DEATH BY TOILET SEAT

posted by James Reel

    I’ve got two theater stories in the current Tucson Weekly, and the editorial staff manged to put the word “edgy” into both subheds.
    First, an approving review of the latest at Live Theatre Workshop:

    OK, so you sit down at Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz knowing only that it's a play about a brother and sister rampaging through Europe while one of them dies from a mysterious disease.
    In the second scene, you find out that the brother is gay (he's a San Francisco children's librarian just given the pink slip, so he's maliciously having his little innocents cut out and wear pink triangles, just like he does). "Oh, no," you think, "not another AIDS play." But then it turns out that it's his straight sister who's been diagnosed with the disease. "Thank god," you think, "not another AIDS play." And then you find out that she's succumbing to Acquired Toilet Disease, which afflicts a very small segment of the population—unmarried elementary-school teachers—and is transmitted via toilet seats. "All right," you think, "at least it's not another damned earnest AIDS play."

    Read the rest here. Then move on to a preview of the doings of a new company—or, I should say, an old company that’s been elsewhere for a decade:

    Ken Tesoriere calls his theater company Coyote Ramblers, which makes perfect sense. Tesoriere has been a rambler all his life—a teenage racecar driver, a freelance journalist roaming the United States and Europe, a painter, a novelist, a playwright and director. The Manhattan native launched Coyote Ramblers in Tucson in 1993, ran it for three years, got fed up with the local scene, moved his operation to Los Angeles, won some nominations and awards, got fed up with the L.A. scene and came back to Tucson last year.
    "For good," he says. And maybe that's true.
    But reviving Coyote Ramblers in Tucson hasn't been easy. Health trouble slowed Tesoriere down, but more critical was his difficulty finding a space where he could operate Coyote Ramblers as a part of Lyric Arts, an organization that at full force will present visual art as well as theater, offer acting and art classes, and put on staged productions and readings.
    The company's first staged offerings in Tucson in nearly a decade are coming up Nov. 3-19 in a cozy space at ArtFare. Tesoriere is presenting three short works of his own under the group title American Album, Volume One (Women on the Verge).

    You can get the full scoop here.

THE CELLO TYPE

posted by James Reel

    Oboeinsight points the way to a blog I’ve managed to overlook: Daily Observations, the musings of Charles Noble, the Oregon Symphony’s assistant principal violist. According to his profile, “Charles enjoys cooking, hiking, cycling, reading, and blogging.” Sounds like my kind of guy, except for his adherence to the serial comma. (I’m AP; he’s apparently Chicago 15.) I’m adding his site to my blogroll today.
    Anyway, what caught my eye, thanks to Patty, were a couple of tongue-in-cheek posts describing the characters of various types of instumentalists. First, Charles repeated someone else’s description of the various sections of the orchestra. Here’s the bit about cellists:

People who play the cello are simply not good looking. They have generally chosen their instrument because, while in use, the cello hides 80% of its player's considerable bulk. Most cellists are in analysis which won't end until they can play a scale in tune or, in other words, never. Cellists wear sensible shoes and always bring their own lunch.

    Now, wait a minute. I wear expensive shoes, by guy standards. You can read the rest of the aspersions here. But then our blogger makes amends with his own more temperate observations. Here’s what he has to say about cellists:

The cellos are an almost schizophrenic bunch. Since they have a comparable body of solo literature to the violin, they have a soloistic impulse almost from the get go. There can often be the element of the mysogenistic cello jock amongst the males, the inverse of which is almost unheard of in the females. On the other hand, they have a great love for the symphonic repertoire and are often very much into the historically informed peformance practice movement. They always seem to make each other birthday cakes, too. They have severe (and sometimes even legitimate) concerns about personal space for themselves and their instruments, which are often met with knowing looks and winks and smiles by the other string players, who wish that they could also just set their instruments on the floor rather than hold them up for several hours at a time.

    Here’s the full post.

INVISIBLE CULTURE

posted by James Reel

    Veteran San Francisco music critic Robert P. Commanday offers a pointed criticism of the state of classical music coverage in American newspapers:

    Pick any city, look at its newspaper, and you'll find attention to classical music diminished to the basic minimum. It will focus on the "big ticket" events — which, in the Bay Area, means the San Francisco Symphony, Opera, and Ballet, plus the most celebrated visiting artists. As is well-known to any person interested in classical music, such coverage just skims the surface.
    Who's responsible? Newspaper publishers and their editors who have a hand in setting policy and then executing it. ….
    [The] "think piece" has taken the biggest hit. You likely will look in vain for a music essay in the weekend paper. If a Sunday music article is to be found, it will be an exception and probably an advance or "puff piece," meaning a celebrity interview or, at best, a column of CD reviews. The think piece, in contrast, can be on any musical subject—a significant composition, composer, or performing group; an issue or controversy; an unusual or provocative upcoming event or a notable musician involved in it—so long as it is a thoughtful discussion involving interpretation, history, or analysis. It is not an article that is essentially a recycling of publicity material.
    Then there's the decline of investigative music journalism, the hard news that music critics should be responsible for. It was the first to go, and it has all but disappeared. When you read the obituary of a symphony and learn about its bankruptcy, that is usually when you first discover that the orchestra had been in trouble for a long time. The reporting on those facts should have occurred long before, but in fact the coverage of the ineptness of the manager and the incompetence and inattention of the board never appeared.

    In our fair town, the Tucson Citizen doesn’t even recognize the existence of classical music, and the Arizona Daily Star’s coverage is so naïve that local musicians merely smirk and roll their eyes—at least those are the polite responses—when the subject comes up. And this is the response to reviews that are unfailingly rapturous. When musicians don’t take positive coverage seriously, you know there’s trouble.
    Read the rest of Commanday’s commentary here.

COPLLAPSING TOWER

posted by James Reel

    The bankruptcy of Tower Records will have absolutely no impact in Tucson, aside from those few people who order from it online (and they can easily switch to a variety of other music sellers). Tower never established a store here, despite rumors of imminent arrival that had local shop owners (remember them) worried in the 1980s and ’90s. I’m not sure what all the fuss is about; the last time I was in New York, I killed some time by browsing in the classical department at Tower, and didn’t find a single thing I wanted to buy. (I did, however, later emerge from the Metropolitan Opera giftshop with a plump bag of recorded goodies, and I’m not even an opera maniac.)
    Still, the debacle is interesting as a symbol of the collapse of the old order. David Hurwitz has penned a typically cranky editorial on the subject:

The final, ignominious demise of Tower Records, auctioned off in bankruptcy to a liquidator for about $146 million, couldn’t have come quickly enough. For years this dinosaur has acted as a break on the necessary restructuring of the retail sector, the musical equivalent of an acute intestinal blockage. The end was predictable, indeed expected for a decade or more, and the only thing keeping the ship afloat was the support of major labels desperate to justify their expensive and proprietary nationwide distribution networks (for popular music, primarily). No one, not Tower, not the labels, was making money; indeed, between Tower paying its bills in returned product, and labels routinely agreeing to payment terms that amounted basically to a barter or consignment arrangement, the only outfit profiting over the past several years has been UPS and other package delivery services.

    Hurwitz is actually optimistic about the post-Tower future of classical record sales. You can find out why here.