Briefly Noted: Bolcom's Complete Rags

William Bolcom, The Complete Rags, Marc-André Hamelin (released on June 3, 2022) Hyperion CDA68391/2 | 133'03"

Hard as it may be to believe, there was a time when America had largely forgotten about Scott Joplin and ragtime. In a liner note to this dazzling new recording, composer William Bolcom describes the origins of his obsession with the rag. It began in 1967, when he first heard of Joplin and his opera Treemonisha, and continued for much of his career, as he and some fellow travelers shared new ragtime discoveries and wrote their own compositions in the style. Most of the original rags in this collection date from the ragtime revival period of the late 1960s and early 1970s. When the soundtrack of the film The Sting swept the nation in 1974, Joplin's music became a rage again, so that by the time of my first piano lessons, Joplin and Joplin arrangements were common student repertory.

Marc-André Hamelin, himself a musical mimic not unlike Bolcom, gives these pieces a studied nonchalance. The two discs obviously include everything published in Bolcom's Complete Rags collection twenty years ago, with a couple of charming lagniappes. These include a few late arrivals, like Knockout 'A Rag', from 2008, in which the player raps on the piano's fallboard for a cool percussive self-accompaniment (an effect heard less extensively in the earlier Serpent's Kiss, with a bit of whistling, too), Estela 'Rag Latino' (2010), and what Bolcom thinks will be his last rag, the ultra-serene Contentment (2015). Another curiosity to discover is Brass Knuckles, a 1969 collaboration between Bolcom and another composer, William Albright, in imitation of the "collaborative rags" undertaken by Joplin and other rag composers.

The spirit of innovation runs through this music, as Bolcom merges the gestures of ragtime with other kinds of music, from more dissonant modernism to Latin genres as in the Tango-Rag. Bolcom also describes his 1969 meeting with the octogenarian Eubie Blake, the great stride master, a style Bolcom calls "urbanized ragtime." They became friends and performed together, a musical relationship that ran deep: "I consider him my last great teacher," Bolcom notes. As if to acknowledge that debt, the recording opens with Eubie's Luckey Day, a tribute to Blake's Charleston Rag.

On ClassicsToday: Jazzrausch Bigband Inspired by Beethoven

On Beethoven’s Beat: “Ludwig Van, House Remix”

Review by: Jens F. Laurson

Artistic Quality: ?

Sound Quality: ?

Before the year is out, 2020 will see Beethoven-themed everything, so it’s perhaps not so surprising to find non-classical acts having some fun at the master from Bonn’s expense: Jazzrausch Bigband, for example, which has released “Beethoven’s Breakdown” on the fine jazz label ACT, which itself has a track record of excellent classically inspired jazz. (Dieter Ilg’s Parsifal or Otello suites come to mind). It’s an album full of surprises, starting with the name: Whatever you might be expecting “Big Band Beethoven” to mean, that’s decidedly not what you are getting here... [continue reading]

Blusey Tuesday: Charu Suri

Just a bit outside of our swim-lane, but why not post this, in anticipation of Indian American jazz pianist Charu Suri's Carnegie Hall debut. (December 20, Weill Recital Hall) Her brand of jazz, judging by a few other clips on her YouTube page, crosses over (in the best sense) to her Indian roots, too, which adds nice little flavor of fenugreek to the proceedings.

Dip Your Ears, No. 218 (Third Stream Beauties from David Baker)

David Baker, “Singers of Songs” Music with Cello Manuel Fischer-Dieskau (cello) M|DG

Bell-tinkling and vibraphone-hints for Miles Davis, cello cantilenas, calypso-moments for Sonny Rollins, an air of spirituals suggesting Paul Robeson, quasi orchestral harmony for Duke Ellington and bebopping percussion beneath a vocalizing cello: And that’s just the opening, “Singers of Songs” on David Baker’s disc with music for cello and variously percussion, piano, or jazz trio. Gunther Schuller defined the term “Third Stream”, under which David Baker’s eclectic, but essentially romantic compositions fall. To summarize Schuller: “Contemporary classical ethno-fusion”… which applies fully to “Singers”. The Cello Sonata is more on the classical side of this stream, the terrific Trio on the jazz side. Written for János Starker (and with his input), they are performed by Starker-student Dieskau jr.

Follow @ClassicalCritic

For Your Consideration: À bout de souffle

Jean-Luc Godards's first full-length feature, À bout de souffle, was released as Breathless in the U.S. in 1961. Hitting the theaters a year after François Truffaut's Les 400 Coups and Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour, it helped launch the French film movement known as La Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol created the screen treatment, loosely basing the story on a newspaper article that Truffaut read about a man named Michel Portail and his American girlfriend Beverly Lynette. In 1952 Portail had stolen a car in order to be able to visit his ailing mother in Le Havre, killing a motorcycle policeman who tried to stop him. When the film did not work out for Truffaut and Chabrol, they gave it to Godard.

Godard changed the story significantly, reportedly writing the script scene by scene and then feeding the lines to the actors only shortly before each scene was shot, often prompting them as they shot. Seeking the gritty look of a documentary, Godard asked cinematographer Raoul Coutard to shoot the entire film on a hand-held camera, with next to no lighting. Working on a shoestring budget that made a camera dolly far too expensive, Godard pushed Coutard around in a wheelchair in the tracking shots.

The noisiness of the camera and the sound of Godard's prompting meant that most of the of the dialogue had to be dubbed in post-production, something that non-French speakers often miss because they are reading the subtitles. The interview scene at Orly Airport, featuring Jean Parvulesco (a journalist who had written articles on the Nouvelle Vague early on, played by Jean-Pierre Melville), shows exactly the sort of camera used in the film. Supposedly in response to a demand to shorten the film, Godard cut out many small sections of scenes, leading to an effect known as the jump cut.

