Category: Music

Boston Globe: After 105 years, BSO to enter a new stage. I’ll be interested to see if there is any audible difference (there will certainly be a difference in the appearance of the floor). I find it interesting that there is so much care taken to reproduce the exact stage floor down to the nails used; certainly Carnegie Hall is a cautionary example, but I don’t think anyone is proposing filling in the sub-stage area with cement. But it’s good to know (albeit a little scary) that the BSO doesn’t know what the stage trap door is for, either…

There were a lot fewer reviews for Seiji’s Mahler 2nd than for previous concerts, though the crowd was much bigger. The reviews were also all about Seiji, though I think the performance of the orchestra and chorus was worth at least talking about:

• Boston Herald: Wiz Ozawa steals BSO shed show (easily my favorite review title ever). “Stutzmann and Murphy sang responsively in their minor solo roles, and the chorus, as usual, sang with nuance and clarity. The orchestra was magnificent, and the roaring from the crowd carried deep into the Tanglewood night.”
• Boston Globe: For Ozawa, an emotional and expressive return to Tanglewood. “The BSO playing was glorious; many episodes, like the brass chorales that used to sputter and splatter, were admirable in ensemble and balance. The hushed entry of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus into the finale was once again an unearthly and spine-tingling moment. There were significant and eloquent instrumental solos from Ronald Barron, trombone, and John Ferrillo, oboe. The vocal soloists were Nathalie Stutzmann, singing with deep-plush contralto tone and warm feeling, and Heidi Grant Murphy, tracing the higher lines with her pearly soprano.”
• Patriot Ledger: Ozawa returns, triumphant, to Tanglewood stage. “In the glorious natural setting of the Berkshires, hearing this epic work capped by the triumphant choral proclamation, ‘Rise again, yes, you will rise again,’ was an uplifting experience.”

So the only thing cooler than singing with Seiji, Heidi Grant Murphy, and Nathalie Stutzmann is having them show up at the choir party afterwards.

It was a weekend of brushes with fame, in fact, some closer than others. Leaving the dress rehearsal yesterday morning, I walked away from the shed and spoke to Lisa, and her first words were, “You touched Seiji!” I responded that I hadn’t been that close, and she said, “No, you dummy, he was standing right in front of you when you exited the hall. You almost ran him over.” Um, oops. In my defense I was still hyperventilating a little bit from the finale.

Then last night the chorus was entering the stage through the side door of the shed, a path which winds by the dressing rooms of the guest performers and the conductor. An older gentleman stepped by as I walked in and commented, “What a long line of performers.” I walked past and did a double-take: it was John Williams, the former Pops conductor and current film composer, who’s been around quite a few Tanglewood performances this summer. I had been within a step of barreling into him on the way to the stage. I walked on by, noting the vaguely familiar woman standing across the hall. When I saw her later at the after-party, I placed her: Mia Farrow. Both were there to say hi to Seiji.

And me? Too gobsmacked, and honestly too tired, to say anything to any of them. Oh well.

Two notes on last night’s performance of Mahler’s Second (“Resurrection”) Symphony at Tanglewood with Seiji Ozawa at the helm.

First, I should know better than to try to make a critical analysis of any work before I actually sing it. A tenor near me was lamenting his difficulty in hitting the high notes at the end of the last movement, and I responded, “There are, I think, some works that are so transcendent that they even transcend the ability of the performer to finish them.” Of course, in the actual performance, it was my voice that cracked on the first fortissimo B-flat on the penultimate page of the choral score. As Monty Python would say, so much for pathos.

Second: I entered the weekend with some uncertainty about Maestro Ozawa’s conducting approach, having gotten accustomed to Maestro Levine’s undemonstrative, understated style. I still have some reservations after the concert. Seiji’s approach to conducting is dynamic and evolving, and I thought at some points that he was placing too much emphasis on emotional content and not enough on precision. But there were decided benefits to his approach too. His dance (and that’s the only thing to call it) on the podium demonstrated to the audience how the music should be interpreted emotionally just as it gave guidance to the orchestra and chorus on how to interpret it musically.

