For all its Broadway glitter, New York has nothing over the Tarheel State when it comes to our profusion of summer outdoor drama. Public Theatre plays its hand of starry aces in a slate of free Shakespeare in the Park productions under the lights of Central Park, but the glitz is mostly confined to the theater district.
Music is a different matter. Despite the demise of the JVC Jazz Festival, the Big Apple still has its act together.
Last month, when I attended the annual Music Critics Association of North America meeting, the Mostly Mozart Festival was in full swing at Lincoln Center. No, the Mostly Mozart isn’t outdoors, and it isn’t free. Compared to Broadway prices, admission to see such classical superstars as John Adams, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piotr Anderszewski, Leif Ove Andsnes, Nicholas Angelich, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Osmo Vanska, and the Emerson String Quartet is priced to please.
While Mostly Mozart was humming at four indoor Lincoln Center venues from July 26-Aug. 22, a Lincoln Center Out of Doors series kicked in on Aug. 5 at two open-air sites on the cultural campus, offering free programs of music, dance, and spoken word. Before I attended Yevgeny Sudbin’s New York debut at Avery Fischer Hall, I was able to peep in on Auktyon, the animated Russian art-rockers, at the Damrosch Park Bandshell. After Sudbin, I had the opportunity to return and behold Plastic People of the Universe, the Czech ensemble renowned for their role in East Berlin’s Velvet Revolution.
Other distinguished headliners at these free outdoor concerts included Dave Brubeck, the Derek Trucks Band, Urban Bush Women, Arturo O’Farrill Afro-Cuban Sextet, Abakua Afro-Latin Dance Company, Lizz Wright, and Allen Toussaint.
My daughter Ilana and I split my final weekend in Gotham between the FringeNYC theater festival and Harlem jazz. We found that the quickest way to get to Marcus Garvey Park for the free music at the annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival was the 2 and 3 subway trains — not the Duke’s proverbial A train. We arrived at the bandshell in time to catch two greats and their combos one after another, Gary Bartz and Frank Wess. After that, we scooted a few blocks east to the Creole Restaurant, where we had reservations for dinner and Dr. Mambo.
Here’s a rundown of what I heard — and how I heard it:
A Flowering Tree (***3/4 out of 4) — John Adams’ new opera is like nothing we’ve seen in the Carolinas since Spoleto Festival USA staged Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River in 1997. There’s a similar mixing of the ceremonial and contemplative with the lurid and grotesque in this engrossing piece — and a welcome departure from the topical historical subjects Adams usually tackles.
Our heroine, Kumudha, develops the gift of transforming herself into a flowering tree as an enterprising response to her family’s poverty. She and her sister are supposed to be the only ones in on the secret: they sell the flowers and make a present of the proceeds to their mother. In true fairytale fashion, a Prince spies Kumudha’s transformative powers and falls deeply in love with the pretty peasant, who becomes his bride. Ah, but Kumudha’s apotheosis enflames the jealousy of the Prince’s wicked sister. So at her most despairing moments — before the sorrowing Prince rekindles her regenerative powers — Kumudha has become a scuttling, limbless vagabond, the merest lump of a person.
Adams led the orchestra onstage at the Mostly Mozart Festival while stage director Peter Sellars collaborated in the stylized presentation and in the libretto’s adaptation of the ancient South Indian folktale for the theater. Three excellent singers split up the vocal solos, Jessica Rivera as Kumudha, Russell Thomas as the Prince, and Sanford Sylvan as the Storyteller. These were augmented — or shadowed — by three dancers, one of whom intertwined chillingly with Rivera to simulate her limbless state.
In a sense, the Schola Cantorum of Venezuela must be considered collaborators in the libretto, since their presence at the world premiere in Vienna was what caused Adams to cast the choral text entirely in Spanish. Really it would be difficult to improve upon the Mostly Mozart version other than by transplanting it to a more ideal venue. The Rose Theatre, on loan from Jazz at Lincoln Center, superbly served the music. With Adams’ orchestra and all the colorful, stylized action sharing the same stage, my view of the opera from the third balcony box seats was fatiguing to sustain. Rituals like this are worth the extra effort.