The crew filmed entirely on location, instead of in studios as was the practice at the time, mostly on the streets of Paris in August and September 1959. People walking by the characters in crowd scenes are often seen looking back at them, curious about what's going on. Footage of presidential motorcades going down the Boulevard des Champs-Élysées is from the actual visit of President Eisenhower to Paris, where he met with General De Gaulle and spoke to the NATO council that September, a happy coincidence.

Godard shot most of the scenes in chronological order, except for the opening sequence, where Michel steals a car in Marseille and drives along R.N. 7 to Paris, which was shot last. The interior scenes were shot in rooms at the Hôtel de Suède, on the Quai St-Michel in the 5th. One can only assume that he arranged with business owners to have messages about the impending arrest of Michel Poiccard flashing on the news tickers as he shot along the Boulevard Saint-Germain. The magical moment, when Michel is standing by the car and the lights come on in the dusk of the Boulevard des Champs-Élysées, must have been carefully timed.

The Orly interview scene is only one of several meta-references in the film. Jean Seberg, an American actress who had lived in France part of her life, got her start in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan a few years before Breathless, when she was not yet 18. It was a flop, but Preminger still cast her in Bonjour, Tristesse, and Godard gave her an even bigger lift with the role of Patricia Franchini in Breathless. When Patricia ducks into a theater, trying to lose a detective tailing her, the movie playing is Otto Preminger's Whirlpool , released in 1950, a film noir about a woman, married to a famous psychoanalyst, who is arrested for shoplifting.

Patricia ditches the detective, and then Michel and Patricia go to another theater to see Westbound together, a Western with Randolph Scott and Virginia Mayo. At one point a young girl tries to get Michel to buy a copy of Cahiers du cinéma, the publication that both Truffaut and Godard started out writing reviews for. La Nouvelle Vague, as one critic put it, is cinema made by cinephiles. Godard even gives himself a significant cameo, as the nosy, pipe-smoking man who recognizes Michel's picture in France Soir and snitches on him to the cops nearby.

Another unseen but iconic aspect to the movie is the jazzy soundtrack by jazz pianist Martial Solal. He was a French citizen born in Algeria, the son of an opera singer and a piano teacher, and it was his only collaboration with Godard. He must be the one we hear furiously practicing tedious Hanon exercises on the piano at one point, something he must have heard a lot at home. Solal got his start playing the piano for American GIs in Morocco during WWII, and he wrote several film scores, this one being the most famous. You can get a feel for his style of improvisation from the clip embedded below, a take on Bronisław Kaper's song On Green Dolphin Street, made famous in a version by Miles Davis.

Mark Morris brings light and warmth to GMU

Dancing Honeymoon, Mark Morris Dance Company (photo by Christopher Duggan)
The annual visits of Mark Morris Dance Group to the area are always welcome. The group's latest appearance at the George Mason University Center for the Arts, however, was a much-needed shot in the arm after what has been a long, long winter. The selection of four choreographies, two a decade or more in age and two premiered just last year, offered a ray of sunlight, with none of the somber qualities of some previous programs.

Late Romantic ballet was one of the great fusions of all the arts, akin to Richard Wagner's music drama. In his long career Mark Morris has stripped away almost all of that trend toward unification of the arts, using no sets, few props, and in most cases no easily recognizable narrative, at least not in the traditional sense. A Morris choreography is abstract, concentrated on movement, music (always performed, as here, by live musicians), and mood conveyed through lighting and color.

The evening opened with A Forest, premiered last May. Costumed in unisex body suits of gray and white paisley (designed by Maile Okamura), the dancers incarnated the whimsical musical gestures from Haydn's piano trio no. 44 (Hob. XV:28), performed by violinist Georgy Valtchev, cellist Michael Haas, and pianist Colin Fowler. The theme of threes -- three instruments in three movements -- is the somewhat obvious main focus, as the nine dancers are grouped into a trio of trios. Most of the movements were playful: bending knees on strong downbeats, flashing the hands upward on pizzicato notes, standing still in extended poses at sudden silences. In the enigmatic second movement, the piano's meandering bass line inspired much striding around the stage, and loud bass notes knocked dancers down to the floor. It created a joyous atmosphere of bubbly exuberance but seemed to miss a more profound statement.

The other new work, Pure Dance Items, premiered last October, was the most active and exhausting. Selections from Terry Riley's two-hour marathon string quartet Salome Dances for Peace added up to about a half-hour of near-constant movement for a group of twelve dancers, often unbalanced by the exclusion of one dancer. This began in the striking opening sequence, where one dancer is seated apart from the rest of the group, eventually joining them in all of their movements, but only with his arms, as if his legs are paralyzed. In a thrilling moment of fantasy, this dancer stood and joined the ensemble for the rest of the dance, jostling the group's order. Colorful sports jerseys and shorts for both men and women (designed by Elizabeth Kurtzman) evoked an athletic joy in movement and physical exertion, recalling soccer players or, as Miss Ionarts saw it, 60s-style surfers.



Pure Dance Items, Mark Morris Dance Company (photo by Costas)
The solo dance Serenade, premiered in 2003 here at the GMU Center for the Arts, provided a moment of calm. Lesley Garrison, costumed in an Isaac Mizrahi black and white skirt with white bow, seemed at times to mimic traits of Spanish, Indian, or Japanese dance, using props (a copper pipe, a fan, and finger cymbals) in the middle dances. Morris made this choreography for himself, making the decision to add the sound of castanets to the final movement of the piece, Lou Harrison's hypnotic Serenade for Guitar and Percussion. He was unable to ask the permission of the composer, who had died as Morris was rehearsing the new dance. Garrison may have taken over the dance now, but in a surprise move Morris joined the musicians (guitarist Robert Belinić and percussionist Stefan Schatz) on stage to play his castanet part.

