Friday Benjamin Linus blogging

Ooooohhhh, I loves me some in control of the situation Ben, as he is here from Meet Kevin Johnson. I guess that's one way to get your daughter's boyfriend out of the way......

Screencap via Michael Emerson.net (thanks Edith!)

Life begins anew: baseball edition

I love this time of year in the American sports calendar. The death marches that are the NBA and NHL seasons are winding down in preparation for the playoffs (go Canucks!), college basketball is all Elite 8 > Final 4 > Final, the golf majors are about to get underway and best of all, baseball gets going.

I've been a baseball fan since around the age of seven; I was living in the Bay Area at the time and Willie Mays ruled. Being an Air Force brat, I didn't form a strong attachment for a team due to moving so often, but after seeing Nolan Ryan pitch from the fifth row at Yankee Stadium, I was a California Angels fan. I had harbored hopes of being a major league pitcher, but alas, genetics conspired against me. As a 13-year old, I didn't really know all that much about the history of the Angels and if I had, I might have not set myself up for so much future heartache. Still, the Angels were "my team" and when my Dad retired from the Air Force and we moved to Los Angeles, I finally had a chance to see them in person, at the old Big A. NOTE: Yes, yes, I know they're officially called The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, but that's totally effing lame, so I call them the California or Anaheim Angels.

Ah, the pennant race of 1979. I'll never forget the atmosphere and sheer excitement of seeing my hero, Nolan Ryan, win a crucial game in the pennant race. My friends and I had smoked a ton of hash and drank a case of beer before the game and we were fired up, to say the least.

Fast forward a few weeks, and the Angels are in the playoffs for the first time in their history, against the Orioles, who didn't suck goat balls back then. My pal Rod and I had tickets to Game 4. The Big A was a construction site, the disastrous move of the Rams imminent, the transformation of the Big A in to a giant, cavernous, soulless multi-purpose stadium underway. This was the year of the "Yes We Can!" chant and the fans were raucous, despite the Orioles 3-0 lead. The Angels loaded the bases, had a then-lust object, Jimmy Anderson at the plate --I had a weakness for geeky shortstops who could barely hit their weight-- and when he hit a rocket down the third-base line, the place erupted....until Doug DeCinces made a great diving stab, stepped on third and threw to first to complete the double play. I've never seen a crowd go from pandemonium to stunned silence quicker. My friends know better than to mention the 1982, 1986 and 1995 seasons around me.

So, here we are in 2008, the Angels the favorites to win the American League West. If last night's season opener against the Minnesota Twins --mmmm, Justin Morneau, mmmmm-- in the soon-to-be-gone HomerDome is any indication, it's going to be another season of "great pitching, weak offense". *sigh* It's a long season and one thing I've learned in my 41 years of being a baseball fan is to not get too excited when things are going well and not get down when times are tough. If the talent is there --and the Angels have it-- they'll find a way to win.

Update (4/1/08): a perfect example of why it's best not to hit the panic button too quickly when it comes to baseball (in my case, the Angels' hitting): the Angels won 9-1 tonight.

Friday Benjamin Linus blogging

This week's picture is from the searing kitchen scene in One of Us, where Ben and Juliet verbally spar about her leaving The Island. Love Ben's glasses!

Screencap via Michael Emerson.net (thanks Edith!)

Joyeux anniversaire, Pierre Boulez

(awesome scan courtesy of Tears of a Clownsilly)

Today, March 26th, marks the birthday of one of my true musical heroes, Pierre Boulez, still active at the age of 83 (hat tip to the redoubtable Pliable for the reminder). Boulez is easily one of the most polarizing figures in 20th century (and beyond) classical music: blamed by some for everything from the death of classical music as an art form to the reason that musicians working in the classical field don't make the cover of national newsweeklies anymore to being the Anti-Christ, beloved by others (i.e. me) for his fierce musical intellect, challenging-but-often-sensuous music, radical musical polemics and being a conductor who can untangle the knottiest of contemporary scores and have you thinking "Well, of course that's how it should be done!". His conducting of his chosen core repertory --Berg, Debussy, Mahler, Ravel, Schönberg, Stravinsky, Webern and Varese, say— is well nigh definitive in some cases and always probing and interesting.

Two of my greatest experiences in a concert hall involved the conducting of Pierre Boulez. The first was a routine subscription program with the Los Angeles Philharmonic that ended with a performance of Debussy's glorious La Mer that had the hairs on the back of my neck at full attention. The other was Maestro Boulez conducting a concert of his own pieces, the four orchestrated Notations (there's since been a fifth added to the piece) ending the concert in such a manner that I was in a daze for days (NOTE: sound starts upon clicking link).

Now, while I'm an unabashed fanboy, I'm not a unconditional one. As much as I adore Le marteau sans maître, Le visage nuptial, Rituel: In Memoriam Bruno Maderna, Sur Incises and what I believe is his masterpiece, Repons, I find most of the other music either too rigidly serialist or it features instruments I'm not a fan of (see: clarinet, for example). As a conductor, his readings of the standard 19th century repertoire can be a bit cold and overly-manicured for my tastes and the less said about his conducting on the Bayreuth Parsifal recording, the better.

I just wish Mr. Boulez had composed more original music instead of constantly revisiting and revising existing pieces; there was long talk of an opera but, alas. I also wish he would have spent the time he used to make make multiple recordings of early 20th century pieces to conduct more outside his normal fach.

Finally, I'm proud that I can count Pierre Boulez amongst the long list of gay men who have contributed so much to world culture.

