Review: Chanticleer

March 29, University of Richmond

Chanticleer, the men’s vocal ensemble from San Francisco, is marking the beginning of its fourth decade with about as wide-ranging a sampler of American music as could be imagined. The program, "Wondrous Free," contrasts early Anglo-American hymnody with liturgical music from the Catholic missions of Spanish California, and familiar folk tunes with modern and contemporary ensemble pieces that sound like latter-day madrigals. (All that’s missing, curiously, is the program’s namesake, believed to be the first secular song written in English-speaking America.)

In this concert, as in so many others, the 12 men – sopranos Dylan Hotstetter, Michael McNeil and Gregory Peebles; altos Cortez Mitchell, Alan Reinhardt and Adam Ward; tenors Brian Hinman, Matthew Oltman and Todd Wedge; and basses Eric Alatorre, Gabriel Lewis-O’Connor and Jace Wittig – demonstrated that no vocal music, no style, no degree of structural or harmonic complexity, elude them. If that weren’t enough, they’re also pretty good at shtick comedy and even better at deadpan humor.

The program’s highlights were "Credidi," a sacred piece elaborated in madrigal style by the early 17th-century Mexican cleric-composer Juan de Lienas – one of a number of early Latino-American works that Chanticleer has revived after centuries of neglect – and "Sleep My Child," a ravishing lullaby that Eric Whitacre originally wrote (to a text by David Noroña) for his opera "Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings" and subsequently rearranged for this ensemble.

The Lienas displayed Chanticleer at its most virtuosic in intricate part-singing; the Whitacre showcased the rarified, almost weightless sonorities this group can create and sustain.

Two more ventures into madrigal style – Peter Schickele’s P.D.Q. Bach numbers "The Queen to Me a Royal Pain Doth Give" and "My Bonnie Lass She Smelleth" – proved less successful. They sounded lovely; but the words, and thus the humor, were obscured in the wash of tone.

The most novel offering of the evening was "Night Chant," written for Chanticleer by the American Indian (Mohican) composer Brent Michael Davids. The piece is extended musical foreplay for a night of love-making, layering a dialogue between male and female characters and a variety of naturalistic and percussive effects on a bassy chant, rendered sonorously by Alatorre.

The program began with a foursome of early hymn tunes, including two shape-note fuguing tunes, William Billings’ "David’s Lamentation" from the 18th century and A.M. Cagle’s "Soar Away," which dates from the 1930s but belongs to a much older tradition of rustic but highly expressive "Sacred Harp" singing.

In three pieces from Samuel Barber’s song cycle "Reincarnations" and "The Homecoming," a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. that David Conte composed to a text by John Stirling Walker, Chanticleer showed its fluency in modern harmonies emphasizing high registers.

A set of three Stephen Foster tunes – "Hard Times Come Again No More," "Gentle Annie" and "Nelly Bly" – led into a concluding selection of folk and popular songs. The last set featured outstanding solos by Mitchell in the Gershwins’ "Summertime," Hinman in "Rock My Soul" and Peebles in "Shenandoah."

Good music = good health?

“Listening to finer music and attending concerts on a consistent basis makes your real age about four years younger,” says Dr. Michael F. Roizen of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. “Whether that’s due to stress relief or other properties, we see decreases in all-cause mortality, reflecting slower aging of arteries as well as cancer-related and environmental factors. Attending sports events like soccer or football offers none of these benefits.”

Matthew Gurewitsch reports on the new field of "musical pharmacology" in The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/arts/music/29gure.html?ref=music

Review: 'The Barber of Seville'

Virginia Opera, Peter Mark conducting
March 27, Landmark Theater, Richmond

Rossini’s "The Barber of Seville" is great fun for audiences. It’s also heavy duty for singers, who must negotiate arias laden with speedy coloratura, exude broadly comic personality and physicality and make it all look and sound romping and breezy. When they pull it off, it’s not just marvelous, it’s wondrous.

This production's cast pulls it off consistently. The principal singers get a huge assist from stage director Greg Ganakas, who peppers the show with sight gags and comic tableaux for choristers and supernumeraries. Even conductor Peter Mark gets into the act at the beginning.

For all the high jinks, this "Barber" is still a singers’ showcase. The five principals – Jason Detwiler (as Figaro), Manon Strauss Evrard (Rosina), John Zuckerman (Almaviva), Steven Condy (Bartolo) and Mark McCrory (Basilio) – sing with high energy, impressive flexibility and generally strong projection and secure pitch as they render Rossini’s florid vocal lines. Detwiler’s delivery of Figaro’s signature aria, "Largo al factotum," is the merry showstopper it’s meant to be; he’s just as impressive as a duet partner and a core voice in ensemble numbers.

Evrard, returning to the company after memorable performances in Offenbach’s "The Tales of Hoffmann" and Donizetti’s "Lucia di Lammermoor" last season, is an alluring Rosina, although she had to rein in a rather steely high register in the early going of the first of two Richmond performances. Her gift for physical comedy, hinted at in "Hoffmann," flowers in this production.

Zuckerman, in his first appearance with the Virginia Opera, displayed a fine-grained, youthfully light tenor voice. Condy and McCrory, also making their mainstage debuts with the company, proved to be able comic foils and projected their low-riding lines with gratifying sonority and without compromising on tempos – not easy for baritones and basses in Rossinian patter.

Eduardo Sicangco’s vintage sets and costumes serve nicely in this revival. The orchestra, drawn from the Richmond Symphony, played with refinement and sparkle, although percussion sounded curiously recessed.

The final performance of the Virginia Opera’s "Barber of Seville" begins at 2:30 p.m. March 29 at Richmond’s Landmark Theater. Tickets: $22.50-$92.50. Details: (804) 262-8003 (Ticketmaster); www.vaopera.org

Sharing

Playlist, a digital concert magazine covering music in Virginia, Washington and Maryland, now features recommended classical-music events from Letter V.