And besides, it’s hardly fair to take points off for precision when he was conducting the entire massive symphony from memory. In fact, I am humbled and shamed about all the times I complained about singing from memory, as he was not only cuing every section perfectly but also mouthing the words to the chorus at the same time, all without opening his score.

So here I am, actually on vacation, no calls to take later for work, in Lenox, Massachusetts, between days of my residency at Tanglewood for the Mahler 2nd. “Oh that magic feeling…nowhere to go.” And of course it’s pouring. Er, has poured, is currently spitting, but looks like it might pour again any second.

What’s a depressive guy to do? Why, crank up the iPod, of course. Today’s random 10 is brought to you by the fine drip coffee (since the espresso machine is broken) and free wifiat the Lenox Cafe, an outpost of Barrington Coffee:

1. Sufjan Stevens, “Vito’s Ordination Song” (Greetings from Michigan)
2. Nada Surf, “Blankest Year” (The Weight is a Gift)
3. Shannon Worrell, “Shoot the Elephant” (The Moviegoer)
4. Soul Coughing, “Maybe I’ll Come Down” (El Oso)
5. R.E.M., “Lotus” (Up)
6. Neko Case, “That Teenage Feeling” (Fox Confessor Brings The Flood)
7. Tori Amos, “Toast” (The Beekeeper)
8. Lambchop, “Suzieju” (How I Quit Smoking)
9. Minus the Bear, “Drilling” (Menos El Oso)
10. Mission of Burma, “Nancy Reagan’s Head” (There’s a Time and Place to Punctuate)

I’m back at Tanglewood, for the last time this summer, to perfom Mahler’s Second (aka “Resurrection”) Symphony with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the BSO. This will be only the second time that I’ve performed the work, and the contrast is pretty significant.

This time, I can hit the high B that the tenors have in the last movement (the only movement in which the chorus sings). I feel as though I’m in command of the music. We’re singing mixed—two tenors next to two sopranos on one side, two altos on the other, and two basses in front of us—which was common under Seiji Ozawa but which we are doing for the first time since I joined the chorus last summer (not counting Pops performances). This means that each of us has to totally know the music—especially since we’re singing from memory.

Last time? Last time was over twelve years ago. The Virginia Glee Club had been invited to join several other Virginia choruses in a performance in Roanoke, which I remember (somewhat improbably) as taking place in a large basketball arena, and that the singers were in the upper bleachers. And I remember driving there with Don Webb and Eric Rothwell, in Webb’s Japanese import with the license plate VMHLB2, and listening to Prince as we talked about the music that we were singing that season. And improbably, on that two hour drive between Charlottesville and Roanoke, just as we were discussing the endless mass that we had been performing all year, which was written by Cristobal de Morales and based on a well known medieval “Ave Maria” chant, the Prince disk worked its way around to “Sexy MF.”

And somehow, someone was singing along to the Ave Maria chant at the same time someone else was singing along to the Prince tune, which yielded “Ave Ma-ri–a…” “shakin” that ass, shakin’ that ass!”

At which point I realized that we were all going to Hell. Forever.

For this reason, my memory of Mahler’s Second is a little dim. So I’m glad I have a chance to do it properly.

Or, more precisely, Power Back On. I’m in my office now, but was working from home this morning because of a power failure that took down our entire building. (Apparently an air conditioner overloaded.) But they fixed it and it’s back to business.

So without further ado, this Random 10, in which the first two tunes are combined greater in length than the next 8:

1. Branford Marsalis Quartet, “Countronious Rex” (Contemporary Jazz)
2. Anthony Braxton, “Cherokee” (9 Standards: Quartet, 1993)
3. The Charlatans UK, “A Time for Living” (Help)
4. Bobby Bare, “Everybody’s Talkin’” (The Moon was Blue)
5. Vic Gammon, “He That Buys Land” (The Tale of Ale)
6. Sufjan Stevens, “Chicago” (Illinoise)
7. Beth Orton, “Conceived” (Comfort of Strangers)
8. Billy Joe Shaver, “Georgia on a Fast Train” (The Third Annual Oxford American Music Issue 1999)
9. Woody Allen, “Summing Up” (Standup Comic)
10. Funkadelic, “I Wanna Know If It’s Good to You (Alt. Version)” (Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow)

