Ahira's Hangar

Tonight I started listening to something new to me, a classical piece by Dave Brubeck (better known as a jazz artist) called The Gates of Justice, available at a decent price on Naxos.

This piece is very different from what I am used to hearing. It was written at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and is a tribute to oppressed peoples. It combines traditional Jewish music and readings with the words of Martin Luther King and with traditional African American music forms such as the spiritual. It is a cantata based on Jewish texts, but with a strong African American flavor. And it asks if modern man can break through the walls of the past and of opression and of prejudice to all become brothers. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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www.mlive.com/entertainment/aanews/inde ... xml&coll=2

Quote:
'Jackie O' gets point across Daugherty work transcends boundaries in variety of ways
Thursday, March 23, 2006
BY SUSAN ISAACS NISBETT
News Special Writer
If I had just a few words in which to explain the current University of Michigan School of Music Opera Theatre production of Michael Daugherty's opera "Jackie O,'' which opened a three-performance run Wednesday evening at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, those words would be "crossing borders.''

That the music, by U-M faculty member Daugherty, mixes genres is no surprise to anyone familiar with his work, nor is it a surprise to see him drawing on popular sources (and subject matter).

In "Jackie O,'' an exploration of the iconization of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that co-premiered at Houston Grand Opera and the Banff Centre in 1997, pop, rock, R&B, jazz and crooning meet and mate with quotes from "Traviata'' and eloquent "high art'' writing - like the affecting opening solo for cello that becomes Jackie's leitmotif. The writing is idiomatic, amusing and elegant - and it lets the voices hold sway, even as we enjoy the wonderful colors in the orchestration.

The libretto, by Wayne Koestenbaum, is likewise a mix, two intermissionless acts of fact and fiction, episodic but meandering rather than dramatic, that bring Jackie to the stage along with - and through the eyes of - fellow icons Andy Warhol, Liz Taylor, Grace Kelly and Maria Callas, plus husband No. 2, Aristotle Onassis. Scenic design (by Vince Mountain) and video design (by Kristin Fosdick) similarly cross between fiction (the theatrical set: a club in Act I's "Happening,'' and Onassis's yacht in Act II) and fact (video clips of JFK's funeral, images of Jackie in the motorcade, etc.).

Finally, and fundamentally, the opera itself is about crossing borders: To whom does an icon belong, and where does public end and private start? That we make paper figures of our idols comes across nicely in this production, guest directed by Nicolette Molnar and costumed by the U-M's Christianne Myers. In the opening scene, hipsters, stoners, go-go dancers and the leisure-suit crowd mix and mingle with Liz and Grace and Andy like mannequins from a perfectly outfitted Bloomingdale's window set up to recreate the '60s. And from start to finish, Molnar has her actor/singers keep their distance from one another, as if they were mannequins, all surface, no heart, each very much alone in a crowd.

The singing by all - but especially by leads Hannah Williams as Jackie, Jody Doktor as Maria Callas and Seth Mease Carico as Aristotle Onassis - is superb. So is the music-making by an orchestra of 17 directed by the U-M's Kenneth Kiesler. But only Carico and Doktor seem to truly inhabit their characters' skin, so that the production, especially given the opera's lack of dramatic drive and progression, feels rather static.

And for this audience member at least, some of the staging and ideas (tap-dancing paparazzi holding the stage for a five-minute entr'acte while we hear JFK's inaugural address) trample memories and events that are still emotionally fraught at a distance of more than 40 years.

"Jackie O'' will be performed again at 8 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and information, call 734-764-2538. The work is part of a festival that also brings to the stage two operas by jazz great James P. Johnson and the first opera ever sung in the Americas.




Just another example (in the subject of this opera) of how classical music is still alive, well, and adapting to our modern world. <i></i>

I've got to thank Fisty. I have been trying to hear some of my favorite classical works live in concert, and this is a year for Beethoven. I heard his Ninth Symphony in December, and two local orchestras were playing one of my favorites of his other symphonies, the Fifth (I also love the Seventh and the Sixth, and I hope to catch one or both of those next year).

Anyway, I couldn't make up my mind which program would be better, because I wasn't familiar with the other music either would be playing.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra (their concerts were in March):
Quote:
Program

Beethoven
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67

Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Haydn
Symphony No. 104 in D major, "London"


Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra (ther concert will be this Saturday):
Quote:
Three Poems by Walt Whitman
Fetler

Symphony No. 5
Beethoven

Rhapsody for Clarinet & Orchestra
Debussy

Clarinet Concertino
Weber


Anyway, I asked Fist which he thought I would like better, and he recommended the AASO concert.

