When you first got your driver’s license, did you take your parents’ car out? Perhaps tentatively at first, and then with more confidence each time? And yet, it was always your parents’ car, and always would be, but you got used to it, and maybe they got used to the idea of you in it. Well Mark Morris has had the proverbial keys to the parents’ car—Lincoln Center—for several years now. Even so, given his puckish nature, he’ll always seem like the teenager in the Buick Roadmaster. And that’s not a bad thing.
Lincoln Center, where Mark Morris Dance Group has performed regularly in recent years—with more frequency than even BAM, near his headquarters—dominates Manhattan’s culturescape in the genres of classical ballet, music and opera. Morris is no neophyte, with his company nearly 30 (!) years old. His modern style is straightforward, rhythmically attentive, often joyous. And yet he structures his dances with the great care of a classicist, from the full-length works to the shorter ones. It’s earthbound and exalted all at once. read more
The hot ticket this past weekend was John Adams’ latest opera, A Flowering Tree. Walking into the lobby on Sunday afternoon there was a queue of at least 50 people hoping for cancellations. Inside the theater was a starry crowd gathered for the Mostly Mozart event—in the seats just around me were opera singers (Renée Fleming) ballet dancers (Wendy Whelan) rock stars (David Byrne) movie stars (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and even a Nobel Laureate (Toni Morrison).
All of us at Rose Hall were treated to some of John Adams’ best vocal writing to date—and one his finest collaborations with the indefatigable Peter Sellars. A Flowering Tree (which debuted in Vienna back in 2006) was written to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth by paying homage to the composer’s final opera, The Magic Flute. The two operas share exotic settings and plots that involve magic, marriage and a little mayhem (though this is the case with many musical dramas). Regardless of its inspiration, A Flowering Tree works on its own merits. read more
A modest stack of new Bach CDs has been piling up on my desk over the last several months—when you’re a Bach-lover it’s hard for this not to happen periodically. There are keyboard sonatas (David Fray), violin sonatas (David Grimal), The Art of Fugue (Pierre-Laurent Aimard), two- and three-part Inventions (Till Fellner), and even a version of the Goldberg Variations played on harp (Catrin Finch). There are lots of cantatas—BWV numbers 6, 12, 21, 41, 60, 68, 99, 117, 172, 182, 197, sung by people like soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, Emma Kirkby, Michael Chance, Barbara Schlick, Andreas Scholl, and Christoph Prégardien.
And there are three recordings of the cantata “Ich habe genug” (BWV 82), whose subject is the wish for death, sung in shades from mournful and wistful to resigned and frenzied. Over time, this has been one of the most popular cantatas performed or recorded—it probably won’t ever approach the reportedly 200+ covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” but it’s impressive nonetheless. Especially in the context of a business—the record industry—that has shrunk to just a sliver of its former self. read more
Lincoln Center has become an elder statesman of New York. At least, that’s the conclusion I reached after coming back from the opening celebration that just concluded yesterday morning at Alice Tully Hall—the kickoff event of “Lincoln Center 50 Years.” The event felt the way I imagine the annual Al Smith Dinner feels. That is, you put a bunch of power players in the same room and give each of them the floor for about five minutes. Big applause after each one finishes.
Here, attention was paid to important people like David Rockefeller—brother of the late John D. Rockefeller III, who spearheaded the campaign to create Lincoln Center—who acknowledged applause from his seat in the audience. Among those in Tully Hall were members of Lincoln Center’s twelve resident organizations and students from the inaugural graduating class of local High School for Arts, Imagination, and Inquiry (founded by the Lincoln Center Institute), who cheered loudly when their school was mentioned. Architect Liz Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (co-architects of Tully Hall with FXFOWLE Architects) was seen flitting about the room, smiling and chatting.
The morning started with Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” performed by the definitely uncommon brass players and percussionists from the New York Philharmonic. Emcee for the event—which was streamed live—was journalist Tom Brokaw, himself an elder statesman. read more
On this past Tuesday, the curtain went up for the first time at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, WNYC’s new street-level set-up at the corner of Varick and Charlton streets. Or rather, the indoor space went from dark to light as the shades went up on windows looking out on both streets—at 7 p.m., it was still light outside.
