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Easy Come, Easy Go

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Before I get to talking about Marianne Faithfull’s new album, a brief homage:

I LOVE Marianne Faithfull.  She was the first (and basically, only) famous person that I ever met.  I was but a wee lad and my father took me to her book signing at a Border’s in Rockville, MD (come to think of it, what was she doing at that store?)  OK, Wikipedia confirms that her memoir was published in ’94, which would mean I was 10 or 11 years old at the time I got to meet her.  I remember being totally shocked when she opened her mouth to speak and thinking that she must have been near death.  I also remember her smelling very strongly of cigarettes.

Ah how I have come to savor that death-rattled voice of hers!  My good friend El Bensòn likened it to a zombie (“Mick, get out of bed, I’m hungry for the brains of Keith Richards!!”)  I think it’s as expressive an instrument as you can get and it sounds so terribly lived-in.

In all honesty, I don’t know too much about Marianne’s early career.  I know she was an English light folk singer early in her career and then transitioned to rock/pop starting around the time of her liaison with Mick Jagger.  Then, she lived, and lived like no one else since.  She released a huge string of studio albums, got addicted to heroine and cocaine, and lived on the streets.

But, was she having fun?

Of course she was.  Also of note:

We find it interesting too, Marianne!

My real love and appreciation of Marianne comes from a little known crevice of her career: the music of Kurt Weill.  It seems that her mother was a ballerina and collaborated with Weill in Berlin during the ’30s and Marianne took up her late mother’s mantle.

This aspect of her career produced two of my ALL TIME FAVORITE ALBUMS: 20th Century Blues and The Seven Deadly Sins (both of which are inexplicably unavailable on the iTunes store).

Marianne’s rendition of Kurt Weill’s ballet chanté is, for me, one of the finest interpretations of any piece on record.  Dennis Russell Davies and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (an under-appreciated ensemble if ever there was one) support Marianne in every move, breathing full life and intensity into this symphonic score.  Just listen:

You like how precise those winds are?  How much energy in the strings?  And then how they can cool down to Marianne’s ironic delivery of “If you take offense at injustice…” ?  Fo sho.

The whole piece is just as good, and the bonus tracks on this album is where I stole my much celebrated rendition of “The Pirate Jenny” from (using Frank McGuiness’s incomparable translation of the Threepenny Opera).

Then, there’s 20th Century Blues, in which Marianne takes Weill as a point of departure and branches out into Noël Coward, Friedrich Holländer and others.  In so doing, she invites comparison with the great Dietrich, so let’s see what we’ve got:

Marlene:  https://www.willcwhite.com/audio/04%20Zorn%20%28Anger%29%20clip.mp3

Marianne: https://www.willcwhite.com/audio/04%20Zorn%20%28Anger%29%20clip.mp3

I’m not sure if you could find two more interesting renditions of any song to compare — they’re both so genuine, so perfect and yet so different.  I love how Marlene sings “they had a touch” pushing just a little towards the high note on “touch”, delivering it with the perfect staccato and without interrupting the phrase.  But when you hear Marianne sing, “you are in love with paaain,” you can’t help but believe it.

Interesting too is how these ladies differ in their placement of “slightly used”/”second hand”.  Marianne’s placement of the notes after the downbeat of each new phrase works better for me — it makes them sound “slightly used” — thrown away and forgotten about.

(Side note: I am convinced that these kinds of decisions about rhythmic placement are, in actuality, what jazz and pop musicians are referring to when they speak of “phrasing” — a very different notion than in the classical world.)

I guess I should actually mention the album that I set out to discuss at the top of this post.  “Easy Come, Easy Go” is something of a rarity (if not a downright oddity): a new studio album of “pop” songs with new instrumental arrangements.  Maybe I’m just not usually in the market for such things, but I really thought stuff like that didn’t still happen.  And the arrangements – how utterly bizarre.  They are the work of three gentlemen: Steve Weisberg, Steve Bernstein and Greg Cohen.  I believe they also have an active Bar Mitzvah band.

The array of instruments includes such oddities as the sarrusophone and the alto horn:

Each and every song seems to inhabit a totally different world (or sometimes multiple universes simultaneously).  I certainly applaud these artists’ versatility.  Of course, certain worlds seem to work better than others.  My favorite tracks include: “Down From Dover” (D. Parton), “Solitude” (D. Ellington), “The Crane Wife 3” (C. Meloy), “Children of Stone” (Espers), and “Dear God Please Help Me” (Morrissey).

