from Berkeley

Ensemble for These Times

Dear ever-patient readers in the Blogosphere,

It's been (and continues to be) a whirlwind fall! Just to catch everyone up a wee bit,  Ensemble for These Times' debut CD of music by David Garner, "Surviving: Women's Words" won a Silver Medal in the Global Music Awards, received two nice reviews (one at American Record Guide, calling the CD, "fascinating," and "compelling" and the other at Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Reviews, calling it "extremely well done" and "Recommended."), and has been submitted for the 59th Grammy Awards--oh, my; I've been in California and Washington; and E4TT is preparing for the first of our Call for Scores concerts, 56x54 #1.

What's a 56x54 #1, you might ask?  Google's latest algorithm, perhaps? Well, this past December-January, we had our first-ever Call for Scores, as you patient reader-folks might remember.  We were honored (and overwhelmed) to receive 275 scores from 200 talented composers. In the end, we chose 56 fabulous works of varying lengths to perform over the next two seasons (Read more here and here) and we're excited to be performing the first set this week, along with one of David's song cycles from the CD and the world premiere of Bruce Nalezny's "Toccata," dedicated to our fab pianist, Dale Tsang.

So, for a teensy plug (Wait, isn't today's blogpost all a plug, you might also ask? Well, although I didn't mean it as such, just trying to catch up is making it go that way.  Thanks again for your. already praised and much-vaunted patience.), the concert will be on Sunday, Oct. 30 at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Piano Club. Tickets ($20/15) are available at the door or from [email protected].

Ensemble for These Times

And who is that woman in the green dress in E4TT's new photos above? That, everyone, is the wonderful--not to mention beautiful--cellist Anne Lerner-Wright. Anne played with us last May and June, and we're thrilled to have her with us this season!

As you can imagine, I've been living and breathing E4TT--mostly, as there's lots else going on in my life, all of it good, for which I'm immensely grateful. More over the next weeks and months as time permits.

What I'm reading: The Alphabet and the Goddess and Mercedes Lackey's Elite
What I'm listening to: Scads and scads of fabulous CDs submitted for the 59th Grammys.
What I'm working on: 56x54 #1 plus music by David Garner!

Muir Woods

...from San Francisco

The tour is over--has been over for some while now--and it was wonderful!  Now let the catching up commence... Pictures galore to come in the future...

But first, for this week, here's a short meditation on my favorite season of the year: summertime....  What makes me love summer so much?

• The air is warm, even when there's fog and wind (unless, of course you are in San Francisco... Mark Twain is said to have quipped that the coldest winter he ever spent was July in SF. While  this may be apocryphal, as there's no good attribution to be found, it certainly sounds like something he might have said.)  Today it's gorgeous in San Francisco, though.

• The character of the sunshine in the summer. It shines a brighter bright than the winter sun, at least in northern climes, when one almost feels like rooting for it, much like the "Little Engine That Could": I think you can (shine), I think you can, I think you can...

• The quality of the color of the light (related to but different from the above).  The blue is more blue; the light is...well, more light.  The hues sparkle and make my eyes smile.

One of San Francisco's many claims to fame

• The sense that anything is possible...Who knows where you'll go?  You might travel anywhere or do anything. It's summer--school vacation for kids and teachers--and all bets are off...or maybe they're on?

• The long summer days, where the light doesn't fade until laaate in the evening and where dining outside at 9 feels balmy, sensible, relaxed and just right.

• As Clara sings in her lullaby from Porgy and Bess--which I've loved singing for years--in  summertime, the living is easy.  Everyone knows Gershwin wrote the music, and yet we tend to forget all about DuBose Heyward, who wrote the opera's unforgettable lyrics. Here's a picture of one of the amazing American soprano Leontyne Price--probably my favorite soprano of all time, among a wide field of fabulous singers--when she played the role of Bess in 1952:

Leontyne Price

• The lovely feeling that mañana will do just fine for most anything...because, of course, it's summertime.

E4TT performing at Galicia Museum

... from Bilbao

Workshop at JCC Krakow (Anna Gulinska translating)

 And the rest are from Krakow's Old Town (not to be confused with the Kazimierz).

...from Munich

...from Krakow 

You bet! With food that ranges from huge stuffed baked potatoes (kumpir) to cakes to fish n' chips, burgers, Belgian frites, pulled pork, the legendary (and seemingly hard-to-find) blue trucks that sell kielbasa, and more, Krakow has a thriving food truck scene and even a food truck square or few. I've been with two dedicated blue truck hunters, who at last report hadn't found their local blue truck nirvana.  But the kumpir that I had (at Krakowski Kumpir last night after our concert) was certainly delish--and more than one human could finish--although we all tried!

A few more photos:






                 and  also

(No, I haven't eaten at even half of these.)

What I'm reading: My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Str

What I'm listening to: klezmer in the Kazimierz, music by Feldschuh, Kapralova, Delej, and Vandor from today's lecture-recital with Dr. Teryl Dobbs and E4TT.

What I'm working on: the latter ;).

Karski statue

... Czećś from Krakow!