It’s not uncommon for a folksinger’s bio to mention the influence of James Taylor, Suzanne Vega, and Linda Ronstadt. It’s a lot rarer for the bio to go on to mention degrees in classical vocal performance and experience in the Jewish, Arabic, and gospel traditions. It’s almost unheard of for a musician to live up to that many promises. But Carrie Cheron is that rare new recording artist who sounds completely authentic and passionate and at the same time polished and poised. Her debut album, One More Autumn, is a relaxed collection of acoustic performances that shows off her songwriting chops and her burnished mezzo voice to beguiling effect.

Carrie Cheron has been gigging around Boston and New York for a few years, but has also had a series of side gigs, including church musician (through which I should mention that I became acquainted with her, in the interest of full disclosure), that have carried her into some different idioms and musical traditions. The variety of her experience stands her in good stead on Autumn, which has a wide emotional range and plays with some interesting contrasts. The mood of the songs ranges from relaxed and reflective in “Goodbye Amelia,” “Autumn,” and some of the other folksy numbers, to mischievously mellow in “Untitled Song About Drinking Alone” to somber and mournful in “Ghost Town.” To my ears the standout track is “Arms of Our Brothers,” which sounds by turns anthemic and balladic and would not be wholly out of place in a worship service. Carrie’s choice of cover material and texts (including a fine performance of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and an adaptation of Christina Rossetti’s “Echo” as “Julie’s Song”) is solid as well.

Gripes? A few minor ones. Carrie’s voice is sometimes a little too low in the mix, particularly on the first few tracks where the backing vocalist is a little too prominent. While I appreciate the choice of traditional instrumentation, I personally could have done without the mandolin on a few tracks, especially on “Time” where it distracts a bit from the performance. When Carrie’s vocals, melody, lyrics, and accompaniment gel perfectly, as they do on “Arms of Our Brothers” and “A Rainy Night,” they hit with an incisive clarity like sunlight through a high window. Carrie may be her own most sensitive accompanist, as both these numbers are primarily driven by her piano.

My take on the album: it’s a compelling voice heard across a crowded room. I look forward to the next one clearing away some of my production quibbles so we can hear the voice more clearly.

It occurs to me that I’ve posted a couple of lists of review links, but haven’t actually written about the experience of performing great choral masterworks at Tanglewood. First a few specific notes about the Mozart performances, then some general observations:

First, the amount of music that the chorus actually sings in Don Giovanni is quite small compared to the three-hour-plus performance length. To be specific, we had three numbers in which we performed: about sixteen or 24 measures each for the men and women in No. 5 (the wedding song), another entrance for the men toward the end of the first act that lasts about 24 or 32 bars, and then the final scene in act II, in which the men have about 16 bars of devilish chorus work. That’s all told less than two minutes of music. Was it worth it to sit on stage for three-plus hours to sing two minutes of music? Um, hell yes, particularly because we had the best seats in the house for the action of the opera. As I eventually agreed with John at MessagesAboutMusic, the key aspect of this opera was being able to watch it, and we had a clear view of all the comedic interactions between the cast. It was a lot of fun.

Second, the Requiem. I’ve sung this piece a few times before, most recently out in Seattle with the Cascadian Chorale on the first 9/11 anniversary, and each performance is different and unique. For one thing, I learned the piece in a non-Süssmayer edition almost 10 years ago with the Cathedral Choral Society, so the memorization part was interesting: I was quite confident with the piece through the first few choral movements but realized a few days before the concert that I was quite shaky on the Offertorium movements, primarily because they had been omitted the first few times I performed the work. But I eventually pulled it together.

This concert was the first time with the TFC that I feel like I really understand why we sing music from memory. Memorizing for a guest conductor can be tricky, since frequently the conductor wants different interpretations of the music from that which was memorized, and there are only a few rehearsals (maybe as few as two) in which to re-learn the music. But singing with Maestro Levine is different.