Although, I do have some questions:

1) Why use Rufus Wainright of all people as a back-up singer?  In fact, his voice is almost so produced that it just becomes an instrument:

Wouldn’t it be nice to hear him take a verse every now and then?  I mean, he’s quite an artist in his own right, even if the Met won’t take his opera…

2) What exactly is going on with the middle of “Ooh Baby Baby”?  The mood starts out just right:

with those digitized keyboard arpeggios, it half sounds like Nico Muhly-does a porn score.  Or a VicLowenthal warmonization.

Then, beautiful harmonies between Marianne and Antony in the release:

And then, what the hell is this??

It kind of comes out of nowhere.  The more I listen to it, the more I kind of like it, but it comes as a jarring, rather than a desired surprise every time.  And Antony, all I can say is, we hardly knew you had it in ya’!

The last thing I’ll say about this album is that it actually allowed me to enjoy a Randy Newman song for the very first time in my life (“In Germany Before the War”).  Kudos to Mr. Cohen on that one.

A very strange album overall, and particularly as a follow-up to 2003’s “Before the Poison”, a much more straight ahead rock/pop album, with plenty of nuance.

Final thought: who but AbFab could come up with more perfect casting than this?

Puff piece

Steven Lemons writes a very interesting piece in the Phoenix New Times on the continuing imbroglio between Michael Christie and the Phoenix Symphony.  My goodness, what controversy!!  And check out those comments — Mr. Christie seems to inspire very passionate opinions both from his admirers and his detractors.  That probably means he’s doing something right.

Speaking of trade mags and puff pieces, what is this “Listen” Magazine that showed up in my mail today?  Did everybody else get this? (he asks his non-existent readership…)  I haven’t actually read it yet, but if I were to judge it by it’s cover (which I think you can do with a magazine) I’d say it’s total crap — just look at the quality of the print and the paper.

A further examination of the contents reveals that this is just another BBC Music or Grammaphone magazine — a bunch of puff pieces about the most famous classical musicians and some lame CD reviews, sprinkled liberally with ads for pianos and opera recordings.  And on top of that, there’s no CD.  BBC and Grammaphone include a CD glued to each edition of their magazines (which makes them even more overpriced than they otherwise would be).  The “Listen” website has a link called “Purchase Music”, which made me think, “well, maybe for a buck or two, you can download a compilation of the tracks referenced in this issue…”

Instead, you are directed to a search page on ArchivMusic.com that lists ALL OF THE CD’s referenced in this magazine.  No no no, this will not do.  Wait a second… flipping through the pages of the magazine, I notice that at least half of the ads are for ArchivMusic.  Well, I think we’ve adequately solved THAT mystery.

But while I’m on the subject, what’s with this Leonard Bernstein 90th anniversary stuff?  I mean, come on people, you couldn’t wait 10 years?  Don’t get me wrong, I think every day should be Lenny day!  But I don’t like the idea of milking every tiny postmortem milestone for every last drop you can squeeze out of the guy’s name.

I mean, just look at him.  He’s so beautiful.

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OK, and I’ll say it, though I probably shouldn’t: this does bother me a little.

It must be a slow news day in Cincinatti

The Paavo Järvi saga continues: Mr. Järvi has entered a plea of not guilty in an Ohio court.  But let’s go to the videotape and be the judges for ourselves: 

 Also, reader challenge: WHAT IS HE LISTENING TO?  You only get to hear it for like 4 seconds at the start of the video.

It gives me a certain satisfaction to see that there are no fewer than 8 pages of reader comments on this story at cincinatti.com (linked above), the only problem being that so many of the commentators have a real attitude problem, seeing Järvi as some elitist trying to skirt the law.  Why can’t fun little classical music scandals without it being some kind of social commentary?  Where’s our Amy Winehouse or Britney Spears?

Woe is me.

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How often do we get two (2) legitimate items of gossip from the world of classical music?

1) Paavo Järvi, of the Estonian dynasty, charged with DUI.

2) Rufus Wainwright’s opera REJECTED! (Actually, from the description, I’m really looking forward to it.)