We (E4TT) are in Krakow, specifically in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter. We're appearing at the 26th Jewish Culture Festival from June 26-28. It's the perfect location for us, as our two venues, the Galicia Jewish Musem and JCC Krakow, are all of 10 minutes away on foot. At night, klezmer music wafts into our windows from the restaurants on the square: the renovated birthplace of a famous cosmetics magnate (Can you guess who?), the hotel's great, with friendly, helpful staff.  

...from Berkeley

I'm back post-wedding for two wonderful concerts last week with E4TT in the SF Bay Area. Still, I can't help but continue last week's pictorial paean to the amazing paysage of Yosemite.  Look carefully below and you may even spot a glimpse of a double rainbow--and check out the amazing volume of water in the falls...

...from Yosemite

where I've been for my son's wonderful wedding.  Just a few lovely photos for the sharing with everyone!







With the rainfall we've had this year, the falls are flowing and the mosquitoes are growing.... More blogging in weeks to come, with concerts May 31, June 2, and June 11.  And probably some more Yosemite pics, too.

Talya in Macedonia

...from Berkeley

Today I've been pondering the word "important" and what it means, especially for projects, initiatives actions, and the arts.  To ground my musings, I started out with the OED (Online Etymology Dictionary, whose acronym apes another, more august tome, and which does, indeed, list its word-ly cousin among its sources.).  I'll call the online etymology version OED2.

At  OED2, I read that the modern English word "important" comes via Middle French (15th century) from Medieval Latin, importans, importantem and ultimately derives from the verb importare, "to bring in, convey or bring in from abroad." It was first used to mean "be important" in English around 1580.

How does that definition apply to artwork, projects, or even governments.  It doesn't even seem relevant--until we realize that important initiatives bring us understanding and perhaps bring help to those in need. (There's that word from the definition, bring.)

If a project is a major one, that can mean many positive things, such as pathbreaking, innovative,, or just plain excellent. But when it's an important one, that usually means it deals with hard topics, ones we know we need to look at but shy away from as joyless and non-celebratory, problematic issue-laden subjects that the world needs to address.

At a refugee camp

So, for example, when my wonderful niece, Talya (shown above and left, too), worked with Syrian refugees in Lesbos and Idomeni through IsraAID, it was important work (and courageous for a young woman). My friend, Paula, too, for that matter.

An important project probably deals with the four horsemen of the apocalypse--traditionally war, famine, pestilence/conquest or death--in one way or another, or at least mini-me versions of them. (Pestilence vs. conquest has to do with translation differences and dissemination through popular culture, both  topics for other days.) See below right for Albrecht Durer's woodcut depiction.

Albrecht Durer (woodcut, 1498)

An important project makes us look at things most of us want to sweep under the rug, or at least to say, "Yes, yes, we know and agree. It's awful. Glad you're dealing with it.  Sigh. Too much to bear thinking about it. Don't know what to do about it. Now go away and let the rest of us relax." And I should know, as that is a slightly over-the-top caricature of my own sometimes past-attitude, despite my having somehow found myself doing an "important" project over the last 6+ years, the JMPP (some of which were recorded on our brand new CD, Surviving:Women's Words).

An important project often has to work extra hard to draw an audience, as who enjoys emotional flagellation? Catharsis is one thing, but to deliberately go to an event that focuses on bad things happening to good people? (Actually, that's a partial definition of what happens in many an opera or tale, so maybe that's not such a bad plot device...) Or on revisiting unhappy history, so that we aren't condemned to repeat it? (Ditto.)

MOR's Jake Heggie

As another example, in yesterday's mail, I received a postcard for Seattle-based Music of Remembrance's Out of Darkness: an Opera of Survival, the new chamber opera by Jake Heggie about the Holocaust that will be produced on May 25-26 at the SF Conservatory of Music.  MOR is an important project and MOR's mission is much in alignment with that of the JMPP; I like both Jake Heggie and his music. So although I fear that it may be an emotionally wrenching evening, I will try to go, and on today, the eve of U.S. Holocaust Remembrance Day, I encourage those of you reading this who are in the SF Bay Area to go, too.


Tragedy. Misery. Suffering.

What I'm reading: More Inspector Gamache mysteries by Louise Penny. (Now about midway through the series)

What I'm listening to: Mozart, Shostakovich, Prince.

What I'm working on: works by Martha Stoddard, Judith Shatin, Hans Winterberg, and Frederic Sharaf, for May and June concerts--plus Mozart for my son's wedding :).

New CD cover: photo by Michael Halberstadt

...from Berkeley

Today's post starts with a flat-out plug for E4TT's new CD, released on Centaur Records
on April 8, "Surviving: Women's Words."

The CD features pianist Dale Tsang, cellist Adaiha MacAdam-Somer, and--as Miss Piggy would say--moi, performing four song cycles written by composer David Garner for the group, to poetry by four different Jewish women poets. The  culmination of an ambitious five year commissioning project, the CD gives a musical voice to these women's viewpoint and experiences of wartime, the Holocaust, exile, and displacement.

Stephen Smoliar in Examiner.com  describes "Surviving: Women's Words" as "a fascinating project within a project"--alluding to the fact that the project is itself a project of E4TT's Jewish Music & Poetry Project--and goes on to say that "...this album offers four passionate meditations on the Holocaust experience, delivered through a unique and highly compelling pair of voices, those of both composer and singer."

