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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > April
April 2009
Review: Forced Entertainment’s ‘Spectacular’ at Fusebox
The spectacle in “Spectacular” is all imaginary. It’s the stuff of a show that characters only talk about, never perform. Instead, on a stripped down stage, armed only with a microphone, a few spot lights, and a skeleton-painted sweat suit, Forced Entertainment operates purely in the theatre of the mind.
“Spectacular” consists of 90 minutes of an actor in a skeleton suit discussing the show he’d normally be putting on, occasionally interrupted by an actress’ prolonged death scene.
For starters, Robin Arthur would usually enter, following a lengthy warm-up act, down a long staircase to take center stage, a frightening, provocative appearance, he says. Instead, Arthur presents an affable, pot-bellied professional in sagging sweats, simply conversing with the audience about his doubts, desires, and, of course, this other spectacular show.
For her part, Claire Marshall’s death is protracted enough to make even Shakespeare’s Bottom grimace at the liberties taken and imaginary guts spilled—but only because she’s done him one better. Ranging from comedically large spasms to quiet, gasping shudders, Marshall’s death is an odd counter-point to Arthur’s quiet musings.
And, thankfully, that’s the show: a monologue exploring the technique of theatre, the emotions it provokes—the mental—all mashed up with not just the visceral, but mimed viscera. Both levels are compelling alone. Arthur is provocative in asking questions, entertaining in his role as a death’s head jester, and, when he describes what the audience’s reactions usually are, emotionally and hypnotically affecting. Marshall explodes one of theatre’s oldest gags to its fullest, for both laughs and, mirroring her often striking contortions, pain.
It’s when the two combine that they make you grateful this is the show you’re seeing, not some extravaganza with dancers and a house band. Whether that’s Arthur critiquing Marshall’s performance or simply standing over her, a seemingly leering skull next to a dead body, together the two can prompt the heartiest laughs or chilling goosebumps. The swings, though deftly accomplished, between both tones and often-competing focus points can be draining, but that only adds to the overall experience.
With the Fuse Box Festival drawing to an end, be thankful it was able to draw the company from the UK. More importantly, make sure not to miss it.
(“Spectacular” continues Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m. at the Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Dr. $15. 512-524-2041, fuseboxfestival.com.)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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NEA announces Texas arts grants of $1,884,500
The National Endowment for the Arts announced today that it has awarded 32 grants totaling $1,884,500 to Texas arts groups. As part of the awards, the Texas Commission on the Arts received $1,025,500 to support NEA/TCA partnership activities.
The NEA is distributing a total of $82,477,100 to the nation’s arts groups.
New York is receiving $10,239,900; California, $5,586,800.
You can read the full list of grant recipients here.
Central Texas groups receiving NEA funding are:
Austin Classical Guitar Society — $40,000
CATEGORY: Learning in the Arts
FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Learning in the Arts
To support the Educational Outreach Program. Classical guitar instructors will provide weekly individual lessons for economically disadvantaged students and will assist with the direction and curriculum planning of guitar classes in Austin-area schools.
Conspirare — $30,000
CATEGORY: Access to Artistic Excellence
FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Music
To support a compact disc recording of a new choral-orchestral work by composer Eric Whitacre. The concert-length oratorio will merge classical, jazz, and rock idioms.
EmilyAnn Theatre — $15,000
CATEGORY: Learning in the Arts
FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Learning in the Arts
To support Shakespeare Under the Stars, a summer youth theater program. High school students will learn all aspects of performance and technical theater through this hands-on program.
Rude Mechanicals — $20,000
CATEGORY: Access to Artistic Excellence
FIELD/DISCIPLINE: Theater
To support a national tour of The Method Gun, an original, company-developed work. The piece will explore the life, ethos, and techniques of a fictional actor-training guru as recounted through the eyes of her students.
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Mexic-Arte wants to stay put, remodel
After asking Austin voters for $5 million in bond money for a new facility at a new location, Mexic-Arte Museum leaders now say they want to remain at their Congress Avenue site and improve the building they had decided to demolish.
In 2006, Mexic-Arte received $5 million as part of a voter-approved $567.4 million bond package. The money was earmarked to help build a $25 million museum on the city-owned Mexican American Cultural Center campus.
But now, museum leaders say a combination of the economic downturn plus a desire to stay at its highly visible downtown location at Fifth Street and Congress Avenue has led them to decide to stay put and consider a more modest plan to remodel their three-story building.
The museum seeks an agreement that would have the city lease the museum long-term and then re-lease it back to the museum. The city struck a similar agreement with the State Theatre, now managed by the Austin Theatre Alliance, which received $1.9 million in city bond money to help remodel the venue at 719 Congress Ave. (The State ceased operations in 2006 after a water main break flooded the stage and basement.)
If the council approves Mexic-Arte’s plan to stay put, the museum would be the second major arts venue to refurbish its Congress Avenue home. The contemporary arts organization Arthouse is about to begin work on a $6.6 million major renovation of its building at 700 Congress Avenue. The Arthouse project is being paid for entirely with private money. Arthouse bought its building, once a theater and then later a department store, with donations in 1997.
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Austin Arts Hall of Fame inductees 2009 named
Without them, our artful Austin landscape wouldn’t be as rich.
Creators, organizational founders and philanthropists — the 2009 inductees to the Austin Arts Hall of Fame represent the wide talents needed to grow and sustain a creative culture.
This year the Austin Critics’ Table honors the following people and welcomes them to the Austin Arts Hall of Fame:
- Bonnie Cullum, founder Vortex Repertory Theatre
- Daniel Johnson, founding director Texas Early Music Project
- Mary Margaret Farabee, philanthropist and arts supporter
- Sylvia Orozco, founding director of Mexic-Arte Museum
- Alexandra Nadal and Eugene Slavin, dance leaders
- Damian Priour, sculptor
The 2009 Austin Arts Hall of Fame honorees will be celebrated at the Austin Critics’ Table Awards. The informal awards ceremony is free and open to the public. The Austin Critics’ Table is in independent group of critics from the Austin American-Statesman, the Austin Chronicle and Might Be Good.
Austin Critics’ Table Awards
7 p.m. June 1
Cap City Comedy, 8120 Research Boulevard
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Weekend Arts Pix
THURSDAY
‘Texas Treasures: Early Texas Art from Austin Museums.’ Yes, Texas has its own art history. Culled from the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, the Harry Ransom Center, the Austin Museum of Art and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, this exhibit features rarely celebrated masterworks of Texas art from 19th century impressionist landscapes to mid-century modernist abstractions. Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday. Exhibit continues through Aug. 30. Regular museum hours: 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, 605 Robert E. Lee Road. 445-5582, www.umlaufsculpture.org.
FRIDAY
Anton Nel and the Miro Quartet. Pianist Anton Nel and the Miro Quartet have plenty in common: Supreme talent, effervescent playing and a kind of emotional presence while performing music that’s utterly compelling. Haydn’s String Quartet No 1 and Edward Elgar’s Piano Quintet in A. 8 p.m. Bates Recital Hall, Music Building, 2305 Robert Dedman Drive. $20 ($17 seniors, $10 students). 471-5401, www.music.utexas.edu.
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
‘A Legacy of Change: 25th Anniversary Exhibition.’ It started as an artist-run endeavor. Now it’s a permanent fixture on the Austin arts landscape. Mexic-Arte Museum celebrates its 25th anniversary with a survey exhibit of its permanent collection which now includes works by José Guadalupe Posada, Adolfo Mexiac, Angelina Beloff, and Pablo O’Higgins, as well as ceremonial masks from the state of Guerrero and fine art prints from the historical Taller de la Gráfica Popular. Opening reception: 7 to 10 p.m. today. Symposium on state of Latino art museums: 2 to p.m. Saturday. Free family day: 1 to 4 p.m. Exhibit continues through Aug. 2. Regular museum hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Mexic-Arte Museum, 419 Congress Ave. $5 ($4 students/seniors, $1 children 12 and younger free every Sunday). 480-9373, www.mexic-artemuseum.org.
SATURDAY
‘Practice, Practice, Practice.’ Good things come in threes. Comedic timing rests on the idea of things happening in threes. Artist Michael Smith and curator Jay Sander pull together a multimedia group exhibition that riffs on the idea of threes, especially threes that result in absurdity or offbeat points of view. Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday. Exhibit continues through June 13. Regular gallery hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Lora Reynolds Gallery, 360 Nueces St. Free. 215-4965, www.lorareynolds.com.
L. Nowlin Gallery. Austin welcomes a new gallery. Photographer Leslie Nowlin — who’strained her lens on documenting various world cultures and social issues particularly Guatemala, Mexico and Cuba — now opens a space that will welcome documentary photography but also black-and-white fine art photography and photographic collage. John Langmore’s images of Mexico will be the featured artist for the inaugural exhibit. Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday. Regular gallery hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 1202 W. Sixth St. Free. www.lesleynowlinphoto.com.
Image: Ken Morgan, “MorganKen40.” Courtesy Lora Reynolds Gallery.
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Review: Graham Reynolds and Carrie Fountain give us a new kind of art song
Composer Graham Reynolds and poet Carrie Fountain delivered a totally Texas 21st-century remake on the classic art song with “Between Steel and Stardust (Songs of Texas Women)” which premiered Sunday at UT’s Butler School of Music.
UT vocal professor Darlene Wiley, wanting new repertoire for young singers — in particular new selections of high school singers to sing in UIL competitions — commissioned Reynolds for the song cycle. And Reynolds in turn tapped Fountain.
And together Reynolds and Fountain dreamed up charming, fresh, sweet and wonderfully relevant songs — all for soprano voice and piano accompaniment — that honored an utterly original fivesome of Texas women.
The Angel of Goliad, cosmetics empire builder Mary Kay Ash, Tejano pop singer Selena, colorful outlaw Bonnie Harper and U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan got their musical and poetical due from Graham and Fountain. What better pantheon of Lone Star women to represent an modern, eclectic, inclusive view of history while engaging and delighting young women singers?
Wiley performed the songs Sunday accompanied by Rick Rowley.
The Angel of Goliad, who administered to wounded solidiers during the Texas ware for independence, received an appropriately honorific ode.
Mary Kay Ash likewise had a song that evoked the strong-willed self-made millionaire who built her fortune by unleashing thousands of Cadillac-driving cosmetics saleswomen. Reynolds gave it a melody that was charging, hectic, delightful. Fountain drew us charming images:
Pink
I’m thinking Pink.
Driving these streets
thankful some things are only skin deep
Selena and Harper were honored with beautiful, sensitive melodies. And for Jordan, Fountain pulled language from the Congresswoman’s own speeches to paint a portrait of a woman — the first African American female member to serve in the U.S. Congress from the South — who was steadfast in her will.
Let’s hope the UIL forces recognize what a delight — what a unique opportunity to sing about Texas women as inventively imagined by a Texas-based composer and poet — these songs could be for young singers.
Also premiered was Reynolds’ “Double Double: A Suite for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano,” a virtuosic piece pulled off with flair by Rowley, Rebecca Henderson and Kristin Wolfe Jensen and filled with Reynolds’ signature turns: charging rhythms, sweeping cinematic crescendos narrative melodic lines and rollicking arpeggios.
Both “Between Steel and Stardust” and “Double Double” were commissions by UT faculty to a non-UT local composer. And that represents a much commendable reach on UT’s part to the community and to Austin’s music scene — a reach that shouldn’t be so infrequent.
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Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: A symphony for 30 years of musical friendship | Michelle Schumann gives chamber music a needed update |
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Review: TEMP delivers delightful musical complaints
Whine, whine, whine.
We all do it. And we’ve been doing for centuries, sometimes, thankfully, with more poetry and music than not.
Taking a cue from the recent popularity of complaints choirs — modern ensembles specializing in resurrecting, and sometimes refashioning, Renaissance and Baroque songs of woe and heartbreak — the Texas Early Music Project delivered their own humor-inspired musical litany of grievances Saturday night at First English Lutheran Church.
TEMP artistic director Daniel Johnson’s musical celebration of kvetching attracted about 100 people who laughed at the funnier turns (and there were plenty) or showered with applause some of the regular TEMP soloists — mezzo-soprano Stephanie Prewitt and sopranos Gitlanjali Mathur and Jenifer Thyssen.
The musical grumbling began with secular songs from the 13th-century and wound their way through the centuries to the 18th-century. An instrumental ensemble — including Reniassiance lute, violin, harpsichord — complemented the changing line-up of vocalists.
Prewitt started things off with a soulful lament about a jealous husband, her voice clear yet rich and always full of nuance. Mathur and Thyssen impressed with their deft phrasing and full tones on a duet about a heartbroken young woman. And Mathur captivated with a poignant song adapted from Shakespeare’s ‘Othello.’
But the concert wasn’t all songs of woe and sadness. A
Giving their own nod to the centuries of complaints they sang, the ensemble ended with an hysterically funny flourish of their. Johnson molded the much-loved but over-played Pachelbel Canon in D into a 21st-century complaint song with lyrics culled from the TEMP member themselves.
“My boss doesn’t care if I do a good job, but I really have to look interested in the meetings.”
“Why can’t I ever catch up on sleep?”
“Why do they sell us ten hotdogs and eight buns?”
Valid gripes indeed and utterly charming when sung, as TEMP did, with plenty of flare and polish. Johnson and his ensemble get it right — they make gorgeous music and make it a good time.
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Texas art, in the beginning
Yes, Texas’ own art history is not all grandiose landscapes and frontier cowboy paintings.
This weekend the Center for Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art, gathering in town for its annual symposium, hosts an art fair. And a sponsored exhibit, on view through the summer, gathers art work that offers a slightly different take on the expected notions of what Lone Star art history.
Culled from the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, the Harry Ransom Center, the Austin Museum of Art and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, the “Texas Treasures” exhibit features rarely celebrated masterworks of Texas art from 19th century impressionist landscapes to mid-century modernist abstractions.
Texas Treasures: Early Texas Art from Austin Museums.’
Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday.
Regular museum hours: 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
Exhibit continues through Aug. 30
Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, 605 Robert E. Lee Road
512-445-5582, www.umlaufsculpture.org
Texas Art Fair
When: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 2, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 3
Admission: $10
AT&T Hotel and Conference Center, 1900 University Ave.