School is hell

Growing up, I grew to hate --yes, that's the correct word-- the social aspects of being in junior high (i.e. middle school) and high school. The cliques, the weird rules that we were supposed to abide by to get along but which changed without notice etc. As I knew I was homosexual, "different", around the age of six, I was always on guard about people finding that out because I knew other boys were bullied for being effeminate. It helped that I loved sports from an early age, that provided an easy smokescreen.

So, when I read stories like this one from the New York Times (via Towleroad), I want to hit things. This poor lad --straight, it seems-- has become the object of bullying in his school and there doesn't seem any way out of it, short of his parents moving 2,000 miles away. What's especially galling is the attitude of school administrators and their subtle "blame the victim" mentality: their job is to ensure a safe space for all students, full stop, even if the object of the bullying is difficult or has learning challenges.

When I was in 8th grade, my family moved --again-- in the middle of the school year, due to my dad being transferred to a new Air Force base. I dreaded these moments: being paraded in front of the class as "the new boy", having to start all over socially, getting the feeling that it was pointless to develop strong friendships because one would just leave in a few years anyway.

As is typical in bullying cases, my mere existence seemed to infuriate one kid in particular. We had an art class together and he would punch me when the teacher wasn't looking, trip me if I walked too close to his working area etc. I was painfully shy, had glasses and braces, just hated being around other people other than to play sports. One day, this kid threw a piece of clay at me. It hit my glasses, driving the metal bridge in to the bridge of my nose. I snapped: I went over to him, pushed him against the wall (I was taller than he was, fortunately) and started to choke him. Seriously choke him, as in: cause him to die by asphyxiation choke him. I'll never forget as long as I live the look of utter panic in his eyes as I squeezed his throat harder. I was pulled off of him by some other classmates and I caused a near heart-attack in the lovely lady who taught us; I have no doubt that if I hadn't been stopped, I would have killed him. Guess what?

I was never bullied again at that school.

Is that what it's going to take for the bullying of Billy Wolfe to stop, for him to snap like I did and, given this is 2008 and not 1975, put a bullet in the head of a tormentor?

Update (3/26/08): Here's a video of Billy Wolfe and his mom's appearance on the Today Show.

Friday Sunday Benjamin Linus blogging

A bit late this week --NCAA basketball has eaten up all my spare time-- but I love this shot of Ben/Michael from The Other Woman, it highlights those sharp features that I love so much. Mmmmm....chest hair.....mmmmmm.

Damn, a month's hiatus for LOST now.

Screencap via Michael Emerson.net (thanks Edith!)

Friday Benjamin Linus Blogging

I love the play of shadows on Ben's face here, from the episode One of Us. I'll never get tired of hearing him say "So, I guess I'm out of the book club".

Screencap via Michael Emerson.net (thanks Edith!)

Guilty pleasures

Ah, one of my favorite music topics: guilty pleasures.

Composer Alan Theisen, looking smokin' hot in that jacket / shirt / tie combo, comes out of the metaphorical closet and proudly declares: Guilty pleasures? I don't need no stinkin' guilty pleasures!

I like the cut of his jib. I'm a prog rock geek, so it's somewhat assumed in that fandom that I'm a foe of disco and punk. Not so! I'm also a staunch advocate of hyper-complex serialism, so I'm not supposed to enjoy Puccini. Absolutely not true!

Now, to be fair, when I was a teenager and early 20-something, I was a horrible music snob. However, I was also a hypocrite: while railing against the 4/4 thump of disco --if it wasn't in 7/8 or 5/4 or 13/8, it was barely music to me, I'd loudly proclaim -- I secretly loved to bits songs like Stayin' Alive and I Feel Love and the glorious Dancing Queen, because, you know, they're brilliant pop records. Luckily, as I grew older, I realized that it wasn't the music so much as the tribal aspects of that snobbery that I was engaging in. Sometime in my late twenties, I started to categorize music simply along a bad > great continuum.

I still have some old aspects of that snobbery lingering around: I simply refuse to say that Billy Joel is as great a composer (he is a fine songwriter, however) as Beethoven as some silly pomo ironicists do, or that they even should be considered using the same critical parameters. However, I'm such a music slut that I'll listen to almost anything that isn't reggae (OK, I love a few Bob Marley songs) or minimalism and find something to latch on to.

I do have to disagree with Mr. Theisen on his choice of the Air Supply song he mentioned. It's obvious, duh, that Making Love Out Of Nothing At All is superior to Even the Nights are Better. I mean, MLOONAA mentions sports!

Friday Benjamin Linus blogging

This week's screencap (click to enlarge) is from the awesome episode The Man From Tallahassee. "I *know* you, John Locke" indeed. Love Ben's jammies and that chest hair......mmmmm....chest hair......mmmm.

Screencap via Michael Emerson.net (thanks Edith!)

Jarrett / Peacock / DeJohnette at Royce Hall

Wow, what a gig at UCLA's Royce Hall by Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, celebrating their 25th Anniversary as a trio. My friend and I had seats in the balcony, with a perfect view of Jarrett's hands on the keyboard. Two sets, about an hour each, with two encores. I know squat about jazz standards, but I was told that the tune to end the first set was Monk's Straight, No Chaser. Monk as filtered through the Second Viennese School, that is. Stunning.

Mr. Jarrett in particular was in fine form, spinning out perfectly executed skeins of 16th note runs over three octaves, more angular motifs and a subtle use of left-hand comping. Mr. Peacock, whether soloing or as part of the ensemble, was terrific, something special to watch and hear for this dabbler on bass guitar. His intonation was superb and his tone muscular and full, no matter where on the neck (or above it!) he was playing. Mr. DeJohnette is not the fiery "what? play a straight pulse? HAHAHAHA" drummer I know so well from his days as Miles Davis' drummer in the great Lost Quintet, but what he lacked in blatant displays of virtuosity, he more than made up for that in subtlety and nuance. What a night of straight-ahead jazz playing!