(For the curious, the CD's title, "Surviving," comes from the fourth song in the final cycle on the CD ("Song Is a Monument"), which sets words by Polish-American Holocaust survivor, Yala Korwin. We were honored to be able to use poems written by Korwin, who passed away in May, 2014, only two months after E4TT premiered the cycle.

"Surviving: Women's Words" is available from Amazon, HBDirect, Arkivmusic, and E4TT. Check it out now or starting May 13, when streaming and downloading will be available for purchase!

And the play with few survivors? Shakespeare's Hamlet, which I saw this evening in a fabulous production by the England's National Theater Live with the inimitable and multiply talented Benedict Cumberbatch (of "Sherlock Holmes" and "The Imitation Game" fame).

Watch the trailer.  Watch Prince Charles deliver Shakespeare's arguably most famous line.

Partly a ghost stoy with a great fight scene, Hamlet is a "greatest hits" play, and deservedly so: much as the opera "Porgy & Bess" is filled with hit after Gershwin musical hit, so too is Hamlet filled with quote after famous Shakespeare quote.  The NTL's stunning production--albeit often very loud--brings out an important sequence in "Hamlet" about the army led by the character Fortinbras--well nigh the only principal character left standing by the final curtain, other than Horatio, whom Hamlet has begged to stay alive to bear witness to his story.

That sequence?  To set the scene, Hamlet has happened upon the Norwegian army on its way to attack Poland and asks the Captain what they're up to. The interchange:
"Hamlet: Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?
Captain: Truly to speak, and with no addition/ We go to gain a little patch of ground/ That hath in it no profit but the name./To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;/Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole/A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
Hamlet:Why, then the Polack never will defend it.
Captain: Yes, it is already garrison'd..."

Thus does Shakespeare four centuries ago emphasize the insanity of war--so often waged for "a little patch of ground"--and the suffering that results, and that, you see, is the connection with the CD, as well.

What I'm reading: More Louise Penny Inspector Gamache mysteries

What I'm listening to: Mp3 after mp3 for making the final vocal decisions for E4TT's call for scores :).  Plus the wonderful artist known as Prince, may he rest in purple peace.

What I'm working on: new music by Judith Shatin and Emma Logan, plus Hans Winterberg and songs by Vitezslava Kapralova

...from San Francisco

First, a big shout out to all the wonderful performers and the enthusiastic audience at David Garner's fabulous Faculty Artist Series program on Monday night!  If you weren't able to join us, I hope you were able to watch the concert stream instead.

Leading up to Monday's concert, I could not put down M.T. Anderson's  YA historical novel, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad--a mouthful of a title that says it all. 

Now, first off, I have to admit that I've been a fan of M.T. Anderson's books for years, beginning with his equally engaging dystopian Feed--written before dystopia had completely taken over as the style-du-jour, and Handel, Who Knew What He Liked and continuing with Strange Mr. Satie, Whales on Stilts, and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. (He has many more, but those are some highlights.)

Dmitri Shostakovich in 1925

Returning  to Symphony...What a brilliant concept! Who'd a thunk one could use the history of a 20th century classical Russian composer to talk about World War II?  It's an obvious call in retrospect, and beautifully done in Anderson's hands.  Symphony works well on a number of levels: at its core, it's a biography of composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) combined with a history of the seige of Leningrad, and it's also a short history on the rise and continuation of Communism in Russia--all informed by and focused on  how both of the latter influenced this enigmatic, great composer who managed to survive in a situation where so many others didn't. (The photo to the right is the young, Harry-Potter-like composer at the age of 19.)

Anderson is honest in his evaluation of what Shostakovich may nor may not have believed and how the exigencies of pleasing Communist dictates may have affected his writing--questions I remember from my own readings in music history. He concludes that we may never know the whole truth in either direction. Nonetheless, we still have the composer's musical testimony, and now we have Anderson's commentary, along with his explanations along the way for non-musical young readers, about musical meaning and meaning in music (not the same thing) for his readers.

Perhaps best of all, reading Anderson's descriptions of Shostakovich's music makes the reader want to go and listen (or re-listen) to his music, especially his towering symphonies and string quartets. How terrific is that, when prose about music--or visual art for that matter--inspires one to go listen to the music itself!

Thank you, M.T. Anderson, for your latest work in cross-arts fertilization...the ultimate in coolth.

What I'm reading: Still Life (the first Inspector Gamache mystery); Margaret Atwood's latest (The Heart Goes Last)

What I'm listening to: Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (this week at SFSymphony!)..but Shostakovich very soon

What I'm working on: Songs by Hans Winterberg, John Harbison and Frederic Sharaf.

Monday's concert features four works, all by David Garner:
First half:
* Vilna Poems (2014), with texts by Avram Sutzkever, sung by soprano Krista Wigle, and played by cellist Evan Kahn, along with members of the SF Conservatory Faculty.
* Mein blaues Klavier (My Blue Piano, 2015), with texts by Else Lasker-Schueler, performed by Ensemble for These Times, i.e., me, pianist Dale Tsang and cellist Laura Gaynon. This is on our new JMPP CD, Surviving: Women's Words, which will be for sale at the concert and is being officially released on April 8 on Centaur Records (Centaur CRC 3490), already available from the group or online for pre-release sales.
*Judith Masur Songs (2016), written for mezzo-soprano Crystal Philippi, to texts by Berkeley poet Judith Masur.