Morris's participation set up the final piece, Dancing Honeymoon, for which the choreographer himself sang Ethan Iverson's transcription and arrangement of jazz standards sung by Gertrude Lawrence and Jack Buchanan. A group of seven dancers, in sun-yellow costumes evoking the 1920s and 30s (designed by Elizabeth Kurtzman), mimed the mild innuendos of the songs in tableaux that might seem escapist in the style of La La Land (a "kitschfest," as Alex Ross put it) but whose innocence and elan won me over. The piece, premiered in 1998, is Morris's love letter to dance, heard in the opening words of the title song: "I hated dancing / 'til I met you: / It never found me / until I found your arms around me." Morris's singing was perhaps not great, but that was hardly the point; when he brought out the castanets again, for the song "Goodnight, Vienna," Morris seemed at one with the music, even if he was no longer dancing.

This program repeats tonight at 8 p.m. at George Mason University's Center for the Arts in Fairfax, Va.

On Washington Classical Review: NSO Gala

Charles T. Downey, NSO gala raises $1 million and fetes opening of African-American Museum
Washington Classical Review, September 26

Jeremy Denk and the Rag

Ligeti, Piano Études, J. Denk (2012) Ives, Piano Sonatas, J. Denk (2010)

Jeremy Denk is a thinking person's pianist, at his best putting together quirky playlists or drawing out bizarre sides of pieces you thought you knew. He is a musician of equal parts wit and enthusiasm, and this is probably why reading his thoughts about music is just as good as hearing him play it, if not better. In his last few appearances in the area, solo recitals in 2012 and 2013 and with the National Symphony Orchestra, he has disappointed a bit in the hearing. I suspect that for listeners who focus, even unintentionally, on his manner at the keyboard -- his gyrations and especially his tendency to turn towards the audience so that his face communicates an expression mid-phrase -- the humor and analysis of the music come through visually. Having spent most of his latest recital, presented by Washington Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater on Sunday afternoon, looking at the floor instead of at him, I received only the sounds he made, including the loud slams of his percussive left foot.

The results were least pleasing in the opening Bach, my favorite of the English Suites (G minor, BWV 808), where Denk emphasized speed over detail in the fast prelude, courante, and gigue, so that trills were often smudged and runs elided. Abundant use of the sustaining pedal obscured the allemande and sarabande, both quite unctuous, while the gavottes had a music-boxy fairy dust quality, sometimes so light in the keys that tone barely registered. Although Denk did not make the connection in his brief remarks mid-recital, all but the prelude in the suite are dance pieces, making what could have been a natural segue to the "iPod shuffle" set examining the influence of American ragtime that concluded the second half. (I had to miss Denk's jazz-classical "playoff" with Jason Moran on Friday night, because of a medical emergency: thanks to Robert Battey for pinch-hitting for me at the last minute for the Washington Post.)

Curiously, Denk took the same over-delicate approach to Scott Joplin's Sunflower Slow Drag, co-written with Scott Hayden, echoed in the later work that was the closest to it, William Bolcom's Graceful Ghost Rag, played even more sotto voce. This was not at all the sound of the rag imitated by Stravinsky in his Piano Rag Music, a jagged jangle of clashes and metric complexity, nor the "Ragtime" movement in Hindemith's 1922 Suite, which was on the vicious side. Both pieces date from before their composers immigrated to the United States, and both came to a more nuanced understanding of jazz after living here. William Byrd's ninth pavan (The Passinge Mesures), from My Ladye Nevelles Booke, and Conlon Nancarrow's first Canon for Ursula had only a tangential relationship to ragtime music, in that they had different kinds of rhythmic complexity. Denk likewise seemed to include Constant Donald Lambert's stride piano send-up of the Pilgrim's Chorus from Wagner's Tannhäuser mostly for laughs.

Other Reviews: Simon Chin, Denk shows range in ‘iPod shuffle’ (Washington Post, October 13) Robert Battey, Two musicians in their prime, sharing music from their genres (Washington Post, October 10)

With Haydn's C Major Fantasia (Hob. XVII:4), Denk was back to his fast and furious Bach mode, with many of the details glossed over at an ultra-fast tempo. (It is marked Presto, to be fair.) This piece comes to a complete stop on a low octave a couple of times, with a fermata meant to be held for a long time followed by a move up a half-step, and Denk played with those moments quite gleefully. The frenetic and excessive side of Denk's musical personality was suited to the final work, Schumann's Carnaval, with its mood changes from madcap to distracted to delicate and back again. One had the sense of a somewhat unbalanced person flitting manically from one thought to another, which is at least part of what Schumann wanted to get across.

The only disappointment was that Denk did not play something for the "Sphinxes" movement. It is not really a movement, just the work's three letter-based themes (referring to Schumann and the birthplace of his one-time fiancée, Ernestine von Fricken) written in long notes, but I had hoped that Denk might do something unexpected with them. Instead, as with so many performances, the puzzles of the sphinx were left unposed, probably what Schumann intended, but not what one expects from someone like Denk.

Washington Performing Arts's Hayes Piano Series continues this Saturday, with a recital by pianist Herbert Schuch (October 17, 2 pm).