I observed last year at Tanglewood that his conducting style is different than others with whom I’ve sung. He stopped a rehearsal of Mahler’s 8th and said to the first violin section, “Look at your scores for that passage. I think you’ll see that Mahler wanted something different than what you’re playing.” No histrionics, no micromanaging, just appealing to their native musicianship to bring out a coherent performance.

It appears that he takes a similar approach to working with choruses: if you provide him with a well thought through, passionate performance, he works in that context to provide feedback. But he never microconducts emotional context, dynamics, fugue entrances, etc. because he relies on you as the performer—yes, even the individual chorus member—to bring that to the performance. It’s daunting if you’re used to conductor-tyrants, but it’s liberating and exhilarating if you can own the music and invest your own energy in the performance.

I’ll be interested, after three concerts with Levine in a row, to see how things go with Seiji Ozawa in August. From what I understand it’s a night and day experience.

My first ever picture in the New York Times! (I’m the face circled in red.)

The New York Times review of the Requiem was the first to appear, late last night, followed by the Globe:

• New York Times: At Tanglewood, Scintillating Send-Offs for Don Giovanni and Mozart: “With the festival chorus, meticulously trained by John Oliver, weighing in at about 80 voices, Mr. Levine simply let it rip. The wall of sound at the start was stunning, and the performance remained compelling throughout, mostly for its power, but also at times for its subtlety.”
• Boston Globe: BSO celebrates Mozart’s 250th with style. “Sunday afternoon brought a solid and stirring performance of the Requiem, with some splendid singing from the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and a starry team of soloists…”
• The Phoenix: Mozart plus. “John Oliver’ Tanglewood Festival Chorus didn’t have as much to do as in its stunning work in the next day’s Mozart Requiem, but it was one more crucial cog in Don Giovanni’s miraculous success.” (OK, so the Phoenix really only reviewed Don G, but they still said we were stunning.)

Only one review so far for the weekend’s performances, but it’s a good one: Boston Globe, Levine leads triumphant Don Giovanni. I would agree with Dyer’s assessments of the soloists, particularly Matthew Polenzani, Soile Isokoski, Morris Robinson, and Luca Pisaroni. The cast had tremendous rapport and it was fun to watch from the best seats in the house, even if we only had a few minutes of song.

The bloggers generally agreed: Bravo, Alto Flute thought it was “very very very very VERY good” and said it gave him/her chills, even at the 3 hour plus running time. The writer at My Blog Is Laaaaaaaame says the singing was magnificent. Fanw, who was on stage with me, notes that the female contingent of the TFC was captivated by both Pisaroni and Mariusz for more than strictly musical reasons. Of course, one grumpy blogger at MessagesAboutMusic wrote that the singers sounded like a bunch of mediocrities to him. Wonder if he was listening to the same concert.

The concert week continues; I sing the chorus part in Don Giovanni in a few hours. The chorus part consisting of approximately 30 measures of music, this will be mostly an excuse for me to watch the action from up close. And the cast being amazing, the action should be excellent indeed.

I was actually reading this New Yorker article about the complete Mozart oeuvre during one of the long stretches between our entrances during one rehearsal this week, but had to stop—there was just too much to watch. For instance, the celebrated scene in which Leporello explains to the stunned Elvira that she is just one of his master’s conquests, then proceeds to read the list from a log that he has kept. In the first runthrough, Leporello used his own paperbound copy of the score as the “catalogue.” In the second, there was a burst of laughter and applause as at the requisite moment in the aria, Levine’s own hard-bound score appeared, passed to Leporello via one of the wind players. Leporello took the score, gaily referred to it during the aria, then passed it back, Levine conducting from memory all the while. The humor of using the score as the catalog, as Leporello’s record of Don Giovanni’s conquests, is delicious, and plays nicely on the metaphysical level.

Today’s Random 10 is brought to you by the letters C and B, where C stands for Carver Middle School and B stands for bus. Carver was the middle school next to ours—immediately adjacent, oddly enough—where a lot of the kids from my neighborhood went, some of the nice ones and some of the troublemakers. I rode the bus with them through three-quarters of the town and a 30 minute morning commute to attend the next door middle school, which had a gifted program. Watching them go their way as I turned and trudged mine probably goes a long way toward explaining my reluctance to accept the privileges in my life at face value, as I know how close the alternatives are.

