Weekend Reviews
South San Gabriel gets catty, in a good way
Rock: South San Gabriel
World music: "Orion"
Opera: "Vampyress"
Choral music: "Perpetual Light"
Chamber music: Canadian Brass
Web posted: Oct. 17, 2005
Rock
The sustained feedback — four beats of eardrum-scorching pain — during South San Gabriel's sound check induced a meltdown among the Emo's crowd. Seemingly the only one unperturbed was lead singer Will Johnson. Seated, hunched over an acoustic guitar, his zombielike eyes sunken in black circles likely caused by obsession and insomnia, he had already entered the zone. Surrounding him were five selfless musicians — including but not limited to all of the players in his other outlet for a voluminous catalog of songs, hardened-beyond-their-years classic rockers Centro-matic — who succeeded with their delicacy in making the band essentially the biggest solo act around."We're gonna play some songs about this cat," he said. Johnson wasn't referring to the guy in the porkpie hat, but to a feline. South San Gabriel's latest, "The Carlton Chronicles: Not Until the Operation's Through," is a nine-song (nine lives!) concept album told from the perspective of Carlton the cat. Sounds sappy and overwrought, but the orchestral folk arrangements delivered in a "slowcore" tone (deliberate, intense, emotional) and accented with twang envelop listeners like the offerings of faith-based Iron & Wine. Johnson began the show the same way his band does the album: "Charred Resentment the Same" finds Carlton looking into the sky, licking his lips over a sparrow named Ron. Carlton-via-Johnson sings, "Things will change in my belly/And things will change with your vertebrae/I will know from your feathers decorating my fair dreams."
From there, the narrative followed Carlton on a days-long flight from his owner, during which he broke his leg in a squabble with a possum and retreated home, where an operation loomed. All the while, a movie screen, adding to the enchantment of the harmonic lullabies, displayed sketches interpreting the songs. As an in-demand soloist (he's opening for My Morning Jacket) and front man for successful, counterbalancing bands, Johnson has finally arrived. After all, how can you deny a man who makes the banal life of a four-legged fur ball resonate with mighty humans?
— Michael Hoinski
World music
INSTRUMENTS, GUESTS ARE THE STARS OF 'ORION'
In "Orion," composed for last year's Olympic celebrations, the Philip Glass Ensemble sits clad entirely in white as a multinational rainbow of soloists come and go. That's fitting, as Glass' music here is little more than a backdrop for the various exotic instruments to be showcased; unlike some of the composer's earlier work with far-flung collaborators, Orion rarely threatened to become more than a novelty.
From the opening note — the haunted bellow of Mark Atkins' didgeridoo — almost to the evening's end, listeners had many opportunities to marvel at sounds infrequently heard in American concert halls. But the sounds were most captivating, and the idea of juxtaposition most successful, in the tossed-off "interludes" that bridged the main compositions. Here, for example, a Gambian stringed instrument played by Foday Musa Suso was paired with Ashley MacIsaac's violin, the soloists blending voices while Glass and company sat silent. What worked on a small scale, though, flopped when magnified for the show's closing number, which dragged everyone on stage for a feel-good trading-solos routine where one half-expected someone to start belting out "We Are The World."
With the compositions themselves often sounding like second-hand movie soundtrack work, the guests Glass brought became the main attraction. Atkins, Foday Musa Suso, and Wu Man on the Chinese pipa were diverting. But the stars were the Brazilian trio Uakti, who — with flutes, PVC-pipe percussion instruments, and a spinning-tank contraption that was played with a bow — not only held their own against Glass' keyboards and Western instruments, but were enhanced by them.
— John DeFore
Opera
COSTUMES ASIDE, 'VAMPYRESS' IS QUITE A SIGHT
Every time I've seen a Vortex production, I've found myself at odds with the rest of the audience come curtain call. The scene invariably looks something like this: I sit in my seat, perplexed, obligatorily clapping for something I'm not sure I completely understood. My fellow theatergoers, meanwhile, appear to have tapped into some deep connection to the material, as evinced by their riotous responses.
What, I've wondered, causes this sharp disconnect? The Vortex's latest offering, Chad Salvata's sanguine new opera, "Vampyress," illuminated one plausible answer. The Vortex, you see, already has a built-in audience. And while the theater doesn't discriminate against other groups, it certainly plays primarily to this one.