Just to confirm that scumbags are not limited to ruining the atmosphere at symphony concerts, despite a clearly stated warning, which I know the guy heard because he was a row down and about 10 seats over from me, some paramecium waited until Mr. Jarrett looked up in our direction during the applause after the second set was over to take a flash photograph. Ruh roh! This prompted two stern admonishments (admonishment > go to piano to begin to play > return to mic for second admonishment) from Mr. Jarrett after the group came back out. I wouldn't have blamed him if he hadn't come back for the encores. What the hell is wrong with people?

For a more profanity laced version of a Keith Jarrett admonishment, check out this clip on YouTube (NOTE: sound starts as soon as you click the link) from Umbria Jazz in 1997. Wow.

Still, a great night of jazz at a beautiful venue.

2008-09 schedule ennui

Starting about ten years ago, coinciding with getting connected to the Internet and having enough disposable income to travel long distances, this part of year meant two things:

1. Baseball was about to start again
2. Opera and symphony schedules for the upcoming season were announced

I'm still excited about baseball starting, especially since the Anaheim Angels are going to be really good again this year. Of the opera and symphony schedules, there's not much excitement generated so far.

The 800-pound gorilla of the American opera scene, the Metropolitan Opera, announced its 2008-09 season yesterday and man, it's boring. Let me qualify that: it's boring to me. Since I have zero interest in most operas written before ca. 1890 not composed by Wagner or Berlioz, it's a big freakin' desert at Broadway & 63rd Street for me. I mean, the one new production of even vague interest is Thaïs, with Renee Fleming, Michael Schade and Thomas Hampson. The less said about the abysmal Doctor Atomic (that's my comment, I forgot to sign the post), the better, I'd say. At least the Met isn't using the awful Peter Sellars production I saw in San Francisco.

As for the revivals, dear oh dear. An average cast for the Ring and Tristan, although the Salome looks kind of interesting. Interesting enough to travel to New York to see? Not likely.

Closer to home, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced the contents of Esa-Pekka Salonen's final season as Music Director (PDF) and it's even more disappointing than the Met's season, since the Met is so stodgy and star-singer oriented that nothing very surprising is ever going to happen there anyway. Mr. Salonen, however, took a dispirited orchestra that was clearly bored with André Previn and over the years, turned it in to a critically lauded orchestra specializing in 20th century works. I've had some amazing nights at both The Dot and Disney Hall with the orchestra and so it's sort of a bummer that the final season before Gustavo Dudamel takes over is so....tame.

For me, the highlight is the much delayed appearance of Kaija Saariaho's La Passion de Simone, which has been postponed twice already. Ms. Saariaho's opera L'amour de Loin, which I have three recordings of, including the terrific DVD, is one of my very favorites, though I found her second opera Adriana Mater somewhat disappointing. I'll believe this is happening when I'm in my usual seat in the balcony and Mr. Salonen lifts his baton to begin. There's a lot of Stravinsky, especially in the final concerts of Mr. Salonen's tenure, which will feature *ugh* Peter Sellars *ugh* staging Oedipus Rex, with The Symphony of Psalms also on the bill. Next April will also find Mr. Salonen conducting Ligeti's Clocks and Clouds, which opens a concert containing a new piece of his and the Beethoven Fifth (!!).

The press release makes much of seven world premieres, but that's a fudge, I think. Louis Andriessen's Double Piano Concerto, written for the Labèque's looks intereseting, especially since it's paired with Janáček's wonderful Sinfonietta and that Salonen warhorse, La Sacre du Printemps. Arvo Pärt gets a commission for a piece for strings and then the fudging begins: four of the premieres take place at a single Green Umbrella concert. Still, all in all, Mr. Salonen has had an admirable record of commissioning new works, including one's that *aren't* ten-minute slices of pseudo-film music (aka How Orchestras Normally Avoid New Music But Still Pretend That Music Didn't Die With Brahms).

Mr. Dudamel makes three appearances, one with the Israel Philharmonic in a program of Bernstein and Tchaikovsky and two more substantial programs with the LAP, which include two of my favorite post-war avant-garde pieces, Ligeti's amazing Atmoshpheres and György Kurtág's terrific Stele. Nice to see Mr. Dudamel going non-tonal for a change!

There's simply no excuse for all-Brahms concerts, none.

As I've gone through the ritual of scouring websites to get the scheduels for 2008-09, looking for things that might be worth traveling for, I'm getting a sinking feeling that there's not going to be very much of interest at all this time around. American opera companies are deathly afraid of taking chances and the orchestras aren't much more adventurous. European houses and orchestras at least still have a cushion of public funding to help them schedule the non-standard repertory stuff that I like without fear of the bankruptcy court or subscriber outrage that they've been denied an all-Brahms concert. I think I'd be happy at this point to settle for a single run of a Franz Schreker opera somewhere, even Die Gezeichneten, as long as it's not the production that "seethes with evil" that I've seen in Stuttgart and Amsterdam. The production of Die Tote Stadt in London still looks very promising though and since it's scheduled to play in January 2009, I can hopefully fit in some Everton matches amongst the gin-and-tonics at the Royal Opera House. Damn damn and damn that I can't make it there next month for the premiere of Birtwistle's The Minotaur. Oh well....

Friday Benjamin Linus blogging

This will be a regular feature, every Friday I'll post a screencap that highlights the sexiness of Michael Emerson as Benjamin Linus on LOST. Today's is from 0219, The Brig.

Screencap via Michael Emerson.net (thanks Edith!)

Help! Save me from the people who want to save classical music. Please?

