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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > October > 27
Monday, October 27, 2008
Review: Round Rock Symphony Orchestra
If it wasn’t exactly auspicious, the debut of the new Round Rock Symphony Saturday night at First United Methodist Church was at least a commendable effort that resulted in an able though not perfect production.
About 300 turned out to hear the new non-profit 40-member professional orchestra — Round Rock’s first — give a concert of lush, pretty Romantic-era symphonic pieces.
Led by music director Silas Nathaniel Huff (also one of the organization’s founders), the orchestra started Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides with a certain timidity, the horns entering the first few times with a nervous wobble in pitch. Eventually, the ensemble got its footing, but still never seemed to quite settle into the piece with full confidence and conviction.
The violins struggled with the quieter sections of Wagner’s gentle Siegfried Idyll, not always staying on pitch. A relatively intimate piece compared to the rest of Wagner’s oeuvre, the Idyll is a spaciously romantic musical poem of sorts, Waqner’s symphonic birthday greeting to his wife. But — perhaps in an effort to entertain? — the Round Rock Symphony’s presentation was accompanied by a slide show featuring the work of wedding photographer, Roy Allen Stagg, an orchestra donor. Rather than add artistically to the understanding and experience of Wagner’s music, the slide show proved a bad distraction and just an advertisement for Stagg.
The orchestra re-couped its dignity with Schubert’s Italian Overture giving it a lively if not fully spirited rendition, though its hard to say if that was because of timidity or a certain directorial passivity.
After intermission, the orchestra was joined by the Round Rock Rock Community Choir, pianist Brett Bachus and six vocal soloists for Beethoven’s sweeping Choral Fantasy. Bachus brought on an invigorating flare, the first real fire of the evening, as did the vocal soloists (sopranos Elizabeth Schwab-Fike and Amy Mathews-Muttwill, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Petillot, tenor Scott Blackshire, baritone Bryan Bolzenthal and bass C. Houston Hill) who performed with confidence and clarity. And that energy made for a finale that had some flourish and flare.
While certainly commodious, the First United Methodist Church has perfectly decent though not super sharp and dynamic acoustics. The result — at times, the orchestra sounded ever so slightly muffled.
It’s admirable that those behind the Round Rock Symphony have the desire to start a new professional orchestra. Certainly, it bodes well for the entire greater metropolitan area that new professional arts groups find the means — or at least the interest — to launch.
The next step? Amping up the gusto and finesse.
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2007-2008 B. Iden Payne Award winners
Austin Circle of Theaters awarded its annual B. Iden Payne Awards at a ceremony Sunday night at the Long Center. The Payne Awards commend outstanding work in comedy, drama, musical theater, youth theater and production design.
COMEDIES
Outstanding Production of a Comedy ‘Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead’ (Hyde Park Theatre)
Outstanding Director of a Comedy Ken Webster (‘Dog Sees God’)
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Matthew Radford (‘Benedick,’ ‘Much Ado About Nothing’)
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Katherine Catmull (Winnie, ‘Happy Days’)
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Comedy Ben Wolfe (Michael, ‘Featuring Loretta’)
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Comedy Bernadette Nason (Madame Arcati, ‘Blithe Spirit’)
DRAMAS
Outstanding Production of a Drama ‘Doubt’ (Zachary Scott Theatre Center)
Outstanding Director of a Drama Shawn Sides (‘The Method Gun’)
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama David Stahl (‘Henry Drummond,’ ‘Inherit the Wind’)
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Kathleen Fletcher (Catherine Holly, ‘Suddenly Last Summer’)
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Drama Tyler Jones (Happy, ‘Death of a Salesman’)
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Drama Rachel McGinnis (Zubaida Ula et al., ‘The Laramie Project’)
PLAYS FOR YOUTH
Outstanding Production of a Play for Youth ‘The Red Balloon’ (Tongue and Groove Theatre)
Outstanding Director of a Play for Youth Andreá S. Smith (‘Wiley and the Hairy Man’)
Outstanding Actor in a Play for Youth Mark Stewart (the Boy, ‘The Red Balloon’)
Outstanding Actress in a Play for Youth Kristin Bennett (Mammy, ‘Wiley and the Hairy Man’)
MUSIC THEATER
Outstanding Production of Music Theater ‘Troades: The Legend of the Women of Troy’ (VORTEX Repertory Company)
Outstanding Director of Music Theater Bonnie Cullum (‘Troades’)
Outstanding Lead Actor in Music Theater Cedric Neal (Sportin’ Life, ‘Porgy and Bess’)
Outstanding Lead Actress in Music Theater Marva Hicks (Bess, ‘Porgy and Bess’)
Outstanding Featured Actor in Music Theater James La Rosa (Abraham, ‘Altar Boyz’)
Outstanding Featured Actress in Music Theater Janis Stinson (Maria, ‘Porgy and Bess’)
TECHNICAL
Outstanding Set Design Arthur Adair (‘The Red Balloon’)
Outstanding Lighting Design Jason Amato (‘Troades’)
Outstanding Sound Design Jeffrey Alan Jones (‘Death and the King’s Horseman’)
Outstanding Costume Design Derek Whitener (‘Porgy and Bess’)
Outstanding Music Director Justin Sherburn (‘The Red Balloon’)
Outstanding Choreographer Robin Lewis (‘Porgy and Bess’)
Outstanding Original Script Zell Miller, III (‘Radio Silence’)
Outstanding Original Score Justin Sherburn (‘The Red Balloon’)
SPECIAL
Outstanding Cast Performance ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenan’e (Renaissance Austin Theatre and VORTEX Repertory Company)
Outstanding Ensemble Performance Content Love Knowles, Betsy McCann, Kira Parra, Emerald Mystiek, Ashley Edwards, Leigh Shaw and Elizabeth Rast (Chorus, ‘Troades’)
Outstanding Youth Performance David Bologna (Mickey, ‘Golly Gee Whiz!’)