West Side Story

(My apologies that MTT isn’t familiar with the tempo of this cha-cha)

So, the latest iteration of “West Side Story” finally opened on Broadway and is pulling in a cool million/week.  I saw this show in DC during out-of-town tryouts.  You can tell from the reactions that the critics see this as a way to define themselves.  As far as I’m concerned Terry Teachout hits the nail on the head.

One really must wonder what the point of Mr. Laurents’ alterations is.  Why the Spanish?  For realism?  Um, I kind of thought this was a musical we were talking about.  If you want realism, make a documentary — chances are you won’t see street gangs singing and dancing through the streets of Manhattan.

Perhpas we should leave the translating to the Takarazuka Revue:

I feel pretty

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Brand new head shots, courtesy of Rick Mitchell Photography.  Mr. Mitchell is a great guy and very easy to work with.  He found my approach very interesting — that is, he is used to working with actors, for whom a head shot really can make the difference between getting an audition and not.  I, on the other hand, only need these photos for publicity purposes, so they just have to look good.  Which they do.  See?

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Is that pronounced fug-you?

Sandow has been addressing this point, I think brilliantly, for close to a month now.

I think that there is a huge gap between the level of sophistication that professional musicians assume their audiences to possess and the actual level.  My thoughts on this have been hugely influenced by these talks that I give (ps. do you like how my name comes right after Esa-Pekka’s?  Yeah, that’s right.)

At my first talk this season for the Civic orchestra, I was really worried that the audience would find my talk not intellectual enough.  This is the kind of twisted anxiety that only a U of C education can impart.  I learned a lot about orchestra audiences that day simply by gauging their reactions.  My next talk was more focused on what I perceived to be of interest to these people.  At my most recent talk (yesterday), I was greeted with applause as soon as I stepped to the platform.  I told the audience that I was very surprised by this reaction.  Then one person shouted out, “It’s because we’ve heard you before!”

All this is not to toot my own horn (too much) but just to say that I think I’ve very quickly learned a lot about how to relate to an average orchestral audience.  Case in point: I shared a couple of drinks with a friend of mine in the Chicago Symphony after Saturday night’s concert and I mentioned that I was going to talk about Bartòk’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste”.  She asked what I was going to say.  I said that I would start out by explaining what a celesta was.  Then I would go on to explain what a fugue was.

She was incredulous that such means were necessary.  And, what do you know, right after my talk, one of my rapt listeners came up and said: “Thank you so much for your talk — I’ll tell you the truth, I never did know what a fugue was!”

There you have it.  At the risk of sounding overly self-satisfied, I would guess that the people who attended my lecture enjoyed the first movement of the Bartòk much more because of my description — that piece can be kind of a snoozer if you don’t know how to appreciate it.

More at another time about how composers deserve the full blame for ruining classical music and which ones are finally starting to take it back.  For now, a note of hope: there are other composers (besides me, that is) writing real music: David Harned Johnson.

Friday 3/13, “Abduction from the Seraglio”, Lyric Opera

This was a very good show, lovely set and costumes, beautiful singing, excellent staging (especially the first act.)  I’ve seen a number of three act operas lately, and it dawned on me that I would not have the faintest idea of how to go about structuring a 3 act theater piece.  I’m so totally steeped in the American musical theater tradition of two acts, I just don’t know what you need that third one for.

“Abduction” is a singspiel, and contains some really excellent tunes.  My only problem with it is that clearly Herr Mozart got a little tired of cute ditties and decided to flex his compositional muscles during the second act.  Wolfie dear, this is neither the time, nor the place.  The music is beautiful and all, but the lengthy duets and quartets really take away from the dramatic unfolding of the piece.

Another note on this performance: prior to the show, it was announced that Steven Davidslim had been suffering from a cold but would sing that night anyway, so the audience was asked to be forgiving.  Um, what?  I’m sorry, Mr. Davislim, it just doesn’t work that way.  Either you can sing or you can’t.

This reminds me so much of every musical theater/opera audition I have ever sat through.  Inevitably, people (particularly young people) will come in and mention that they have a cold.  Ugh, JUST GET ON WITH IT!  If you really have a cold, which you don’t, we’ll be able to hear through it.  Auditioners in this situation invariably begin responding to these warnings with: “Oh yes, it seems like there’s something going around”.  Let’s just cut the crap, shall we?

No matter.  The real star of the night was Matthew Polenzani, a beautiful lyric tenor that filled the entire hall with a rich, full sound.  Kudos as well to Aleksandra Kurzak and Andre Silvestrelli.