One of the issues surrounding classical music and opera is the perennial "Why oh why is classical music/opera dying?" sorts of wailing and lamenting. After hearing 20+ years of this apocalyptic hand wringing, I'm starting to suspect the question itself might have serious flaws.

I sometimes think that what this boils down to is "Classical music isn't featured on the cover of Newsweek anymore, how do we remedy that?", i.e. the health of the art form is based strictly on its cachet in the mass media and pop culture. To say I think this is the lamest possible metric to use is a vast understatement; the idea that some hipster doofus who thinks Conor Oberst is a musical god should know what the best recording of Le Sacre du Printemps is should be mocked and scorned. Now, undoubtedly, there are challenges:

• The financial health of some orchestras and opera companies is not the best
• Finding funding in a system that does not have any governmental support of note is always a problem (this does not apply to Europe, for the most part, though that's changing too)
• According to studies, the average age of a concert goer is 106 or: from the pearl clutchers perspective: it's not hip 20-somethings buying those $80 L.A. Phil seats
• The possibly past its sell-by date use of subscriptions as the major source of ticket revenue
• The collapse of the record industry and the transition to The Glorious All-Digital Future
  
• The dullness of programming (overture > concerto > big piece) and safety of the choices for those slots; if new music is played, it's often wan 10-minute pieces picked because they won't send anyone scurrying towards the exits before the Beethoven violin concerto

etc.

From my perch here in Los Angeles, these points have been around as long as I've been going to concerts, since the mid-1970's, when my Dad would take me to the Hollywood Bowl and the sadly underused Ambassador Auditorium. So, when I see articles like this, I'm torn between rolling my eyes until they almost pop out of my head, weeping in frustration or resorting to mockery and scorn. I'll settle for the last option here.

Obviously, this is nothing personal against Rob Kapilow, who it seems is quite sincere in his mission (and is totally adorable to boot), but rather my frustration with the position he and others like him occupy within the classical ecosystem.

His niche is an important one: grooming audiences that in 20 years will buy the subscriptions that underpin the funding for most orchestras and opera companies in the United States. I simply think they're going about it the wrong way. Why? Because they misrepresent the art form, I think.

I fully realize that music obsessives like me are rare, someone who has dozens of recordings of some pieces, has the full score, reads every book and article he can find on the piece and its composer etc. That's fine; it's the height of arrogance to assume my obsession should be your obsession. I know that most people treat music as just another form of entertainment, they don't really want to spend the time digging in to it and that's fine. However, one thing I know in my bones: to get even minimal enjoyment of a piece of classical music takes a little bit of effort for people who are new to the genre. I've long thought that the focus on "converting" 10 year olds is futile, why not focus on late 40-somethings and above who are likely settled in their careers and their kids (if they have any) grown up enough not to need constant attention, who have more free time to devote to exploring new things? Hint: that won't land you on the cover of Time.

While Mr. Kapilow's laudable efforts are aimed at youngsters, whose attention is notoriously hard to attract and even harder to keep, there's some assumptions in the article that drive me mad.

I've had this experience over and over: a friend who knows I'm a big classical/opera fan will express interest in going to a performance. I'll then pick a symphony program that features, maybe, shorter pieces or something so well known that one of its tunes were used in a soup commercial. After the usual instructions about not dressing like a hobo and staying quiet until the music stops, we go to the concert. We listen to the first half of the program and while chatting at the intermission, a variation of this inevitably happens:

Them: There's too much music, I don't know any of it, it's confusing.
Me: I offered to burn you a CD of the pieces they were going to play so you could listen to them in your car or wherever but you weren't interested.
Them: I wanted to experience them for the first time here, come to it with fresh ears. [cue much rolling of my eyes]
Me: I told you that the music is complex and that there's a lot of it, it's not like it's simple to grasp stuff like They Might Be Giants that comes in 3 minute chunks, you usually have to listen to a piece numerous times, you have to hear it over and over for it to begin to make sense, what on earth were you thinking?
Them: You're such an elitist snob.
Me: [quietly dies a little inside]

What bugs me about so much of the "get new audiences" programs is that it doesn't address a simple fact: enjoying classical music takes work, it takes *gasp* effort. It's really, really time intensive because of the complexity of the music, the length of the pieces and the sheer density of information that one has to process when hearing a full orchestral piece for the first time. It is not an immediate art, it doesn't reveal its strengths via 3 minute sound bites (for the most part), it requires that you be an active (if silent and non-fidgety) participant. This runs counter to how most music is listened to and how art in general is experienced. Then there's this kind of stuff.....

From the article:

Classical music should not be scary, he says, "but so many things surrounding it are almost designed to intimidate. The sense that it's hoity-toity -- you have to dress up, know when to clap -- is, in a weird way, foreign to the music itself."

How is that any different from being a normie at a hardcore death metal concert or a drunken lout at a mostly acoustic singer-songwriter gig at a club? There's norms of dress, behavior and so forth at those events that are just as rigid as at a Cleveland Orchestra concert, but somehow the ones attendant to classical music get portrayed as this stifling straight jacket at Severence Hall.

Ah, the old "you have to dress up" nonsense. In the late 80's, I rebelled against wearing a nice clean shirt, slacks and Hush Puppies and went to a few concerts at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion dressed like I was going to see the Grateful Dead: t-shirt, ratty jeans, a dirty pair of Reeboks. I did shower beforehand, however; I'm a bit of a hygiene freak. "Hahahahaha, you stupid old fuckers", thought I, "it's about the music, maaaaaan, not the clothes, that's bourgeois conformity, dude, I'm going to show you the future!".