Second half: excerpts from Mary Pleasant at Land's End (2015),  his fabulous, brand-new opera, Semi-staged by Jimmy Featherstone Marcheso, and performed by  mezzo-soprano Crystal Philippi, soprano Julie Adams, tenor Michael Jankosky, and bass-baritone  Philip Skinner with pianist Kevin Korth.

Here's what David writes:
"Mary Pleasant --one of the most complex, mysterious figures in the history of the nation--comes to life in Mary Pleasant at Land's End...with libretto by Mark Hernandez.  The opera traces much of Pleasant's astonishing life, beginning with her days as a shepherd for the Underground Railroad.  Arriving in San Francisco, she becomes a beloved leader in the young city. Eventually, this daughter of slaves stands as one of the richest and most influential individuals of the time. Her championing of people and causes, however, brings her into conflict with a familiar face of wealth and power, and the ensuing struggle plays out in a notorious courtroom drama that mesmerizes the public. Sensationalist press coverage demonizes Pleasant, playing on attitudes towards her race and gender. An essential figure in the founding of San Francisco, and indeed the state of Californi, she is forgotten even as the city bursts into world prominence..." More info at David's website.

If you can't come on 4/4x8 (i.e., April 4, at 8:00 p.m.),  you can watch the livestream. Streaming will start about 5 minutes before the concert. When it begins, you'll see "Live now" below the name, Caroline H. Hume Hall. Select it to automatically see the video with the live stream...at least in theory.

What I'm reading: M.T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Seige of Leningrad; Elizabeth George's A Banquet of Consequences; Terry Pratchett's final Tiffany Aching novel, The Shepherd's Crown.

What I'm listening to: Mozart's Jupiter Symphony and Beethoven's First.  Also the many, many (did I say many? We received 275!) scores from E4TT's call for scores. Winners to be announced June 1.

What I'm working on: Mein blaues Klavier, of course, along with songs by Winterberg, Sharaf and Garner for April and May.

Brussels

...from San Rafael

Today's blog post: short, simple, and sweet but sad. A moment of silence in my tiny corner of the blogosphere for those who suffered or are suffering as a result of the bombs in the beautiful city of Brussels, Belgium.    

Pi Pie

...from San Francisco

Today (well, yesterday by time you read this) is a paean in praise of Pi, the number  3.14159265358979323846264338327950 (stopping after all 10 digits have been included) or, as it's commonly known among us lay folk, 3.14.  Hence Pi Day is 3/14, March 14. Crucial for measuring circles and circular objects, pi is an irrational constant and so it keeps rolling on, digit after digit, never resolving.

March 14 is a verrrry popular birthday (three folks in my family own it, for example), but there are fewer famous folk with it than on some other days of the year.  However, one hugely famous Pi Day celebrity--for whom March 14 is a most appropriate birthday--is Albert Einstein (1878-1955). 

Warning: shoals of a famous mathematical formula ahead, but the digression is brief. If desired, skip the next paragraph to avoid possible eye glazing.

(Einstein's special theory of relativity is represented mathematically with another constant, c.That famous formula? E=mc2, where E means energy, m means mass, and c means the speed of light in a vacuum, which is then squared. The constant, c, is NOT pi, but rather a little less than 300 million (299,792,458) meters/second, i.e., pretty darn fast!)

There are many great quotes attributed to Einstein, many nearly aphorisms. I find Einstein, his story, and his words infinitely inspirational--and I hope you will, too. 

Albert Einstein

Here are a half dozen:
            
             Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

            Try not to become a man [or woman in today's more egalitarian verbiage] of success, rather try to become a man of value.

            Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe.

            Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

            We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

            Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Interested in more Einstein quotes? Visit Brainy quotes.com.

Who are a few other less-scientific Pi babies?  Quincy Jones, Billy Crystal, and among musicians of olde, George Telemann.

Happy Pi Day, everyone!

What I'm reading: I just finishe Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (recommend by Lee Wind's excellent blog). It's a great book, even though or especially because--depending on your perspective--the title immediately causes the Styx song to stick in one's ear like an earworm. Speaking as one, mind you.

What I'm listening to: When "Come Sail Away" isn't running through my head....I was able listen to Schubert's Winterreise recently.

What I'm working on: David Garner's Mein blaues Klavier, for my next concert (April 4)--it's also on our CD that's coming out on April 8!!!--and songs by Hans Winterberg for May 31 and June 2.

...from Berkeley



Happy International Women's Day!

The official UN theme for 2016 is "Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality" and the International Women's Day website encourages us all to Pledge for Parity (#PledgeforParity for the twitterati and instagramati). The TMI from the IWD's website reads: "Celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievement of women. Yet let's also be aware progress has slowed in may places across the world, so urgent action is needed to accelerate gender parity. Leaders across the world are pledging to take action as champions of gender parity."


Looking back, the theme for 2015 was "Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!"  What a lovely picture it would be for the whole human race were empowered.

In 2014, "Equality for Women is Progress for All."  A near-tautology that is so very true.