According to production notes, "Vampyress" is inspired by the life of a 16th-century Hungarian countess named Erzsebet Bathori. Bathori supposedly killed 650 young women, bathing in their blood to preserve her own youthfulness. She earned the nickname "Bloody Countess" before she was condemned for her crimes.
For her production, Vortex Artistic Director Bonnie Cullum enlisted a brave cast of seven women to share more than 20 roles, several requiring full nudity. As Bathori, Melissa Vogt used her outsized voice to overcome the developmental constraints written into the role. The fact that Vogt carved a clear character from Salvata's inconsistent score speaks to her ability as both a singer and an actress.
Cullum and her artistic team maintained a generally impressive command of the technical elements. Ann Marie Gordon's naturalistic set and Jason Amato's often chaotic lighting served both the space and the material well. Blair Hurry's costumes, on the other hand, looked like the lovechild of "Barbarella" and "Spamalot."
"Vampyress," like last season's "Sleeping Beauty," overflows with pagan imagery. Ripe seasonal allusions and an organic production design collaborate to effect a visually robust, if somewhat exclusive, audience-wise, result.
"Vampyress" continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays through Oct. 31. The Vortex, 2307 Manor Road, $10-$25, 478-LAVA, www.vortexrep.org
— Tommy O'Malley
Choral music
'PERPETUAL LIGHT' SHINES WITH EMOTION
"Tell me where is the road I can call my own/That I left, that I lost, so long ago?" With these words in "Perpetual Light," the voices of Conspirare firmly yet gently enveloped the listeners and created a community of artists and audience where the acknowledgement of loss could lead to hope.
During three different Requiems, the graceful longing of Donald Grantham's "We Remember Them," and the two-syllable explorations of John Corigliano's "Amen," conductor Craig Hella Johnson masterfully guided the a cappella program. A crew filmed the concert for inclusion in a documentary on love and seemed somehow to intensify the give and take between singers and audience.
In comparison to the myriad vocal layerings and gravitas of Ildebrando Pizzetti's "Requiem," Eric Whitacre's "Three Songs of Faith" was almost playful with its use of three e.e. cummings' poems, "I will wade out," "hope, faith, life love," and "i thank You God for most this amazing day." In the last of these pieces greater vocal intensity with the line "I thank You God ... for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes" was needed. One cannot be restrained when embracing "yes."
Stephen Paulus' adaptation of "The Road Home" from the "Southern Harmony" hymnal provided a plaintive musical and thematic line that culminated in Eliza Gilkyson's grieving "Requiem."
The wondrous sounds rose high to meet the soaring architecture of St. Martin's Lutheran Church last Friday night, yet this was no ethereal or angelic choir but one, fittingly, of flesh and blood. What do angels know about life and death, about struggles with tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, about the process of rebuilding? Conspirare's many voices might be pure in tone and beautifully polished, but in this "Perpetual Light" concert they sounded particularly human while singing of sorrow, acceptance and joy.
— Jamie Smith Cantara
Chamber music
TOP-NOTCH CANADIAN BRASS BOTH PROFESSIONAL AND FUNNY
There are plenty of acts who can entertain an audience for an hour or two, but the Canadian Brass on Sunday evening enthralled a Bass Concert Hall audience with two hours of top-notch chamber music for brass quintet.
In short, these guys are great.
That can't be news, because the group has scored consistent successes since 1970. But while I've heard their fine recordings for years, it was a particular pleasure to take in their live act, and see just how dryly funny tubist Charles Daellenbach could be as he introduced most of the selections. About a third of the time trombonist Eugene Watts did the talking, and his humor was just as funny, but a bit broader.
Then came time for the music. The group has built a vast library of smartly orchestrated arrangements and original compositions embodying musical wit on a scale probably not seen since Joseph Haydn. And as they played, the ensemble proved completely professional and thoroughly artistic.
Earning special distinction was first trumpeter Justin Emerich, who spent nearly half of the program playing the treacherous piccolo trumpet with only a few split notes. Then there was hornist Bernhard Scully. He had what I call a frozen embouchure, meaning his embouchure was so perfect that I never saw him making little adjustments to produce very high or very low notes. Every last note started beautifully and ended beautifully, and in between was gorgeous tone and exalted musicality. The fifth player, trumpeter Stuart Laughton, prevailed as well.
A special feature was Giovanni Gabrieli's "Jubilate Deo" in which the Canadian Brass were joined by the University of Texas Faculty Brass, a genuine treat. And the one piece of music actually done for laughs, a sendup of Bizet's "Carmen," was a hoot.
— David Mead
