Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings on stage at the Wiltern
Photo: mine 2010

What better way to end a month full of Wagner than with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. There is no real connection here and I’m not trying to imply one. Sometimes it’s just best to finish the Beaujolais and walk away if you know what I mean. I last saw SJDK, as their backdrop proclaims them on their current tour, at the Hollywood Bowl in 2008 as the second act on a triple bill of “world music.” At the time I was blown away and mostly desired to hear a more substantial set from this ensemble in a more hospitable venue. Well, my wish was granted this weekend at the Wiltern Theater when Ms. Jones and her formidable fellow musicians appeared on their current West Coast tour in support of their latest recording I Learned the Hard Way. It’s a relatively more musically adventurous collection of songs for the group, but all of the material blended nicely on Saturday.

Which is no surprise, considering how incredibly tight this ensemble of 15 or so is, including four strings, three horns, and back-up singers. The show puts Jones front and center in a not at all tongue-in-cheek homage to a 1960s Soul revue à la James Brown. The outfits, mannerism, and consummate musicianship are all there. Even a sort of retro party atmosphere is maintained as Ms. Jones invited various men and women to climb up onto the stage during the performance to dance or interact with her. Some in the audience got a little carried away, clambering over the breech without an invitation, which though inappropriate lent a sort of bygone exuberance as well. Ms. Jones arrives on stage with hyperbolic fanfare that she soon delivers on with an immense amount of energy and feeling. All of this was maintained without a hitch in a nearly marathon two and a half hour show that never flagged and covered everything you could possibly want to hear, including their calling card rendition of “This Land is Your Land,” which is no less powerful now after having accompanied the opening credits to Reitman’s Up in the Air. What I love most about SJDK besides their superb musicianship is the fact that they're selling something completely unrelated to much of what is currently marketed as popular music, and they don't seem to care. Yet this is much, much more than nostalgia. It's passionate, engaging music that I will dearly miss until they come around again.

Labels: Sharon Jones and the DK

You know who freaking rocks? Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. At least they did at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday night, a venue that might seem daunting for their brand of reclaimed 60s soul and funk. Audience participation is their stock and trade and in the giant bowl at a great distance, it initially seemed this would be a difficult evening. But in no time, the incandescent Jones and the tight-as-anything Dap-Kings had the crowd on their feet and in the palm of their hands. The energy level, brash personal and political commentary, and sheer musicianship were overwhelming. In addition to their expected hits, they delivered a remarkable version of “This Land is Your Land” and closed with Jones’ take on James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World,” twisting that classic into something unique. Fantastic.

Oddly, Jones and the Dap-Kings were sandwiched in the middle of this KCRW-sponsored show with two other acts whose introspective approaches were leveled by the enormous venue. Vancouver’s Pacifika ran through a nervous and brief opening set, but more worrisome was headliner Feist. Her set was plagued with some technical problems, but seemed clearly attuned to a smaller and more intimate setting. Her beautiful but often fragile compositions felt more like a passing breeze. Even the bouncier fare that has led her band into the limelight such as the Apple-commercial-hyped “1,2,3,4” seemed uncertain and hesitant.

So, while the programming folks may have misjudged the proper order of the acts in the show, it was still a night to remember due the presence of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Check them out when they're next in your neck of the woods.

Labels: Hollywood Bowl 08

May comes to L.A. as warm, sunny skies give way to more warm, sunny skies and car dealers all over town busily remind us that in fact Memorial Day is here and we are crossing over into what we’ll call summer for the time being. Of course, performance-wise there’s plenty to look forward to, and, while there is plenty going on abroad, there’s a plethora of worthwhile events here at home on my schedule as well. Details for any of the mentioned events can be found in the calendar to the left

As always, summer is the time for the L.A. Philharmonic's annual pilgrimage from the beauty and exquisite sound of the WDCH to the ersatz dinner theater and flight-path obstacle we affectionately refer to as the Hollywood Bowl. It’s the usual grab bag of crowd pleasers and lightweight pop concerts this year and I have to admit that with a few exceptions it’s the weakest season there in a while. There is a concert performance of Carmen with Denyce Graves, a Philip Glass program led by Leonard Slatkin, and the typical appearance from Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Probably the "classical" highlight will be the Salonen-led performances of Mahler’s 8th symphony in the first week of September. On the pop side, the L.A. Phil will sponsor performances from Feist, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and Diana Ross, which will undoubtedly be a double-edged sword of an evening. Radiohead will stop by as well for two sold-out evenings as will Stevie Wonder. Meanwhile, Los Angeles Opera, on the other hand, has almost completely abdicated it's summertime programming and will offer only revival performances of Tosca which opened last weekend and La Rondine with Patricia Racette.