And 2013? "A Promise Is a Promise: Time for Action to End Violence Against Women." Sadly, this is still only a dream not yet close to being achieved.

...from Berkeley

San Diego Zoo Safari Park

With yesterday having been Leap Day, it seems fitting to think about time...Missing time, lost time, and making up time... Leap Day allows us to find a place for the lost time in the Gregorian calendar,  so that "real time" and the calendar stay in sync.  Likewise, in my case, the month of February flew by so quickly, that I, too, am out of sync and need that lost time to catch up with promised answers and topics from previous blog posts. Hence today is a day for catching up on overdue promises...A bit of housekeeping, as it were, but hopefully a bit more interesting than housekeeping, both to do and to read.

First, where did that mysterious picture up top and from two weeks ago come from?

As the caption (omitted in the original post) says, this is the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, on an amazingly warm (84 degrees!) day in early February.

Moving on to the even more shamefully overdue promised story about the origins of Verdi's opera La Traviata from many weeks ago....

Like many operas--a topic to explore on another day and another post--La Traviata comes from a successful literary work in another genre, in this case, the novel La Dame aux Camelias by Alexander Dumas fils (1824-1895).  Dumas based his protagonist on a real-life Parisian courtesan, Marie Duplessis who, much like Verdi's Violetta, died of tuberculosis.*  (The story was turned into a play as well. The moral of the story here? Good tales bouncily bound across genre borders as easily as Peter Rabbit.)

La Traviata premiered in 1853 in Venice and was set, against Verdi's wishes, in the turn-of-the-previous-century past. It wasn't until several decades later that stagings of La Traviata were moved to the 19th century "present" as Verdi had desired.

As is so often the case, opening night was a bit of a flop, with the requisite booing, including ample criticism that the 38-year old soprano, Fanny Salvini-Donatelli (pictured here) was far too old and far too...ample to play a character who died of consumption, or even a woman who would have been appealing enough to be a courtesan.** Nonetheless, La Traviata soon grew to become one of the world's most beloved operas, and Violetta one of opera world's favorite heroines.

*Any idea whichother famous, equally beloved soprano character in 19th century opera also dies of TB? Comment if you do and feel like it!

**This is an old, regular cavil for opera: plus ca change, etc., it would seem. But in my opinion, unlike in musical theater, where looking the part is much more crucial, opera singers need first and foremost to sing gloriously; looks should be a distant second.

What I'm reading: Deborah Crombie's The Sound of Broken Glass; Nest by Esther Ehrlich

What I'm listening to: the wonderful excerpts played in the first few episodes from the second season of Amazon's award-winning "Mozart in the Jungle."  Excerpts today included the overture to Le Nozze di Figaro; Schubert's 8th Symphony, Beethoven's 5th, Mozart's Rondo alla turca  and more Mozart, Mahler... What great music: Amazon should market a downloadable playlist!

What I'm working on: David Garner's Mein blaues Klavier, which goes into rehearsal this week for a repeat performance on April 4--just in time for the CD release on April 8...

...from San Francisco

Opera Parallele's Champion

This week is a heavier than usual post, as I'm still thinking about sins--continuing with Dante from last week's post--in this case, operatic as well as literary ones...past sins, perceived sins, and their effects on those who commit them.

Sins operatic: Opera Parallele, the wonderfully adventurous SF modern opera company, opened its 2-week run of Terence Blanchard's Champion: an Opera in Jazz, last week at the SF Jazz Center.  A deeply moving work with a multiple-Kleenex ending, Champion is based on the true story of bisexual championship boxer, Emile Griffith, who at the height of his career inadvertently killed his opponent in the ring and died of boxer's dementia in 2013.

How does one inadvertently kill a human being without committing manslaughter? In a 1960s welterweight bout, Griffith fought boxer Benny Paret, who taunted him about his sexuality until Griffith knocked him out. Paret died from the resultant coma, and Griffith is said to have been haunted for the rest of his life by his role in Paret's death and by not having been allowed to see Paret in the hospital. The libretto mentions that Paret probably should not have been in the ring, as he'd still been suffering from a previous bout.

Champion starts in the present, with the old Emile a figure of pathos--obviously no longer mentally clear--and proceeds in a series of flashbacks that tell his story via a structure that's easy to follow. The work's strengths are the story itself, the excellent production and performances by an absolutely stellar cast of singers, actors, dancers, and musicians, and the transparent, spare music with multiple influences. The weak link in the work is the overly repetitive libretto, which takes most of the first act to set up the story. But in the second act, beginning with the inspired boxer's dance, the work's center of gravity takes a turn into the realm of the serious, catching hold with the Mother's show-stopping aria with solo bass accompaniment. On Friday, the aria was a tour de force in soprano Karen Slack's hands (or rather, voice); the opera then moves deeper and deeper into heart-wenching territory as the younger Emile unravels, beginning to catch up with his damaged older self who, though not fully aware of where he is anymore, is still haunted by his societally condoned killing.

Dante Alighieri statue in Verona

...from Berkeley
For the past week I've been working on a project involving Dante's Inferno.

Botticelli: Dante and Virgil

  I'd dipped into it a bit in grad school (I wrote my dissertation on Renaissance music) and had always meant to read the Inferno in its entirety....actually I'd wanted to read the whole Divine Comedy. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, no? In this case, literally. (Facilis decensus Averno, to quote Virgil, as he is crucial to the Inferno  and thus today's blog post.