'Blue Viola'

Charles T. Downey, UrbanArias’s ‘Blue Viola’ makes for a somewhat intriguing night at the opera
Washington Post, March 23

Opera companies need to sponsor new works if the genre is to have a future. UrbanArias, a small but feisty company based at the embattled Artisphere in Rosslyn, has helped fill that niche by mounting a few new or recent operas each season since 2010. Its latest offering, “Blue Viola,” by music theater composer Peter Hilliard, makes for a moderately interesting evening at the theater. Less certain is whether audience members looking for opera, and all that word entails, would find what they seek in it.

The clever libretto by Matt Boresi adapts the true story of an 18th-century viola left on a sidewalk by the principal violist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra... [Continue reading]

Peter Hilliard and Matt Boresi, Blue Viola
UrbanArias
Artisphere (Rosslyn, Va.)

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, UrbanArias performs ‘Before Breakfast,’ ‘The Filthy Habit’ (Washington Post, April 16, 2012)

Vernon Miles, Death Knell for Arlington's Artisphere? (Arlington Connection, March 12, 2015)

Matt O'Connor, Guilty Plea In Tangled Case Of Hit Man, Stolen Viola (Chicago Tribune, September 1, 1999)

Phat X. Chiem, Prized Viola Recovered, But Mystery Lingers (Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1998)

«Stained Glass», Concertino for Joshua Redman, Aaron Goldberg, and the WKO

 

 Gerd Hermann Ortler, «Stained Glass»

Concertino for Joshua Redman, Aaron Goldberg, and the Wiener KammerOrchester (2014)

(World Premiere Performance, commissioned by the Wiener Konzerthaus)

Performed on Tuesday, March 11th, 2014 at the Grosser Saal of the Wiener Konzerthaus ¶

Briefly Noted: Michel Legrand and Natalie Dessay

Entre elle et lui, N. Dessay, M. Legrand, et al. (released on October 29, 2013) Erato 934148 2 | 65'32"

Crossover is normally off limits here at Ionarts, but my francophilia gets the better of me with this new release. So this recommendation applies only to readers who share my weaknesses -- for jazz, for the film scores of Michel Legrand (especially in the films of Jacques Demy), for French song, and for Natalie Dessay. Legrand, one of my favorite film composers, made a very rare visit to the Washington area in 2009, which through a calendar mishap, I managed to miss having the chance to review. This new disc gives me hope that I may get another chance to hear Legrand live, if there is a related U.S. tour. Dessay sings all Legrand songs in this selection, with the composer at the piano, joined at times by bass, drums, and harp, with vocal turns by soprano Patricia Petibon, baritone Laurent Naouri. Legrand himself sings in two of the more moving performances.

Legrand's voice and hands at the piano sound just fine, for someone who is now in his 80s, and Dessay is not quite up to snuff in only a few cases. (It takes a while to realize that Dessay is singing in English in the song from Yentl, for example. If you are looking for translations of the French songs and one Russian song, you are out of luck, by the way.) Legrand turns a lot to the same formulas: there are moments in Les moulins de mon coeur, made for the film The Thomas Crown Affair, that sound an awful lot like sections of the score for Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, for example. Legrand's credentials are strong on both sides of the jazz-classical divide: he studied with Nadia Boulanger but was also formed by jazz he heard in Paris. Where he excels are the songs that sound best on this album, the slow ballads in minor keys that are infused with ineffable Gallic sadness (La valse des lilas, Les moulins de mon coeur, the song of Guy and Geneviève from Parapluies de Cherbourg, The Summer Knows, Mon dernier concert). A guilty pleasure.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra -- Whither WPAS?

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

The Neale Perl era at Washington Performing Arts Society is coming to an end, and the organization has just announced its new leader, Jenny Bilfield, who will take over as President and CEO of WPAS in April. The official announcement was made last night, before WPAS's presentation of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. What will it mean for WPAS's schedule to have Bilfield -- whose previous work at Stanford emphasized more cross-cultural programming than purely classical music -- at the helm?

No one really knows yet. Anne Midgette has some thoughts on the appointment -- although, as she is quick to make clear, she and Bilfield are friends -- and she thinks it is a good sign that WPAS is "shaking off the 'stodginess' label with a vengeance." We can perhaps guess what that means in concrete terms for WPAS: less Takács Quartet and more Kronos Quartet, less Royal Concertgebouw and more eighth blackbird, less Angela Hewitt and more Esperanza Spalding. The programming at Stanford Lively Arts is indeed quite like what Susie Farr, formerly programming director at the University of California at Berkeley's Cal Performances, has brought to the Clarice Smith Center in recent years -- a position from which Farr will be retiring at the end of this season. There is nothing wrong with broader programming, and WPAS could benefit from a slight shaking up of its "big name" programming -- how many times hearing Joshua Bell or Yo-Yo Ma is too many? -- but we would hate to see the otherwise laudable goal of broader programming come with the sacrifice of not hearing the marquee musicians that only WPAS has tended to sponsor here in Washington.

After all, WPAS already hosts a number of jazz and popular music events, and like this concert they are often beautiful and high-profile performances. With the programming narrated by Wynton Marsalis, from his place in the back row with the other trumpets, this concert began with a first half in tribute to a great Washingtonian, Duke Ellington. Wailing reeds and the chatter of dirty trumpets marked The Mooche, with a howling solo by trombonist Chris Crenshaw, followed by some late Ellington in Chinoiserie. The only really familiar tune in the set was Mood Indigo, with a cool trio of clarinet, trumpet, and trombone out in front, paired with a rarity in Braggin' in Brass, with a rapid-fire solo from Marsalis. The tribute concluded with the substantial Toot Suite, which showed off the big orchestration that was the hallmark of the Ellington Orchestra. Listening to this set silenced the expected objections that Marsalis is a sort of museum curator, ignoring the newest developments in jazz -- that may be true, but what he aims to preserve is so good and so important. I, for one, do not care if the ensemble is on the conservative side -- even the Vienna Philharmonic has some women players now, one might observe -- because to listen to Ellington's music revived this way was such a thrill.