A Tribute to Antonio Carlos Jobim and Stan Getz (***1/2) — Down the hall from the Rose Theatre (at orchestra level, not the nosebleed balcony) is Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, maybe the best-engineered jazz joint on the planet. Whether you’ve booked a table or a barstool, every seat at Dizzy’s is a good one, with a nice evening view of Columbus Circle, Central Park, and 59th Street through the huge studio window behind the musicians. Almost as certain as the excellent seating and acoustics, the all-Brazilian Trio da Paz, vibraphonist Joe Locke, and vocalist Maucha Adnet will converge on the Club in August for at least a week.
That’s been the drill for the past three years, anyway. This year, the pretext was a tribute to Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim and the instrumentalist who did more than anyone else to popularize his bossa novas here in the States, tenor sax sultan Stan Getz. After reviewing Locke’s latest two CDs for JazzTimes, I wasn’t going to miss the chance to see the master in live performance, particularly since he has never recorded any Jobim compositions. Sue and I booked for opening night.
With his dazzling four-mallet technique, Locke pounced on two Jobim favorites that served as bookends for the closing set, “Wave” and “The Girl from Ipanema.” He was even more formidable on Milton Nascimento’s “Vera Cruz” and on “Bachiao,” a piece by Da Paz guitarist Romero Lubambo. The Getz component of the tribute was Harry Allen, who was able to match Getz’s gilded tone more readily than Locke’s inventive fire. Better answers came from the Trio’s members, bassist Nilson Matta, drummer Duduka da Fonseca, and the ebullient Lubambo, the most frequent soloist during the set.
Adnet was a little livelier than Astrud Gilberto as the singer in this bossa nova constellation, escorted onstage by Locke midway through the program for a glittering string of three Jobim pearls, “Caminhos Cruzados,” “A Felicidade,” and “Agua de Beber.” Of course, Adnet came back for the “Ipanema” finale, singing Jobim’s greatest hit in English, in Portuguese, in vocalese, and — during the seductive farewell — a mishmash of all three.
I’m lobbying for Locke to start recording some of these Jobim standards. But if you have to go to Dizzy’s next August for a sampling, the great view — and the chef’s wicked Louisiana gumbo — will be waiting for you.
Schola Cantorum de Venezuela (***1/2) — Watch out, Chanticleer! Your customary pocket-chorus slot on concert series across the nation may be under siege. Drawing the choral parts at world premieres of recent works by John Adams (see above) and Osvaldo Golijov, this co-ed ensemble — plus spare, yet spicy instrumentation — is shedding the provinciality that has kept Schola in obscurity for most of its history since 1967.
The program they presented at the Mostly Mozart festival was resolutely modern, and with the exception of compositions by the Barcelona-born founder of Schola, Alberto Grau, all were written by composers who hail from the Americas. If that modernity and Americanism struck fear in the hearts of the audience, it was calmed by the charms that Schola wields onstage and by the prevailing south-of-the-border flavoring of their program selections. Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer and Americans Elliott Carter and Eric Whitacre were the only non-Hispanics in the mix.
Even the Schafer, with its magical “Chant to Make the Stones Sing” and such, and the Whitacre, sporting chimes, bird whistles, and a whispered text by Octavio Paz, were still mucho exotico. Though the Schola were dressed less colorfully at Alice Tully Hall than they were at the Rose for Flowering Tree, they were choreographed magnificently. I was amazed that the whole ensemble could keep two complex shows in their heads and perform with such consistent vitality and precision.
I had read the rave reviews of the renovated Tully’s acoustics, and a tour of the hall had been part the Music Critics Association of North America meeting this year at Lincoln Center. This concert not only demonstrated why Adams and Golijov hold the Schola in such high esteem, it affirmed that Lincoln Center is rightly proud of their state-of-the-art Tully. Attend a concert there if you can.