But what is very cool is that someone from Ann Arbor tracked down one of the composers, Fetler. He was living in retirement down in Florida. When he found out that the orchestra was playing one of his pieces, he immediately booked a flight up here to attend. The AASO usually gives an hour long lecture to concert goers before the concert, and he will be there as a part if that, as well as being part of the audience that night. I thought that's pretty cool!

Quote:
8 p.m.
Season Finale : Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra.AASO music director Arie Lipsky conducts the orchestra in a concert that features former Israel Radio Orchestra principal clarinetist Eli Eban in performances of Debussy's Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra and von Weber's Clarinet Concertino. Also, Paul Fetler's Three Poems by Walt Whitman and Beethoven's Symphony no. 5. Preceded at 7 p.m. by a talk, free to ticketholders, by Lipsky and composer Fetler. Michigan Theater. Tickets $10-$39 in advance at the AASO office, 527 E. Liberty, suite 208. $25 dinner-and-concert package available for those ages 21-39. Half-price rush tickets for students with ID at the door only. 994-4801.
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Wow, that's excellent having the composer fly up like that! Could he be as good with the crowd as SRD was with us? lol Have a great time!! ____________
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>

It sounds like a cool piece of music, too. From an email about the concert that I recently got from the AASO:

Quote:
Three Poems by Walt Whitman

Paul Fetler

Born February 17, 1920; Philadelphia

Although born in the United States, Paul Fetler’s formative years were spent in Eastern Europe, especially in Latvia, where the influences of Russian culture were very strong. Fetler credits his mother for ensuring that his training in music was uninterrupted, despite his family’s continuing changes in residence. For his formal training, Fetler returned to the U.S. and enrolled at Northwestern University. He then attended Yale, where he studied with Quincy Porter and Paul Hindemith, after which time he moved back to Europe for advanced composition study with Boris Blacher in Berlin.

Fetler was then awarded a post at the University of Minnesota, where he served for many years as a professor of composition. His catalog features well over a hundred works, including several for orchestra. About his approach to music, Fetler notes his preference for "progressive lyricism," and remarks: "I’m not out to prove systems or theories. I’m out to reach people. My goal is the merger of listener and music. And when I need to, I am not afraid to write the most beautiful melody I can imagine."

Considered to be among the greatest of American poets, Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was a man of deep personal complexity and outgoing generosity. The first edition of his celebrated collection of poems titled Leaves of Grass was published in 1855. The event prompted Emerson to write directly to Whitman: "Your work is the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom yet contributed by an American." Most likely, Whitman would have approved the idea of musical settings to his verse, having once remarked: "But for opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass."

Fetler’s Three Poems by Walt Whitman was completed in 1976, in commemoration of America’s bicentennial year. The musical adaptations are set beautifully for narrator and full orchestra, investing in each movement generous time for the appropriate moods to transpire. Movements I and III are derived directly from Leaves of Grass. Movement II was inspired by Whitman’s poem Drum Taps, of 1865, written as a memoir of the poet’s volunteer work caring for wounded Civil War soldiers, including his own brother.

The nuance of the first movement conveys a nocturnal ambience. Following the poetry to its climactic peak, the music resolves in turn into a dark, still quiet. Then, at the first bars of Movement II, aggressive, chiseled rhythms and sharp-angled dynamics prepare for "Beat! Beat! Drums! – Blow! Bugles! Blow!" The words and music conclude with: "...so strong you thump, O terrible drums – so loud you bugles blow." The apocalypse of war is unmistakable.

Finally, the gentle opening of the third poem is at once hymnal in mode and altogether delicate in timbre, featuring an elegant solo violin quasi-cadenza after which is intoned "Ah, from a little child, thou knowest, soul, how to me all sounds become music...." The phrase is heard again in replication near the close, carried as if by a distant, enchanting music box – simulated on-stage by a toy piano.


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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Lately I have been edging into the music of Claude Bolling, a twentieh century jazz/classical cross over composer.

I've been listening to a Naxos recording a lot, called Suites for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio; it a cross over between Baroque classical music and jazz. It's a lot of fun and very, very cool. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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