Participating galleries: Beuhler Fine Art, Cliff Logan Art & Antiques, David Dike Fine Art, Heritage Auction Galleries, Rainone Galleries, Inc., Robert E. Alker Fine Art, Russell Tether Fine Arts Associates, Simpson Galleries, Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden and William Reaves Fine Art
Image: Donald Leroy Weisman, “Electronic Icon,” ca. 1958, Blanton Museum of Art
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Review: ‘Golf: The Musical’
Caveat: The only 18 holes I’ve ever played involved throwing discs (poorly) at Pease Park. As a game, I just don’t get golf. As a musical revue, though, “Golf” is an entertaining collection of Broadway-caliber talent that more often than not makes up for the fact that the show is, well, almost entirely about golf.
“Golf’s” loose collection of sketches and songs has a vaudevillian feel to it—as if Abbot and Costello had performed “Who’s At Hole One.” In the small space of the Keller Williams Studio with its cocktail seating, the sense is heightened and put to good use. “Golf’s” peppy numbers are catchy and often funny, but the best moments are shared more directly with the audience.
Actor and director Joel Blum, himself a veteran of the original Off-Broadway run, and Austinite Joe Penrod do more than re-create Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, they look and sound like Al Hirschfield caricatures come to life. Their bouncy “Road to Heaven” imagines the duo’s last hole together with plenty of quirks and laughs, but also more than a few groaners. But just like the original charismatic comedians, the duo can entertain even when a pun gets used one time—or twenty—too many.
Likewise, Daniel Herron, another Broadway vet, and Jill Blackwood, for whom Austin is lucky that she hasn’t gone off to Broadway on her own, are adept at bringing the audience in behind the set jokes. Whether as a hard boiled links detective with a penchant for wordplay or, in a separate song, as a wife who’s been abandoned for a mistress composed entirely of misheard double entendres or a vamp singing many of the same, they’re able to wink at the audience and make the performance entertaining past the gag’s own merit.
That’s good, because while “Golf” is if not a one-joke show, a one-themed script. And even for someone who looks forward to the O. Henry Pun-Off each year, two hours of golf jokes is shooting above par. Compounding the problem is that while some bits actually border on clever satire, like the jingoistic “Let’s Bring Golf to the Gulf,” other “topical” references simply fall flat.
But for what it is, an evening of high talent performing largely entertaining, if innocuous, material, I’d still take “Golf: The Musical” over “Golf: The Game” any day.
(“Golf: The Musical” continues Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. through May 10 at TexArts’ Keller Williams Studios, 2300 Lohmans Spur, Lakeway. $30-$34. 512-852-9079 x101, tex-arts.org.)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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Long-awaited in the Live Music Capital of the World: Austin’s orchestra premieres an Austin-made symphony
Among the dozens of commissions Austin-based composer Dan Welcher has received in his three-decade career, he’s written works for the Boston Pops, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Guggenheim Foundation, and his work has been performed by more than 50 orchestras including Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony and the Atlanta Symphony.
This weekend the Austin Symphony Orchestra premieres Welcher’s Fifth Symphony,
And although it’s arguably the first time in living memory the Austin Symphony Orchestra is premiering a symphony by an Austin composer, the cost of the project is underwritten by an independent consortium of local donors, not the orchestra itself. The nonprofit radio station KMFA-FM spearheaded the fundraising drive that began nearly a year ago. To date about $40,000 toward the $50,000 goal has been raised, with donations ranging from as little as $50 to as much as $5,000.
Welcher is honoring his good friend Peter Bay, Austin Symphony Orchestra conductor. The two have been friends fo 30 years and Bay is celebrating his 10th season with the orchestra.
Sample Welcher’s music:
Austin Symphony Orchestra
Dan Welcher’s Symphony No. 5. Also on the program is guest violinist Sarah Chang playing Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1.
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Where: Dell Hall, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive.
Cost: $19-$48
Information: 512-476-6064, www.austinsymphony.org
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Review: Fusebox Fest starts off dancing with ‘Erection’ & ‘Bodies in Urban Spaces’
Dancers have a knack for reminding audiences that bodies have infinite possibilities.
In the opening weekend of the ten-day Fusebox Festival, “Erection” created by French duo Pierre Rigal & Aurélien Bory and performed by Rigal and “Bodies in Urban Spaces” by Austrian choreographer Will Dorner and a squad of local dancers, posed physical questions.
Rigal: Why stand on your feet instead of your shoulders?
Dorner: Why sit on a downtown bench when you could perch on it knees down, butt up?
On Thursday at Ballet Austin’s theatre Rigal morphed from amoeba to frog to biped to hologram as he slowly, deftly rose from lying on the floor to standing. He began on his back, his chest thrusting upwards, as though his heart filled his entire rib cage. On his upwardly mobile journey, Rigal writhed and rippled (he must excel at party game Twister). Simple, colorful projections—a series of white bars on the floor or expanding and shrinking squares of green, blue and red—framed Rigal’s motion.
Finally reaching standing, the projections subsumed his body. First, a strobe light effect (a direct steal from David Parson’s gimmicky, but famous 1982 solo “Caught”) made it look like Rigal could fly. Next a bare-chested, glowing projection of a man (imagine a cross between the Incredible Hulk and Michael Phelps) joined Rigal onstage. Rigal sometimes meshed with his projected partner, and other times left body parts outside the animation. The final effect: wiggling on the floor, the detail-oriented contortions looked more human than the standing man.
No environment could conceal the gymnastics of Dorner’s cast. “Bodies in Urban Space” is basically a contemporary art chase. An ensemble of colorfully clad dancers runs ahead of a walking audience, who encounter the performers in a variety of architectural crevices. During Saturday’s early evening show, the piece quickly transformed bystanders into audiences: bikers quieted their Harleys and rolled back several yards to stare at upside-dance dancers wrapped around a light post.
The intentional audience — those who assembled at Republic Park for the walk to the Capitol — seemed incredibly drawn to photograph every group of butts sticking out of building doorways or legs wrapped around gutter pipes. Bodies apparently don’t come into urban spaces without their iPhones anymore.
The Fusebox Festival continues through May 2. See www.fuseboxfestival.org.
Clare Croft is American-Statesman freelance dance critic.
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Q-and-A: Jessica Mathaes, violinist and concertmaster with Austin Symphony Orchestra
In 2005, violinist Jessica Mathaes won the distinction of being the youngest-ever and first female concertmaster of the Austin Symphony Orchestra at age 25.
Since landing the position, Mathaes has delighted Austin audiences with her vivacious playing that’s both technically superb and emotionally engaging. In addition to her role with the orchestra, Mathaes has a busy solo career, which you can find on her Web site, www.jessicamathaes.com, and this spring is releasing her first solo CD, ‘Suites and Sweets.’
Preview a sample here:
What are you working on right now?
It’s been a busy and fun 2009 for me so far! Most recently I soloed with the Round Rock Symphony— they are in their debut year as an organization and had such a great energy. I played a world premiere with them by Manly Romero, and a surprise encore, the “Souvenir d’Amerique- Yankee Doodle Variations” by Henri Vieuxtemps. The program was very virtuosic, so I had to practice it a lot, and playing it for the audiences made it very rewarding.
When I’m not on the Long Center stage performing as concertmaster of the Austin Symphony, I am usually preparing for or playing solo engagements both in and out of town. This year so far I have performed three different solo recital programs and a concerto program. There is so much great violin music to play, so I’m constantly learning new repertoire, which really keeps me on my toes. A lot of my work over the past months has been devoted to my debut solo CD, “Suites and Sweets.” The official release of the disc is coming up in May, which is very exciting for me.
What do you like about Austin’s classical music scene?
I love the audience members! I have felt very welcomed and appreciated ever since I came to the city in 2005, which makes it so fun to share my music with the Austin community. I always enjoy talking to the concertgoers and have met many interesting people that way.
One of my fondest Austin classical music memories is the bicentennial birthday bash I threw for my violin back in 2007. A perfectly quirky Austin event, the idea was actually dreamed up for me by an audience member at one of my previous concerts! I played pieces from 1807, 1907, and 2007, including a world premiere by Austin’s own P. Kellach Waddle. I was overwhelmed by the turnout when I walked out on stage and was greeted by four or five hundred Austinites in the hall to help celebrate. We had a birthday cake reception afterwards — it was a blast!
How could Austin’s classical scene be improved?
Unlike some other forms of music, classical music has a history that goes back a few hundred years. It is a really rich and exciting history, but the music is still very relevant to today and the emotions and tastes of modern people. The problem is when it is treated as something that’s old and stuffy, which it does not have to be. I think it’s up to the people who advertise classical music events to market them as something young people might enjoy. It is also up to the performers to be accessible and to potential audience members to go ahead and try classical even if they haven’t in a while — they might like it!
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What if FEMA deployed artists?
What if FEMA deployed artists to post-disaster areas?
What if, along with re-building efforts after a hurricane or a flood or an earthquake, artists were invited to be a part of a community’s re-building effort?
New York artist Paul Villinski thought about that as he got ready for an exhibit in New Orleans in 2006. He wanted to create some kind of artistic response to the devastation wrought on the city by Hurricane Katrina.
But to do so, Villinski, who builds beautiful sculpture out of discarded materials, realized he would need to transport his entire studio the New Orleans. And so he created the Emergency Response Studio, a mobile self-contained sustainability solar-powered live-work artist’s studio.
Through May 2 the Emergency Response Studio will be on view outside the Long Center for the Performing Arts, co-sponsored by Arthouse and the Fusebox Festival.
Hours are 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through May 2, noon to 7 p.m. Sunday-Wednesday. Admission is free.
Villinski salvaged a 30-foot Gulfstream Cavalier travel trailer identical to the ones distributed throughout the Katrina afflicted areas by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He gutted the trailer, replacing the interior with sustainable eco-sensitive — and health-sensitive — materials. Solar panels on top charge 1.6 kilowatt system that powers all the trailer’s electrical needs along with the power tools in a small workshop. A geodesic dome on top sheds natural light throughout the trail and a section of the trailer wall folds out becoming a porch, a work platform or possibly even a stage.
Villinski said he wasn’t suggesting what artists should do in a post-disaster area, but rather, his project is aimed at suggesting a means for artists the flexible means to be able to live and work some place that lacks power.
“I think artists have something to bring to a post-disaster situation,” said Villinski on Wednesday as he installed his mobile studio. “I’m not saying artists can save the world, but artists can solve problems in really unorthodox ways. And we shouldn’t be on the fringe of our communities. The world would be lost if we didn’t have art.”
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More Fusebox pix
The Fusebox Festival is now officially sparking Austin with edgy art. And if you didn’t catch ‘Erection,’ the compelling performance of French dance artist Pierre Rigal last night, you have two chances today. But hurry to make a reservation. Last night folks were turned away when the 254-seat Austin Ventures Studio Theater filled. Make a reservation at the Fusebox Web site.
‘Erection’
When: 6 and 9 p.m. Friday
Where: Austin Ventures Studio Theater, Ballet Austin, 501 W. Third St.
Other Fusebox pix for this weekend:
“Bodies in Urban Spaces’
Imagine meandering through downtown Austin following a group of dancers in brightly colored sweat suits who use the urban landscape as a stage in surprising ways. They might just squeeze themselves into odd architectural spaces or maybe they’ll scale a light pole or a tree. You’ll have to follow them to see what they might do.
When: 1 and 6:30 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to noon Sunday
Where: Republic Square Park, West Fourth and Guadalupe streets
Maxi Geli! & PlayColt
It’s retro glam 1980s pop. Or maybe it’s re-channeled 1960s European pop songs. Or maybe Maxi Geli! & PlayColt are just Brooklyn’s most popular band that blends powerfully harmonized vocals and sharp tunes with trenchant and ironic lyrics.
When: 9 p.m. Saturday
Where: Victory Grill, 1004 E. 11th St.
‘Maxi Geil! and Playcolt vs. Neal Medlyn’
‘American Idol’ move over. New York-based musicians and performance artists Neal Medlyn and Maxi Geli (aka Guy Richards Smit) battle it out in a crazy improvised song competition.
When: 7 p.m. Sunday
Where: Blue Theater, 916 Springdale Road
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Texas women get a new kind of tribute song
What if young Texas female singers could sing about the fabulous women who made Texas history?
They can now.
UT voice professor Darlene Wiley commissioned composer Graham Reynolds to write a song cycle for emerging singer. Reynolds in turn tapped poet Carrie Fountain to collaborate. On Sunday, “Between Steel and Stardust: Five Songs About Texas Women” premieres.
The concert is at 4 p.m. in Recital Studio 2.608, Music Building, UT campus. Admission is $10.
This is a not-to-miss gig, but if you can’t be there, it will be Web cast live at www.music.utexas.edu.
The Texas women honored in “Between Steel and Stardust” include the Angel of Goliad, U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, Bonnie Harper (of Bonnie and Clyde), Selena and Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Also premiering is Reynolds’ Double Double: A Suite for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano.
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Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: | Michelle Schumann gives chamber music a needed update | Q-and-A with Stephanie Prewitt, mezzo-soprano |
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Building a new kind of art festival tent
Three years ago, Art City Austin, a weekend downtown spring arts fair and festival, had a little wake-up call from Mother Nature. A classic Texas spring storm brought high winds the night before the festival started. With nearly 200 artists and their work housed in display tents, the festival site narrowly missed being an art disaster area of blown-down tents and destroyed creativity.
That incident got leaders of the Austin Art Alliance, the nonprofit mostly volunteer organization that runs the festival, thinking. What if we asked architects and designers to create a temporary outdoor gallery space, something sturdy yet portable and affordable? With the group dedicating its fundraising proceeds to the Austin Museum of Art and the Blanton Museum of Art, sponsoring a creative competition seemed like a good fit.
Partnering with the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects and Austin Foundation for Architecture, the Alliance last year launched the first Temporary Outdoor Gallery Space (TOGS) competition. Some 139 submissions from designers in 26 countries came in. Architects Amy Wynne and Mark Leveno of Los Angeles netted the first-place honors with a sleek functional modern-looking mini-gallery that they dubbed “A Little Room.”
And that means a prototype of their TOGS will debut at Art City Austin this weekend. Look for the prototype of “A Little Room” at Cesar Chavez Street near Austin City Hall. Later this year it will head to New York to exhibit with the New York chapter of the AIA.