Dr. Mambo and Experience Ensemble (***1/4) — There’s a fascinating cookery on the northeast corner of 118th Street and Third Avenue up in East Harlem. The Creole Restaurant serves up various okra gumbos, poultry and seafood entrees (including gator etouffee), sweet potato beignets to die for, and some aggressive Latin jazz. After spending the waning daylight hour at the Charlie Parker Jazz Fest in nearby Marcus Garvey Park, Ilana and I adjourned to the Creole at the end of their summer-long Latin Jazz Legacy Series. Coming weeks will see more varied fare on Friday and Saturday nights, with Annette Anguilar, Bobbi Humphrey, Steve Kroon, and Grady Tate parading in as headliners.
We were greeted by Dr. Mambo warming up at his two keyboards, surrounded by an Experience Ensemble that included two percussionists, vibraphonist Bill Jacobs, bassist Alex Blake, and KC Benjamin on alto sax. Benjamin had a menacing look in his eye and an amp at his feet. Settling into a booth not very from the sextet, I’ll admit I feared for my hearing. I was able to loosen my grip on the table when the group launched into Miles Davis’ “Seven Steps to Heaven,” for the sound didn’t send me flying to the back of the room after all. In fact, the sound had a surprisingly silky civility for a jazz club.
Best of the soloists were Benjamin, a promising firebrand, and Blake, an accomplished master of pairing scat vocals with his bass solos. Dr. Mambo, who hosts a monthly “World of Jazz” radio program under the more worldly name of Dwight Brewster, isn’t in quite the same improvisational league. He more than compensates with his arranging gifts, coaxing Davis’ “Seven Steps” and Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro Blue” into a fresh Afro-Caribbean groove. Dr. M also served up his original song, “Unity,” written for the Obama presidential campaign and sung in a style reminiscent of Dizzy Gillespie when he went calypso on his irresistible Jambo Caribe album.
The set, wrapping up with two more Dr. M originals, seemed to us about 20 minutes shorter than it should be. But the cover charge for each set, at $15, is about half the usual. We would have stayed for the 10 o’clock set if this weren’t our third show of the day. The music was as much to our liking as the menu. Ilana sends her shout-out for the coconut shrimp.
Simone Dinnerstein and Zuill Bailey (***1/4) — A half century ago, the legend of The Village Gate was born on Bleecker Street. Before it folded in 1995, jazz greats from John Coltrane to Carmen McRae, from Nina Simone to Horace Silver, and from Herbie Mann to Mongo Santamaria had all recorded live at the Gate on albums that still proudly bear its name. Flip Wilson, Bill Cosby, and Jerry Seinfeld developed their stand-up comedy chops on the same stage.
Now a younger generation has taken over, renamed the club Le Poisson Rouge, and they’re breaking new ground on hallowed ground. There’s still that Village disdain for fluff, but the Red Fish’s musical horizons have widened to embrace progressive rock and classical. Ilana and I dropped in on a fairly retro classical night, when pianist Simone Dinnerstein teamed up with Zuill Bailey in an evening of Beethoven cello sonatas, coinciding with the release of their new 2-CD set on Telarc.
Chamber music has a decidedly different feel when it’s performed in a nightclub amid the bustle of waiters and the clank of shot glasses and beer bottles. Formality peels away, and the musicians’ passions surge outwards into the audience in the flattering spotlights. And while classical is alien to clubs — and amplification is classical heresy — the sound crew at Le Poisson keep it real.
We would have happily listened to every note Beethoven wrote for this instrumental pairing if we had snagged a table, but we learned the hard way that classical music draws SRO crowds on Bleecker Street, and a Poisson Rouge reservation doesn’t guarantee you a seat. So the brevity of the concert — Dinnerstein and Bailey didn’t play all five of the sonatas and they didn’t play any of the other piano-cello nuggets on their album — was something of a godsend for us.
Standing is more the norm when they do pop and rock. Tables are whisked off the floor and all of the audience stands and raves. This week, the big name on the events list is jazz songbird Norah Jones. But you need to have reservations already to find out if there is any seating for that one. It’s a sellout, but classical hounds can still queue up for Gil Shaham, headlining next Tuesday.
