THESE FLATS DON'T RUN
posted by James Reel
Pianist Jeremy Denk seems to have been too busy to blog recently, but now he’s back with mandatory reading: he imagines that he can interview Sarah Palin about Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata.
Pianist Jeremy Denk seems to have been too busy to blog recently, but now he’s back with mandatory reading: he imagines that he can interview Sarah Palin about Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata.
When I was writing material for a yet-unpublished issue of Fanfare, a few weeks ago, I concluded a review of Cameron Carpenter’s new organ CD with the expression “gird your loins.” Coincidentally, Joe Biden dredged up that archaic turn of phrase in a speech this past weekend. In case you’re curious about the mechanics of loin girding, this article will explain it all to you.
This press release just in from Tucson composer Dan Buckley ...
Jonestown opera lecture demonstration scheduled
When: Thursday, Nov. 6, 7 p.m.
Where: Dinnerware Artspace, 264 E. Congress
Admission: $3 at the door, wine bar available (sorry, no Kool Aid)
On November 18, 1978 some 900-plus members of the People¹s Temple of Jonestown in Guyana took their own lives, hours after some of the Jonestown commune members murdered visiting congressman Leo Ryan, newsmen and a small number of Jonestown deserters on a jungle airstrip. The event remains the largest mass suicide in modern times.
Like Richard Nixon, Rev. Jim Jones frequently kept tape recorders going to document his "great socialist experiment." The tapes were discovered by the FBI when the bodies were recovered from Jonestown. The recordings were later released through the Freedom of Information Act.
Tucson composer Daniel Buckley has been working with the Jonestown tapes in a variety of musical settings since 1980. He is currently working in collaboration with set designer Alfred Quiroz on an opera based on the Jonestown tragedy, to be performed at the University of Arizona School of Music in November, 2010.
In anticipation of the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown suicide this year, Buckley will hold a lecture demonstration at the Dinnerware Artspace. Buckley will talk about the history of the cult and the events that led to its demise. He will also present various pieces he has written using the Jonestown tapes, including the string quartet he wrote for the Kronos String Quartet in the mid 1990s and sketches from the upcoming opera. The lecture/demonstration will show how working with these materials has directly impacted his evolution as a composer and performance artist.
Why Jonestown as the subject for an opera? Jones himself said it best (quoting philosopher George Santayana) in a sign that hung directly behind his "throne" in Jonestown: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The Jonestown tragedy is the best documented example of cult behavior, but there have been more since (notably the Branch Davidian/Waco group of David Koresh and the Heaven's Gate cults), while the techniques Jones used to brainwash his followers were the same employed to get terrorists to fly into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. As operatic fodder, it's a tale of megalomania, sexual perversion, intimidation and death, with whispers of CIA involvement and prevailing mysteries.
From 1987-2005 composer Daniel Buckley was the classical music critic for the Tucson Citizen. Since 2003 he has created video and audio content for the Citizen's online operation, www.tucsoncitizen.com. He also writes about contemporary classical music for Stereophile Magazine.
Prior to working for the Citizen Buckley composed music for theatre, dance, art gallery installations and concerts in Tucson. He was a pioneer of the Club Congress performance art scene, working under his own name as well as Blind Lemon Pledge and Lonesome Jack Underpants. He was also a member of the dreaded Little Dinks, and a five-year president of the now defunct Central Arts Collective art gallery. He has received grants from the Southwest Interdisciplinary Arts Fund and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
WARNING: Reverend Jones is a foul-mouthed dude. This is not for kids.
So the classical audience is aging? Well, so is the general population, and composer Matthew Guerreri has crunched some numbers that show that both overall life expectancy and the age at which people start pursuing grownup interests (like classical music) have risen at almost the same rate. See it here
This is a great week for theater in Tucson. Besides a wonderful production of Love’s Labours Lost, which opened last night at the UA and which I’ll review next week, there are two other plays running right now that require your immediate attention:
Acting isn't just a matter of delivering lines; actors must also listen and react while others are speaking. Two terrific productions that opened last weekend give actors abundant opportunities to demonstrate the art of listening, for each play is essentially a sequence of monologues, often amusing, sometimes harrowing. Borderlands Theater is offering _Blind Date_, by the Argentine-born, Miami-based Mario Diament. The play is a series of, for the most part, chance encounters, many of them on a park bench presided over by a blind writer modeled on Jorge Luis Borges. … The characters in John Patrick Shanley's _Savage in Limbo_ feel caged, and they're desperate to get out but have no idea where to find the door, let alone the key to the lock. Live Theatre Workshop's late-night series is presenting Shanley's so-called "concert play"; there's no music in it, but it is a set of spoken solos and some ensemble numbers, all variations on a theme of dissatisfaction.
You’ll find the full review here, in the Tucson Weekly.
James Reel's cranky consideration of the fine arts and public radio in Tucson and beyond.