We asked Wynne and Leveno about their design process; they spoke as a unified voice via e-mail.
American-Statesman: What was your inspiration for ‘A Little Room?’
Wynne and Leveno: The design for “A Little Room” is inspired by two major ideas. The first relates to the structure being something that is repeatedly taken apart and rebuilt. Those moments of reconstruction offer a unique opportunity in architecture — to rebuild it differently each time.
The second idea was to rethink how artists display their work. Typically an artist is constrained by the existing gallery space — the lighting, the wall materials, etc. We wanted to create a gallery in which the artist has the opportunity to create a space that is specific to their work. These two ideas converged in the idea of a simple frame with removable wall panels. Artists then have the option to configure the panels however they wish — opaque, translucent, open, white, black, colored, painted upon, textured, etc. Each time the gallery is configured, it becomes an extension and representation of the artists and their art displayed inside and out.
What do you hope ‘A Little Room’ can teach people about architecture and its possibilities?
Architects are taught to think creatively as well as critically about the design. Our goal as designers is to identify potential opportunities to do something innovative that will enhance the aesthetic, experience and functionality of a piece of architecture.
While there are endless solutions to every design problem, the best ones usually surprise you. We hope that people look at “A Little Room” and think that it is beautiful, intelligent and inventive. Ideally it will inspire other designers to think hard about the design opportunities embedded in even the simplest situations.
In regards to transitory architecture, we thought hard about what it means to ship a small building from place to place. The ability of our gallery to pack completely into its base structure to be shipped is essential to the overall idea of the gallery. It means we are creating a space with no waste and a compact efficiency.
Every element in this project is pared down to meet the most basic requirements. The inherent beauty of “A Little Room” comes from having a sophisticated system conveyed through a minimalist form.
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Fresh sparks: Fusebox Festival fires up
It’s starts today with 50 drummers smashing out the rhythms in Wooldridge Park. And then for the 10 next days, the Fusebox Festival brings some of the most explosive performing and visual arts being created in the world today to Austin. The festival spreads across venues, into parks and urban spaces, into museums and galleries and clubs.
Read more about it here. And consult the Fusebox Web site for complete listings.
Fusebox Festival 2009
When: Thursday-May 2
Where: Multiple venues
Cost: $129 for festival passes; free to $15 for individual events (not all events are available with individual tickets)
www.fuseboxfestival.com
‘Parades, Processionals and Percussion: The Fusebox Festival 2009 Kickoff Concert’
The festival starts today with a bang. Austin composer Graham Reynolds celebrates the essence of street music found around the world with a spectacular new work for 50 drummers made up of professional, amateur and student musicians. Then, a core group of the percussionists will process down Guadalupe Street to Ballet Austin.
When: 6:30 p.m. today
Where: Wooldridge Square Park, 900 Guadalupe St.
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Q-and-A: Stephanie Prewitt, mezzo-soprano
Stephanie Prewitt’s luminous and rich mezzo-soprano voice has graced Austin stages for more than a decade. A native of Galveston and winner of an Austin Critics’ Table Award, Prewitt sings a vast repertoire and can be most often seen with several local ensembles that notably La Follia Austin Baroque and the Texas Early Music Project.
This Saturday, she’ll be featured in TEMP’s next concert, “Complaints Through the Ages,” 8 p.m. First English Lutheran Church, 3001 Whitis Ave. See early-music.org for ticket information.
What are you working on?
II just finished three performances of Messiah with Conspirare, which was enjoying its first excursion with a period orchestra. After this I’ll be singing in La Follia’s May concert.
So lately I’ve been immersed in singing with historical instruments, something I really love to do. Not that I don’t still love the modern ones! But when you’re singing the old style stuff, it’s great to get to do it with the old style instruments.
‘m now in rehearsals with Texas Early Music Project for a concert at the end of this week. TEMP’s next concert will involve medieval, renaissance and baroque instruments. It’s called “Complaints Through the Ages” and was inspired by this Complaint Choir fad that’s been happening in Europe and Canada. I first heard about it from my mother, who’d seen it featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Go to YouTube and type in “complaint choirs” and you’ll see what I’m talking about — it’s people singing about the things that annoy them, truly making lemons into lemonade.
When I heard them, I was reminded of a medieval piece that TEMP director Danny Johnsonloves to do called “Fort m’enoia” (in English, “I am greatly annoyed”); it’s basically a litany of complaints; and I thought, “Boy, we’ve been doing this for a long time, haven’t we?” When I told Danny about it, he said, “You know, I think you’ve got something there,” and proceeded to create an entire concert of complaints, from medieval time to now, topping it off with his own creation, woven out of the complaints of various members of TEMP. We just sang through it for the first time last night. I love it. It’s delightfully amusing and beautiful to hear.
What do you like about Austin’s classical music scene?
Two things occur to me at once: the warmth and collegiality, and the enormous range of repertoire that’s offered here. I love it that I never get up in front of an orchestra in Austin anymore that isn’t comprised of lots of old friends who I’ve heard playing……. tango, celtic, Brahms, Corigliano, a film score, jazz, you name it, in some other venue. And there they all are, come together to play a larger work, with a real depth of understanding for that style too. The Live Music Capitol of the World gets more of its juice from classical repertoire than a lot of people realize. The musicians that you hear in classical concerts here are gigging all over the place, and many of them bring in colleagues from other parts of the world to “enrich the scene”, so to speak. Musicians from around the country and around the world love to visit and perform in Austin — that’s true for classical music as well as other musical genres. It all makes for a great musical community in which to live and work.
How could Austin’s classical scene be improved?
One thing that would help enormously — a piece of real estate to call our own. I work with a lot of chamber groups and vocal ensembles, and we were all so sad when the Long Center had to scale back it’s original design, which provided more rehearsal and office space, as well as a medium-sized hall with acoustics more suited to chamber music.
We’re truly fortunate to be supported by so many of the beautiful churches in Austin. That’s where most of our work happens. But life would be easier for us — and more good work could happen — if we had a building in which to rehearse, perform, park instruments between performance, etc.
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Art Week Austin starts now
A dizzying series of arts events descend on Austin today and continue for the next few days, all a part of Austin Arts Alliance’s Art Week Austin.
There’s too many to feature here, but check out the Alliance Web site for a complete schedule.
TODAY
Art Talk Austin
Where: BoConcept. 403 W. Second St.
When: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
The announcement of the finalists and winners of this year’s Temporary Outdoor Gallery Space Ideas Competition 2 (TOGS 2). The Art Talk will the TOGS 2 jurors Deborah Berke, FAIA, Louise Harpman, Dana Friis-Hansen and Lora
Reynolds, and guest panelist Wendy Feuer. The TOGS 2 competition has been brought to Austin through partnerships with American Institute of Architects (AIA) Austin, Austin Foundation for Architecture and AIA New York Chapter.
TODAY THROUGH SUNDAY
Public Art Bike Tours
Where: Mellow Johnny’s, 400 Nueces Stt.
When: 12 noon
In partnership with Mellow Johnny’s, PublicArt Bike Tours launch today and run through Sunday, April 26. Departing from the shop free public art bike tours run daily, exploring Austin’s public art projects.
THURSDAY THROUGH MAY 2
“12:19 Project”
Where: Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress Ave.
When: Ongoing through May 2
Art Alliance Austin and Fusebox Festival make their collaborative debut with “12:19 Project” at Austin Museum of Art. The project invites people from across the globe to chronicle their lives from 12:19-12:20 p.m.
FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY
pink [unplugged]:
Where: The Plaza outside City Hall,
When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: | UT scholars fill in where Ellington left off on his only opera, ‘Queenie Pie ’ | Eric Einhorn makes ‘Dialogues With The Carmelites’ real Q-and-A with Matthew Hinsley, Austin Classical Guitar Society
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Q-and-A: Matthew Hinsley, Austin Classical Guitar Society
On Saturday, the Austin Classical Guitar Society will present Tunisian-French guitarist and composer Roland Dyens in a solo concert.
We caught up with Matthew Hinsley, executive director of ACGS and himself a guitarist, to ask a few questions.
What are you working on?
I am fortunate to have a very rich and full life. My wife Glenda was recently doing an exercise where she was trying to brainstorm about what her ideal day would be and, after spending the day on it, she snagged me and asked me what my ideal day might be like. After thinking about it briefly, I surprised us both by responding: “I actually think I just lived it”.
My weekday mornings are spent running the Austin Classical Guitar Society, an organization I have been running for the past 12 years. The organization has grown to be the largest guitar society in America and it is a great privilege for me to be working on effective programs that benefit our community with the great people that give their time and energy to the organization. In the afternoons and evenings, and on Saturday, I teach. I have students of all ages and levels but my passion is teaching young people. Over the years I have been extremely fortunate to train major international award-winning youngsters and it seems like the more great young people I work with, the more come to see me from further and further away. Sharing music with passionate and talented young individuals is one of the great joys of my life. I was trained as a performer on the classical guitar (undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory and Doctoral work at UT) and I round out my professional life as a concert artist.
My current projects for the Guitar Society include closing our 2008-09 International Concert Series and preparing for our 2009 Summer Chamber Series. In October 2008 we published (at www.GuitarCurriculum.com) a full-scale middle school and high curriculum for classroom classical guitar that serves over 500 students each day in Austin now and is in use around the world, so a major project currently is developing and implementing strategies for success with regard to that curriculum and our educational outreach program. The guitar society is also hosting the world’s most prestigious international classical guitar competition at the Long Center for a full week in June 2010 and so I am busy laying the groundwork for what I believe will be the most important guitar convention ever including local partnerships with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, Austin Lyric Opera, Austin Chamber Music Center and more.
As a teacher, I recently published my first book called “Classical Guitar for Young People.” The book comes on the heels of some of my students distinguishing themselves nationally and internationally and I have been simply thrilled at the rate of adoption of my book both as a teaching tool for colleagues around the country and as a text for university pedagogy classes. I was asked to begin the UT string project classical guitar program last fall, which has been marvelous, and I am coming off of a month of traveling where I judged several competitions and taught masterclasses. Two more trips are planned in the near future.
Performing is the hardest part of my life to keep balanced, but I have played several concerts this spring, I have an in town engagement in the next few weeks, and will travel for several concerts this summer and next fall. I am also an avid singer (tenor), and I still take voice lessons. Some of my favorite programs are when I self-accompany on art songs from the renaissance through romantic and modern works. Pure self indulgence really!
Increasingly I am being asked to consult for non-profit organizations. The Guitar Foundation of America asked me to join their board and chair their development committee this year, I have consulted for many guitar societies and in May I’ll travel to Toronto for my first International consulting job for the Toronto Guitar Society. In fact, I am just finishing a draft of what will be my second book this spring about building non-profit arts organizations.
What do you like about Austin’s classical music scene?
What is not to like? Our larger established groups are great, our mid-sized groups (like my organization!) are varied and high-quality, and we have amazing diversity in our smaller organizations and independent artists. The UT Butler School of Music is simply unbelievable and, in many ways, is the generative center of the wheel around which the rest of the arts community spins. Austin audiences are educated, have diverse and, I think, progressive interests, and support our rapidly evolving arts community. Recently I presented a fabulously talented young Polish virtuoso who is programming a lot of new music. I was very gratified that our artist received a standing ovation at the end of his first half (in and of itself an unusual thing) following a remarkable performance of a long, complex, modern work that no one had ever heard before.
I am extremely grateful to the Austin arts community for helping me to build the largest classical guitar society ever in America. Many people view classical guitar as a tiny segment of the classical music world which is itself a tiny segment of the entertainment industry in America. But the Austin arts community was open to the benefits we bring to our community through our vast education and community initiatives, and was willing to take a chance on us.
How could Austin’s classical scene be improved?
The great thing about our classical music scene is that it is evolving. There is a tremendous amount of talent and creativity and collaborative spirit in Austin that is always creating something new. From my limited perspective as a classical musician whose passion is for recitals and chamber music, I would say the single greatest missing element is a world-class 500 to 700 seat recital hall available for the public to use. I would love to be involved in the development of such a facility.
Photo by Greg Abell.
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Review: Ellington’s ‘Queenie Pie’ gets a respectful refashioning
Duke Ellington received due homage this weekend when the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music debuted their smartly crafted production of ‘Queenie Pie,’ the jazz genius’ only opera.
Before his death in 1974, Ellington and his collaborating librettist, Bettie McGettigan, never completed ‘Queenie Pie,’ which was originally intended to be a one-hour PBS special.
From the remaining manuscripts — which sometimes indicated merely a melody for what should have been a fully-fledged orchestrated song — UT music scholars Jeff Hellmer, John Mills and Robert DeSimone crafted together an finished version of ‘Queenie Pie’ as close as possible to what Ellington may have envisioned.
(Concert versions of the work have been done and last year Oakland Opera presented their extended, operatic version.)
Read more about their process.
The result? A snappy operatta cum nightclub revue that wonderfully showcased Ellington’s big band-era genius. No extraneous excesses of added material here. Instead, we arguably got pretty close to what Ellington and McGettigan intended ‘Queenie Pie’ to be.
This production also showcased an important collaboration between UT and Huston-Tillotson University, an historically black college across town from UT. DeSimone, director of UT’s opera studies and director of ‘Queenie Pie,’ tapped HTU choral studies professor Gloria Quinlan who in turn rallied her students to join the production. Quinlan is also a UT alum, another element of synergy to the collaboration.
For all the musical burnish in this re-imagined ‘Queenie Pie,’ the plot remains slim. Queenie Pie is a Harlem beautician — a character modeled after Madam C.J. Walker, an early 20th-century cosmetician whose hair straightening product helped make her one of the first African American millionaires — and the reigning champion of a local beauty contest. When her primacy is challenged by the young Cafe Olay, Queenie frets and fusses. In a vivid dream, Queenie Pie finds love in the arms of the king of a magical island — a way out of her previous life.
But the UT creative team smartly didn’t try to overwrite or add to what Ellington and McGettigan left behind, patchy as the plot may be. Instead, this iteration ‘Queenie Pie’ played like a two-act, 75-minute revue, songs strong together with a little bit of narrated plot or dialogue in between and singers and big band presented as if the stage of UT’s McCullough Theatre were that of a Harlem jazz club.
