SHEPHERDS AND ZANIES

posted by James Reel

    Two new plays opened in Tucson last weekend. Well, actually, they’re old plays, with a twist. First is Borderlands Theater’s annual update of the old Latin American pastorela, which somehow in the Tucson Weekly editing process got turned into “pastorella”:

    So you walk into this family theater show, and they hand you a glossary so you'll understand all the references. Right after Harry Potter comes Pol Pot; the last few items, in order, are Idi Amin, Randy Graf, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Paris Hilton and FEMA. On your way out, after the cast of shepherds and angels and devils has sung Christmas carols in Spanish and kids in the audience have whacked candy out of a piñata, the ushers try to give you a yard sign that says "Humanitarian aid is never a crime."
    It's right-wing talk-radio's worst nightmare: A Tucson Pastorella, telling the shepherds' role in the Christmas story while exposing children and adults alike to 90 minutes of cockeyed liberal outrage and frisky community activism. The shepherds are undocumented Mexican migrant workers, and God is on their side.

    Tucson Theatre Ensemble, just launching its third season, had evaded my attention until now. I wasn't sure what to expect when I was invited to its production of Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters, but suspected I'd be seeing the work of a dedicated but amateurish community group.
    The good news is that the company's Goldoni show is thoroughly respectable and generally enjoyable. It isn't as polished as productions by the likes of Invisible Theatre or newcomer Beowulf Alley, but there's some good talent at work here, especially in the principal roles. The main problem, aside from some stiffness in the minor parts and a few awkward interactions, is something that could afflict any company: an uneven tone, an uncertainty at the ensemble's various creative levels about exactly what sort of comedy this should be.

LEARNING TO SAY "MAYBE LATER"

posted by James Reel

    When bloggers blog about being too busy to blog, I wonder why they didn’t take the time instead to blog about something other than not blogging. But now I understand; I feel that I owe you an explanation of why my blogging is so spotty these days. (Sorry; that sounds like a medical problem.)
    The trouble is, I’ve been busy. My work at KUAT constitutes only about 45 percent of my income; the rest flows from my work with the printed word. As the Tucson Weekly’s arts editor, every week I write one or two articles (mostly reviews of plays) and do light editing on one or two other stories. I contribute 1,000 words a week to the All Music Guide (mini-bios of composers, and program notes on compositions). I’m billed as a “contributing editor” to Strings magazine, which means I have one or two or three or maybe even four articles plus a couple of CD reviews in every issue of that monthly magazine. I write longer reviews and features for the bimonthly Fanfare magazine. Once or twice a month I do a couple of hours of proofreading for Madden, the company that puts out glossy magazines and visitor publications like Tucson Guide. About once a month I proofread and sometimes index a book for Rio Nuevo, a local publisher of books of regional interest. And during the downtime from all this, I write for other publications.
    I never have to pitch story ideas to editors. At the Weekly, I do whatever I want. Otherwise, editors e-mail me or call me with assignments. I’m not in prestigious magazines like the New Yorker (I wonder why they never call), but it’s an easy and reasonably lucrative life, and laziness and greed are my two strongest motivating forces. This may be the only profession that makes them compatible.
    Last month, the assignments started piling up. It happened around the time I was appearing in a short-run play at Invisible Theatre, essentially portraying myself as a heckler in Susan Claassen’s A Conversation with Edith Head. I had maybe 30 lines scattered through the show, but rehearsals and performances kept punching holes in my schedule for a week, and I never quite regained my equilibrium. By the beginning of this month, I had a pile of assignments that I really needed to finish off, but were showing no signs of coming to completion. I’d already done the research and interviews for several pieces, but hadn’t found the right time to sit down and write the articles. (Most of these things I can toss off in no more than two hours, once the interviews are done, so it isn’t as if I have to struggle with the muse for days on end.)
    Finally, last weekend, I sorted out my schedule and figured I could easily finish off several pieces already in the works this week, pull together by the end of the month/year two or three other articles they’ve been waiting for at Strings, make substantial progress on a book about the Navajo reservation I’m doing some heavy editorial work on for Rio Nuevo, fulfill all my usual weekly commitments, and start fresh in January with a couple of big pieces on the Bach cello suites and violinist Kyoko Takezawa. After devoting most of Saturday to household stuff, all I’d have to do on Sunday would be skip the concert being presented by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music (of which I’m vice president), stay home, polish off a piece for Strings on adding pizzazz to your viola playing, complete a potential February cover article for Stage Directions on the new Mesa Arts Center (that’s where I was last Wednesday, instead of on the air), and write two theater reviews for the Weekly. Which I did.
    But then I got a call from the editor of Fanfare, who announced that the magazine’s Webmaster had just died; would I take over the job? OK, fine, even though that means learning new software and having one more little thing to do every two days and something big to do every two months. On Monday, an editor from a local publication I haven’t written for before called to ask me to do a particular story, due the middle of next week. Sorry; no time for what would amount to a little investigative piece with so short a deadline, given everything else I was up to. I recommended another writer, and the editor said she might check with her, but she might also just hold the assignment until I had more time. Gee, thanks. Not this year.
    Then the editor at Rio Nuevo e-mailed me, asking if I could come in the next day to do the final proof on a new little book about poisonous critters, then compile the index. Sorry, no time this week. Well, what if I did the index over the weekend? It’s just a little book. OK, OK, I’d do the index, later, but not the proofing.
    Then late yesterday the editor of a local publication for which I’ve written fairly regularly called with an assignment, due early next week (he always calls about a week before something is due). This would require less work than the piece I’d turned down the day before, a couple of phone interviews, a little Internet research, maybe a drive by a building downtown rather than actually venturing inside it if I’m going to keep my time down. The whole thing, including the writing, would take only two or three hours. OK, but no way could I turn it in by Tuesday, since I wouldn’t even be able to think about doing this until about then. So I got an extra day. Thrilling.
    My problem, obviously, is that I’ve never learned to say “no,” but I am apparently getting better at saying “later,” which is fine until “later” becomes “now.”
    So there you have it, my too-busy-to-blog post. Probably the first in a series.