Um, no. I simply looked like a hippie who'd taken too many drugs and wandered in to the Dot. I soon went back to the button down shirts, slacks and Hush Puppies. Just as I'd not show up at a Mastodon gig in a three-piece suit and tie, I'd not show up to Covent Garden dressed like a bum. I've been to concerts and operas in the United States and in parts of Europe, and except for a very few patrons, the old tuxedo and haute couture thing simply doesn't apply; it's business casual dress. Here in Los Angeles, I can wear my nice black Levi 501's and raise nary an eyebrow. It might be different at the Wien Staatsoper, but oh well.

When to clap? Again, how is that different from clapping at great sax solo in a jazz club before the player is done and has passed the musical argument off to the next player? It's mind bogglingly simple: if you don't know when to clap, don't clap until you see other people do it! Jeebus.

Let's dispense with the other reasons that allegedly keep people who would otherwise be amenable to hearing Birtwistle's Exody away from concert halls:

The no talking rule

In this day and age of home entertainment centers, the concept that when one is in a public space that one should not talk while the music in playing (or the movie is playing or the actors are still on stage doing the play etc.) is increasingly contentious. I had an acquaintance up in San Francisco who would give death glares at people who talked after the music started. Since he was 6'4" and had a mean glare, they would shut their yaps immediately. There is simply no excuse for continuing to talk about little Bobby's soccer game that afternoon once the music starts, none at all. Unless you feel a heart attack or gran mal seizure approaching, shut. the. hell. up.

Please?

The don't fidget rule

I once sat in a seat at the San Francisco Opera during a performance of Britten's Death in Venice. The man next to me, obviously dragged there by his female companion, equally as obviously did not want to be there and expressed his boredom by contstantly lifting up his left arm, almost sideswiping my jaw, and checking his watch. OK, the first time, it was rude due the almost contact between my cheek and his elbow, but about the 20th time he did it, I was getting seriously pissed off. After the curtain was down for the intermission, I turned to him and said "If you don't stop looking at your watch every two minutes, I'm going to complain to an usher that you're ruining my enjoyment of the performance. If you're bored, please leave so I can concentrate on the music and the performance". He was not happy at this impertinence from someone of an obviously lower social class than he --I had splurged for orchestra seats instead of the usual spot in the standing room in the balcony-- but wee! he and his companion didn't return to their seats for the second act.

If you're so bored that you're rustling your programme or hitting the people sitting next to you with your body, leave at the first stoppage of music. If it's the first act of Parsifal, I'd say it was preferable that you climb over people to leave, risking their wrath, rather than fidget and distract others around you. Remember, when in a finely tuned concert hall, dropping your purse sounds like a bomb going off.

"But...but....Henry Holland!" I hear you exclaim, "we want to make performances more inviting to attend, not straight jacket people with arcane rules that aren't universally shared or known". So true! That's why most orchestras and opera companies have sections like this to help out. If for some reason you're unfortunate enough to sit next to me at a concert and I give you a Stare of Death because you choose the exact moment when the only sounds coming from the stage are a delicately plucked harp and a flute playing ppp to open up your tinfoil candy wrapper, don't take it personally. Just don't do it again!

I have no empirical evidence, being a secretary not a sociologist, but I wonder if the misplaced emphasis on clothes, clapping and the like by neophytes isn't a smokescreen to cover up the fact that they feel kind of lost when faced with, say, a Mahler symphony for the first time. It's okay, I'd tell them, observe a few simple guidelines that are there not to oppress them but make the music the sole focus of attention, pay attention and the rewards can be astonishing.

Finally --finally!-- this from the Rob Kapilow article had me groaning:

Based at Lincoln Center, Kapilow began his musical mission because, as a conductor, "all I wanted to do was turn around and say, 'Did you hear that? Isn't that a beautiful chord?' But if you did that, they would cart you away".

Yikes. So, Mr. Kapilow, would you prefer the good kicking before or after they cart you away? I know that the sub-Lenny music proselytizers rely on endless supplies of enthusiasm and "golly gee Beav!" good cheer, but damn! it's not about you. It's about the music, full stop, you should be striving to remove your ego from the process as much as possible, not place it front and center.

Still, he's really totally adorable.

OMG! OMG! King Roger at Bard!

The 2008/09 opera season is shaping up to be a season of finally experiencing in person operas that are rarely produced but which I've loved as recordings for years. First there was Die Soldaten, which is coming up in July in New York. Now, a recent announcement has me even more excited: Karol Szymanowski's glorious King Roger --or Król Roger for those original language pedants out there-- is being fully staged for five performances by Leon Botstein and his American Symphony forces at Bard College's SummerScape festival.

It's nice enough that King Roger will be presented, but it's a short opera (ca. 80 minutes), so as a curtain raiser, Mr. Botstein will conduct the U.S. premiere of the ballet-pantomine (with tenor soloist and chorus) Harnasie.

I love Szymanowski's music, especially that period ca. 1910-1925 where pieces like the Third Symphony, the first Violin Concerto, the Myths and Metropes piano pieces, the orchestral song Penthesilea and especially King Roger revel in the lush, hyper-chromatic world of Strauss, Debussy and Scriabin. Harnasie underwent a long gestation, from 1923-1931, and in that time Szymanowski's music underwent a stylistic shift towards more folk-based material.

It's also of interest to me that Szymanowski was a gay man, a gay man who lived quite an out life. Of course, he did that mostly away from repressive, heavily Catholic Poland, being quite fond of the areas around the Mediterranean and the youths therein. Closer to home, he was briefly the lover of the 15-year old Boris Kochno, who lead quite a life. Wow, to go from Szymanowski > Diaghilev > Cole Porter's bed!