And really, who needed a fleshed out plot when Ellington’s music did it all?
In their arrangements, Hellmer and Mills seamlessly filled out Ellington’s sound. And Hellmer led a crackerjack student big band (culled from UT’s jazz program) who sat behind glittering marquee stands on stage and delivered the punching, swinging rhythms with plenty of brio.
Although special guest, noted jazz singer Carmen Bradford, as Queenie Pie, ddin’t get her chance to impress until the second act, she wowed immediately with impeccable phrasing and pure panache. No wonder Count Bassie plucked her to sing with his orchestra when she was just a teen.
Soprano Morgan Gale Beckford, a UT student, stunned as the sassy Cafe Olay, with a voice clear, polished and full of confident character.
An energetic chorus of UT and HTU students flashed through their song and dance. And Michaele Hite’s 1920s period costumes dazzled, especially the women’s extravagant hats.
Somewhere, the Duke, has reason to be honored that his ‘Queenie Pie’ has gotten her proper moment on the stage.
‘Queenie Pie’ continues at 8 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Sunday at McCullough Theatre, UT campus. See www.music.utexas.edu for ticket information.
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Long Center, and other projects, nets architecture prize
The Long Center for the Performing Arts netted a 2009 AIA Austin Honor Award Saturday night from the Austin chapter of the American Institute for Architects.
Design architects Nelsen Partners Architects and lead designer Stan Haas were honored.
I sent my design love to the Long Center last year in a review shorty after it opened. A year later, I still think the Long Center is one of the smartest additions to our built landscape.
AA-S photo.
Also among the 14 winners of an AIA design award this year was “Ultimate Pulse,” the temporary public art project by Legge Lewis Legge architects that lit up First Night Austin 2008 with 1000 LED flashlight discs.
“Ultimate Pulse.” Image courtesy Legge Lewis Legge.
And Miro Rivera Architects won for their very sculptural public restroom on the north side of the Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail.
AA-S photo.
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Review: ‘Let Me Down Easy’
In most reporting, a quotation is a punctuation point. A fantastic quote is the example of a character or the pudding where we find proof, but most of the writing in a story, the underlying argument, is still the reporter’s. Sometimes there are quotes that just need room to breathe, though. “Let Me Down Easy” is all breath.
Playwright and performer Anna Deavere Smith draws from hundreds of interviews, presenting a handful of them in verbatim excerpts.
Smith brings “Let Me Down Easy” to Austin’s Zach Theatre on her last stop before the play opens Off-Broadway at New York’s Second Stage Theater this fall.
The characters range from Lance Armstrong to a cancer patient and her mother from Midland to the dean of Stanford University School of Medicine. Not all have a personal or professional relationship with cancer, but each has something to say on the subject of mortality.
That includes Smith herself. In the opening speech, and the only one where she’s present as more than an unseen and unheard interviewer, Smith talks with New Yorker theatre critic John Lahr about the motivations behind “Let Me Down.”
Unsurprisingly, as Smith and Lahr point out that she hides within and between her characters, they’re the least dramatically compelling minutes of the production. Lahr reappears several times to offer some sort of advice or academic perspective. The meta-approach and critical dialog feels fussy, but also crucial to the overall project. While Smith is interviewing the subjects, the audience is asked to interrogate the work.
There’s heart, though, as well. Smith’s interpretation of some characters, like evangelist Hazel Meritt talking about her deceased daughter, have all the force of emotional body checks. Others, like a rodeo bull rider from Idaho, abound with confident humor.
Still others, like our former Texas governor Ann Richards, sparkle on the round stage, interacting with the real native Texans. All highlight Smith’s ability to shift, mercurially but precisely, from one human being to the next. And that’s impressive — sometimes stunningly so — but alone it wouldn’t matter.
The thought is as essential as the feeling. It’s the combination of Smith as mimic, reporter and curator of all these personalities that makes “Let Me Down Easy” work. Each sentimental moment is balanced by one weighing public policy ideals against reality, celebrities are compared to just folks, and bitter resignation is matched with an embrace.
Smith says the play is always changing based on past productions and future interviews, so the end result won’t stay the same. This group of characters is worth a visit, but I don’t think there’s an answer hidden in “Let Me Down Easy” — just people and lines of thought that are more or less appealing. And that’s ideal. Smith has laid out the evidence in an engaging collection. The audience can now ask the questions.
(“Let Me Down Easy” continues Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 and 7 p.m. through May 10 at Zach Theatre, 1510 Toomey Rd. $15-$65. 476-0541, www.zachtheatre.org.)
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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Monday morning report: No perfect storm
Last year, the convergence of the Austin Lyric Opera at the Long Center and the Reggae Festival on Auditorium Shores caused what Long Center leaders dubbed “a perfect storm” of traffic congestion.
In April 2008, the 1,200-space city-owned Palmer Events Center garage - which serves the Palmer and Long centers - filled up with reggae festival attendees by mid-afternoon. By the time evening rolled around, those with tickets to the Austin Lyric Opera, the garage was full and the area around South First Street, Riverside Drive and Barton Springs Road was gridlocked.
Not so this past Saturday night. Parking in the Long Center garage (which is operated by the Austin Convention Center, not the Long Center) was reserved for opera patrons. Reggae Festival goers were directed to the nearby city-owned One American Center.
Yes, the area was crowded. And with a hot rod car show in town and construction along Riverside Drive, there was plenty of traffic. But that traffic flowed and tempers didn’t flare like last year.
In fact, on the Long Center’s City Terrace some opera patrons were even seen grooving to the reggae beats that floated over from Auditorium Shores. Maybe we can all get along…
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Review: ‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’
Austin Lyric Opera delivers a nuanced yet gut-wrenching production of Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” which opened Saturday night at the Long Center.
And that’s no a small feat to pull of with Poulenc’s very modern intellectual yet ultimately emotional query into the nature of belief. “Dialogues” is hardly an easy opera (to like or to present well) though it’s gaining currency as one of the masterpieces of the 20th-century repertoire.
Premiered in 1957, “Dialogues,” is based on a screenplay that was in turn was based on historical accounts of 16 Carmelite nuns sent to the guillotine by revolutionaries during France’s Reign of Terror.
(ALO’s special guest in the audience Friday night was the renowned soprano Virginia Zeani who originated the role of the young nun Blanche de la Force and who was invited by Poulenc himself to take the role.)
As the title suggests, most of the opera is conversationally sung text. That throws a challenge to those who might expect that opera can only be bodice-ripping romances filled with show-stopping arias.
And it clearly threw a challenge to the audience at the Long Center Friday night: In the orchestra section at least, empty seats appeared after intermission.
That’s too bad because this “Dialogues” not only had vocal talent in spades but rang with a smart emotional and intellectual clarity.
Her voice beautifully shaded in tone yet powerfully dramatic, Emily Pulley relayed every ounce of Blanche’s neurosis, fear and ultimate acceptance of her vows. In Pulley’s hand, Blanche’s anxiety-fueled religious conversion and subsequent psychological journey rings with a very contemporary reality.
Always a highlight of any ALO productions she joins, the luminous soprano Suzanne Ramo brought a charming no-nonsense to Constance, the nun whose good nature belies her smarts and her beatific faith.
In their solos, Jennifer Check (Madame Lidoine) and Dana Beth Miller (Mother Marie) unleashed torrents of luscious clear tones.
Conductor Richard Buckley perfectly calibrated the color and pace of Poulenc’s score which is by turns hauntingly lyrical, sweepingly cinematic and even occasionally playful.
Director Eric Einhorn brought a very modern, realistic tone to this nicely spare production (originally created by Calgary Opera). These were no one-dimensional nuns but rather each emerged as complex and distinct as they wrested their decisions to sacrifice their lives for their faith.
In this telling, this production of a about 18th-century Catholic nuns transcends time and place to speak to us now.
“Dialogues of the Carmelites” continues 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 3 p.m. April 26 at the Long Center. See www.austinlyricopera.org for ticket information.
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Review: Diavlolo
The dancers of L.A.-based Diavolo maintained their status as the American gladiators of the performing arts world Friday at the Paramount Theatre. Diavolo shows function somewhat formulaically: a large built structure sits center stage and extremely strong dancers pull themselves across, over, and through the object.
Friday dancers climbed a giant set of stairs in “Tete En L’Air,,” tumbled through a jungle gym cube in “Caged,” mounted a wall with large pegs in “D2R-A,” and rode a giant rocking shell of a boat in “Trajectoire.” Artistic director Jacques Heim and the dancers who help him choreograph these giant spectacles have a gift for manipulating a sense of danger through each piece. Even once the choreographic formula becomes familiar, a sudden fall or a slow slide across a capsizing platform is gasp-inducing.
Program opener “Tete” offers the most sense of story. A series of anonymous, trench-coat clad, fedora-topped figures walk down a gigantic staircase. As John Adams’ music gains momentum, the figures speed up, running and rolling down the steps and sometimes each other. Clothes come off and come undone, as dancers leap into and out of the stairs’ hidden compartments. The stairs’ transformation furthers the piece’s urban references. What was one a passageway now functions as an apartment-filled skyscraper.
But even as “Tete” grows to harried chaos, the dancers work together perfectly. The program hails the dancers’ varied backgrounds from gymnastics to acting, but says the company must be “always teammates.” That cooperation may be what makes the choreography’s sense of danger so appealing, almost heart-warming.
In the final moments of “Trajectoire,” one woman performs on top of the rocking boat’s platform, titled at a sharp angle. The audience can see the structure’s underbelly, where the other eight dancers rest shoulder to shoulder inside, their bodies’ weight holding the structure still. She can move, because other people can hold her.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance dance critic.
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Eric Einhorn rethinks ‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’
Eric Einhorn thinks of himself as a storyteller. And he’s the first to admit that’s almost a traditional way of thinking about his role as an opera director, not one you might expect from a 28-year-old like himself.
It’s hard to know what would be typical from someone who isn’t even 30 and has already started to carve a national reputation for himself in a notoriously hierarchical and competitive profession.
Einhorn arrived in Austin about a month ago to direct Austin Lyric Opera’s production of Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” which opened last night at the Long Center. Einhorn has a regular gig as an assistant director for many productions at the Metropolitan Opera. And increasingly, he’s invited to direct for opera companies across the country.
“What I crave (in an opera) is human interaction,” he says. “And what the challenge is for me as a storyteller, is to make those human relationships as real and direct as possible.”
In our day and age of multimedia, Einhorn points out, there’s no fooling an audience any more with routine theatrical tricks. If you can YouTube your way through the world, what haven’t you seen at this point? If media keeps you in the role as passive observer, what do you crave? Maybe, Einhorn suggests, what would feel new to an audience today is something immediate and human — a story told with clarity and sincerity.
Kevin Patterson, managing director at Austin Lyric Opera, says he invited Einhorn to direct “Dialogues” because Einhorn’s background and fresh approach would give a very 21st-century perspective to Poulenc’s psychologically charged opera about nuns during the French Revolution.
“I (also) asked him to direct this opera because he’s not Christian. He is Jewish,” Patterson says. “I wanted to not get caught up in all of the Catholic trappings of cloistered nuns. On a very basic level (‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’) is a story of nuns, but I wanted to challenge Eric to go beyond that initial story line as both he and I agreed that this opera has a strong universal statement. Beliefs are universal. They do not know the bounds of religion.”
Written in the mid-1950s, “Dialogues” musically typifies Poulenc’s lush harmonies, striking melodic lines and arresting orchestrations. And it also speaks of Poulenc’s own lifelong struggle with his Roman Catholic beliefs.
Based on historical events, “Dialogues” is set during the French Revolution and subsequent Reign of Terror. The opera tells the story of a nervous young woman of nobility, Blanche de la Force, who chooses to abandon her rank, and the violence of the secular world, for the safety and sanctity of a Carmelite convent. But once at the convent, Blanche realizes the convent is hardly a place that will protect her from the revolutionary terror that is ripping through the country. The anti-religious revolutionary forces are out to seize the convent and arrest the nuns. Blanche runs away, but once she learns that the nuns are condemned to death by guillotine, she realizes she might have saved her own life but not her soul. She joins her sisters on the march to the guillotine.
“(The story) is not really about nuns,” Einhorn says. “It’s about the choices we make and the conviction we have — or don’t have — to follow through on them.” And so, Einhorn conceived of the characters not as anonymous women in matching black and white habits, but rather as separate individuals.
“This is not some homogenous group of dour women,” he says. “This a microcosm of society. All of the women are there for very different reasons. All make their decisions to die for their beliefs for very different reasons.”
And all, he says, have their own fears as they approach the guillotine.
“Everybody fears death,” Einhorn says. And there’s no glossing over that fear. And as a good storyteller, he’s striving to make sure that emotion feels palpable to the audience.
“The story has to feel real, has to be told to you immediately and directly,” he says. “That’s my job.”
‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’ plays 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Wednesday and Friday, 3 p.m. April 26. Dell Hall, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive. www.austinlyricopera.org
Photos by Laura Skelding/A-AS.
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Review: New percussion music beats in
Tom Burritt and the UT Percussion Ensemble charmed Tuesday night with premieres of new works by Austin composers Graham Reynolds and Dan Welcher.
Reynold joined the 12-piece student ensemble on piano for his ’ ‘Whale Drum.’ Rollicking minor chords pumped through decidedly groovy riffs that were alternated with more lyrical heartfelt moments. If anyone denies that a gathering of a dozen percussion instruments can’t be melodic, Reynolds proved otherwise, unleashing a funky harmonius frenzy.
“Whale Drum” is just first of three pieces UT’s music faculty have commissioned from Reynolds that will be premiered this spring. That inclusive gesture to a non-UT musician is welcomed bridge over the town-gown divide that keeps UT music efforts so often disconnected from the Austin community.
Welcher’s “You Can Fool” was a smart musical reflection on the recent presidential election. Written by the request of ensemble students Matthew Teodori and Philip Welder - the first commission Welcher said he’s ever received from students - “You Can Fool” flashed by as intense musical postcards of wildly different mood and color. The quartet of players paired off in duos, then rejoined at times in a dance of musical cooperation and opposition. Finally, a brief moment of peaceful world music soothed before the piece finished with rolling military snare drums. So much for a visionary getting through the layers of history, Welcher’s composition seemed to say.