And that bus goes a long way toward explaining my bizarre memory for 80s pop and hip-hop. The alpha kids at the back of the bus always had a radio, a boom box really, which the driver tolerated since it kept them from beating up the other kids (usually). And that radio would always be tuned to some reasonably urban station or other, which (in the days before really rigid formats) could also be counted on to drop some choice dance tracks alongside the hip hop. I first heard Doug E. Fresh do “The Show” on that bus, and “Roxanne Roxanne” … and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Which explains its presence with the former two songs on my first brace of 80s compilations.

And the rest of today’s list? To me today, the other nine songs look like the fruit of my long running attempts to run away from the music on that bus and find something different. It was a quest led me down a lot of blind alleys as well as to a lot of new and interesting places. But it never succeeded in excising those other songs, which tormented me for years—the knowledge that the troublemakers may have gotten the worse school, but they still had my attention because I couldn’t get their music out of my head.

1. David Byrne, “Good and Evil” (Rei Momo)
2. Frankie Goes to Hollywood, “Relax”
3. James Brown, “Bewildered” (Star Time)
4. Richard Buckner, “Faithful Shooter” (Since)
5. Miles Davis, “Assassinat (take 2)/Julien Dans l’Ascenseur” (Ascenseur Pour L’échauffaud)
6. Mogwai, “Friend of the Night” (Mr. Beast)
7. Funkadelic, “Funky Dollar Bill” (Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow)
8. The Wedding Present, “Shatner” (George Best Plus)
9. Mogwai, “Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist” (Come On Die Young)
10. Camera Obscura, “Dory Previn” (Let’s Get Out of This Country)

I came from an intoxicating rehearsal of the Mozart Requiem this morning (if you’ve ever sung the “Rex tremendae” with a huge, well-tuned chorus after listening to four nearly perfect soloists hit the “Tuba mirum” out of the park, you know what I mean). This afternoon I was startled to come across a suggestion that the piece is not just intoxicating but subversive. A reviewer on Amazon writes that the piece incorporates “Freemason music” (look for the review called “The All Time Best Mozart Requiem”). In a word, huh?

Turns out it’s not that far fetched. Mozart was a Freemason, a member of the lodge “Zur Wohltätigkeit” (Benefaction) and a Master Mason for the last six years of his life, and many of his works contain what some have described as overt Masonic symbolism, such as the three chords in the opening of the Magic Flute. But the only case I can see for giving credence to the Masonic symbolism suggestion for the Requiem is its echoes of the orchestration of the Magic Flute. Not much to hang a conspiracy theory on.

But I was amused to learn of one non-Masonic connection in Mozart’s work: the scatological, as evidenced by his six (or three) part canon, “Leck mich im Arsch” (K. 231 or 233, also known as the “Kiss My Ass” canon). You won’t hear that on WCRB…

As I was looking through the Feedster and Technorati listings for reviews of the Gurrelieder concert, I was pleased to run across a couple of other people who have been blogging about (and from!) the TFC:

• Rishi, who performed in February’s and July’s Gurrelieder
• Carol Minor at Minor Music, who attended the performance last weekend and with her keen eye noted some details of Levine’s conducting
• Five O’Clock Shadow, who attended the February performance and appears to be a Boston student
• Maury D’Annato of My Favorite Intermissions, who joins the chorus of bloggers and reviewers griping about balance problems with the soloists
• Kelly Corcoran of, um, her MySpace, who sang with us in July (and whom I didn’t realize was a conductor)
• fanw, who writes intelligently about the trade-offs involved in singing in a major work like the Gurrelieder as an amateur chorister
• Andrea, who sang in the February Gurrelieder and wrote about some of the logistical challenges of singing the last five minutes of a 130-minute-long work
• Marie, whose dad is in the TFC and who wishes she could sing like Karita Mattila (don’t we all?)
• Willowfinn, who had an impromptu Gurrelieder dance party with his/her friends in the back row at Symphony Hall back in February, and who also points out the real reason for the piece’s magnificence: “Schoenberg + zombies + a dude named Waldemar + a veritable forest of violins = WIN!”