So, it's off to the Hudson River Valley in August for me. King Roger is in my Top Five Operas I Want To See Staged Before I Die* and as long as the staging doesn't set it on a spaceship or an ocean liner or some other lame-ass Regie konzept, it should be quite a night.

* also: Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane, Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise (allegedly part of the quite good looking Gerard Mortier's first full New York City Opera season that has canary fancier types sputtering with rage) and Britten's Gloriana.

Listening to music

One of my daily stops in the classical music blogosphere is On An Overgrown Path, run by the indefatigable Bob Shingleton, who blogs under his nom de blog, Pliable. I'm awed at how he's able to blog so consistently across such a wide range of subjects when I can't rouse my lazy ass to post more than occasionally.

In a typically interesting post, the topic of "dishonest music" came up in regards to Richard Strauss. Der Meister von Garmisch-Partenkirchen gets a hard time from sniffy critics who don't think he's serious enough or didn't use his talents properly or is too facile or [long list of aesthetic crimes here]; that's apart from the whole "stayed in Germany and was a Nazi functionary" thing. One of Pliable's commenter's, Pentimento, made this comment in regards to Strauss' music:

But I think that Strauss failed to use his abilities to achieve what the best music does, which is to really touch the core of humanity and bring the audience to a higher experience of it.

Oh dear, how to unpack that? After a cursory look-see at Pentimento's blog, I suspect that what she means is "Strauss' music doesn't put us in contact with The Divine", which leaves me absolutely cold, having been an atheist since I was 12. Good for Strauss, who loathed religion, I say! I replied in Pliable's comments:

It's probably just me, but if I'm told that a piece of music is "uplifting" or "touches the core of what it is to be human", I run as fast as I can from it. I look for two things from music:

1. Tickle my ear with interesting sounds
2. Engage my intellect via form, harmony etc.

On those counts, Strauss succeeds in spades. I don't listen to music as an exercise in self-improvement, but as music.

It's really the old Sibelius/Mahler conversation about the symphony, isn't it?:

Sibelius: "When our conversation touched on the essence of symphony, I said that I admired its severity and style and the profound logic that created an inner connection between all the motives. This was the experience I had come to in composing".

Mahler: "No, the symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything".

Sibelius 1, Mahler nil. My way of viewing music is obviously not common, as this follow up post by Pliable and this comment indicates:

Well ... yes, it is, [just you] Henry, as least as far as I'm concerned.

It strikes me as a marvelously silly and cynical conceit to dismiss a piece out of hand simply because someone has been touched by it beyond interesting sounds and technical ingenuity.

It sounds to me like a singularly cold and soulless manner in which to live. But to each his own.

Note that I'm not saying that Henry Holland is silly or cynical or soulless; I have no idea whether he is or not. I'm just saying that his comments strike me that way.

Well, I'm silly a lot of the time, absolutely cynical to the bone and reject the idea of a soul as religious hokum. So........it's a fair comment, I'd say!

More seriously though, I think the commenter, Scott, slightly missed my point and my intended sarcasm obviously didn't translate (I should have put a :-) in there after "I run as fast as I can").

I obviously wouldn't avoid a piece based on "someone being touched by it": in that case, I wouldn't have been blown away by the experience of hearing the Beethoven 9th in the late 60's because my Dad just had to have me hear it, so much so that he forcibly sat me in a chair and said "Listen to this!". OK, he was mainly sick of me wearing out my Beatles, Cream and Hendrix albums with overplay, but still. Needless to say, I'd have been put off Parsifal forever if that was my attitude, considering how borderline creepy some Parsifal fanatics are in terms of solemnity and The Proper Way To Attend A Performance of Wagner's last opera.

It's one of my pet peeves about the arts: they're not something to be enjoyed in various ways by individuals based on a complicated set of criteria that's unique to each person, there's that Puritanical gloss of "It's good for you, it'll make you a better person", like music is castor oil, that I detect underlying so many of those kinds of comments. Sure, I suspect that's not Scott's intent, but it's something I've heard for years, that my way of approaching music is "too intellectual", "cold", "clinical" and my favorite: "not what music is about". Sorry, we can't all be like my first boyfriend, Rob, who burst in to tears the first time he heard Phantom of the Opera.

My small apartment has scores and books like this all over the place; I really should have been a musicologist, as I'm far more interested in HOW an opera/orchestral piece came to be than WHY or how others perceive it. I mean, last night, after watching the lovely bit of fluff called Indiscreet that I'd recorded last week off of TCM, I was curious about the overall key scheme in the Nachtspiel of Schreker's fab-u-lous Der Schatzgräber because I'd listened to it the other day and was curious about the harmonic plan of that part of the score. So, I pulled out the piano/vocal score, got my #3 pencil (because it makes light marks that are easy to erase) and spent 10 minutes analyzing the score. Turns out, it pivots around D minor, with excursions in to C# and Bb. All that feeds in to my fascination with astronomy, chess, the plots of LOST and other things: what is the scaffolding upon which this thing is erected?

How I listen to rock and jazz is different, as it's simpler to grasp, but when I first listen to an opera or orchestral piece, I'm taking in as much information about the sound and form as I can, to make sense of the musical argument; I'm not thinking "Wow, this makes me think of God!" or "That depicts a bird flying through the air!". A perfect example is a recent discovery: D'Albert's Die Toten Augen. This obscure opera was mentioned as a throaway remark by a favorite opera blogger, Maury D'Annato, in this post. I listened to a few soundclips at Amazon and ordered it. As usual, I planted myself between the speakers of my computer, popped the first CD in to the D: drive and, with libretto in hand, listened to see if the opera was worth a second listen. What I listened to was purely technical things, based on what little I knew of D'Albert's music and the time frame the opera was written in (my criteria would be different if it was written in 1982, say): does the music support the text, are the vocal lines grateful to sing, are the tunes any good, the orchestration interesting? Yes, mostly, yes, definitely. I've since listened to the opera two more times and would love to see a production of it.