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This weekend, it’s crazy choral confluences
It never fails to happen at least several times during the arts season: Everybody’s event lands at the same time. This weekend, it seems like it’s all choral concerts all the time. I wonder, how can any hope to attract a full audience? And never mind that Austin Lyric Opera is opening “The Dialogues of the Carmelites” this weekend too along with UT’s production of Duke Ellington’s opera “Queenie Pie.” Tough choices, all around.
While you make your choices, listen to “We Remember Them” by Austin composer Donald Grantham, performed by the UT Chamber Singers.
SATURDAY
‘Harmonie and Thyme.’ Austin Singers take on John Rutter’s ‘The Sprig of Thyme’ along with Hayden’s ‘Harmoniemesse’. 8 p.m. Hope Presbyterian Church, 11512 Olson Drive. $5-$15. 314-5532 www.austinsingers.org.
‘Invitation to the Voyage.’ Madrigals and spirituals including Lauridsen’s ‘Lux Aeterna’, Brahms’ ‘Zigeunerlieder’ and Rachmaninov’s ‘Bogoroditse Devo’. 8 p.m. First Presbyterian Church, 8001 Mesa Drive. $15-$20. 372-3233 www.txconsort.org.
SUNDAY
Texas State University Singers, Women’s Chorus, & Men’s Chorus Concert.* Music by Eric Whitacre along with Britten’s ‘Rejoice in the Lamb’ and Rutter’s ‘Gloria.’ 2 p.m. Covenant Presbyterian Church, 3003 Northland Dr. Free. 512-245-2851. www.music.txstate.edu.
‘Invitation to the Voyage.’ (see above.) 3 p.m. First Presbyterian Church, 8001 Mesa Dr.
UT Chamber Singers and Concert Chorale. Music from several centuries from Brahms to Bernstein. 4 p.m. Bates Hall, Music Building, $10, www.music.utexas.edu.
‘Harmonie and Thyme.’ (see above) 4 p.m. University Presbyterian Church, 2203 San Antonio St. $5-$15. 314-5532 www.austinsingers.org.
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Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: | UT scholars fill in where Ellington left off on his only opera, ‘Queenie Pie ’ | Thomas Burritt bangs a new path with mallets and Tweets | Q-and-A with Lois Ferrari, conductor
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Review: ‘Avenue Q’
I have a weakness for puppets. I suspect I’m not alone. There’s probably an explanation in evolutionary psychology and a human need to care for cute, furry things. There’s also years of “Sesame Street” and “The Muppets” drawing in young eyeballs. But as an adult — and, again, I think I’m not alone — there’s not much that’s funnier than a puppet working blue.
While the satire’s softened in the years since its opening (and Tony-award-winning season) in 2003, “Avenue Q” still knows how to find the joy in a foul-mouthed fur monster and even a few subtler jokes as well.
Avenue Q is the fictional lowest-rent section of New York City — a move to Hell’s Kitchen is a step up—and its residents are a mix of humans, puppets, monsters, and Gary Coleman. Their one common bond is that they’re all people, as the opening number explains, whom it sucks to be. But as much of a downer as the thought could be, it’s chirped more than whined and grinned more than gritted. That’s the magic of puppets; even suicide is a laugh when it’s presented by the falsetto-voiced Bad Idea Bears.
But in the central story around Princeton, a recent liberal arts graduated puppeteered by Robert McClure, and Kate Monster, a furry activist brought to life by Anika Larsen, there’s also a little real feeling. The “human” touches about a relationship help keep the material fresh and jokes poignant.
And even though the point of the production is to put the puppets in front of their operators, Kate’s stitched-on grin seems alone in the way it’s out of place with her story. No other character ever really lets their utter failure at life get the best of them, but Kate ranges from happy to sappy to bitter to spiteful. And some of those emotions are out of the range of her googly eyes. So while most of the puppeteers in their dark clothes and practice of standing just outside of the spotlight fade away, it’s easy to fall in to the habit of watching Larsen’s face as much as her hands. The juxtaposition of perma-cheer and changing feelings highlights the absurdity — and humor — of the rest of the production.
Not all elements hold up as well. “Avenue Q” is still, quite literally, a laugh a minute, but just since its opening six years ago, this brand of absurd satire has gained something between a foot- and stranglehold on pop culture. While Danielle K. Thomas’ version of Gary Coleman singing a lesson schadenfreude is still funny on a meta-level and superbly performed on its own, the larger joke has been played out countless times on the small screen.
Fortunately, while satire loses its point after a while, I’m not sure dirty puppets will ever lose their fun. And with this cast, several of whom come straight from Broadway, most of the material feels as fresh as ever. So forgive some nitpicking (my favorite Muppets were always Statler and Waldorf) and don’t miss “Avenue Q.”
(“Avenue Q” continues at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, and at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday at the Bass Concert Hall, 2300 Robert Dedman Dr. $19.50-$73.50. 471-1444. www.utpac.org.) Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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Weekend Arts Pix
TODAY
‘Megan Geckler : Straddle the Line, In Discord and Rhyme’ and ‘Lauren Levy: New Works.’ Park once, see art twice for free. Two female artists, two galleries right around the corner from each other and two openings scheduled for tonight. At Women & Their Work, Geckler uses brightly colored commercial industrial plastic tape to fashion enormous, vivid installations that become translucent optical fantasies. At D. Berman Gallery, Levy takes her whimsical found button sculptures to a new level. 6 to 8 p.m. tonight. Women & Their Work, 1710 Lavaca St. and D. Berman Gallery, 1701 Guadalupe St. Free. www.womenandtheirwork.com. www.dbermangallery.com.
TODAY THROUGH SATURDAY
‘Tenebrism.’ The Rude Mechs present Minneapolis-based theatre company Lamb Lays With Lion which experiments with that fragile line between performance and reality by sharing its failure with the audience. ‘Tenebrism’ is inspired by the religious imagery of Renaissance painter Caravaggio, Martin Scorsesse’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and legendary rock star Ian Curtis and his iconic post-punk band, Joy Division. The host, Jeremey, promises the audience a show about Jesus, Joy Division, and Caravaggio. However, as ‘Tenebrism’ unfolds, it becomes clear that the real performance is in witnessing just how hard it is for Jeremey and his assistant, Jayne, to get the show to “go on” at all. 10:30 p.m. today-Saturday. Off-Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. Tickets are $5-$25, sliding scale and cash only. www,rudemechs.com
SATURDAY
‘Bayanihan: Work From Manila.’
The indie artist-run gallery Okay Mountain continues its international ‘No American Talent’ exhibit series with new art from nine emerging Philippine artists. Curated by Austin artist Tim Brown, ‘Bayanihan’ refers to a Filipino term that means place, town, community or even nation — or perhaps in our global 21st century, it means state of mind. Opening reception: 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday. Exhibit continues 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays through May 23. Okay Mountain, 1312 E. Cesar Chavez St. Free. www.okaymountain.com.
Gala Ganesh. For its spring fundraiser, Women & Their Work uses India and the Hindu elephant-headed god Ganesh, remover of obstacles, as inspiration. 8 to 10 p.m. Big Red Sun, 1102 E. Cesar Chaves St. $100. www.womenandtheirwork.org.
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Q-and-A with Lois Ferrari, conductor
For their next program on April 25, Austin Civic Orchestra is joined by the noted violinist Brian Lewis and violist Roger Myers. We caught up with conductor Lois Ferrari.
Here we are in the year 2009, yet we still don’t see too many female orchestra conductors.
Women in leadership positions are few and far between in many fields. I don’t know for sure why this is but it seems to me that, as in any profession dominated mostly by men, it takes a few generations of women breaking into the field before their presence is not considered revolutionary or odd. I hope for the day when people don’t think of me first as a woman conductor, but rather just a conductor.
I think it’s very important for women in traditionally male professions not to set themselves apart purposefully as special and then expect to be treated equally. I have made a point throughout my career to not place a name tag on myself or make my choice of profession any kind of mission or statement. I think making strides via the mainstream makes a more lasting impression.
Can you tell us a little bit about your experience as a conductor?
My first experience as a bona fide conductor was teaching middle school band and orchestra on Long Island in the mid 1980s. It was there that I realized that conducting was my preferred niche in the music education field and decided to pursue this further. I went back to Ithaca College for my masters degree in conducting and was very fortunate to be a part of a program that not only allowed me to study with wonderful conductors but also in all three areas of conducting: band, orchestra, and choir.
In 1989, I took a position as a high school band director in upstate New York, but spent all my spare time traveling back and forth to Rochester to watch Donald Hunsberger rehearse and perform with the renowned Eastman Wind Ensemble. Shortly after that, I knew what I wanted to do, so for two years I studied hard and prepared for the audition into the doctoral conducting program at Eastman. I still remember the exact moment I opened my acceptance letter in the parking lot of my apartment complex.
Two years later, in 1993, I accepted the job offer from Southwestern University, thinking that this New Yorker would spend about three years gaining experience and then off I would go. Sixteen years later, I am still extremely happy at SU and can’t imagine working with better people anywhere.
My musical life and career also improved a great deal in 2002, thanks to my being nominated for and then appointed to the position of music director of the Austin Civic Orchestra. There are not enough superlatives to express my admiration and affection for all the wonderful, selfless people that make this organization work so well. I feel very lucky to be associated with both institutions and look forward to continuing to grow with and learn from them.
Through all these experiences, I don’t recall anyone ever telling me I couldn’t be a conductor because I’m a woman. A few people have remarked over the years that this was something noteworthy and might be difficult to achieve, but I don’t know of anyone who made disparaging or negative comments, at least not to me personally.
You’re a big champion of music by living composers. What’s important about supporting new music?
Until the mid-19th century, nearly all the music that the Western public consumed was new. There was no way to record performances and thus, music had no way to become “standard” or “popular” on a very large scale. There were favorites in small circles, of course, but the idea of new music in live performance was accepted as routine.
The advent of technology really made it difficult for composers in the 20th and now 21st centuries. Today, most Western audiences regard classical music concerts as entertainment and thus, expect to hear their favorite works, which have been preserved and mass distributed via easily available and affordable media.
The interesting thing, though, is that these same audiences, when presented with new material, almost always embrace the experience as at least interesting and rewarding, if not wholly extraordinary. I truly believe that audiences would welcome new music more if it wasn’t treated like a plate full of Brussels sprouts by some of us who are responsible for programming concerts.
Right now, the best or largest audience for new music is in academia and it is there that I feel not only the desire but the responsibility to commission and promote new compositions. Otherwise, the art of music would stagnate and disappear, and sadly we have been experiencing some of the tell-tale signs of that for some time.
On April 25, the ACO will present the third world premiere I have helped give birth to this semester, a work by Jason Hoogerhyde entitled, “Lament,” for string orchestra.
How could Austin’s classical music scene be improved?
That’s a tough question since Austin already has a very rich music scene of which it should be very proud. I guess the thing I would like most to see is the same amount of financial and community support that is given athletics in the public schools be given to Arts programs. In my not so reserved opinion, it is the Arts that defines us as human and evolved beings and it is the Arts that will ultimately save us from our own savagery. As my idol, John Adams once said: “I must study politics and war that my children may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My children ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain”
Spring Concert: Premiere of “Lament” by Jason Hoogerhyde; Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante; Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony
7:30 p.m. April 25
Reagan High School, 7104 Berkman Dr.
Tix: $10 ($8 students, $3 children 12 and under)
www.austincivicorchestra.org
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Gina Ducloux: 1923-2009, with husband helped found Austin Lyric Opera
Austin Lyric Opera announced today the passing of Gina Rifino Ducloux, wife of Austin Lyric Opera co-founder, the late Walter Ducloux.
Gina Ducloux passed on April 15 in Newport Beach, California. No cause of death was given.
Walter Ducloux co-found Austin Lyric Opera along with Joseph McClain.
“Our thoughts are with the family and friends of this Austin icon,” said general firector Kevin Patterson. “Unfortunately I never had the chance to meet Mrs. Ducloux but I’ve heard nothing but wonderful stories about her days with our company and we’re indebted to her and Walter for their generous contributions to ALO and our city.”
Born June 24, 1923, in New Jersey to Carlo and Rose Rifino, Ducloux excelled as a student, musician, singer, pianist, accordionist, linguist and teacher. Growing up, she won numerous scholarships, and began giving operatic vocal recitals as a teenager. Along with her siblings, Al and Anita, she would perform regularly at local events as an accordion trio.
Ducloux attended the University of New Hampshire on voice scholarship, where, as a freshman she met a dashing young professor (and assistant conductor to the NBC Symphony) from Switzerland, Walter Ducloux. They were married 53 years before his death in 1997.
After World War II, the Duclouxs moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where they lived from 1945-1948. During this time, they performed throughout Europe in various opera productions, he as conductor and she as a soprano.
They lived in New York in 1948-1954, while Walter served as musical director of the Voice of America. In 1954, they moved to Los Angeles where Walter became head of the University of Southern California symphony and opera departments.
In 1968, at the personal urging of Frank Erwin, the Duclouxs moved to Austin to develop the opera and symphony departments at the University of Texas. In 1986, with the support of the community, they co-founded the Austin Lyric Opera along with Joseph McClain.
Gina Ducloux was a voice teacher and vocal coach, and her high school students regularly took top prizes in UIL vocal competitions. She was regularly invited to teach foreign language musical diction at various conventions, including the annual summer Mozart Festival in Salzburg, Austria, where she taught as recently as 2004.
She is survived by her children, Denise (Dede) Brink, of Newport Beach, California, and Dede’s husband Howard; Claude and wife, Susan; and Philip and wife, Summer; and grandchildren, Simone (and husband Zachary Miner), Christopher, Daniel, Dominique, and Zoe.
An Austin memorial and celebration of her life will be held in Austin at a future date. Memorial gifts may be made to The Austin Lyric Opera Gina Ducloux Memorial Fund.
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Tonight: Erik Michaud lights up Art Palace
In an intriguing variety of media — from video to wood burnings to found object installations — artist Erik Michaud presents enigmatic little tales about nostalgia, youth and a mythical past. Or perhaps its a mythical future? Or an imagined life not lived?