Other Articles: Max Radwin, Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to return to Hill for anniversary tour (The Michigan Daily, January 30) Alison Samuels, Wynton Marsalis Celebrates 25 Years of Jazz at Lincoln Center (The Daily Beast, January 25)

The second half was bound to disappoint by comparison, but pieces by John Lewis, Gerry Mulligan, and some members of the orchestra brought in other facets of the history of jazz. Mulligan's Over the Hill and Out of the Woods, with its parts for flutes, was a happy-go-lucky multi-metric frolic, while Sherman Irby's Insatiable Hunger was a raucous tribute to Dante's Inferno. The closing Kenny Dorham tune (Stage West?) featured Irby's alto saxophone in a crazy solo and brought the house down. A long ovation prevailed in coaxing an encore from a small group -- just Marsalis and his rhythm section, joined later by Irby -- in Billy Strayhorn's iconic Take the 'A' Train.

With the important goal of keeping this music alive for future generations, Jazz at Lincoln Center is starting a Summer Music Institute for young jazz musicians this summer, on the beautiful campus of Santa Barbara City College. Pass the word along to the young musicians in your life.

Briefly Noted: Le Bœuf sur le Toit

Le Bœuf sur le Toit: Swinging Paris, A. Tharaud (et al.) (released on October 22, 2012) Virgin 5099960255228 | 67'

We mentioned Alexander Tharaud’s new CD, Le Bœuf sur le Toit: Swinging Paris, when he was giving a dramatic series of concerts across France featuring its music. Incredibly, this was shortly before he came to Washington on a brief recital tour: we hope that the French Embassy will be able to feature this cabaret program here at some point in the future. I say Tharaud’s new CD, but as with his Satie disc a couple of years ago, this is really a collaborative effort. Working with a score of other musicians, the French pianist’s goal was to recreate the atmosphere of the most famous French cabaret of the années folles, the period we call the Roaring 20s in English. At 28, rue Boissy d’Anglas, near the Church of La Madeleine, entrepreneur Louis Moysès gave it the name of Darius Milhaud and Jean Cocteau’s pantomime-ballet in 1921, and until it was closed by the authorities in 1927 the club pulsed with the heartbeat of creative Paris.

This reconstruction is speculative, given that no record of any precise program at the Bœuf survives, but an authoritative program note by Martin Pénet lays out the history of the club, the musicians who performed there, and what sort of music they left behind. The selection of music is centered on the composer and arranger Jean Wiéner, the cabaret’s pianist and de facto music director, as well as his partnership, in a two-piano duo act, with Belgian pianist Clément Doucet. Both musicians specialized in arrangements that bridged the gap between popular music of the time, the American jazz that took Paris by storm, and the European classical tradition. Frank Braley joins Tharaud for four of the duo's arrangements, and the solo arrangements played by Tharaud include versions of Gershwin and other jazz tunes (including a delicious version of Cole Porter's Let's Do It with Madeleine Peyroux, the American singer based in Paris), French-inflected original jazz pieces by Wiéner (with Natalie Dessay imitating bluesy, wah-wah trumpet in one selection), and a truly odd arrangement of W. C. Handy's Saint Louis Blues for harpsichord. As Wiéner did for his cabaret performances, Tharaud mixes in some jazz-inflected classical pieces by Milhaud and Ravel, as well as some of Wiéner and Doucet's jazzy renditions of Chopin and Wagner. The result is suave, pleasurable listening from end to end -- a natural Christmas gift.

Double Bill from UrbanArias

Charles T. Downey, UrbanArias performs ‘Before Breakfast,’ ‘The Filthy Habit’
Washington Post, April 17, 2012

T. Pasatieri, Before Breakfast, L. Flanigan, Voices of Change Chamber Orchestra

UrbanArias is a small opera company that presents an annual mini-festival of mostly new chamber operas in a black-box theater at Rosslyn’s Artisphere. The hope is that such a company can reinvigorate the moribund world of opera, because it champions work that other companies cannot or will not. A listener looking for opera in all of its irrational extravagance, the art form in which music and stage grandeur deliver the largest emotional punch of them all, might be disappointed by the experience.

The company’s second production this year is a double bill of one-act pieces, heard Sunday night. Thomas Pasatieri’s chamber operas are certainly no innovation, as they have obvious appeal to many small-budget companies. The libretto of Pasatieri’s “Before Breakfast,” a verismo melodrama by Frank Corsaro based on a Eugene O’Neill play, follows the early-morning rant of a woman caught in a tragic marriage going nowhere. Conceived originally for Beverly Sills and revised in 2006 for Lauren Flanigan, the single role calls for a soprano with some dramatic power and high-flying range, qualities that this production’s Charlotte, Caroline Worra, had in spades. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, 'Positions 1956' (Washington Post, April 16) -- the other production in the UrbanArias festival (performances continue through April 22)

Soprano Caroline Worra was heard in Stephen Hartke's excellent opera The Greater Good

Stephen Brookes, UrbanArias stages opera for modern sensibilities (Washington Post, April 6)

Thomas Pasatieri's Padrevia was produced at the Fringe Festival a couple years ago