SPECIAL CERTIFICATE Special Certificate for Outstanding Achievement in Animation to Leah Sharpe for ‘The Red Balloon’
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Review: ‘Hansel and Gretel’
Composer Engelbert Humperdinck (not the pop star Engelbert Humperdinck) and his librettist explicitly designed their opera ‘Hansel and Gretel’ for an audience with children. Like a brand clearly carved into all the gates of a ranch, a musical proverb is sung near the start and at the very end of the piece like an inscription: When we’re in trouble, God helps us.
It’s one thing to be in the forest at night and afraid of the dark. Hansel and Gretel are helped through the night by 14 guardian angels, a sandman, and a dew fairy (I admit, it’s a curious mixture of Christian and pagan beings, but they’re all on our side). In the morning light the children face real evil, a witch who bakes children into gingerbread. Now it’s their wits that save them.
So what happens when Richard M. Isackes, director and designer of the production in performance by the University of Texas’ Butler Opera Center, systematically inverts the entire moral order of the world in which this piece takes place? The various ministering spirits become bag ladies, complete with a pair of grocery carts, and the same bag ladies return in the last scene as the gingerbread children. Economic, yet illogical. The witch is visible overseeing the action at the opening and — explain this, please — at the end, AFTER she has been baked in her own oven. (That means that evil wins in the end, doesn’t it?)
As a visual experience, this forest is some sort of dystopia, a collection of objects, a few of which can be seen to serve a purpose in the story. But light and dark are really important in this story, and nightfall comes only AFTER the sandman has put the children to sleep.
Unlike other elements of this production, the musical elements are quite good. Let the record show that the Witch was portrayed by a mezzo-soprano, obeying the composer and contrary to the vile American habit of using a tenor. George Garrett Keast, conducting his third production at UT and a kind of principal guest conductor, draws a rich, full tone from the orchestra. Particularly on Friday evening, he was able to pull back into line players and singers who fell victim to opening night jitters.
David Mead is a classical music freelance critic for the American-Statesman.
‘Hansel and Gretel’ continues at 8 p.m Oct. 31 and 7 p.m. Nov. 2 at McCullough Theatre, 23rd St. and Robert Dedman Dr., UT campus. $20 general public; $17 UT faculty/staff and seniors; $10 students. www.utpac.org
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Review: Ballet Austin and ‘Episodes’
Ballet Austin has a knack for choosing good bedfellows. Working with Washington company the Suzanne Farrell Ballet elevated the company’s dancers and brought a rarely seen, but important dance work to Austin audiences. The company’s season opener Friday at the Long Center featured George Balanchine’s 1959 ballet “Episodes,” reconstructed in partnership with Farrell and her company. The dancing, like the ballet, was clean, clear, and smart. (The season opening program also included Artistic Director Stephen Mills’ premiere “Liminal Glam” and Twyla Tharp’s “Nine Sinatra Songs.”)
Balanchine built “Episodes” from intelligent couplings, too. Originally the ballet had two sections: the former choreographed by modern dance matriarch Martha Graham and the latter by Balanchine.
Musically Balanchine paired the sparse dissonance of Anton Webern with the lush baroque of Bach, arranged by Webern, and played this weekend by the Austin Symphony. Graham’s portions of “Episodes” lasted only two years, but what remained — Balanchine plus Webern and Bach — feels like a revelation, a palate cleanser of ballet.
“Episodes” featured dancers from Ballet Austin and Farrell. Ballet Austin’s Ashley Lynn and Paul Michael Bloodgood were excellent in the ballet’s first section, “Symphony,” which turns an investigative eye to the body’s joints, exploring how limbs move. The leads, accompanied by a corps that included Austin’s Orlando Canova and Christopher Swaim, suddenly break their legs at the knee or the ankle. Then Lynn and Bloodgood move on to the hips; he holds her as she swings her legs in ever-widening circles. Individual bodies break into pieces and then reform into coherent wholes as Webern’s equally segmented “Symphony Op. 21” spits notes into the air. Knees bend. A triangle tinkles. They connect.
If “Symphony” assembled the body, “Episodes” second movement assembled a couple. Austin’s Allisyn Paino and Farrell’s Momchil Mladenov play with moving together, rarely to graceful effect. Paino has had so many comedic roles in various Ballet Austin programs, and she is funny here, too. But it is not a character that makes her funny, but rather the placement of her body against Mladenov. The dancers take full advantage of the choreography’s intended awkwardness, coming together like the pieces of an old jigsaw puzzle. They fit together, but not so cleanly that the lines between them disappear. “Episodes” final sections, “Concerto” and “Ricercata,” feature Farrell dancers as the leads, though some of the most beautiful work comes from “Ricercata’s” corps, which included many Ballet Austin dancers.
Six women stand frozen for the ballet’s beginning, then start a series of arm and leg movements, visually and kinetically layered over the rest of the corps, who are on their knees, extending and circling their arms and legs. Bach’s music buoys Balanchine’s simplicity, and “Episodes” threatens a pleasurable overflow. All the pieces of Webern and Balanchine get added together, the precision of arms and legs in unison or in canon suddenly offer emotional sustenance.
Clare Croft is a dance freelance critic for the American-Statesman.
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