Examine this picture carefully to guess where in San Diego this photo was taken*!

...from San Diego

This coming weekend is the start of San Diego Opera's 2016 mainstage season, which I would have loved to see, both to see what they are doing and also to support the company.  After the brouhaha of 2014, all in the operatic community want very much to see the company succeed.

Alas, the calendar didn't work for me.  But for those in San Diego or Southern California and able to attend (Feb. 13, 16, 19, 21), SDO will perform Puccini's Tosca--a verismo opera par excellence that Joseph Kerman with great although unjust rhetorical flourish once dismissed as a "shabby little shocker."*  (A shocker, yes, but shabby?  One could certainly debate that point.)

San Diego Opera presents Tosca in Feb. 2016

Shabby or not, it's a cinematic opera in the best melodrama tradition, with betrayal, murder, torture, intrigue, and more, as well as a good many mishaps. Some may be apocryphal; others undoubtedly are real.  For example, did one unlucky Tosca really jump off a stage parapet onto the protective mattress (normally placed backstage below said parapet), only to bounce back into view of the audience again and again, geboing geboing geboing? One writer says not, but relates other mishaps, including misplaced mattresses and guns that fired more than blanks.  Read about other, mostly less dangerous mishaps here.

SDO moves on to another Puccini favorite--an opera about a different kind of betrayal--with Madama Butterfly in April (13, 16, 21, 24), followed by the West Coast premiere of Great Scott (May 7,10, 13, 15) by California's own Jake Heggie, with beloved mezzo-soprano Frederica Von Stade.

Fingers crossed for a mishap-free Tosca run and the best of luck to SDO for their February Tosca and a successful 2016 spring season! (And the perpetually delayed blog about the story of La Traviata?  Not forgotten, but still delayed.)

What I'm reading: More Deborah Crombie, Megan Chance's The Veil (finale of 3)
What I'm listening to: La Boheme, Carmen and Handel
What I'm working on: Handel, Caldara, and Winterberg for April-May concerts

*Comment or email me if you have a guess as to where in the San Diego area this picture was taken! **from Kerman's Opera as Drama.  

...from Berkeley

I haven't forgotten that I promised to write about the source of La Traviata--and I will get to that very, very soon.... But for today, I have instead a somewhat timely, short post musing about deadlines, early birds and eleventh hour applications.

It's so tempting to wait until the last minute for a competition or deadline. I've been known to do that myself on many the occasion.  However, having sat on both sides I can tell you that it does NOT serve anyone well to come in just under the wire with an entry or submission.

Certainly, if you find out about a competition at the last minute, it's better to apply than not, as if you don't apply you have no chances of winning at all. Just so, applying too early and half-baked, i.e., before your submission is fully ready, serves no one, of course. In many cases, it really doesn't matter if you're early or middle-ish, in terms of timing--and sometimes coming in at the beginning of a submission window means being drowned by the initial flood of applications. And there are even times when as long as you make it by 1 minute before a deadline, you're cool as the proverbial cucumber.

But there are times when that's not going to be the case.

Sometimes the judges' capacity to lavish attention on your entry may wane as they get to later and later entries.  And sometimes, with online applications, the server may jam up or get overwhelmed and you'll miss the cutoff point entirely.You never know when one of these might happen.

So is it worth the risk? You make the call...

A case in point: this season, Ensemble for These Times started our first annual call for scores, as we want to be able to showcase more and more varied compositional voices than simply the composers we already know.  We set up a 2-month window for submissions, figuring that we were a small West Coast group and that it would take awhile for word to spread.

Not so....

There is an immense pool of compositional talent all over the world!  We were amazed and humbled at the sheer volume of scores that flooded in to us. After 5-6 weeks we had received 200 scores (yes, Virginia, you read that correctly), and were literally drowning in music.  We did not have the capacity to sort through any more scores between now and when we had promised to announce the winners, in June--and, indeed, barely had the capacity to sort through what we'd received..

So we very apologetically had to close the submission window 2 weeks early, asking those composers who had still wanted to submit a score but had not yet done so to come back for our 2nd annual call for scores... And you can bet that the window for submissions will be tighter next time around, as we have learned from this year.

We had already started to sort through some of the earliest scores to come in, and those got our longest attention.

As we continue to sort through the submissions, we have noticed two things:
1) The incredible amount of talent that's around!
2) Many folks don't follow/ pay attention to the rules. Sometimes there's a good reason (they don't have what we need, but think we might still be interested in what they're doing. In those cases, a little note telling us what's going on for the extenuating circumstances is appreciated and keeps us from rejecting something out of hand.But not everyone is like us; some competitions are looking for a reason, any reason, to reject you and narrow the field.).

We are very excited about what we've seen thus far, and can't wait to finish sorting through all the marvelous works that have come our way.  We'll announce the winners in June...so stay posted.

The moral of the story: if in doubt, sometimes the early bird does have a better chance at the worm. With competition being so stiff in today's world, wouldn't you rather be that person with the better chance?

