A hundred years of Arizona

Above: Composer JAMES DEMARS

The celebration has already begun, though the date won’t arrive for over a year. The state of Arizona turns 100 in 2012 – Feb. 12, 2012, to be specific – and the Arizona Commission on the Arts as already commissioned two new musical works to commemorate the occasion. A new choral piece by James DeMars, of Tempe, and a new band composition by Sy Brandon, of Cottonwood, have been unveiled and are available for performance.

DeMars, this year’s artist-winner of the  Arizona Governor’s Arts Awards, I have written about in liner notes for the CD of his Piano Concerto and in a rave review of his Violin Concerto for The Arizona Republic. Brandon is new to me, but I intend to find out more.

You can download pdfs of the Centennial scores, and listen to MIDI mock-ups of them, here. What an amazing convenience it is to be able to look over scores online! On the other hand, MIDI mock-ups never do a score anything near justice, so let’s hope for performances soon.

New music is the best way to celebrate social and political milestones. Can we expect an announcement soon from The Phoenix Symphony?

– Ken LaFave

Lenny’s Mercedes

Have you seen the new Mercedes-Benz commercial that includes a brief clip of Leonard Bernstein conducting? The ad is made of a series of clips of people with arms raised “in triumph.” Sports figures are also pictured.

I can’t say I really knew Lenny, though I met and talked with him on a few professional and personal occasions. But I can’t help but wonder at his association with a German car. His sensitivity to the history of the Holocaust was keen. While he dismissed Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana on musical grounds (he once called it “gilded shit”), those who knew him said part of his dislike was Orff’s connection to the Nazis.

Everybody’s different, but I have several Jewish friends who would never buy a German car. And then there’s Sarah Silverman’s bit, “Jewish people driving German cars.” (Warning: Strong language.)

Your thoughts? Any readers with an informed guess as to whether Bernstein would have approved? Or not?

– Ken LaFave

Golijov’s Phoenix: A world premiere

Osvaldo Golijov’s long-awaited new work, commissioned for The Phoenix Symphony by the folks at The Musical Instrument Museum, turned out to be a slow, meditative, color-drenched piece about 12 minutes long (an estimate – I didn’t time it) notable for its use of electronics in dialog with ancient instruments. Symphony music director Michael Christie conducted the premiere Thursday night; the concert repeats Saturday night.

The composition, logically enough titled Phoenix, started with the eerie sound of the kamancheh, or Persian fiddle (played by Kayhan Kalhor), sounding a Middle Eastern-tinged melody echoed and altered by electronics (Jeremy Flower on a laptop). At length, percussion (Jamey Haddad, helped by two members of the Symphony percussion dept.) began to tap out an 11-count rhythmic pattern (1-2/3-4/5-6/7-8/9-10-11). Suddenly an accordion (Michael Ward-Bergeman) took up the melody, supported by the strings and low-lying flutes of the Symphony. The rest of the piece consisted of the main melody tossed about and embroidered by these forces until at last the kamancheh intoned a quiet close.

The challenge in writing for a mix of traditional instruments and Symphonic ones is that the expressive modes of each differ widely from those of the other. There are various ways of overcoming this. Lou Harrison, in his Pipa Concerto (played by the Phoenix Symphony a couple seasons back) decided to let each “side” have its way, and underline the contrast. Golijov has chosen instead to let the traditional instruments boldly paint the stage with their bright timbres and distinctive gestures, while placing the orchestra in a strictly background role.

It would be interesting to witness an entire season of such work, and the ways in which different composers faced the challenge.

– Ken LaFave

From the stage to the screen…no, wait, reverse that!

Time brings reversals, in the arts as everywhere else, and the new season at ASU Gammage underlines one of the more radical reversals on Broadway in my time.

Of the seven shows scheduled for ASU, two are old favorites: Fiddler on the Roof (1964) and Hair (1967). In keeping with the series’ extraordinary ability to bring us the latest from Broadway, the other five are more recent shows: Young Frankenstein; Billy Elliot The Musical; Shrek The Musical; 9 to 5: The Musical; and Mamma Mia!

All but one of the five is a musical based on a hit movie, and the fifth, Mamma Mia!, is a jukebox musical, a show put together from pre-written songs.

Both things barely existed until about 15 years ago. Now, they dominate new musicals. To be sure, shows that don’t fit those profiles still get done: Avenue Q, Light in the Piazza and Spring Awakening are three brilliant examples from the past decade. But musicals such as The Wedding Singer and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels simply would never have been produced had they not enjoyed instant audience recognition of their titles, and Jersey Boys and Rock of Ages trade wholly on the popularity of songs already drilled into theatergoers’ ears.