Sonny Rollins at the Kennedy Center

Saxophone Colossus, S. Rollins, T. Flanagan, D. Watkins, M. Roach Tenor Madness, S. Rollins, R. Garland, P. Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, J. Coltrane A Night at the Village Vanguard, S. Rollins, W. Ware, E. Jones The Bridge, S. Rollins, J. Hall, B. Cranshaw, B. Riley

Sonny Rollins is one of the last surviving jazz legends, a status made official when President Obama gave him the National Medal of Arts this spring at the White House -- and about to be reinforced this December when the American saxophonist receives the Kennedy Center Honors. He has been coming to the Kennedy Center Concert Hall with some regularity in the last few years, sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society, and he had his latest such appearance on Monday night, still a force in his 80s. (You can watch him speak about his ongoing career with Tavis Smiley on PBS.) Rollins had some difficulty walking around the stage, and the bulk of the solos in the 70-minute set went to the talented members of his band, especially Peter Bernstein on electric guitar and Kobie Watkins on drums, with some highlights from bassist Bob Cranshaw (who has been playing with Rollins for most of his career) and Sammy Figueroa on congas.

Some clunky rhythms aside, Rollins still has a broad, buzzing tone and a laid-back improvisational style that mixes silence with pert motifs. Gunther Schuller once wrote about the way Rollins improvised, saying that his most important innovation was a more studied thematic and structural unity. Rollins is still doing this, developing the motifs of a tune as the bones of his improvisation, as he did with the main motivic cell of Patanjali, for example, the perky staccato pattern popping up again and again. The tone ranged from ultra-smooth, in the third number, the smoky ballad Once in a While, rendered with torch-song vitality as Rollins serenaded listeners in the front row, to human voice-like guttural growls, in the opening number, New Song (an "unnamed" new piece).

Through his many stylistic shifts over the years, Rollins has returned again and again to his Caribbean heritage: although he grew up in New York, his parents were from the U.S. Virgin Islands. Calypso-style rhythms, with Figueroa's congas in the spotlight, permeated the opening number, returning later in the set in the sixth number, Nice Lady, featuring a minimalistic improvisation by Rollins with lots of filler by drums and congas. Rollins had a dynamic back-and-forth with Watkins in the fourth number, Serenade, a triple-meter lark, followed by Watkins taking his most extended solo.

Rollins said very little during the concert, not announcing anything on the playlist and limiting his comments to just two points in the evening, but what he did say was memorable. He introduced his fellow musicians, saying several times, to the delight of the audience, that "these musicians are not dope addicts," and Rollins's own trials with drug use, from which he recovered, hovered in the background of those comments. He also spoke, quite movingly, about how he travels everywhere in the world, and no matter where he goes people love jazz, that the music represents the United States abroad -- and it does so very well indeed. Of a planned trip to play in Turkey, he said that some people were surprised that Muslims would like jazz, but he joked that Muslims who were listening to him play jazz were also not going to attack Americans. Those hoping to hear some of the Rollins greatest hits had to content themselves with Tenor Madness -- one of my favorites, embedded below in the famous recording with John Coltrane -- and the final number, Don't Stop the Carnival. Before he opened that last piece, Rollins assured the crowd of his love for them, adding "I'll see you again, sometime, somewhere, so don't worry about that." We plan to hold him to his word.

SEE ALSO:
Mark Jenkins, In concert: Sonny Rollins at the Kennedy Center (Washington Post, October 11)

Chris Barton, Jazz review: Sonny Rollins at Royce Hall (Los Angeles Times, September 23)


Tenor Madness, S. Rollins, J. Coltrane

Dip Your Ears, No. 109 (Nordic Jazz)

Johannesson&Schultz, P.Johannesson, M.Schultz et al. Prophone 109 (available from Amazon.co.uk)

What's New, Lars Jansson Prophone 109 (available from Amazon.co.uk)

Record reviewing is an unthankful business and difficult enough even if you know your way around the repertoire very well. Reviewing music that you merely like, but are not an expert in, is even worse… you feel lost at sea – and even if you don’t, the know-it-alls (who, frustratingly, really do tend to know better), are just around the internet-corner, ready to snap at your heels. Ironically, the sole gratifying aspect about CD reviewing is doing it as a way to make yourself listen to music that you are not familiar with, because it broadens the mind and bears many a happy surprise.

That is why I consented to have two Jazz CDs sent to me by an on-line magazine's editor, even though I am merely a jazz listener, not an expert. To judge my response, it might be helpful where I come from when it comes to jazz – and how to respond to it. My Jazz tastes are fairly universal and within that wide swath solidly ordinary. I came to Jazz via Keith Jarrett. That was quickly expanded Jacques Loussier and then to the classics (Miles, Coltrane, Gillespie, Peterson, Brubeck, Evans, Parker et al.). Eventually I added Acid Jazz. I pretended to dislike Wynton Marsalis until I had a feisty back and forth with him; now I appreciate his intense professionalism. Occasionally I get to attend a Jazz Festival – the Jazz Festival Alto Adige, most recently, where my ears where opened to the sounds of trumpeter-composer Matthias Schriefl. In Washington DC, I’ve always had a particular hankering for contemporary Scandinavian jazz at the Blues Alley and beyond. Part of my menial post-college labor included serving drinks in a seedy, rinky-dink Jazz Club in Georgetown. I don’t mind quality crooners (Diana Krall for the most part, Jamie Cullum not really), and I will listen to pretty much anything that appears on the ECM label. I would like to think that "Ascension" is John Coltrane's masterpiece, but I don't really get it.