Tonight, Michaud gives a talk about the work in his solo show “The Gates of Dawn” now at Art Palace Gallery, 2109 E. Cesar Chavez St. The talk begins at 8; the gallery is open 7 to 9 p.m. tonight and every Wednesday.
By personalizing mass-produced items like or else transforming detritus with quirky personal touches, Michaud unravels a particularly American yearning for distinction. Aren’t we all supposed to have histories packed with great and fabulous tales?
“The Gates of Dawn” continues through April 29.
Art Palace Gallery
2109 Cesar Chavez
www.artpalacegallery.com
“Blue Sky Hotel” by Erik Michaud.
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Review: ‘The Method Gun’
The Rude Mechs can’t help themselves. They have to tweak whatever they do every time they do it.
And with ‘The Method Gun’ — the theater collective’s much-heralded play from last season — the tweaks, and the Rudes, are alright.
Better than alright actually. To this critic, ‘The Method Gun’ still ranks as one of the best productions to grace the Austin theater scene in the past few years.
I said as much last year when I reviewed the show’s premiere, one of the many productions that helped open up the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
But now the Rudes are back home at the Off-Center, their East Austin warehouse performance space. And now ‘The Method Gun’ packs more intensity and more poignancy. In the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theater, the show featured plenty of visual — and theatrical — volume.In the much more intimate Off-Center, there’s no escaping the emotionally raw yet ultimately endearing ride. And the Rudes’ tweaks have made it all much more immediate and personal.
Of course, the sweet absurdity is still there. What’s not absurd about a group of actors still following an illusory acting guru named Stella Burden long after she has disappeared. So fixated with Burden’s acting technique — the method known as ‘The Method Gun’ — this group can’t let their guru go. Burden’s biggest challenge to her troupe? Present a production of Tennessee Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ performed without any of the principal characters.
Isn’t that an impossibility?
But, oh, does the troupe — superbly acted by Thomas Graves, Heather Hannah, Jude Hickey, Hannah Kenah and Lana Lesley — try hard to make it work. They put themselves through humiliating exercises, frustrate themselves with acting challenges and otherwise unravel their emotions. They fight each other, they kiss each other, they scream at one another. They fumble with out-dated audio-visual equipment, plunk out tunes on a piano and consult a miniature tiger figurine that Stella Burden held dear.
Played in a series of quick-fire almost hallucinatory scenes that ricochet around in time, the play (the script was written by Kirk Lynn) seemingly in brilliant manner builds and unravels at the same time.
And the final scene — Stella Burden’s principal-less ‘Streetcar’ — emerges as one of the most polished, gorgeous, breathtaking and riveting moments on an Austin stage.
The Rudes Mechs plan to take ‘The Method Gun’ to New York’s P.S. 122 next year. Let’s hope the folks realize what we already know: The Rudes craft compelling theater.
‘The Method Gun’ continues 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday through May 2 at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. See www.rudemechs.com for ticket information.
Photo by Bret Brookshire.
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Tony Award-winning ‘Avenue Q’ comes to Austin
Guest blogger and American-Statesman staff Geoff West catches up with John Marx, co-creator of the Tony Award-winning puppet musical ‘Avenue Q.’ You read that right: a puppet musical.
The Muppets have Manhattan. Now “Avenue Q,” the Tony Award-winning Broadway parody inspired by the popular ‘70s TV show “Sesame Street,” brings an adult-themed satire to Bass Concert Hall. The show opens Wednesday and runs through Sunday.
Just like “Sesame Street,” colorful, outspoken puppets and their human pals join up on a fictitious street in New York City — this time called “Avenue Q.”
And though songs and music are delivered in a “familiar sing-song, rubber-ducky kind of way,” the lyrics don’t hit reading, writing and arithmetic, says co-creator Jeff Marx.
“It sort of has the flavor of the ‘Sesame Street’ teaching songs in the vocabulary of a children’s television show but it’s teaching adult themes,” Marx says.
Now, the lovable puppets are stumbling through an awkward post-college transition into real-life, dealing with topics that range from coming out of the closet to porn addictions.
Marx calls the play an “equal-opportunity parody,” as the show pokes fun at nearly every demographic. Most people get the joke; critics love it and the show’s a worldwide hit — now boosting a touring company in the U.S., a Broadway residence and a London offspring. A movie is in the works, too, he says.
“Puppets sort of have license to say blunt things that would be kind of offensive if humans were saying them,” says Marx, a law grad, who co-wrote the musical with Robert Lopez after the two men bonded in a songwriter’s workshop. “Honestly, the only people that have ever really written us letters (of disapproval) are Republicans (upset about a George Bush cameo in the lyrics of one song),” he says.
But the show’s a unanimous hit otherwise — even with the Hensons, the family of the late Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets. Leading up to the show’s humble opening at a small non-profit theatre in New York City in the Spring 2003, Marx and Lopez invited Jim Henson’s widow, daughter (and lawyer) to a reading. The writers feared a lawsuit. But to their surprise, she liked it. And Jim would too, she said. Soon after, The New York Times called it a “breakthrough musical” and four months later, “Avenue Q” was on center stage—now the 23rd longest-running show on Broadway, according to statistics compiled by the Internet Broadway Database.
We never expected that,” Marx says. “Here we are six years later going from kids living in Astoria (New York) to having Tony awards on our shelves.” He says they based the characters on themselves and friends—those from Ivy League schools who expected to “live in a high-rise in Manhattan and have a great job as the vice president of some company” after graduation only to end up Xeroxing and answering phones.
“When we grew up and entered the real world, we realized we missed having those friendly puppets,” says Marx. “The ones who could teach us how to do laundry. How to get out of jury duty.
Through a biting satire, the show teaches hope and optimism, summarized in the show’s last song, “Everything in Life is Only for Now”. Everything passes and everything changes, so hang in there, the cast sings. It’s a happy-ending and a hopeful message. And not unlike “Sesame Street.”
‘Avenue Q’ will be at 8 p.m. Wednesday, 2 and 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, 8 p.m. Friday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Bass Concert Hall, 2300 Robert Dedman Drive. $19.50-$68.50. 477-6060, www.utpac.org.
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Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: | UT scholars fill in where Ellington left off on his only opera, ‘Queenie Pie ’ | Thomas Burritt bangs a new path with mallets and Tweets | New Music Co-op explores sound
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Got Twitter? You should if you want an audience
Hey orchestras and classical music groups, percussionist Thomas Burritt has a message for you.
“@tburritt: Use social and new media if you want to reach today’s new and younger audience that demands transparency, authenticity and accessibility.”
That message is 137 characters, three less than the maximum you can use on Twitter, the social messaging and microblogging service. (Minus tburritt, Burritt’s Twitter name, that is.)
Read more about Burritt’s advocacy of social media.
And don’t forget, Burritt and the UT Percussion Ensemble play a free concert Tuesday night that will feature premieres of new work by Austin composers Graham Reynolds and Dan Welcher as well as Iannis Xenakis monumental work for percussion “Peaux.”
University of Texas Percussion Ensemble
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 14
Where: Bates Recital Hall, Music Building, UT campus
And if you want to follow me and this blog on Twitter, the Twitter name is @artsinaustin.
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Review: ‘Arthuriosis’ at Blue Theatre
The potential visual puns are obvious: “Heavy metal, from the time when that was just the dress code.” Fortunately, in The Getalong Gang’s new “Arthuriosis,” a rock metal opera about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, the armor may be clapboard, but the music is metal at its glammest.
In the only production that’s ever handed me earplugs (unused) at the door, one of the West’s oldest myths is told again. The story doesn’t diverge too much — barring, of course, Andrew Varenhorst as the Grailgnome, a guardian mutt of Gollum, Beezelbub, and awesome. But all the other main characters are there, just rocking a bit harder than usual.
The final battle between Arthur and Mordred is cast as less of a sword duel to the death and more the eternal battle between flashy lead vocalist Benjamin Wright and mysterious axeman — a returned showdown between Plant and Page. And Morgana, played with a punkish sex appeal by Kathleen Fletcher, is revealed with a riff and moves deriving more from Van Halen than Lerner and Loewe.
The style, as brought out by director Zenobia Taylor, carries the show, but there’s substance there as well. The script came through many hands, but co-writer Spencer Driggers, as a Galahad with wide eyes and a flair for mock seriousness in narration, makes it the most clear. Unfortunately, when the story meets the metal, the music (and a very muddy sound setup) wins out. There’s some wit and great parody in the lyrics, but they’re often garbled under shredding solos and heavy drums from house band “Council of the Beast.”
You may miss out on many words, but a ballad of seduction between Arthur and the disguised Morgana paired with Lancelot and Guenevere about making love on a table (you know which one) rings clear. And even if it didn’t, the rock star writhing of Brock England as Lancelot makes the plot pretty apparent.
It’s a different sort of humor than “The Sword in the Stone,” but one that goes better with shots of whiskey and a beer chaser. From what I heard, the writers are more than capable and hearing the lyrics would add to that humor. From my own experience, it’s just as easy to throw up the horns and root for the once and future king when you can’t.
(“Arthuriosis” continues at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday at The Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road. $10. 927-1118, ggpg.org.)
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New Music Co-op: Immersive and in the dark
The always adventurous New Music Co-op staged what was more an intense sound installation than a concert Saturday night at Ceremony Hall, exclusively featuring the work of American experimental composer Alvin Lucier.
The private chapel turned community space, Ceremony Hall was dimly lit when the audience was admitted, folding chairs arranged in a large oval, a xylaphone and some other music equipment in the middle. Also occupying the center were several snare drums standing on their sides. A synthesized sine wave pulsated throughout the room as people filtered in in the dim light.
The snare drums seemed to grab the slow pulsations of the synthesized sine wave emanating what a low buzz.
The sound was immersive, intense, meditative and even frustrating at times. And that amalgam of experience held through the more than 90 minutes of the concert, even after the snare drums were put aside and soloists began to play from different spots in the room.
Or was Saturday night a sound installation? After all the audience was invited to leave their seats and move around the space to listen from different spots. And while the program indicated the discrete pieces performed, the experience was more a continuously fluid experimentation in sound and listening. Solo instrumentalists (flute, French horn, violin, cello, percussion) took turns creating long tones of specific pitch to affect the sine waves. Some sounds soothed. Others provoked. All demanded that you listen.
To end the event, the performers turned out the lights completely and using Sondols (small hand-held echolocation devices conceived of in the 1960s, but never mass-produced), began to sonically map out Ceremony Hall, the Sondols emitting muted tapping sounds that varied in speed and intensity. (Co-op members made the Sondols modeled after original plans).
In the dark, the experience became as much about listening as it was about sound - a chance for personal meditation as much a group experience.
Since it formed in 2001, the New Music Co-op has developed a small but loyal following. After all, most experimental music efforts or electro-acoustic music explorers anywhere typically don’t attract huge audiences.
But New Music Co-op does well by those who are curious and come out to their concerts. No aloof insider attitude here. Thoughtfully written and very thorough program notes explain much. And the ensemble is only too happy to chat with audience members afterwards, which invariably happens with many lingering for a while.
And all that makes for an easy open-ended scene.
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Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: Q-&-A with Austin composer P. Kellach Waddle | Tango: The original alt classical music | Itzhak Perlman concert
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King Arthur meets heavy metal
Guest blogger and American-Statesman staff Geoff West finds intrigue with the Getalong Gang’s theatrical mash up of heavy metal and the legend of King Arthur. Camelot? Not exactly…
We were intrigued when we got the press release for the Getalong Gang’s latest production, a heavy metal imagining of the King Arthur tale. Co-artistic director Spencer Driggers answers our questions about “Arthuriosis,” which opens this weekend at the Blue Theatre. It’s not the group’s first foray into this territory. Driggers says their production of “Ben Franklin: A Rock Opera” was “a Promethean tale in which Franklin had to climb a mountain and steal lightening from the gods. On his quest, he was beset by the siren song of a French lady of the evening and a giant three-headed eagle.”
American-Statesman: What’s the theme of the show and how did it originate?
Driggers: The show is actually adapted from a concept album we created with a group of friends over a decade ago. We took a long weekend and half-wrote, half-improved our own absurd version of the Arthurian legend. Then we recorded it on a busted-up four track recorder. For years, there was only one existing cassette tape, and the sound got progressively more awful with each listen. Luckily, we were finally able to convert it to digital, so the legacy shall remain intact.
Is there a metal opera (or any other performance) that you could compare to Arthuriosis?
The album was inspired by a Manowar song that chronicles the Trojan War, called Achillies: Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts. We strive to be as epic and over-the-top as those guys. I’ve never been to a metal opera myself, but we did see a German rock opera on YouTube that was based on Faust. That looked pretty bold. And hilarious. Not sure it was intentionally funny or not, but they seemed pretty serious about it.
How closely will the performance follow King Arthur’s tale?
We tried to hit the high points, but we did add a few narrative flourishes. For instance, we felt the story needed a gnome.
Did you read any specific text by a particular author?
We drank a lot of beer and watched the movie Excalibur. That’s about the extent of the research we did. The rest was based on memories of high school English class and The Sword and the Stone.
What interests you about his story?
It’s got all the components of a classic myth. Archetypes like the hero, the innocent, the sage, the betrayer. Utopia, ruination, love, war, the supernatural. Basic good vs. evil.
Who’s the target audience?
I think metal heads will appreciate the authenticity of the music. There’s no shortage of satire for comedy fans. The overblown spectacle of the costumes, lights and set should appeal to followers of Broadway musicals and/or GWAR. There’s even a smattering of language jokes for all the grammarians out there.
Are the musicians the actors or are they separate?
The band performs live on stage, and the lead guitarist plays Arthur’s son, Mordred. He has a couple of scenes, but he only speaks through his guitar. That being said, he speaks volumes.
What was Blue Theatre’s reaction to the idea?
The Blue has always been cool with whatever shows we’ve done there. The sound was initially a challenge, since the space is not really acoustically designed for a metal show. But we got it under control once we put some foam castle walls around the drum kit.
What can the audience expect?
They can expect to laugh, cry and rock like there’s no tomorrow. Free earplugs with admission.
‘Arthuriosis’ continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays through April 18 at Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road. www.bluetheater.org
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Lordy Rodriguez sees new states of America
It’s been a long road trip for Lordy Rodriguez.