In case you had missed the news, the Greene space for broadcasts and live performances is finally open, after years of planning. This small room looking out on two streets has all the technological bells and whistles, a curvy wooden backdrop to its small stage, a Fazioli piano from Italy, a soundproof broadcast booth in the corner, and several high-definition video screens. It can broadcast radio or television and live to the internet. WNYC is celebrating its opening with a ten-day festival ending on May 8 that will include broadcasts of the Brian Lehrer and Leonard Lopate shows; the launch of “The Next New York Conversation Series” with Dr. Eddie Glaude and Dr. Cornel West; and a Cinco de Mayo celebration with food, music, and dancing. read more
If you don’t mind navigating the rather nasty-looking Lincoln Center construction site, you can now get into the Juilliard School’s newly renovated interior. It reopened within the last few weeks, looking very spiffy indeed, even if the outside street scene features the music of street drills and is overlooked by a giant crane. Of course, for a documented cheapie like myself, an added appeal is the school’s many low-cost and free events. read more
This week, SundayArts looked at Lincoln Center’s Out-of-Doors, which on Sunday 24 celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Roots of American Music series with a bill that’s nothing short of killer. “Roots music,” just like “world music,” has become a catch-all term that often means more in the marketing realm than in musical or aesthetic ones, so the bill in question is particularly exciting because it makes us reconsider what exactly we mean by “roots”: The bill is shared by Charlie Haden Family and Friends, starring the famous jazz bassist, Patti Smith, the Knitters, featuring John Doe, Exene Cervenka and DJ Bonebrake, and the Music Makers Blues Revue. All of them draw inspiration from the past, but then they put it through their personal musical food processors, and come up with music that’s everything but frozen in amber. read more
What happens when unfamiliar cultural elements are set within an all-too familiar framework? The result can be a kind of cultural slide show where the structure takes over and the content becomes secondary, as with Lemi Ponifasio’s Requiem. The director says Mozart’s same-titled work inspired him, yet it is not part of his theater piece, presented in the Rose Theater by Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival.
This is not the only source of disconnect about Requiem, originally created for the 2006 New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna. For this work about loss – cultural, environmental, or otherwise – Ponifasio pieced together songs, chants and rituals from his native Samoa, where he is a high chief. The program contained a libretto with the text, but apart from that, there was little onstage to give the audience some sort of grip on the various acts’ meanings. So the martial arts arm gestures, thigh slaps, shuffling gaits, and songs became more decorative and superficial than meaningful.
And yet the structure places it firmly within the anthology of contemporary performance art created recently in either Europe or the US and presented at venues such as Lincoln Center. read more
Since 2005, Australian native Kathryn Bennetts has been artistic director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders, which makes its full-company Manhattan debut with William Forsythe’s Impressing the Czar at the Lincoln Center Festival in the Rose Theater. Impressing the Czar, described simply as a history of western civilization conveyed with humor, was choreographed in 1988, and has not been performed in the US since 1989. Bennetts spoke from Antwerp by phone on July 12, prior to coming to New York.
Impressing the Czar seems like an ambitious work with which to acquaint New York with the company.
It’s a great way to acquaint New York with the company, because it shows the many talents they have. It’s a piece on a very large scale, and it shows off the company very well. read more
It’s hard to find a more fitting act to open Lincoln Center’s annual Midnight Summer Swing series than Nellie McKay. Now, Lincoln Center isn’t new territory for McKay, who appeared in that institution’s Great American Songbook in March 2005, but the interesting development this time around is that she’ll be fronting a band called the Aristocrats, featuring musicians pulled from the Swingin’ Hot Shots. It may look like an idiosyncratic move for a singer-songwriter who usually backs herself on the piano live, but then McKay specializes in odd moves. And even when they don’t quite pan out, the results are never boring. Let’s not shy away from hyperbole here: McKay is possibly the most interesting artist to emerge out of New York in the past decade. read more
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