It used to be that musicals started on stage, became movies, and along the way provided popular music with the majority of its material. Now musicals follow rather than lead, tagging along after screen hits or grabbing pop songs for support.

Familiar stories and familiar songs are, frankly, a cheap way to do instant marketing. While that doesn’t necessarily mean the resulting product lacks merit, compare Wedding Singer and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to Light in the Piazza and Spring Awakening and a case begins to gel for originality over rote adaptation. Easy commercial paths never lead to artistic success. Imagine someone telling Lenny Bernstein and Jerry Robbins in 1957: “Dump this West Side Story thing – do a show on Gone With the Wind!”

The Broadway series at ASU Gammage opens Monday with Young Frankenstein, with songs by the man who gave us one of the biggest of all movies-into-musicals, The Producers. Mel Brooks is a funny guy and some of his songs for The Producers hit home (though none hit like the original movie’s blockbuster, “Springtime for Hitler”). It’ll be interesting to hear what his score does for Young Frankenstein.

In the spirit of combining musicals based on hit movies with the idea of the jukebox musical, I suggest the following shows for future production:

The Godfather, featuring songs from the catalogue of Frank Sinatra. Imagine the Don’s big finale, “My Way.”

Animal House, with songs by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. Think “Great Balls of Fire” and the John Belushi character; a perfect fit.

Silence of the Lambs, with a score comprising various ‘80s hits. The bad guy sings “Me So Horny.”

No Country for Old Men, incorporating Johnny Cash songs. How could one possibly improve on Anton Chigurh singing “Ring of Fire”?

– Ken LaFave

Shakespeare vs. Joan of Arc

Southwest Shakespeare’s Blood Royal, a one-evening adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy, includes among its characters Joan of Arc. I plan to attend Blood Royal this week, and I look forward to seeing how the adaptation treats her, as The Maid of Orleans appears in Part One of the Bard’s original, not as an heroic figure, but as a conniving witch — a partisan of Evil France against the just reign of Good Ol’ England.

It’s only natural Shakespeare would have taken the part of his own country against her age-old nemesis. But it must be difficult today, given centuries of Joan-adoration, to portray her as anything other than a brave and holy warrior of mystical stature. More than a hundred novels have been written on her life, including one by, of all unlikely authors, Mark Twain. “She is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced,” Twain wrote – amazing words from cynical old Sam Clemens. Verdi and Tchaikovsky both composed operas about her, though no one does them any more, and even this year, Rhode Island composer Steven Jobe unveiled his operatic take on the subject.

Joan is the subject of many hundreds of visual portrayals, none of them accurate, since the only painting she sat for has been lost. Southwest Shakespeare’s publicity claims their Joan is “beautiful,” though there’s every reason to believe she was as plain as an ill-fed peasant girl of that era must have been. (The image above is pure conjecture by an artist working in 1485, decades after her death.) And of course there are movies, including the 1957 lemon with Ingrid Bergman looking ridiculously pretty in clunky plate armor, and a recent made-for-TV biopic for which those responsible should be burned at the stake. Figuratively speaking.

The best film by far is Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), in which a mannish, anguished Joan doubts everything save the persistence and ultimate truth of her own inner vision. It is that vision which got her killed by the Church in the 15th century, and that selfsame vision which got her made into Saint Joan of Arc by the Church five centuries later. Just a matter of perspective, I guess.

– Ken LaFave

Chuck Ives, meet the kids

Played the last movement of Charles Ives’ Second Symphony for my school kids today.  The kindergarten LOVED it – went crazy moving to its changing rhythms and moods, laughed at that last blast of a dissonant chord, and after it was over yelled “Again! Again!”   Grades 1, 2 and 3 were less overt in their enthusiasm, and in each of the grades someone called the music “weird” and/or “scary.”

Some in the 3rd grade listened with a maturity beyond their tender years, yet the overall response was that the piece sounded odd and “off.”

When are kids taught to listen with prejudice?  How do their ears get the message that music must sound a certain way and no other?  When I asked what was “scary” about the music, students said, “It got louder and softer, and slower and faster.”  Music they hear on the radio tends to stay at the same dynamic and tempo, and to stick to a meager harmonic vocabulary.

The challenge in general music education is not getting kids to learn this or that kind of music, but getting them to listen with open ears to everything.