The Phillipine-born Texas-raised artist has spent ten years systematically re-mapping the United States state-by-state according to his creative imagination.
Now Rodriguez’s 55 imaginative maps — he added the five new states of Disney, Hollywood, Internet, Monopoly and Territory — fill the walls at the Austin Museum of Art through May 17.
Rodriguez’s maps are immediately familiar. Who hasn’t seen similar vividly colored hand-drawn maps in an atlas, on the walls of a school room or held in the lap during a road trip? And Rodriguez has all the expected cartographic components there: the topographical symbols, the road numbers and river names, the border lines, the formal typeface.
But these maps are also deliberately absurd. What if Kansas collided with the Southeast? What if Texas bordered New Jersey? What if every state in America had a port? What if there were new borders, new bodies of water, new mountain ranges?
By re-imagining the entire country, Rodriguez considers the deeper meaning of place in the 21st century. He situates our nation’s capital half-way between the newly imagined states of Hollywood and Monopoly. The names of the towns and cities in Hollywood are taken from the movies; in Monopoly, cities are named after the cites that headquarter Fortune 500 companies.
We long to define ourselves by where we are from, where our families came from or where we choose to live. But in today’s mobile, shifting world, place is more fluid than ever before.
The lacklustre installation at AMOA disappointments and doesn’t do justice to the potency of Rodriguez’s richly imaginative ink drawings.
That’s too bad. Because in his charming, beguiling colorful maps, Rodriguez — who himself has perhaps the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-national background —ask trenchant questions. And perhaps the most important is. how would you map your world?
“Lordy Rodriguez: States of America”
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, (Thursdays until 8 p.m.), noon to 5 p.m. Sundays through May 17
Where: Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress Ave.
Tickets: $4-$5
Information: 495-9224, www.amoa.org
Image: “Monopoly” by Lordy Rodriguez. Courtesy AMOA.
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The New Music Co-op gets a bit batty
One the most literally inventive music groups in Austin, the New Music Co-op, is once again crafting new and original instruments and sound-making devices for their concert this Saturday.
“Sound in Time” is a tribute to the music of minimalist American composer Alvin Lucier.
Among the pieces performed Saturday is Lucier’s “Vespers,” which the composer dedicated to “all living creatures who inhabit dark places and who, over the years, have developed acuity in the art of echolocation.” The title is taken “vespertilionidae” or “vesper bat” the largest species of North American bats — just like the kind who live under Austin’s Congress Avenue bridge.
According to the Lucier, the piece seeks to “make a picture in sound about the space you’re in.”
To perform the piece, New Music Co-op members Bill Meadows and Travis Weller have crafted replicas of the electronic “Sondol” echo-location devices which were used in Lucier’s original piece. The Sondol was originally conceived as an assistance device for the blind and visually impaired that would allow a person to perceive or read their surroundings based on the echoes that bounced back.
Six Sondols are used as musical instruments in “Vespers.” Prepare for a echo-immersion experience.
Sondols built by Meadows and Weller.
Sound in Time: The Music of Alvin Lucier
8 p.m. Saturday
Ceremony Hall, 4100 Red River St.
$12 students/advance and $15 at the door
www.newmusiccoop.org
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Tango - The original alt, indie classical music?
Perhaps tango is the original alt-classical music. Perhaps, in fact, tango ensembles were the original bar bands.
Here in Austin, the tango bug bit about a decade ago, right along with a general resurgence in the sultry, complicated dance that was rolling across the country. But unlike most other places where tango percolated, Austin had its own tango house band right from the get-go.
This Saturday, Glover Gill and the women of Tosca String Quartet are returning to their monthly gig at Esquina Tango and you can read more about here.
Have a listen here.
Glover Gill and the Tosca String Quartet
When: 10:30 p.m. Saturday (Beginning tango dance lesson at 9 p.m.)
Where: Esquina Tango, 209 Pedernales St.
Cost: $10 (includes dance class)
Information: 524-2772, www.esquinatangoaustin.com
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Last days and nights for Texas Biennial!!
The Texas Biennial is winding down and you have just a few more nights to catch the four solo shows by artists William Cannings, Lee Baxter Davis, Jayne Lawrence and Kelli Vance.
Check here for the locations. All locations are open 7 to 9 p.m. through Friday.
The solo exhibits will also be open this Saturday from noon to 5 but then that’s it:
It’s also the last few days of the two Biennial group exhibits at Women & Their Work and Mexican American Cultural Center.
The Texas Biennial has got to bye-bye.
However, the Biennial’s temporary outdoor projects will stay on view until December.
Steel sculpture by William Cannings at Okay Mountain.
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Tiger tells all: ‘The Method Gun’ is ‘kooky, crazy’
In a rare accomplishment of multi-media arts journalism, we were able to get interview footage of Tiger, the undisputed star of “The Method Gun,” an undisputed jewel of a play by the Rude Mechs.
The Rudes are reprising “The Method Gun” beginning this weekend and running through May 2. See www.rudemechs.com for show times and tix. The remount comes as part of the Fusebox Festival.
The Rudes premiered ‘The Method Gun’ last year as part of the opening of the new Long Center for the Performing Arts. And I loved the play then, as I said in my review:
”Nothing short of the best work this theater collective has done in its 13 years … This is the Rude Mechanicals doing what they do best: crafting a rich series of stunning and surprising visual moments, lacing those moments with kinetic physical movement and wrapping it all together with a script both lyrical and cheeky.” Read the rest of the review.
And check out the recent Tiger interview:
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Legendary Indie-Musical Icon and Globally Renowned Artist Daniel Johnston Donates Artwork
The Austin State Hospital’s upcoming fundraiser, the Ash Bash, an art show and auction, has just received a box full of unique works on which guests can bid: drawings and paintings by legendary cult-musician artist Daniel Johnston.
View donated work by Johnston here.
The Ash Bash is at 6:30 p.m. April 23 on the 18th floor of 816 Congress Ave. Tickets to the Ash Bash are an affordable $20, with VIP tix going for $50. Music is by Grand Hotel with Erin Ivey. See www.ashbash.org for more info.
An edited press release from the event organizers follows:
A local icon thanks to his music and unmistakable “Hi, How Are You?” painting on 21st and Guadalupe, Johnston’s artistic popularity stretches across the globe, and his artwork can be found in exhibits in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia. Johnston’s donated work - alongside ASH patient artwork and art donated by professional artists- can be purchased during the event with all proceeds going towards improving the quality of life for ASH patients. The 40 contributing artists also include Steve Dubov, Christopher Fitzgerald, Roi James, Shawn Camp, and Eliza Thomas.
Most of Johnston’s colorful drawings are created in Magic Marker on regular-sized notebook paper, with speech bubbles and title text floating around the main figures. His “doodles and nervous drawings,” as he describes them are exceptionally unique in the consistency of their themes and challenges. Throughout his nearly 30 year career Johnston’s art, visual and musical, portrays the constant battle between good and evil.
While some of his work is undoubtedly somber, peace can be found within many of his drawings. These pieces are filled with jokes, bright-yellow ducks and visions of love. While Johnston’s challenges with mental illness continue, his artwork portrays a person who believes strongly in good, evil and fun.
From early on in his career Johnston’s battle with mental illness has proven challenging. In the mid 1980s, at the height of his battle with manic depression and bipolar disorder, Johnston was hospitalized at ASH to receive needed care. After spending nearly 5 years at ASH receiving help and treatment, Johnston returned home to live with his parents.
Currently residing in Waller, Texas, art for Johnston continues to not only be a powerful outlet but also a successful profession. Daniel’s artwork is exhibited around the world and was featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. His music is covered by numerous well known recoding artists including, Sonic Youth, David Bowie, Beck and The Flaming Lips. He was the subject of a feature length documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and his work has been the focus of several comprehensive art books.
For more information about Johnston please visit www.HiHowAreYou.com.
Image: Untitled by Daniel Johnston.
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Today: City to host discussion on Hispanic cultural arts
From an official City of Austin press release:
The City of Austin will seek public input about cultural arts during the third forum of the Hispanic Quality of Life Initiative at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, at the Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River St. Anyone who has an affinity or connection to the Hispanic culture or cultural arts is invited to voice his or her opinions or listen to others’ ideas at this forum. The comments captured at these discussions and through surveys will help shape recommendations on how to make the City of Austin a better place to live for the diverse Hispanic community. For more information, visit www.AustinHispanicQualityOfLife.org or call (512) 974-2344. A Spanish-speaking interpreter will be available at the forum.
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Review: ‘Common Ground’
“Common Ground” is not a subtle play. Characters say what’s on their mind, act on their impulses, and put down wild dogs when they need to illustrate their own, potentially irreversible, failure as moral human beings. But in the space between unnaturally open dialogue and descriptions that don’t fly quite high enough to justify their artifice, Pro Arts Collective finds moments of full-force emotion and sentiment that are unmistakably powerful.
Writer Antoinette Winstead tells an old story of two brothers, but in this case the prodigal has stayed home with a knee injury while the paragon followed the Air Force to Vietnam. The particular moment in history doesn’t much affect the story, though. The bitter, almost-was rodeo star competing with his successful hero of a brother for the love of a made-to-order family could slot into most settings. The ‘60s schmaltz of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” just adds an extra punch.
Luke has, to the tune of the old standard, returned from his tour unannounced and ready to move his family away from the home where his brother and mother have provided for them in his absence. Brother James, through a mix of sincere emotion and a need to compete, is unwilling to give up his role as patriarch. As that becomes clearer and Luke must find a space for himself, the Christmas-card portrait dissolves.
Unfortunately, the characters aren’t much more nuanced than those of the parable. Descriptions and judgments fly thick in the play’sclimax, but there’s not much opportunity for us to see characters live up to those roles. Instead, we see more of the happy family—tickle fights and cookies that don’t advance the plot—and then abrupt switches into adultery and shouting.
The benefit of the no-pretense, low-subtext style is that each emotion is heightened. When Aaron Alexander’s Luke is angry, he is furiously so. When Robbie Ann Darby as the wife is conflicted between love and duty, she is poignantly so. When LeVan Owens as James sulks or dawdles his makeshift daughter on his leg, it’s wrenchingly bitter.
I was once told that if you simply take each of Shakespeare’s line at face value, the emotion and transitions come through as sudden and intense as a shotgun blast. But Shakespeare’s language is heightened by poetry. Winstead’s is straddling the fence between natural and plain. We’re given a collection of actors who can wring anger or tenderness from those lines, but the effect comes largely from the basic plot and their strength of emotion.
One perfect marriage is between Feliz McDonald and the part of Rosa Young. As a boozy, effervescent b-girl, she struts, shrieks, and snaps with impunity and lack of perception of the larger situation—a regular fool—and draws loud laughs with each step across the stage. As a scorned woman drawn into the dysfunctional family, she knows more than she lets on, until it’s time for a pointed reveal.
All that emotion makes for a powerful climax, though it’s muted by moralizing and a need to suddenly show a tender side to relationships with no introduction. Regardless, the blow-ups and confessions can’t compete with smaller, quieter moments. Taking a break from explaining his thoughts, Luke simply does. As the rest of the family gathers at the table, Aaron Alexander stood in the back of the stage and idly fingered a branch of the Christmas tree, looking in from the outside of a 2-year tour abroad.
Blunt honesty is powerful, but those hidden moments are the real Christmas gifts.
Joey Seiler is an American-Statesman freelance theater critic.
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Review: Round Rock Symphony Orchestra, take 2
Saturday night, the Round Rock Symphony Orchestra, in its only second show, gave a much more polished performance than its debut in October.
The first of two performances, Saturday’s concert attracted more than 100 folks. And interestingly, it was in North Austin, at Westover Hills Church of Christ. Sunday, the RRSO played Round Rock.
Music director Silas Nathaniel Huff took an interesting approach for a new, suburban orchestra, presenting a program of two new works bookended by romantic symphonic staples.
Bringing panache to Saturday’s concert was guest soloist, violinist Jessica Mathaes, concertmistress of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. Mathaes played the premiere of Manly Romero’s “Remember Father.” Mathaes wrested a great deal of nuance form Romero’s intricate, repeating layers that built interesting into a tense height before exhaling with a mournful sigh.
Allen Schulz’s “This Day, This Dusk,” employed predictable contrasts between violent, melodies that were then balanced against lighter passages. In the end, the piece felt weary, not exhilarating.
Surrounding the Romero and Schulz were Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet’ Overture and Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ suite — both about as markedly un-modern as the two center pieces. Huff has got the orchestra sounding a bit tighter and smoother than its shaky debut even if all the awkward edges are not totally worked out. And confidence and cohesion still needs to grow.
And yet, an orchestra attempts to grow for Round Rock, and that’s just fine.
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Review: Itzhak Perlman
To a virtually sold-out house Sunday night at the Bass Concert Hall, violin great Itzhak Perlman played seemingly two concerts.
The first half was ultra-formal, hermetic even, Perlman nodding but not otherwise saying a word to the audience, instead delivering the music in quick succession.
To Handel’s Sonata No. 13 in D, Perlman brought a polished modern feel to the Baroque stylings. To Franck’s Sonata For Violin & Piano in A, Perlman also wrested an ever so slightly contemporary burnish to a piece that lies just on the edge of romanticism and modernism.
But after intermission, the silent, formal virtuoso didn’t appear. Instead, it was Perlman the casual, accessible - yet utterly genius - violin player, the man who, in his breathtaking half-century career, has not only performed with every great orchestra and in every great concert hall, but also played popular movie scores (“Schindler’s List”) and easily joked with muppets on “Sesame Street.”
“The good news is that the piece is not very long,” he deadpanned about Messiaen’s modernist Theme and Variations. “Just pretend you’ve heard ten times before and you’ll like it.”
After that it was seven short pieces.
“This is a computer printout of everything I’ve played here in the last 40 years,” he joked waving a piece of paper. “Maybe I play something you’ve heard before, you can tell me if you like it better now, or then.”
“Here, this is a good one,” he said, before embarking on Kreisler’s transcription for violin of Falla’s “Spanish Dances,” a staple of the classical guitar repertoire full of dramatic flourish.
