posted by James Reel
Last week, embroiled in radio fundraising, I didn’t have a chance to note the 85th birthday of Ned Rorem, one of America’s finest composers but a fellow perhaps better known as a sometimes disturbingly frank diarist. It’s Elliott Carter who’s getting all the attention these days because he’s turning 100, and because he’s long been the American poster boy for the Modernist establishment. But frankly, Rorem’s music is the more attractive and, yes, meaningful, if you go to the trouble to hear it. (It does require some effort; I’m not aware of any Tucson performances of Rorem’s music this season, and we have precious little of his music in the KUAT-FM library.)
Frank Oteri wrote a good overview of Rorem’s chamber music for the latest issue of Chamber Music America’s magazine, but that is not yet online. Right now, you can read a good interview with Rorem here, courtesy of the South Florida Classical Review. The author is Lawrence A. Johnson, a fellow I tried to hire as my successor as classical music critic at the Arizona Daily Star more than 10 years ago. Larry had other fish to fry, though. Turns out he got fried by his Florida newspaper not long ago—he is one of the latest of many classical critics to get dumped by America’s increasingly irrelevant daily newspapers. I’m glad he has an online outlet for his work.
Classical Music,
October 27th 2008 at 7:47 —
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posted by James Reel
Last week, I teased you with a positive comment about the new Arizona Repertory Theatre production. Now here’s the review, from this week’s Tucson Weekly:
It just doesn't make sense: Four bright young men want to live forever--at least in other people's memories--by giving up all a young man's pleasures in life. They want to form a renowned academy, and in the process they forswear women, freedom of movement and partying down. The project is sure to fail, especially once four young women show up to distract the guys from their endeavors.
Other things don't make sense in this story, which is Shakespeare's _Love's Labours Lost_. The dialog is full of fancy wordplay and obscure topical references that nobody can understand anymore. If a joke needs a footnote, can it possibly be funny? Well, sometimes, yes, for the UA's Arizona Repertory Theatre has managed to mount an utterly hilarious production of this, one of Shakespeare's most peculiar comedies.
The full review lurks here. While you’re at the TW site, take a look at my preview of a one-night performance slated for this weekend:
Harry Clark is a cellist, not a visual artist, but he does create portraits: performances that draw together musicians and actors to tell the story of some remarkable arts figure.
Almost (but not quite) all of Clark's subjects have been composers, and those portraits are the backbone of every Chamber Music Plus Southwest season. A new season is about to begin, but with something unusual: a portrait not of a musician, but a painter.
Western artist Maynard Dixon is Clark's latest subject. Clark, as cellist, will perform a new score by Tucson guitarist-composer Brad Richter, and he's assembled a script drawn mainly from Dixon's writings, to be read by actor John Schuck. Schuck has most recently made sporadic appearances on _Law and Order: Special Victims Unit_, but he's probably best remembered as Rock Hudson's police sidekick in the 1970s TV series _McMillan & Wife_. He's also been spending a lot of time in revivals and tours of such musicals as _Annie, 1776_ and _Annie Get Your Gun_.
Schuck won't be singing, just speaking in the Maynard Dixon show, which is titled _Go Ask the Little Horned Toad_. It's being presented in conjunction with an exhibition of Dixon's work at the Tucson Museum of Art, the organization that commissioned the performance.
The whole story is here.
tucson-arts,
October 23rd 2008 at 7:27 —
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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.
Classical Music,
October 23rd 2008 at 7:26 —
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posted by James Reel
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.
quodlibet,
October 22nd 2008 at 7:32 —
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posted by James Reel
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.
Classical Music,
October 20th 2008 at 7:45 —
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posted by James Reel
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
Classical Music,
October 20th 2008 at 7:33 —
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