Our content-sharing begins in the April edition of Playlist, online at:

www.plylstmagazine.com

Review: eighth blackbird

with Glenn Kotche, drums & percussion
March 25, University of Richmond

Encounters between performers of contemporary art-music and popular music of the art-rock or "indie" genres are becoming more frequent, if not yet commonplace. Many younger musicians ignore the old, once-bold line between highbrow and lowbrow art forms; and, it seems, "every composer’s got a band," observed Missy Mazzoli, shortly after her "Still Life with Avalanche" was introduced by eighth blackbird in the finale of its fifth season in residence at the University of Richmond.

The program explored the common ground – by now, a pretty substantial bit of acreage – cohabited by today’s classical musicians and rockers who aspire to more than four-four beats and catchy hooks in their songs. It also reminded us that this common ground has been cultivated for some time.

The featured artist of the evening was Glenn Kotche, best-known as the drummer of the band Wilco, also a composer and performer in several other groups that delve into jazz and multicultural percussion-centered music. Kotche, with and without members of the ’birds, presented four of his compositions, and joined the sextet in a performance of Steve Reich’s "Clapping Music" (1972) for an ensemble of hand-clappers.

Two of Kotche’s works, the large-scale "Monkey Chant" (2004) and shorter "Projections of (what) Might" (2005), melded the sound and style of gamelan, the Indonesian percussion orchestra, with the rhythms and atmospherics of street-corner funk. Gamelan music has influenced generations of American composers in both classical and jazz realms; Kotche, as a percussionist, departs less from the original sound model than others who have adapted gamelan for Western instruments and ensembles.

"Monkey Chant" is a "loose retelling" of the story of the battle of monkey armies from the Hindu epic "Ramayana," in which Kotche plays along with a film by Nathaniel Murphy. Murphy uses figures from Indonesian shadow plays in an animation recalling the primitive television cartoons of the 1970s, with their minimally moving figures and static backgrounds.

Kotche’s "Double Fantasy" (2008) expands his "Fantasy on a Shona Theme" for solo vibraphone into an ensemble piece for performance with eighth blackbird. The theme, a tune from Zimbabwe that sounds like a lullaby, develops into a kind of lilting pastorale with heavy percussive interjections. It also boasts one of the oddest multi-instrumental taskings ever faced by the ’birds’ Matt Albert, who alternates between violin and bass drum and gong.

Kotche’s "Individual Trains" (2005), another piece expanded for eighth blackbird, is the densely percussive sound track for his abstract film-in-four-frames on their mutual hometown, Chicago.

All these works showcase Kotche’s virtuosic technique on drum kit and other percussion and his immersion in both non-Western and vernacular pop rhythmic styles; but they also show that, multicultural as his influences may be, Kotche is a composer whose structural and dynamic arcs reflect a fundamentally classical core.

After performing his works, Kotche joined eighth blackbird in Louis Andriessen’s "Worker’s Union" (1975), a thunderous, lengthy opus from the height of the Dutch composer’s thumb-in-the-eye-of-the-highbrow-establishment period. Characterized by the ’birds’ pianist, Lisa Kaplan, as a "socialist manifesto minimalist romp," the piece, heard a generation after its creation, makes both the political and musical ideologies sound oppressive and obsessive. The musicians managed their heavy labor with intense concentration, and maybe an ironic sense of fun.

The premiere of Mazzoli’s "Still Life with Avalanche" was a welcome break from the largely high-volume percussive balance of the program. The work is a sunny pastorale into which a dark cloud intrudes; while writing it at an upstate New York art colony, the composer got news of the sudden death of her cousin. Mazzoli layers melodic content expertly and emotional contrasts with sensitivity and depth. In this first performance, the ’birds treated the piece like a precious, fragile object – like life itself.

Symphony 'Free for All'

The Richmond Symphony will present a "Musical Free for All" beginning at 10 a.m. on March 28 at the downtown main branch of the Richmond Public Library, First and Franklin streets.

The event, co-sponsored by the Friends of the Richmond Public Library, will feature activities for families and children, including a "petting zoo" with hands-on exposure to instruments of the orchestra, computer composition classes, sessions in instrument tuning and care, introductor Suzuki violin lessons with instruments provided, art activities and storytelling.

The Richmond Ballet's Minds in Motion Team XXL and the Happy Lucky Combo will perform, and the symphony, conducted by Erin Freeman, will stage an open rehearsal at 10 a.m. and a concert of works by Haydn, Dvořák, Rimsky-Korsakov and others at 3:30 p.m.

Admission is free, but donations of canned goods for the Central Virginia Food Bank are requested. (This is the local component of the "Orchestras Feeding America" national food drive.)

For more information, call the symphony box office at (804) 788-1212, or visit www.richmondsymphony.com

Purge in Phoenix?

Eight veteran musicians in the Phoenix Symphony have filed age-discrimination complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Phoenix office of the National Labor Relations Board has charged the orchestra with violating the National Labor Relations Act.

Both actions stem from "charges of wrongful termination, allegations of retaliation, and the charge that the symphony's top, veteran players are being forced to take demotions or leave the symphony so they can be replaced with younger, more compliant players," Phoenix New Times blogger Stephen Lemons writes:

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2009/03/michael_christie_saint_or_sata.php

Among the "EEOC eight" is Peter Rosato, the former principal violist of the Richmond Symphony, who left Richmond in the early 1980s to take the first chair in the Phoenix Symphony's viola section. Rosato "is embroiled in a legal fight with the symphony over unpaid wages and breach of contract, and was recently terminated," Lemons reports.