So, how is that a less valid way to experience music?

Two other examples of orthodoxy that grind my molars:

* Joseph Kerman's sniffily pompous description of Puccini's fabulous Tosca as a "shabby little shocker". I adore Puccini's operas, Edgar excepted, and find the continuing disdain that they engender from professional critics hilarious. Via the wonderful La Cieca at Parterre Box is this amazing set of videos (you can watch the other parts after clicking on the link La Cieca provides): Tosca as done in Legos. That the piece, truncated as it is, still works as theatre, that's what I need to know, not whether the opera is spiritually elevating or tells me anything about the world.

* The continued veneration of the music of Shostakovich, based almost entirely on his biography, not the intrinsic worth (or: worthlessness) of the actual music. From that interesting article (which I have problems with, by the way) at the link, musical bomb thrower par excellence Pierre Boulez could be speaking for me:

"Shostakovich plays with clichés most of the time… It's like olive oil, you have a second and even third pressing, and I think of Shostakovich as the second, or even third pressing of Mahler. …with Shostakovich, people are influenced by the autobiographical dimension of his music"

Ouch. As Monty Python might say, "Cruel, but fair". It was interesting that Esa-Pekka Salonen, to much fanfare, initiated a Shostakovich festival about 6-7 years ago, because a) he was Music Director of a symphony who b) had never really conducted Shostakovitch's music, so here was his chance. There were to be three symphonies performed each year, with the numerically corresponding string quartets played in the public areas beforehand. I think that Mr. Salonen lasted one season (alas, Google is no help and I've long gotten rid of the programme) before he bowed out (the first of the three was the Fourth, I think; I still remember the second concert in the series, containing the absolutely ghastly 2nd and 3rd symphonies). I believe his comment when it was quietly announced that he wouldn't be continuing the project he initiated was "Well, his music is interesting" in that way where "interesting" = "is really bad".

If the critical consensus was to be believed, I'm supposed to turn my nose up at Puccini's glorious operas because they're allegedly treacly, sentimental and manipulative "low art" and revel in Shostakovich, who wrote music That Is About Very Important Things.

I'll pass.

A small irony: I type this on the day I'm attending the Disney Hall concert of the sublime Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (the pit band at the Netherlands Opera, where I heard them play the hell of out Schreker's Die Gezeichneten last June). The program: the Mahler 5th and...ta da! Strauss' Don Juan.

Lorin Maazel needs to buy a clue

Lorin Maazel, fresh off conducting Die Walküre at the Met, is here in rainy, cold Los Angeles to conduct four performances (um, now three since I'm late with this) of Benjamin Britten's blazing masterpiece, the War Requiem. I have my ticket for Saturday night and I'm very much looking forward to it.

In these days of cutbacks of coverage of classical music in paper-and-ink newspapers, it was nice to see a teaser article yesterday in the Los Angeles Times. Pretty straightforward --250 people will make quite a noise in the fairly small space that is Disney Hall-- except for this juxtaposition:

The work also calls for two conductors -- one for the large orchestra and one for the chamber orchestra -- although there have been performances under the leadership of a single person. "I have conducted both orchestras," Maazel said, "and it was doable. But I felt it was defeating the purpose of the score, and I was very happy to go back to the source and follow the composer's instructions. [snip]

That's admirable, one assumes the composer knows best what they want. Oh wait.... (from earlier in the article):

Britten called for a chorus of boys' voices, but here, as often elsewhere, the chorus will be mixed. "This was requested by maestro Maazel," said Anne Tomlinson, director of the children's chorus. "He prefers the sound of a mixed ensemble".

As you'd say in a text message: WFT? I know humans have the capacity to hold contradictory thoughts in their minds simultaneously, but that's absurd. One can't claim fidelity to a composer's intentions and in a previous breath, totally disregard them for your own aesthetic reasons. Jeebus.

As anyone who knows Britten's biography in any detail could tell you, Benjamin Britten had a complicated relationship with adolescent boys. Apart from his amorous and sexual interest, however, he simply loved the sound of unbroken boys voices; his oeuvre features them prominently (Miles in the incredible The Turn of the Screw, the Spring Symphony, my very first live opera experience A Midsummer's Night Dream and so on) . If Britten had wanted a mixed boys/girls chorus in the War Requiem, he bloody well would have specified it in the score!

This is really one of my serious pet peeves: conductors/stage directors who don't follow what's in the score. Tristan und Isolde set on a spaceship kinds of things are simply so clichéd and boring by now that they are almost beyond risible. Tampering with the way a score is performed, however, is another matter altogether. I well remember attending my first Der Ferne Klang at the Berlin Staatsoper, conducted by noted Schrekerian and advisor to the Franz Schreker Society Michael Gielen and being aghast at how Gielen allowed some of Fritz' lines in Act III to be assigned to minor characters, just so that the director could perpetrate his fraud of a production. Shame, shame, shame.

Still, I love the War Requiem to bits, it's an ever-timely piece these days and to hear it in Disney Hall as opposed to the barn that is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion should be an amazing experience. Huh? What's that? Be consistent and boycott the performance because Maazel is tampering with the score? Yeah, right......

Life begins anew: 2008-09 opera schedules

Damn, it actually takes willpower to blog on a consistent basis......