These likes are reflected in the two CDs I picked: Going solely by name, I went for Lars Jansson’s “What’s New” and the self-titled “Johannesson & Schultz”, both on the (unknown, to me) Prophone label. Both sounded promisingly Scandinavian (they’re Swedish), and they would going to be my soundtrack for a few relaxing, fully wholesome evenings in Oslo. It’s not the most sophisticated way to chose your jazz, admittedly, but in this case I hit the bull’s eye, twice.

Peter Johannesson (drums) and Max Schultz (guitar) form a quartet with Bobo Stensson (piano) and Martin Sjöstedt (double bass). The Herbie Hancock influenced musicians composed thirteen songs for this disc (a 14^th covers the Coltrane’s “Impressions”), eight of which are by Schultz, four by Johannesson, and one by Sjöstedt. The results are on the mellow side of the jazz divide, varying along and within a reasonable (meaning: never gratuitous), very organic bandwith of excitability… from the placid “Footloose” to the driven “The Force”. In “Too Simple”, Schultz’s e-guitar sound and the hummable, memorably melodic tune he finds, could be straight out of John Scofield. “Big McKee”, along similar lines, wouldn’t be out of place in a Mike Stern recording. This guitar sound doesn’t dominate every track, but it’s the most—literally—outstanding quality. Unfussy listenability, over and over and over again, is the gratifying musical result.

Lars Jansson’s sound on his disc of standards reminded me straight away of the Tord Gustavsen Trio, if with some of the Norwegian group’s distinct flavor traded in for a touch of hotel bar sentimentality… that presumably being in the nature of a disc just with standards. (As someone with a distinct distaste for most trashy hotel bar muzak, I should add that in this case it is meant in no pejorative way at all.) The trio for “What’s New” consists of Jansson on piano, his son Paul Svanberg on drums, and Thomas Fonnesbæk on bass; they work their way through “Love Man”, “The Masquerade is Over”, the crooning-laconic “Hilda Smiles”, and seven further tracks with a Be and a Bop, a spring in their step, and Keith-Jarrettish humming over the harmonies.

My concluding response to a live gig of the Tord Gustavsen Trio five years ago is just as appropriate as the final remark for these two discs: “This is [a broadly popular] kind of jazz—well behaved, stylish, and beautiful—which also means it's not for everyone: If your favorite record is Miles Davis’ Live at the Newport, you won't be impressed. If you like intelligent and lyrical late-night jazz, make either of [these] records your next.

More Big Fat Summer

As promised my postings are few, because summer has many distractions. But I've been seeing things and some of it keeps flashing in my mind, like the fabulous Miles Davis documentary at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, We Want Miles.

Davis was a complex and, towards the end, volatile character, but as this exhibit reminds us so well through photos, film, and mini-sound rooms, twenty in all, throughout each of his many incarnations Miles Davis was brilliant. He collaborated with the greats, Monk, Blakey, Dizzy, Ron Carter, and Herbie Hancock and the amazing Bill Evans. A studio album released in 1959 would make him a star: Kind of Blue would go on to become the largest-selling jazz album ever and influence a generation of artists, not a bad spot in history.

But of course there would be many more transformations of Miles to come, coupled with the influence of drugs, racism, and fame. Who can forget the Davis soundtrack for Louis Malle's film Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1957)(Elevator to the Gallows in the U.S.) and Jeanne Moreau's scene walking the streets of a gray Paris at night, Miles's score playing in the background. He even made Paris cool.

Also in Montreal through November 14th is a small Jenny Holzer exhibit at the DHC/ART Foundation, including a few of her Redacted paintings and LED light sculptures from her recent Whitney show. This was my first visit to the foundation: nice space.

Of course NYC closes up tight in August and it's hotter than --, so who in their right mind would visit but me and 60,000 tourists all converging on the Met at the same time. I paid my dime and elbowed my way through the Picasso show: very nice, except for the cameras from hell! As you may know from past posts, I'm very open to camera use in galleries and museums, but the mob at the Met were bonkers. I could barely examine a painting without a camera being thrust right in front of me, flash and all. It's Taser time at the Met! (update: A Met press release claims the Picasso exhibit drew 700,000 visitors in 17 weeks)

I finally made a visit to the almost newly renovated Museum of Art and Design to see Bespoke: The Handbuilt Bicycle (closed on August 15). I'm a bike nut and hope to someday either weld my own steel bike or buy one of the beauties from this exhibit. With all the rage of lighter than air carbon fiber road rockets, I know fiber is good for you, but steel is real and many pro designers and enthusiasts are rejuvenating the bike industry with handbuilt one-of-a-kind or limited-edition old-school steel bikes.

Of course the steel is lighter and the mechanics are far superior to the bikes I had as a kid. Sascha White's Vanilla Bicycles of Portland, Oregon, makes a tricycle that even I would happily pedal around on. His Randonneur road bike might be a better fit, with its beautiful simple lines.

For the ladies, Peter Weigle's 50s-inspired Randonneur or one of my favorites, a 70s-inspired Richard Sachs roadster or one of Italian master Dario Peroretti's free-form paint jobs. Jeff Jones builds off-road bikes without fancy suspension. He builds a titanium SpaceFrame with a truss fork, combined with extra-large wheels to absorb the shock and awe. There is video of Jones riding the trails near his shop with an attached camera, very cool. I would like one of each please!

The Dave Brubeck Quartet

“I never expected to see you again,” quipped the octogenarian Dave Brubeck following the standing ovation that occurred Thursday evening at the Warner Theater before the first notes of the concert were struck. The Washington Performing Arts Society was fortunate to have been able to reschedule the Dave Brubeck Quartet after their canceled performance earlier this year. Given the superb performance, Brubeck, designated a Living Legend by the Library of Congress, must be feeling much better.