All-Beethoven with Yevgeny Sudbin (***) — The brief pre-concert recital at Avery Fisher Hall was pure bliss, with Sudbin playing two Scarlatti piano sonatas, a Nikolai Medtner trinket, and a Rachmaninoff piece, “Spring Waters,” arranged by the soloist. When we reconvened for the all-Beethoven, moving from the seats we had chosen to those printed on our tickets, I found that I wasn’t nearly as thrilled with the view or the sound.
The Fisher, you see, is one of those shoeboxes that don’t place a design premium on keeping the audience as close as possible to the musicians. Depending on where you sit, sound quality is a crapshoot. Treble reached me clearly enough, but bass frequencies seemed to reverberate through a fog.
Osmo Vanska and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra were the best possible antidote for the ills of the hall. Size of the string section was a trim 27 players, and Vanska drew rich textures from the podium. Where Beethoven’s music is expected to flex its muscle in Symphony #8, the oomph just wasn’t there. Sudbin was unperturbed by his lightweight accompaniment and delivered beautifully on his end of the Concerto #4 dialogue. It probably did sound better up there on the stage.
Wagner in Paris at Bard Summerscape (**1/2) — Up in the Hudson Valley at Bard College, Bard Summerscape is in its seventh year of building a reputation as a multiarts festival presented with academic rigor. This year, the six-week festival included full productions of Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, Meyerbeer’s The Huguenots, and Mendelssohn’s St. Paul. Summerscape winds up with a miniature festival-within-a-festival — actually, the original Bard Music Festival, which marked its 20th season with “Wagner and His World.” The program that we had booked, a small-scale “Wagner in Paris” concert, came at the halfway point of the mini-fest, the sixth of 12 programs scheduled during Summerscape’s final two weeks.
At first, I thought that the bus carrying me and my fellow MCANA members up the river to Annandale-on-Hudson was chartered specially for the critics. No way. The bus departed from near Columbus Circle on Sunday, laden with a cargo of critics and non-freeloaders. Offered online, the package price for a round-trip plus concert ticket plus boxed dinner was a steal.
Or it would have been if the concert has been consistently professional. The program, a potpourri of compositions by Wagner and his contemporaries, was intriguing enough, including works by Chopin, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Liszt, Rossini, Bellini, and Cherubini. Most provocatively, perhaps, we heard music by Auber and Halévy arranged by Wagner for flute quartet during his years in Paris, 1839-41. Which is more surprising — that Wagner wrote flute quartets or that he took up the work of Halévy, composer of the enormously popular La Juive?
The best musicians onstage turned in exemplary performances. Versatile pianist Jeremy Denk, who has never failed to please in his Charlotte appearances, plumbed the essence of some exquisite Chopin and some diabolical Liszt. Flutist Randolph Bowman breathed singing soulfulness into both of the quartets, and soprano Erin Morley brilliantly sang two Wagner obscurities — written to French texts! — in an elaborately pleated black evening dress that drew nearly as much comment as her gorgeous voice. Acoustics at the ultramodern Sosnoff Theatre didn’t let anyone down.
But two other vocalists were jaw-droppingly unprepared. If you take up an operatic role in a recital, you need to own the words and the music so that they seem to spring spontaneously from your heart. In all my years of hearing vocalists giving chamber recitals — in Charlotte, at Spoleto, or at festivals in Europe and across America — I’ve never seen a soloist tethered to a music score unless it was a sudden emergency. Yet tenor Scott Williamson brought a book with him onstage to sing a lied by Meyerbeer, his only slot in the concert, and just to prove this wasn’t a mirage, soprano Amanda Meade strode forth after intermission and sang two arias out of a book.
One of these was from Rossini’s William Tell. Core repertoire!
The shabbiness of these performances — where even an attempt at dramatic impact was hard to detect — didn’t tarnish the work of Denk, Bowman, and Morley since they were off in the wings. But it tended to make the musicians who did share the spotlight with them appear less distinguished.
This article appears in Sep 22-29, 2009.