As an opera fanatic who has spent vast sums of money traveling within the United States and to Europe for opera performances, this time of year is always interesting, as the upcoming season schedules are released. Obviously, the vast majority of them consist of the usual La Bohème > La Traviata > Die Zauberflöte core rep --nothing wrong with that, they're great operas and there's always a segment of the audience that are experiencing them in the opera house for the first time-- so the one or two slots that the bigger companies use for non-standard repertory is where the real interest lies for me.

My hometown troupe, Los Angeles Opera, has decided to do three Puccini pieces in a season again but this time in the form of Il Trittico. I've only been to one performance of the entire trilogy (at the Met in the early '90's, with Teresa Stratas as a searing Suor Angelica) so I'm looking forward to this production. The long mooted Ring cycle finally gets off the ground, sans Industrial Light and Magic. Most companies start with a single opera in the tetralogy, but it'll be nice to have Das Rheingold and Die Walküre to look forward to. I have zero hopes for Howard Shore's The Fly. The basic idea is sound, I guess, but there's a huge chasm between writing film scores and writing an opera (though, of course, Erich Wolfgang Korngold had no trouble doing an opera > film score move) and I have doubts that Mr. Shore will be able to pull it off. See: Elliott Goldenthal and Grendel.

The one opera I'm really really really looking forward to finally experiencing live is Walter Braunfels glorious Die Vögel. At last year's potpourri concert of excerpts that served as a taster for LAO's ongoing Recovered Voices project, the excerpts from Die Vogel were magical. I listened to the sole recording (that I know of) again a few months ago and was transported once more. I'll note it's also a good move to limit the run of it to four performances. I can't wait for the subsequent season's productions of Schreker's incredible Die Gezeichneten (please please please don't use the Stuttgart production--I've seen it in Stuttgart and Amsterdama already!) and my favorite opera, Korngold's Die Tote Stadt. Major props to LAO Music Director James Conlon for his advocacy of these operas.

Up the coast, the San Francisco Opera delves head first in to the David Gockley era and, for me, it's not pretty. There's exactly one thing that would compel me to hop on a Southwest Airlines flight: the aforementioned Die Tote Stadt. Alas, there's two strikes against this production:

1. Torsten Kerl, who is scheduled to sing the punishing tenor role of Paul. I have two recordings of his Paul: the DVD from Opéra de Rhin, which, ghastly Eurotrash production aside, contains Kerl's wobbly Paul and the 2004 Salzburg Festival recording, with outgoing SFO Music Director Donald Runnicles in the pit, that's even wobblier.

2. The "one intermission" note at the SFO site means one thing: the horrible cut that is standard these days of the end of Act 1 and the beginning of Act 2. The cut takes out the last two minutes or so of Act 1 and cuts out most of the fabulous Act 2 prelude festival of celesta, bells and wind machine. It means that the first two acts are run together, lasting about 90 minutes. That's a long sing for the Paul and the Marietta and it makes my butt hurt in uncomfortable opera house seats.

Pamela Rosenburg's tenure from 2001-2005 was certainly interesting and I might be in the minority in ruing the missed chances in that period. Due to various circumstances (9/11, the dot com bust, the conservative faction of the audience, board resistence), her extremely ambitious project, Animating Opera, was only fitfully realized. The biggest success was a much lauded production of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise, but planned productions of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel and Berlioz' Les Troyens were scrapped. The less said about the appallingly bad Four Saints in Three Acts, the better. At least there's no Philip Glass on the menu........

So now David Gockley is in charge and it seems "innovation" and "interesting repertory" are ideas banished to the wilderness. I'd love it if in five years, people who support the San Francisco Opera turn on him for being such a programming dullard. Is this really the company that has done such things as Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel, Reimann's Lear and von Einemn's Der Besuch der alten Dame, among many operas done there that weren't Verdi and Puccini?

Other opera company schedules are starting to trickle in: Canadian Opera Company in Toronto is ambitiously tackling Prokofiev's War and Peace and Britten's ravishing A Midsummer Night's Dream (my very first opera ever attended) in the same season.

Further afield, my jones to hear Reimann's Lear live again might mean a trip to Germany later in the year: Frankfurt and Halle have been mooted to be mounting productions in early October. Die Tote Stadt finally makes it to the United Kingdom, a mere 89 years after the premiere, at the Royal Opera House, with a superb cast of Stephen Gould, Nadia Michael and Gerald Finlay. Ingo Metzmacher is in the pit and that should be a good thing: he brilliantly conducted the Gezeichneten I heard in Amsterdam last June.

Hopefully, there'll be a production or three of Schreker's operas to tempt me to travel, but the German-language houses usually don't announce their upcoming seasons until the spring/early summer. Damn not having the ability to traverse space and time....

EDIT (1/24/08): Lyric Opera of Chicago (PDF) weighs in with their 2008-09 itinerary. Mein Gott, das ist Lulu's Bild! Yes, one of my very favorite operas, Berg's Lulu, gets an airing. There's been a worrying trend in Germany to revert to Berg's torso score, the reason given for not doing Friedrich Cerha's completion being.....well, I can't tell, really, since his job was much easier than Alfano's for Turnadot or either Jarnach or Beaumont for Doktor Faust. In any case, a good cast on paper, Andrew Davis in the pit, with the quite handsome Paul Curran will be directing. A look at the portfolio on his website shows some really lovely stage pictures, all the better to contrast with the human carnage that is the plot of Lulu.

Also of interest for people two times zones away from Chicago is the Tristan with Clifton Forbis and Deborah Voigt as the doomed lovers, Andrew Davis again in the pit. Lyric is borrowing David Hockney's beautiful production, originally done for Los Angeles Opera and recently spruced up. For star power, Lyric is offering Massenet's Manon with Natalie Dessay and tenorhunk Jonas Kaufman. Does anyone know if Lyric is jumping on the theatre screening/DVD bandwagon?