The program opened with Duke Ellington’s C Jam Blues, which showcased Brubeck’s extraordinary musical partners, particularly saxophonist Bobby Militello, who was gallivanting all over the place. In Ellington’s Take the A-Train, Brubeck and bassist Michael Moore played cat and mouse, imitating themes ending in a joyously unexpected guffaw from Brubeck -- he is no stiff old man in a white suit. Indeed, Brubeck’s technique is remarkably supple and his tone beautiful. Splashes of wild color would often shoot out from the instrument after sections of chords under the orchestra. The piano solo introduction to Stormy Weather was very poetic.

Themes from the second movement of Howard (Dave’s brother) Brubeck’s Dialogue for Jazz Combo and Orchestra began with a masterfully fresh piano solo improvisation -- Brubeck’s playing is fresh, flexible, and never fixed -- followed by fascinating upward decrescendo runs on the saxophone. Next came a jazzy waterfall of kaleidoscopic improvised three-part counterpoint between piano, bass, and sax. It is possible that Bach himself would not have heard any broken counterpoint rules. Brubeck mentioned afterward that Howard “wanted to bring classical, so-called classical, and jazz together.”

Other Reviews: Matt Schudel, Dave Brubeck: Live Last Night (Washington Post: Post Rock, June 12)

The second half of the program featured March Margie, Ace in the Hole among other works. Militello swapped a flute for his sax in Somewhere Over the Rainbow, creating magical effects by allowing the pitch to die away at times and adding glissando-like arpeggios over Dave’s tune. It was pleasurable to hear Take Five live as the musicians personalized themes to their liking. Randy Jones’s extended drum solo was grippingly excessive. At one point he cut out for a few beats and the entire audience ceased breathing. The program ended with Show Me the Way to Go Home, at which point a female fan shouted cooingly, “We love you.”

Highlights of the WPAS Jazz series for next season include concerts by Sonny Rollins (December 2), Miguel Zenón (February 20), Jazz at Lincoln Center (March 1), and Ramsey Lewis with Ann Hampton Callaway (May 15).

Fun with Ethan and His Orchestra

Humor, spot-on observations of life, love, Tupperware, pets, and many unexpected twists... Ethan Lipton brought his orchestra to the Vermont Arts Exchange's Basement Music Series in Bennington, Vermont, on Saturday night and blew us all away. I awoke the next morning with a smile, thinking about Greg Aguilera, the king of accounting, so wry, so good.

Lipton, a New York-based singer, songwriter, and playwright, masterfully weaves sophisticated often hilarious parables from the simplest moments in our lives, what will really fit in that Tupperware container or as in the tune Old People Don't Whisper, the beauty of growing old together is, we become more alike (he gets large breasts and she grows a beard).

Ethan Lipton continues a long tradition of observational story telling: John Prine, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, Frank Zappa, the Gershwins. He cherishes the mundane, and with whit, charm, and tight back-up from Eben Levy on guitar, Ian M. Riggs on bass, and Vito Dieterle on sax, the simple and mundane become the puzzle pieces we've been searching for and Ethan has had them in his pocket all along.

Update: New York Magazine's best lounge act! Cool Ethan.

Jessye Norman Got That Swing

What is Jessye Norman up to these days, you ask? She is appearing at a lot of gala performances, doing the beloved past superstar thing. To be sure, it is no longer the voice we knew and loved when, in the just re-released Four Last Songs, for example. Even so, the chance to hear and watch this inimitable soprano one more time is hard to pass up, so we were happy to be in the sold-out house for her season opening concert at the Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts on Friday night. True, it was Duke Ellington instead of Strauss, but La Norman has certainly earned a little indulgence for her eccentricities. In general, opera singers making mediocre jazz is about as disastrous as pop stars attempting opera. There were cringe-worthy moments, but the combination of singer and composer just might be a natural choice for a Barack Obama inauguration, if that comes to pass.

The first half was drawn from Sacred Ellington, a staging of some of Duke Ellington's sacred songs (which she will perform complete at St. John the Divine in the spring). The program did not credit an arranger of these pieces by Duke Ellington or give source information about them (most were drawn from the three Sacred Concerts Ellington gave later in his career). The range of styles in the arrangements was broad. David Danced before the Lord (without the solo composed by Ellington for tap dancer Bunny Brice) featured only Norman's voice, amplified from off stage, and the earthy tenor sax of Bill Easley. In In the Beginning God, which won Ellington a Grammy for Best Jazz Composition in 1966, Norman recited a list of things that were not when God was in eternity -- no conference calls, no applause, no critique, no amateurs, no professionals. More pleasing were Come Sunday, a slow-ballad plea for God's help, and the bouncy, straightforward, one-word Hallelujah.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Jessye Norman, Still a Diva Beyond the Classical Canon (Washington Post, September 15)

The microphone was a necessary evil for Norman's present voice to compete with the talented jazz quartet, reduced from Ellington's own big-band orchestra in scope, and the amplification caused several infelicities of Norman's performance to be heard much more clearly than otherwise. One sometimes had the impression of Norman reining in what is left to get a sound appropriate for amplification. She may not have a second career as a torch singer, or in scat singing if Heaven was any indication. Still, there was a certain amount of comfort in watching Jessye Norman try on standards like Sophisticated Lady (almost a beat parody of itself), I've Got It Bad (attractively gentle and bluesy), and In My Solitude (finally, she put the mike down). It was not an embarrassment, and Jessye, having lost an incredible amount of weight, is looking good.

Photo of Jessye Norman by Carol Friedman, courtesy of Clarice Smith Center