The Ojai Festival will again take place the first weekend in June with a typically strong program featuring appearances by Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, So Percussion, Signal, and this year's festival director David Robertson. The programs will include the works of Reich, Elliott Carter, Messiaen, and Ligeti. Unfortunately, I’m only going to be able to attend the opening evening on June 5th before heading out of the country, but expect a full report. As always, Ojai remains one of the highlights of the summer season.

Of course, it wouldn’t be summer without doing my bit to drive up the price of gas even further by driving out of town around the U.S. Up in San Francisco, David Gockley continues to stab around in the dark for a new vision for SF Opera (last Fall it was a “singer’s house”, last month it was an “Italian house”, what'll he think of next?) with Das Rhinegold in the American-themed production from Francesca Zambello after its Washington NO run. Natalie Dessay will also be appearing in a non-Mary Zimmerman Lucia, and an exceptionally strong cast (though now without Ewa Podles) will make the most of what looks to be a rather dismal John Copley production of Handel’s Ariodante. Maybe it’s a “keep your eyes closed” house after all. In Santa Fe, Richard Gaddes has put together a very strong season to follow last year's mixed bag with dem geilen Teddy Tahu Rhodes starring in Billy Budd, a new Radamisto with David Daniels, Falstaff, Figaro, and the U.S. Premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater with the Peter Sellars production imported from Paris now staring Monica Groop in the title role and Pia Freund. Between it’s penchant for inventive staging and beautiful scenery, Santa Fe may be the antidote for San Francisco.


Last but not least however, I’m going to make the trek to New York over the 4th of July weekend not just for theater, but also for the Lincoln Center Festival's performance of Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten. How can you miss out on a 20th century opera with mobile seating? And so another summer is about to begin. But first there is that matter of the Salonen Piano Concerto….

Labels: Summer plans

Lionel Bringuier looking much cuter than his LA Phil press photos
Photo: Micke Grönberg/SR

Apparently, the LA Phil press department never sleeps as evidenced by this curious oddity – LA Phil Assistant Conductor Lionel Bringuier was identified by CNN as one of the “Young People who Rock”. According to their website, YPWR is “a weekly interview series focused on people under 30…who are doing remarkable things.” Bringuier is off to a strong start this season with some appearances in the Phil’s new music “Green Umbrella” series where he led performances of the works of Kaija Saariaho. He also survived the Lorin Maazel led performances of Britten’s War Requiem last week with no apparent signs of damage. Bringuier will be fielding questions from the on-line community on "CNN.com Live" this Friday, February 1, at 11:30 AM (PST) per their website. You can even submit a video question if you like – either way it sounds much more interesting than those dreary presidential debate questions.

Speaking of youth and the LA Phil, we’ve another series of Gustavo Dudamel concerts coming up at the end of March and inquiring minds like myself who have been speculating about his interest/aptitude towards contemporary music may finally be getting some hints. The programs he will lead on March 28-30 will include the LA Phil’s own beloved Esa-Pekka Salonen’s composition Insomnia. Now there is some potentially clever programming. FYI – there is a dreadful puff piece interview with Dudamel on the LA Phil website where Gail Eichenthal asks brilliant zingers like “Why do you suppose music is so well-suited to rescue children from poverty on the streets?” Thank you Ms. Eichenthal for exhibit A in my argument about the problems with the media's coverage of (and the public's overenthusiasm to) Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. Western culture saves the great, unwashed masses once again. Who needs global economic justice and peace when you have art?

And on a brighter note, the 2008 Hollywood Bowl season is on its way with Salonen conducting Mahler’s 8th in September, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Thibaudet in the Khachaturian Piano Concerto, and a largely Philip Glass program led by Leonard Slatkin.

Labels: LA Philharmonic

Linda Watson and Vitalij Kowaljow Photo: Monika Rittershaus/LAO

Oh it’s that time of year again. And, although my performance schedule for the last two weeks is in significant flux, I feel it’s time to make the call for this year’s top ten primarily music-related events. 2010’s denominator included 236 complete live performances of which 163 were either operas or musical concerts, be they “classic” or otherwise. (That’s 72 operas, and 91 concerts) Here’s what I thought was worth remembering this year:

1. Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at L.A. Opera. 7/10 A monumental production from the mind of Achim Freyer that was so much more than an opera production. Not everything in the course of these many hours was perfect (Linda Watson and John Treleaven to name two), but Freyer managed to produce a work of art of his own that changed the way you thought about Wagner’s Ring. That is if you were willing to listen and think about something new. Like much great art, it was met with divisive opinions and sadly was not committed to video. But the company stuck its neck out in virtually every way for a huge artistic success. The only question now is how long we’ll have to wait for the show to return.

Karita Mattila and Gerd Grochowski Photo: Cory Weaver

2. Janáček’s The Makropulos Case at San Francisco Opera. 11/10 Operatic perfection - pure and simple. What’s more, Karita Mattila gave a definitive performance of Emilia Marty and further cemented her stature as an operatic legend with perhaps one of the most vocally and physically comprehensive performances you’ll ever see. Watch out New York, she’s on her way back with this achievement in tow.