What I'm reading: Grayling by Karen Cushman; Alistair Grim's Odd Antiquaticum, more wonderful Deborah Crombie mysteries

What I'm listening to: Handel and Caldara cantatas, for a concert in April

What I'm studying: "Do not utter a word, Anatol" (a new-for-me aria from Barber's Vanessa); songs by Hans Winterberg for May and June.

...from Berkeley

Singing Elisa

I continue to almost-but-not-quite* binge-read my way through Deborah Crombie's marvelous Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James mystery novels.  Over the weekend, while performing my debut as Elisa in The Handel Opera Project's chamber performance of Handel's rarely performed but ravishing score of Tolomeo, I also finished the fifth in Crombie's series, Dreaming of the Bones.  I found the denouement surprisingly moving--surprisingly, because being moved isn't what one always finds in British murder mystery novels.

To avoid any spoilers, let me just say that vengeance not-quite-a-la-Elektra rears its retributive head in Crombie's #5. Crombie refers to Elektra several times in her tale, including at the very end, which got me contemplating vengeance, as my Handelian character, Elisa, has her own, much, much milder attack of a different kind of vengeance. (A princess who is spurned by the man she loves--who turns out to be a prince in disguise who loves another--Elisa luckily lets her better self comes to the fore before she poisons said unlucky lover, whom she, instead, lets live and love. She doesn't quite get as far as loving the one she's with, but hey, she's a Handelian princess, right?)

All this brought me back, yet again, to that other "E" character, Elektra--especially as I just performed in a house concert of Strauss' Elektra again this past summer--and to her primal cry for vengeance, vengeance driven by the will of the Greek gods externally manifesting the internal needs of the human psyche. Which all goes to show that in such a deeply Jungian, collective-consciousness sense, in their plays, mythology, and all-too-human gods, the ancient Greeks got it right, mining key human emotions--vengeance,  retribution, and expiation all being at the core of so much tragedy, right down to this very day.

Perhaps the most moving of all for Elektra and Crombie #5 is the single voice crying aloud against evil that was once committed, and for it to be made right.Who'd a thunk that a mystery novel could generate such disturbing, philosophical thoughts? And yet the best ones do.

What I'm reading: Deborah Crombie's #6, Kissed a Sad Goodbye

What I'm listening to: Can't get Tolomeo out of my head, nor, for that matter, the Poulenc, Delage, and Tailleferre from last week.

What I'm working on: songs by John Harbison and David Garner, for concerts later this spring and our tour to Krakow this summer.


*Oh and why almost-but-not-quite binge reading?  Well, beyond my first time singing as Elisa over the weekend, I also performed some lovely French music in concert on Tuesday with Ensemble for These Times and on Wed. as well. It's hard to binge-read at full throttle when you're performing, as adequate sleep and concentration are prerequisites for singing well and staying healthy.  But I have to admit that the Duncan-Gemma duo created quite a temptation, taking all my professional will power to put them down.

...from Berkeley

Happy MLK Day!

It's always such a pleasure when the arts mix, more specifically, when books that aren't regular old nonfiction or historical fiction about musicians drift into the world of opera and music-making (although those books are fun, too, of course). And it's an even greater pleasure when the author gets it right.


Of the many books that fit this description, my mind immediately goes Bel Canto, by the marvelous Ann Patchett (I'm an immense fan of her writing and gladly read everything she writes).   And then there's the sub-genre of books and specifically murder mysteries set in the opera house, such as Cat Melodia's delightful Ding Dong the Diva's Dead (such a lovely turn of alliteration in that title!).

Unfortunately, writers don't always get the details right...and yet, from my experience, this often isn't even the author's fault. Here I'm thinking specifically of a colleague who is a very fine writer--who shall remain nameless--and whose excellent books are set in the world of music and musicians as a backdrop to the very human drama within them.

This writer got the emotional details of what it's like to be a musician very right, so much so that I was disappointed when there was a tiny discrepancy (a symphony said to have been written by a composer whom I knew had never written one or something along similar lines of musical minutia).  When I asked my writer friend, the reply was that the publisher had thought that the type of music they were referring to was not well known enough for the general public and asked that it be changed to something better known. As it was completely incidental to the plot and characters, my colleague acquiesced, of course. Understandable, but very sad on a number of levels, not the least of which being the notion that the average American reader can only be counted on to recognize a handful of classical music forms, nor to be willing to learn a new music term.

Returning, though, to today's blog title--as in what does Deborah Crombie really have to do with La Traviata?--I've recently started enjoying Deborah Crombie's Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James mysteries, having been turned onto them from another colleague/book-friend's strong recommendation.  The third book in the series, Leave the Grave Green, is set in an operatic household, and Crombie gets the details right, down to the details about the origins of La Traviata.  Besides my telling you that one of the characters is a retired soprano and voice teacher who had sung quite a Violetta in her time--hence the connection with La Traviata--you won't get any spoilers here about whodunit in this highly enjoyable murder mystery, but if you like English murder mysteries with appealing detectives from Scotland yard and good local color, I'd suggest you read this one. You may well find yourself drawn into reading Crombie's whole series...I'm certainly hooked!

To come: more on La Traviata. For now, what books have you read that are set in the symphony hall or opera house, that aren't about musicians and music, per se? Comment if there's one you especially like.