The pieces grew in virtuosity and technical demands, yet with each, Perlman left micro-seconds of air, even between the most rapid successions of notes for exquisite yet seemingly effortless clarity.
After Bazzini’s rapid-fire “Dance of the Goblins,” the maestro was done. No need for an encore. After all, Perlman had effectively started the encore from the first note he played.
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Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: Q-&-A with Austin composer P. Kellach Waddle | Critic’s Picks | UT New Music Ensemble
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Review: “The Color of Dissonance”
Art about art is tricky territory. And while creative collaborations often result in a rich pluralist end product, sometime too many divergent artistic enthusiasms can clutter.
Clutter seemed to muddle “The Color of Dissonance,” an ambitious new opera with music by Jason Hoogerhyde which premiered Friday for a three-performance run at Southwestern University’s Alma Thomas Theatre.
With a libretto by Hoogerhyde, Sergio Costola and Kimberly Smith, “The Color of Dissonance” turned its lens on a seminal moment of cultural history: the birth of modernism. As this story used the pre-World War I friendship of painters Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Munter and Arnold Schoenberg as means to examine the radical break modernism made, from realism to abstraction, pretty tonal melodies to harsh dissonances.
Unfortunately, such a heady intellectual topic was never quite realized into compelling theater.
To be sure, Southwestern University deserves kudos for commissioning its faculty— of which Hoogerhyde, Costola and Smith belong — to create a such an ambitious production.
And what a production.
Kandinsky, Munter and Schoenberg were each played by a singer, an actor and a dancer, the cast clad in all-white fin-de-siecle period garb. Thousands of images — from Kandinsky’s paintings to Schoenberg’s scores to glorious early cinema and period newsreels — were projected onto the screen backdrop or sometimes cast onto individual canvases or other surface. A chorus sang from offstage after parading through the audience at the start.
More a singspiel, with arias interspersed by spoken monologue, “Dissonance” found the three characters hardly interacting so much as remaining isolated figures addressing the audience in monologues or arias. And that made for a very static, sometimes wooden progression.
iIn and around the singers and actors, the dancers wove. But their presence, and the overly-stylized choreography, distracted.
As Kandinsky, baritone Oliver Worthington was a standout, his tone expressive and colorful. Indeed he seemed poised to bring more dramatic depth to role, if only that had been part of the theatrical direction.
Unfortunately, it was not.
Really, one wanted ultimately much more of Hoogerhyde’s rich yet ethereal music. Hoogerghyde’s delicate, thoughtful tonal dramas was where this opera’s emotional force lay.
Only the media design, by Duncan Alexander, had as much impact and complexity as the score. Far beyond a typical kaleidoscopic montage, the churning story written by the images and footage offered the only true dramatic foil to Hoogerhyde’s music.
After all, just because some collaboration is good, doesn’t always mean more is better.
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Three questions with P. Kellach Waddle, composer and bassist
Composer and bassist P. Kellach Waddle is a flurry of musical activity. Whether writing new pieces (he’s penned more 300 separate works of music) or concertizing with every group from the Austin Symphony Orchestra to a multitude of chamber groups, Waddle and his bass are perpetually on the go.
Last year his String Quartet #2, commissioned by the Miro Quartemt won the 2008 Austin Critic’s Table award for Outstanding Original Composition.
Through his presenting efforts, PKW Productions, Waddle has also created the wildly popular “Music and a Movie” series at the Alamo Drafthouse cinema. Waddle’s assembled ensembles to play pre- and post-movie concerts for films as diverse as “Amadeus” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” always attracting a packed house.
In his more than two decades in Austin, the ever-eclectic Waddle, a major advocate for new approaches to new classical music, sees Austin as a hub for change that nevertheless needs more support.
How could Austin’s classical music scene be improved?
Classical music, much less new classical music, is still the stepchild in the Austin music scene. Classical music is in general totally off the radar here in a city so known for music being in it’s everyday life.
Will anyone ever not ask me when I tell them I am a musician “what band are you in?”
[I have to wonder] if the folks at the Live Music Task Force have any clue who [we classical and indie classical musicians are.] I don’’t think it’s any malicious intent to exclude us, but music that doesn’t get heard in a bar at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night isn’t on Austin’s music scene radar. Do the Austin Music Awards even have a classical category?
This is something that needs to be continually addressed and we all need to do our part to change.
What do you like about Austin’s classical music scene?
I have a gargantuan amount of music performed and premiered here on a regular basis in all of my own series under the PKW Productions umbrella but I also get to have music on so many other of my colleagues’ series and projects and vice versa
Right now Austin has so much new classical music heard in venues that continue to tear down the stereotype of what people consider the “normal ” or perhaps, more bluntly, the “Intimidating or segregated” world of “new classical music.” I now have at least half if not more of my premieres at a book store (Book People on the “Music and Literature” series) and a movie theater (Alamo Drafthouse.)
That is what I think is so beautiful about what we have going in new classical music in Austin. While other cities have people valiantly trying to do these things, they still are seen as anomalies. Yet what so many of us are doing here — giving audiences new classical music - new audiences at that, that that’s something I really don’t think you find anywhere elsewhere. The kind of things we do are now a regular part of Austin’s classical music landscape and I think we are very blessed to have manifested this situation here.
What are you working on right now?
It’s been a busy few months with more than two dozen new pieces being premiered.
For my “Music and Literature” series at Book People, I’m finishing up pieces on books by F. Scott Fitzgerald including a quartet for three cellos and bass, a sonata for two basses, a solo bass piece and a violin/cello/bass trio.
In late May it’s new works for “The Violin According to PKW ” featuring Austin Symphony concertmistress Jessica Mathaes. And to continue the series, in early summer it’s “The Sound of the Bass and Cello According to PKW” and “The Sound of Two Basses According to PKW.”
The Austin Chamber Ensemble commissioned a new major work which will premier in May 14-15. And for the Balcones Chamber Orchestra I am completing work on a short ” symphony” of three intermezzos.
For my own upcoming solo concerts at Central Presbyterian Church, I just finished one set of three nocturnes.
Also for these concerts, I am, as always, practicing Bach solo movements and three pieces that were written for me by other composers
Listen to a sample of Waddle music:
Photo: Benjamin Sklar for the American-Statesman.
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Weekend Music Pix
This weekend, we’re overloaded with recommended music offerings, particularly on Sunday, when things
And no, this isn’t just happening on the classical music scene. Austin is dizzy with entertainment offering in April.
Tonight, for me it’s “The Color of Dissonance,” the new opera by Jason Hoogerhyde that’s getting its premiere at Southwestern University. It’s always an occasion when new operas are realized here in Austin. The opera plays tonight, Saturday and Sunday. www.southwestern.edu/boxoffice.
Listen to an excerpt:
Saturday, the Round Rock Symphony had a rocky debut last fall, but Jessica Mathaes, Austin Symphony Orchestra concertmistress is the guest soloist, and she’s not one to miss. Mathas plays the premiere of Manly Romero’s ‘Remember Father.’ 8 p.m. First Presbyterian Church, 8001 Mesa Drive. $15-$30. www.roundrocksymphony.org.
Sunday, Itzhak Perlman dominates the evening choices and I can’t resist that.
The rest of the offerings, which you can see here, are numerous. The Wild Basin Winds has an interesting looking program of new music — read about here — but it conflicts with the Perlman concert. UT’s Great Organ Series and repeated performances of “The Color of Dissonance” and Round Rock Symphony.
Image: “The Color of Dissonance.” Photo by Claire McAdams.
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Itzhak Perlman: Carnegie Hall, ‘Sesame Street’ — It’s all good
He’s played the world’s best symphony halls, won 16 Grammy Awards and also on performed on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “Sesame Street.”
Of course, now that violinist Itzhak Perlman is celebrating his 50th season of his United States debut there’s little the virtuoso hasn’t done.
Perlman plays the Bass Concert Hall Sunday. On the program is Handel’s Violin Sonata No. 13, Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in A and Messiaen’s Theme and Variations.
What’s perhaps remarkable about Perlman’s lengthy resumé is its democratic range. Yes, he can claim as his own the most exclusive classical gigs. But he’s also been a champion of classical music, taking his message to every pop culture or media platform he can. Besides, once you’ve already had your Carnegie Hall solo debut at 18, why not concertize with muppets if it means exposing a television audience of children to the beauty of classical music? Or why not play the achingly beautiful solo on the soundtrack to movie “Schindler’s List?”
Born in Tel Aviv in 1945, Perlman contracted polio at age four and grew up listening to classical music on the radio. Although he’s been known to eschew the word “prodigy,” that’s what he was: He gave his first solo recital aged 10. After moving with his family to the United States in the late 1950s, Perlman, who now walks with the use of a cane or uses a motorized scooter, soon embarked on a breathtaking career of award-winning recordings and nearly non-stop performing.
Sunday he plays the Bass Concert Hall in a solo recital. “Our society would be incomplete without culture, without music,” Perlman told a recent interviewer. “The world has so many problems these days, but music has proved to be something that can be around for a very long time.”
7 p.m. Sunday
Bass Concert Hall, University of Texas campus
$34-$75
512-477-6060. www.utpac.org.
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City council to weigh street closure rules
The City of Austin has proposed new rules about closing streets for races, parades, arts festivals and other big events. And today at 6 p.m. the council is scheduled to consider a change to street closure rules that would prevent arts events like Art City Austin and First Night Austin from occupying Cesar Chavez Street.
Read a recent American-Statesman story about the issues.
See the city council agenda item and supporting documents here.
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Weekend Arts Pix
‘Common Ground.’
Two years ago at the Black Arts Movement Festival, San Antonio playwright Antoinette Winstead impressed with a staged reading of ‘Common Ground,’ her play about a Central Texas African American ranching family in the 1960s as a son returns from Vietnam and clashes with the world he left. Now Pro-Arts Austin stages the compelling drama as a full production. 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday. 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 7 p.m. Sunday. Boyd Vance Theatre, Carver Museum and Cultural Center, 1165 Angelina St. $20. 474-8497. www.proartsaustin.org.
‘RubyRico’s Peepshow Magnifico!’
From the folks who created the popular ‘The Tom Waits Peepshow’ comes an all-new offbeat cabaret with dancing girls, outrageous costumes, magicians, acrobats, jugglers and the No Salvation Army Band playing their covers of Prince, Cole Porter, the White Stripes, Queen and more. 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Saturdays through April 25. The Independent at 501 Studios, 501 N. Interstate 35. $20. www.rubyrico.com.
Image: ‘Peepshow Magnifico.’ Photo by Christopher Caselli.
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Candidates, talking arts
Nearly 400 people showed up Wednesday night at the Paramount Theatre for an arts forum with Mayoral and City Council candidates.
Mayoral candidates attending were David Buttross, Josiah James Ingalls, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Lee Leffingwell, Brewster McCracken. City Council candidates Perla Cavazos, Sheryl Cole, Sam Osemene, Chris Riley, and Bill Spelman were also on hand.
Council Member Mike Martinez, who was absent due to illness, delivered a statement by proxy.
Not an open Q-and-A with the audience, the forum instead had each candidate responding to specific questions with a specific time limit for answer ( one minute for some topics, two minutes for other).
That made for orderly, if somewhat predictable presentation by the candidates, with almost every candidate voicing their support of, in many instances, Austin’s creative community and its need. Osemene and Ingalls dissented at times, however, arguing that there were more important issues (homelessness, the recession, public safety), that required the city’s attention first before the arts.
The discussion circled around three essential issues: 1) The city’s need for a consolidated ,and higher profile, department of arts and culture that would oversee all aspects of cultural funding and municipal support for the all of the creative arts, including film; 2) The need for more downtown public parking, especially around the Long Center, and; 3) Lifestyle and affordability issues, particularly accessibility to affordable housing and affordable rehearsal/studio space.
Not brought up at all? The city’s current funding levels for cultural contracts issued to arts organizations.
The event was hosted by Arthouse, Austin Film Festival, Austin Lyric Opera, Austin Museum of Art, Austin Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Austin, Conspirare, KMFA, The Long Center, Mexic-Arte Museum, One World Theatre, Paramount & State Theatres, and Zach Scott Theatre.
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Wet Ink: Windy new music
It isn’t always easy getting an audience out to see a woodwind ensemble.
Maybe a little ‘American Idol’ type voting will help.
“Wet Ink,” a pair of concerts on Sunday and Tuesday by five-member Austin ensemble Wild Basins Winds, will feature all new music, including some compositions that have never been heard by an audience before
The audience will be invited to vote on which new piece they like best.
Read more about the program here and find concert information.
And check out this video clip of the Wild Basin Winds:
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Explore Austin’s other live music scene
We’re in the midst of a five-week project exploring Austin’s ‘other’ live music scene — classical music. Recent coverage: New Opera: ‘The Color of Dissonance’ | Critic’s Picks | UT New Music Ensemble
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Austin’s ‘other’ new music scene
The University of Texas’ marketing motto may be “what starts here changes the world,” but sometimes it seems like that “world” might be every place but Austin.
Though the city has grown much over the last decades, the town and gown divide in Austin can still feel profound. Particularly in the world of classical music. Yet, we’re lucky to have a growing tribe of musicians, separate from the university, out there writing composed music, looking for inventive ways to bring it to people.
Last night at the UT New Music Ensemble, I caught up with Graham Reynolds, who was taking a night off and taking some music in. Interestingly, Reynolds has a couple of commissions for new works that will debut April 26, and both are commissions from UT.
UT vocal professor Darlene Wily asked Reynolds for a song cycle suited for emerging talents — something young singers in high school or early undergraduate years might be able to use for recitals. Reynolds in turn tapped the talents of poet Carrie Fountain and the two created “Between Steel and Stardust” a song cycle about famous Texas women from Barbara Jordan and the Angel of Goliad to cosmetics queen Mary Kay Ash.
Also premiering on the April 26 concert is a trio for double reeds which will be played UT faculty Rebecca Henderson and Kristen Jensen with a piano accompaniest.
To content yourself until the new premieres, here’s ‘DSCH,’ Reynolds poignant and beautiful tribute to piece to Dmitri Shoshtakovich.
- ‘DSCH,’ by Graham Reynolds. From The Tick Tock Club, Golden Arm Trio (Shamrock Records)
Graham Reynolds at UT New Music Ensemble concert.