– Ken LaFave

A world of music/The “C” Word

In case you blinked and missed it, the Valley last spring became home to the largest collection of world musical instruments in…well, the world. The Musical Instrument Museum (The MIM), on Tatum Blvd. just south of the 101, is an amazing place to spend a day viewing and listening to instruments created by peoples all over the globe.

And you will need a full day, or most of one. It’s astonishing to see how many variations cultures can make on the same idea – how varied are the plucked string instruments of, say, India, Korea and Sweden, or the flutes of Africa and Native America. The audio machine you carry with you at the Museum automatically plays clips of whatever instrument you are viewing, so you hear the kora or the gamelan or the grand piano it as you see it.

Experiencing these different instruments with their range of tunings and timbres prompts the question, “Does what people hear in their heads determine how a culture makes and tunes its instruments? Or do the instruments get made, shaping how the people hear?” Unanswerable, I suppose; a relative of nature-or-nurture.

There’s a room where you can see one of Eric Clapton’s guitars and the piano on which John Lennon wrote “Imagine.” For classical geeks, there’s Lang Lang’s piano and one of Lenny Bernstein’s batons – as close to an “instrument” as a conductor might have. There’s also a hands-on room where my sons and I recently spent probably way too much time playing harps, drums, and that favorite of old-time horror movies, the Theremin.

If you haven’t been there yet, put a visit on your must-do list.

*******

Congratulations to The Phoenix Symphony and Phoenix Theatre for daring to use the “C” word: Collaboration. The Symphony and PT united to produce a semi-staged version of The Music Man last week, and they’ve just announced they’ll kick off each of the next two seasons with similar co-productions.

Way to go! The days of trying to get the biggest piece of a limited audience pie are gone! Gone! (“Gone with the hogshead, cask and demijohn…” Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.) It’s been replaced with the need for arts groups to work together to bring more folks under the arts & culture umbrella.

More, please.

– Ken LaFave

Welcome to 2010-2011

Highs are still registering over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade (which is, I am sad to tell you, where highs are measured – highs in the sun are typically 130-plus) and already the Phoenix performing arts season is at flood, with The Phoenix Symphony revving up its classics concerts, Southwest Shakespeare and Phoenix Theatre in the middle of runs, and Ballet Arizona and ASU Gammage gearing up to start before the end of September.

The common wisdom among Arizona arts presenters is that anything prior to November or after April is begging for empty seats, what with the Snowbirds still in Wisconsin, Michigan, etc. Fortunately, the common wisdom is being challenged.

The Phoenix Symphony opened its season with a concert version of The Music Man last week, and commences its classics series proper with two great warhorses this week (Thursday, Sept. 16). The Brahms Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathetique”) are the sort of pieces we hear in our sleep, so it will be up to TPS music director Michael Christie and violin soloist Augustin Hadelich to wake us up to beauties inherent in the scores, but not necessarily heard before.

I haven’t seen it yet, but everything I’ve heard from trusted friends about Phoenix Theatre’s production of Noises Off tells me it’s something I need to see before it closes this Sunday. Stiff competition comes, however, from ASU School of Music, where Sunday (Sept. 19) at 2:30 p.m., clarinetist Robert Spring gives his annual fall recital, intriguingly titled “Speak of the Devil” and including both new scores and a score or so of Spring’s ASU colleagues. Spring and guests — including flutist Elizabeth Buck, violinist Katie McLin and pianist Andrew Campbell — will perform a sonata by Saint-Saens and a bunch of new works, including one that requires two clarinetists each to play two clarinets at the same time. (Should one call this a duet or a quartet?)

And what, in the name of Francis Bacon, is Blood Royal? That’s a question rhetorical, since we know what it is: It’s Southwest Shakespeare’s adaptation of the Bard’s Henry VI trilogy into a single evening’s tale. Does it work? I have until Sept. 26 to find out.

Ballet Arizona grabs new fans every September with its “Ballet Under the Stars” program, concerts given outdoors in Valley parks. Fresh from triumph in Washington D.C., over the summer, Ballet Arizona presents this free series beginning Sept. 22 at various locations. ASU Gammage brings Broadway to the Valley Sept. 27-Oct. 2 with Young Frankenstein, the Mel Brooks musical based on his film. The ASU season combines new shows – others include Shrek: The Musical and Billy Elliot – plus revivals of old faves such as Fiddler on the Roof and Hair.

Enough to get you started? An embarrassment of riches, as the French say – though I suspect they say it in French. Hang on, the season only gets richer, busier, and more varied.

– Ken LaFave