Here's just a tiny plug for two of my performances this week: first Tuesday's Noontime Concert in SF with my contemporary chamber music group, Ensemble for These Times, of 20th century French rarities and masterworks (Tailleferre, Poulenc, Debussy, Delage, and the Boulangers)--tomorrow!-- and Sunday's performance of Handel's Tolomeo with The Handel Opera Project in Berkeley. I'm singing the role of Princess Elisa, scorned by the prince she yearns for and loved by the wrong prince.

What I'm listening to and working on: the above (surprised?)

What I'm reading: the next Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James mystery by Deborah Crombie

...from Berkeley

Richard Strauss, 1918, (Max Liebermann)

Catching up a bit here, but the week before Thanksgiving, I heard a fabulous concert at the SF Symphony, conducted by the ever-masterful Michael Tilson Thomas, which I alluded to in last week's post: Strauss' Brentano Lieder and Serenade, Op. 7, plus R. Schumann's Spring Symphony.  The program notes were illuminating and interesting (as they generally are at SFS), with an excellent essay on musical length and proportion by James Keller.

I already talked about Schumann's Spring Symphony last week...now on to the Strauss.

The Brentano Lieder (Op. 68) are famous in soprano annals as being fiendishly difficult, due in large part to their tessitura, but also to their vocal demands.  Their tessitura (where they sit in the voice and range, for those of the less-vocally inclined among my readers), is super high, especially for song repertory.  One thinks of them in the same breath, for example, as Debussy's Quatre chansons de Jeunesse, in terms of where they sit for the voice.  Neither set is in my repertory, nor will they be, at least in their entirety, as I'm not a coloratura.

Soprano Laura Claycomb sang the pants off them. Brava!

Strauss, age 22

She performed the first five, ending with the tour-de-force "Amor," and skipping the last, "Lied der Frauen."  Who'd miss it after her mastery of the puckish, insouciant vocal lines Strauss wrote for his soprano in the middle four songs, especially in "Amor"--and besides, it's really written for a different kind of soprano than the rest, requiring a different kind of vocal heft (as is the first, "An die Nacht," which she also sang beautifully).  Strauss wrote the Brentano Lieder for the Elisabeth Schumann; she is said to have only performed the entire set once, in 1922.

NB: The matching bookend to the Brentano Lieder from Strauss' own repertory is his cycle, Vier letzte Lieder, written some 30 years later. These, however, are for more of a Marshallin-Sopran (the Marshallin being one of the roles from Der Rosenkavalier, my favorite Strauss opera and one of my favorite operas ever written...a topic for another day, though)--and thus are songs on the bucket list of works I want to perform in my career.

The Serenade?  A winds-only 10-minute amuse-bouche that shows how talented Strauss was, as it came off his 17-year-old pen.  A charming piece.

What I'm reading: Deborah Crombie's A Share in Death and Philip Kerr's March Violets (both excellent recommendations from a friend), having read--out of order for the series--his Lady from Zagreb.

What I'm listening to: Trois poemes desenchantes by Maurice Delage (for E4TT's concert on the 19th), Handel's Tolomeo (I'm singing Elisa in it on the 24th), music by Polish composers Martyna Kosecka and Zygmunt Krauze

What I'm working on: the first two of those, plus songs from Tailleferre's Six chansons francaises and Poulenc's  nostalgic "Les chemins de l'amour."

...from Berkeley

The lives of Romantic era composers Robert (1810-1856) and Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896)
seem eternally fascinating... Such biographical riches to mine and contemplate! As I've been continuing to think about this musical couple ever since blogging about Clara last week, I was reminded about Robert and specifically his marvelous Spring Symphony.

We can thank Clara for its genesis and composition.

Clara and Robert

Clara was a strong proponent of Robert's works--and not simply out of love for her spouse, as despite a few blind spots, she was a savvy performer and a canny judge of talent, In today's music-making world, we think of him mostly for his small forms and miniatures, i.e., his songs (Dichterliebe, Liederkreis, the ever-sexist but eternally beloved Frauenliebe und -leben, and more) and piano works (Papillons, Carnaval, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, etc.).  If those were all he'd written, his place in the annals of Western music history (to wax pompous for a moment) would be guaranteed, for Robert was, indeed, a brilliant composer.

But, in fact, he wrote beautifully in large forms and for large ensembles as well. And his Spring Symphony is a case in point.

Last week, I was listening to the radio in the car (yes, Virginia, actual, real radio--KDFC, and the station can thank me for that free plug--although I do often listen to Spotify, SoundCloud, Sirius, et al, as well), I tuned into the middle of a familiar symphonic piece on the radio, one that I couldn't initially identify. It was somewhat Beethovenian, but, of course, it wasn't Beethoven; its orchestral language in the first movement was so muscular and its second so lyrical; it sound so very familiar.  What was it?  Not Haydn, Beethoven, not Schubert, and certainly not Mozart. After a long, big duh moment of potential senioritis, I realized I was listening to Robert's wonderful Spring Symphony.


What I'm listening to: Debussy's Cello Sonata, Handel's Tolomeo, Schumann Spring Symphony

What I'm reading: Before I Fall, The Tsar of Love and Techno, A Share in Death

What I'm working on: Tailleferre, Handel, Poulenc, and Delage, all for performances later this month.