Recent arts coverage:
- Evolutionary biology. Aesthetic determinism. Live action role playing. The Rude Mechs are making a new play again
- Suburban battlefield: Women fight invisible foe in Amie Siegel’s ‘Black Moon’
- In eerie paintings by Ana Fernandez, a house isn’t just a house
More arts coverage | Follow this blog on Twitter @artsinaustin | Read recent arts reviews
Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > August > 14
Friday, August 14, 2009
‘O Fortuna’ gets a makeover
To extent, every artistic creation is a response to or a riff on every artistic creation that came before it.
Texas Choral Consort makes the point clear this weekend with their concert, ‘A Shadow of Light’ which plays Saturday and Sunday at the Northwest Hills United Methodist Church. The program features music from many centuries that is also music, well, based on other music.
Featured are J.S. Bach’s reworking of an old Lutheran tune and Mendelssohn’s Romantic-era take on Bach’s tried-and-true cantata style. And Arvo Part’s ‘Te Deum’ is a confluence of medieval chants and popular Eastern European sounds.
And getting its premiere is a new piece, ‘Orff’s Good Fortune’ by Austin composer Peter Stopschinski.
‘Orff’s Good Fortune’ is a riff on the most popular part of Carl Orff’s super-popular (and darkly dramatic) choral work, ‘Carmina Burana.’ Orff used the text from a 13th-century Latin poem cycle for his cantata which has been co-opted ad nauseum by popular culture.
Stopschinski says the opportunity to riff on that popularity was too unresistable.
“I wanted to do a parody and make a harsh song sound nice,” he says. “(I) ended up making this ‘O Fortuna’ a lullaby (by) picking and choosing text from the ancient Latin — which is amazing text — and using the motif and other random bits of musical material from the Orff’s composition. You get this kind of hip blend of extremely dark lyrics about succumbing to fate set to pretty music.”
“I’m interested in the ‘super-mega-hit classical pieces and why they are so popular,” Stopschinski continues. “My piece is in an ultra-lush romantic choral style with string orchestra accompaniment and mezzo-soprano and violin solos — a lullaby spectacle!”
See www.txconsort.org for ticket information.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Music
Review: ‘Wicked’
There can be so much pleasure when witches sing together. “Wicked” flew into Austin this week, riding not on broomsticks, but on the performances of two women: Heléne Yorke as Glinda the Good Witch and Marcie Dodd as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. The Broadway hit, which runs at Bass Concert Hall until Aug. 30, has plenty of megamusicals’ bells and whistles, including a mechanical dragon and magic rain.
But wizardry does not give “Wicked” its heart, the intertwined voices of the leading female roles do.
“Wicked,” with lyrics music by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman, draws from Gregory Maguire’s novel of the same name. Like the book, the musical tells the backstory of the “Wizard of Oz.” How did Glinda become good and the Wicked Witch of the West became (supposedly) wicked?
Told by Glinda in a series of flashbacks, “Wicked” chronicles the two women’s adolescences, when green Elphaba and blonde Glinda fell on different sides of their school’s popularity divide.
Although the school story does recuperate Elphaba’s character, the resolution to the musical’s good versus bad question rests more in songs than story. In “For Good,” the song Elphaba and Glinda sing as their goodbye, the two trade a show full of alto/soprano harmonizing to hold the same final note together.
There’s the show’s answer to the good/evil question: good is what the women are when they are together, no matter what the world thinks of either of them. (And yes, as musical theater scholar Stacy Wolf has pointed out, “Wicked”’ flirts with queer — to use the word in a gay-positive way — romance.)
Joe Mantello and Wayne Cilento’s careful staging makes what could be a cartoonish world full of cartoonish characters full and funny. Glinda’s hilarious way of moving,her over-dramatic flop on her bed during “Popular,” for example, pointedly exaggerates her performance of pink hairbow-wearing femininity.
The bulbous curves and rich color palette of Susan Hilferty’s sculptural costumes add sumptuous layers of texture. The supporting cast of Marilyn Caskey as the girls’ teacher Madame Morrible, Tom McGowan as the Wizard and Colin Donnell as the girls’ mutual love interest Fiyero is excellent in purposely peripheral roles.
Sometimes musicals can feel too formulaic, but “Wicked” is a puzzle that feels good as it fits together.
‘Wicked’ continues through Aug. 30. See www.utpac.org/event/wicked for more information. Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment
Arts groups call for health care reform
National advocacy group Americans for the Arts along with a coalition of 20 national arts organizations have issued a statement to Congress urging legislators to support health care reforms.
The organizations are urging members of the arts community to write to their Congressmen.
“Like others who have fallen through the cracks of the current system, many in the cultural workforce work independently or operate in nontraditional employment relationships, leaving them locked out of group healthcare coverage options,” says the statement issued by Americans for Arts.
Read the full statement here.