SEALED FOR YOUR PROTECTION

posted by James Reel

    Leftists love to quote John Stuart Mill’s remark that "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative." I have a musical corollary to that: Claims for the “Mozart Effect” aside, classical music doesn’t make you less stupid, but stupid people are ignorant of classical music.
    Here’s the latest evidence that complete idiots and asses are in charge. The victim of the stupidity: composer, music journalist and blogger Kyle Gann. He operates a little online music service he calls Postclassic Radio. At that site, you can hear a wide variety of contemporary art music, hardly any of it available commercially or easily. Gann is providing exposure for composers whose music otherwise might not be heard beyond Downtown Manhattan, and absolutely nobody is losing money because people would rather listen free to Postclassic Radio than buy the CDs it plays—again, you can’t buy much of this stuff, and those discs that you can buy are things you probably would pass up because you’d have no idea what the music sounds like. Everybody benefits from what Gann is doing, and nobody loses.
    But Gann has been found in violation of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, because he dares to play more than two consecutive tracks from the same CD. The law is intended to keep people from downloading or making available huge chunks of commercially available discs, thus cutting into the legitimate profits of record companies. But the morons in charge of protecting the rights of the record companies don’t understand that classical music is dominated by multi-movement works. If you don’t play more than two tracks of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, or any number of other compositions new and old, you’re not playing the whole thing. Gann tried to explain this to the Powers That Be, but they remain recalcitrant in their ignorance.
    You can’t expect all people to know all things; that’s why this so-called information society developed, so we could become better informed. But the willful ignorance exhibited by the people cracking down on Gann is intolerable. Why do we give power to people who defend their right to stupidity? I suppose it’s called democracy.
    Meanwhile, Gann has figured out a work-around. The “permalink” option isn’t working, so to read the update go to his blog and find the entry called “Take the Blue Pill.”

REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/GEORGE HANSON

posted by James Reel

    Shakespeare has provided great fodder for composers over the past couple of centuries. The plays’ passions are strong, the plots and characters familiar, and they easily translate into highly effective music in the grand Romantic manner, music that can tell a tale even without benefit of Shakespeare’s words.
    Not all efforts to transform Shakespeare into music are equally successful, though, and last night’s Tucson Symphony Orchestra concert under George Hanson began a bit weakly, gathering strength piece by piece.
    Richard Strauss’ Macbeth is by no means a tale told by an idiot, but what it signifies is open to question. Strauss’ music doesn’t really resonate with the action, characters and setting of the Scottish Play; the work could just as easily be titled King Lear or, for that matter, The Song of Roland—anything with a bit of tumoil and regal pomp. This is the composer’s very first symphonic poem (although it was published later in the series), and while it’s smudged with many Strauss fingerprints, it hasn’t really taken on the mature Strauss polish; it sounds like something by one of those young composers in the early 20th century imitating Strauss until they could find individual voices (Szymanowski’s Concert Overture comes to mind).
    Hanson seemed a little reluctant to throw himself fully into the piece; he drew expertly judged dynamic swells from the orchestra in the opening section, but he didn’t maintain the headlong sweep this score requires if it’s going to hold together. The various components—trumpet fanfares, ominous woodwind phrases, string tremolos—rarely cohered, and conversely the periodic interruptions weren’t sufficiently volcanic. This was a performance on the verge of becoming effective, falling just short of success. The next time Hanson conducts Macbeth the interpretation will surely be more settled, but in truth this is not a work that bears frequent repetition.
    In contrast, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet holds up to almost anything, and it was in good hands last night. Hanson emphasized the contrast between the creamy, legato Friar Laurence theme and love music and the bite of the conflict music, although this latter lost some of its edge in the tense, quiet passages.
    The best music and performance of the evening came after intermission, with selections from Prokofiev’s ballet treatment of Romeo and Juliet. In part because of Prokofiev’s native dramatic-romantic sensibilities and in part because Prokofiev had the luxury of telling the story over the course of two and a half hours, this is by far the most varied, richest and truest translation of Shakespeare into music, full of longing, rapture, humor and violence.
    Hanson and the TSO found it all in the 45 minutes of the score they offered, a well-chosen selection that followed the action of the story and included all the ballet’s major themes. The performance may not have been perfect—woodwind and brass balances, for example, weren’t always ideal—but it was full of character and the confidence that was lacking in the Strauss. One example of how well the performance worked: Hanson whipped the orchestra mercilessly throught the swordfight music leading to the death of Tybalt, while maintaining a solid bass line. For once this passage sounded urgent and dangerous; taken more slowly, it can seem more like cartoon music (as can similar material in Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky).
    Hanson and the orchestra played these two Romeo works just five years ago; the next time they prepare a Shakespeare program, I hope they’ll dust off something different, and something stronger than the Strauss. For starters, TSO performances of Dvorák’s Othello, Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet and Berlioz’ Roméo et Juliette are long overdue.

HANK AND THE VIRGIN

posted by James Reel

    Two items of mine darken the pages of the latest Tucson Weekly. First, Arizona Theatre Company does a fine job with a script that should have been better:

What's cookin' at Arizona Theatre Company is a good lookin' revue called Hank Williams: Lost Highway. Well designed, acted and sung, the show could be improved by only one thing: jettisoning the first act and rebuilding the play around the second-act crisis, thereby taking time to develop the elements unique to this country singer's story, and using the music to help tell that story rather than merely to punctuate a breathless narration of the man's whole damn life.

The Tucson Chamber Artists are setting themselves apart by offering two performances this weekend of music that's not particularly easy to sing, in a program whose texts emphasize the rose, the queen of flowers, a symbol of Mary in the Christian tradition. Threading through this assortment of everything from unaccompanied Renaissance pieces to tone-cluster modern works will be several familiar carols.

WHORES AMOK

posted by James Reel

    Why are so many Hollywood movies predictable? Because marketing experts conduct preview-audience surveys asking whether or not the viewers like the ending, among other things; if the test audience doesn’t get the ending it wants, the movie gets reshot. Why are so many clone novels being published? Because manuscripts are vetted by publishers’ marketing departments, which now have more control over the fall and spring lists than any editor.
    And we find marketers muscling into classical music. The New York Times reports that Glimmerglass Opera has had composer Stephen Hartke rename his forthcoming opera because a word in the title might offend some people. The word? Whore. The original title was Boule de Suif, or The Good Whore; now it’s being called The Greater Good, or the Passion of Boule de Suif.
    Says the Times, “Officials of Glimmerglass, the summer festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., denied they were being prudish but said the word could have kept patrons away. The composer, Stephen Hartke, and the librettist, Philip Littell, acquiesced, and Mr. Hartke said that he was contacted in July by Theresa Grover, the new marketing director at Glimmerglass, who said ‘whore’ might be a problem.”
    So this was a marketing decision imposed on a work of art. It’s surely one of the dumber examples of marketer muscle-flexing. Gee, I’d think more people would be put off by a string of French words they can’t pronounce than by the word “whore.” And, by the way, nobody has taken the whores out of the opera itself. Marketer Grover must think patrons will happily attend an opera about a whore as long as they don’t encounter that naughty word in the title. Or maybe she has no idea what the opera is about. Content doesn’t matter; image is everything.
    The larger irony here is that Theresa Grover’s own profession bears a certain resemblance to the world’s oldest. Her cell phone ring tone, no doubt, is "Call me madam."