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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > February > 16
Monday, February 16, 2009
Synergy — and DJ Spooky — in the house
Sometimes synergy happens. And when it does, things sizzle and explode.
There’s plenty of synergy flowing around Golden Hornet Project these days. Composers Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski took their decade-long collaboration to a new level last year when they formed the Golden Hornet Project into full-fledged 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization.
Now, the two indie musicians have a platform to refine and promote their considerable vision. Reynolds and Stopschinski — along with a board of trustees that includes Alamo drafthouse founder Tim League, public relations whiz David Wyatt, club booking master minder Graham Williams and Tosca String Quartet violist Ames Asbell. among others — have re-doubled their efforts to present new musical works.
Golden Hornet Project is on a mission to collapse the barrier between the nightclub and the concert hall, conflate the academy with the underground. And that’s long overdue in Austin, and everywhere for that matter. The limits of categorization — classical music, new music, pop music — impose too many boundaries between composer and listener.
Sunday night, Golden Hornet Project’s new found synergy was in full force at a preview of the group’s March 1 Tenth Anniversary Concert which will feature Tosca String Quartet.
As dusk fell about 70 people gathered at The Plant at Kyle, the post-modern architectural jewel that’s under the co-stewardship of Dana Friis-Hansen, Golden Hornet Project board member and director of the Austin Museum of Art.
The evening’s special guest was Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Something of a conceptual music artist who applies DJ techniques not only to music and found sounds but to film and multi-media, the New York-based world-traveling Miller was a guest of Golden Hornet Project all weekend, giving a show Friday night at the Mohawk with Reynolds and Stopschinski. Miller also stopped by the Alamo Drafthouse to present “Rebirth of a Nation,” his re-mix of the D.W. Griffith’s 1915 infamous film “Birth of a Nation.”
But at The Plant on Sunday, Miller gifted a CD of his latest mix to everyone in the audience before the Tosca String Quartet played a snippet of Miller’s “Nature Morte,” the nine-movement piece which is the composer’s musical meditation on global climate change. Ethereal and dissonant, “Nature Morte” suggested a sound portrait both sad yet beautiful.
Despite the evening’s chill — which caused Tosca’s string instruments to slip out of tune; remember why Izthak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma played to a recording at the Inauguration? — the quartet gave a nice turn to excerpts of pieces by Reynolds and Stopschinski that will be heard in the entirity at the March 1 gig.
Afterward, as darkness spread, Miller signed copies of new book “Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture.”
“Music is exchange,” said Miller. “Today, you are what you play and sound is global.”
Graham Reynolds, Paul Miller, Peter Stopschinski
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Review: ‘Shooting Star’
We’d all like to think we’ve escaped our youth. Actually, we’d all like to think that everyone else forgot us too when we were flush with idealism, when we were confident that our life would go exactly according to a grandiose plan, when we were certain we would do great and different things.
Steven Dietz sends a tender valentine to middle-age in “Shooting Star,” a smart and sweet comedy from one of American theater’s most-produced playwright and now getting a polished premiere at Zach Theatre.
Years ago, when they were in college, Elena Carson (Barbara Chisholm) and Reed McAllister (Jamie Goodwin) were madly in love and living the bohemian life together. Elena was the ultimate free-spirit and Earth mother-in-the-making; Reed tried be a free-spirit, but wrestled with his more thoughtful nature. They experimented with an open relationship, they told each other they were both destined for significant and soul-changing lives.
Then they broke up. And they didn’t see each other for 20 years. Now they’ve run into each other again, both stuck at a snowed in airport.
Dietz’s gift as a writer is an acute attention to our modern language. He elevates ordinary conversation to a kind of music with precise rhythms and exquisitely timed phrases. In Dietz’s hands conversation sounds natural, but smart.
That kind of linguistic precision could weigh down an actor. But Chisholm and Goodwin deftly handled the clever banter, never letting the energy slide during the 80-minute intermission-less play. And though the plot may see the characters traverse a mountain of emotion — the regret, the unfulfilled dreams, the acceptance of the reality of one’s present life — Chisholm and Goodwin shoulder it with sincerity.
Played tightly in the round on Zach Theater’s Whisenhunt Stage, “Shooting Star” doesn’t let you get far away from the bittersweet actuality of life considered at middle-age. But then why try to? Dietz makes reality poetic.
“Shooting Star” continues 8 p.m. Wednesdays—Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through April 5. Whisenhunt Stage, Zach Theatre, 1510 Toomey Road. $15-$39. 476-0541. www.zachtheatre.org.
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Review: Ballet Austin’s ‘Hamlet’
Opera and ballet fans often overlap: both forms tend toward spectacular extravagance. While story ballets may be replete with costumes and sets, it’s rare to see a production where choreography and design work together as well as Ballet Austin’s “Hamlet.” Artistic Director Stephen Mills’ 2001 rendition of iconic Shakespeare returned to Austin on Friday at the Long Center. The staging and the stage picture were always stunning and smart.
“Hamlet’s” design, created by Jeffrey Main and Mills, and lighting, designed by Tony Tucci, manipulated space to tell the story of the despairing prince and his wounded lover. Hamlet could be the story of one man’s tightly wound mind, and Phillip Glass’ swirling music kept focus on Hamlet’s (Frank Shott) journey. The set’s sense of scale, a mix of openness and elements that are so large they are monstrous, makes Hamlet’s intensity more painful.
When the second act opens at Ophelia’s funeral, the white hammock-like bed for Ophelia (Ashley Lynn) floated high above the mourners against a huge blue-lit scrim. Ophelia and Hamlet are always cast as outsiders in the ballet. In the opening moments, Hamlet sits on an elevated platform similar to Ophelia’s funeral bier. Then he moves through the crowd largely unseen. Ophelia dances with everyone, but her hair is down; the other women’s hair is tightly bound. Her dress is light pink; the other women wear deep colors.
Hamlet and Ophelia serve as observers and mirrors to a community unaware it has been unleashed from ethics in the wake of the murder of the king, Hamlet’s father. The people’s unfounded innocence unfolds most obviously from Ophelia’s brother Laertes. As Laertes, Johntuart Winchell’s fluffy blonde hair and earnest attack at movement made Laertes’ connection with the new King Claudius (Edward Carr) believable.
The completeness of the ballet’s narrative has much to do with the intelligent coupling of design and dance, but Shott and Lynn bring nuance to roles that can be stereotypical. In several solos, Shott foreshadows Hamlet’s breakdown through energetic choices. His knees suddenly jerk and bend. Hamlet’s ground is being torn from beneath him. Lynn’s Ophelia seems doomed by vulnerability Her open chest and deep lunges speak to her sensitivity, but also her undoing.
Choreographically, Mills’ work for Ophelia might be the best in the production. Her steps tap the softness of the other women’s classicism, but Ophelia’s are rooted. The combination illustrates how Ophelia is a woman who chooses to be different. Perhaps she goes insane because she, like Hamlet, is honest.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance critic.
Photos by Tony Spielberg.