Nina Stemme and Mark Delavan
Photo: Terrence McCarthy/SFO 2010

3. Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde in Die Walküre at San Francisco Opera. 6/10 Talk about comprehensively great performances. Stemme made it clear that with Christine Brewer on the sidelines, no one currently singing this Mt. Everest of roles can even come close to her. Stemme manages so much beauty, ease, and outright lightness in this part that it actually sounded like the proverbial bel canto music Wagner thought he was writing. Sadly, New York, you’ll be missing out on this one for the foreseeable future. Get your San Francisco Opera Ring Cycle tickets now.

4. Georg Friedrich Haas’ String Quartet No. 3, subtitled In Iij. Noct performed by the JACK Quartet at Monday Evening Concerts. 4/10 The daring young men of the JACK Quartet let it all go for this hour long adventure played in total darkness. The MEC team spared no expense in creating an environment that was more than completely darkened, but one where it didn’t matter if your eyes were open or closed, it all looked the same. The audience, like the players were forced to listen in new ways and I was astonished to discover how dependent I am on visual cues even when listening to music.

Paulo Szot in The Nose
Photo: Ken Howard/Met Opera 2010

5. Shostakovich’s The Nose at The Metropolitan Opera in New York. 3/10 William Kentridge’s irreverent, marauding production of this neglected masterpiece proved a perfect environment for the talents of baritone Paulo Szot in the leading role. Another opera where the art of the stage craft rivaled the art of the opera itself.

6. Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at BAM in New York. 3/10 William Christie and Les Arts Florissants returned to New York with the hit of the 2009 Glyndebourne Festival in the spring. A visually stunning, often outright hysterical staging of a sometimes ungainly work, Christie was in his element with Baroque music that sounded as lovely as one imagines it did hundreds of years ago.

Mojca Erdmann and Johannes Martin Kränzle Photo: Ruth Walz

7. Wolfgang Rhim’s Dionysus and String Quartets at the Salzburg Festival. 8/10 Rhim got the attention he deserves at a festival not nearly large enough to contain the music of this most prolific of living composers. Even the small fractions I was able to see left me desiring much more, though. His world premiere opera based on Nietzsche and his writings in a productions from Jonathan Meese was a hallucinatory shot in the arm. This was the life of the mind and easily the year's best new opera. The Arditti Quartet's take on his middle period String Quartets, also performed at the festival, was equally remarkable.

8. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings at the Wiltern Theater. 6/10 No one does it quite like Ms. Jones and the tightest band in America. The players returned to Los Angeles for an evening of their incomparable soul stylings that easily surpassed any other popular music I saw this year. (Though the xx on their first U.S. tour weren’t too shabby either.)


9. Louis Andriessen’s La Commedia with the ASKO/Schönberg Ensemble. 4/10 I know this is a bit of cheating considering this piece made the list in 2008 with the same soloists and conductor Reinbert De Leeuw. But this major recent operatic work, receiving its U.S. Premiere in a concert version without Hal Hartley’s companion video installation, was an event to remember. One of the great operas of the new century thus far. And if you don't believe me, just ask the folks who gave the Grawemeyer Award to Andriessen for this very piece this year.

10. Either Adams’ Nixon in China at Long Beach Opera 3/10 or Berg’s Lulu at the Metropolitan Opera. 5/10 You can choose between the two – I can’t. Long Beach Opera continued to thumb its nose at a bad economy with a big, good-looking production of a major 20th-century work on a shoe-sting budget managing to outclass 95% of everything put on stage by more comfortably funded organizations. Meanwhile, the Met used its formidable resources to dust off a relic of a production which was then lavished with musical qualities beyond compare, including the conducting of Fabio Luisi.

Most Overrated: I had a hard time with Anne Sofie von Otter nearly everywhere I saw her this year. Despite a reasonable Countess Geschwitz in that Met Opera Lulu, she was the weakest link in a number of concert performances including a French program from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France with Myung-Whun Chung and then got drowned out by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen as Judith in an otherwise superb version of Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Here’s wishing her a better 2011.

Dudamel high point of the year: Leading Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs in 4/10 with Kelley O’Connor. Gustavo Dudamel continued to struggle in the first full calendar year in his tenure as music director with the L.A. Philharmonic. He and the orchestra were critically drubbed just about everywhere they went on a U.S. tour in the spring after an essentially free ride in the press here at home. Other writers have begun to question the effect of the allegedly small amounts of time he’s spent with the orchestra so far. The PR machine rolls on uninterrupted, however, with a plan for live concert broadcasts to theaters around the country next year and more DVDs than you can shake a stick at. Dudamel does have moments every now and then, though, and Lieberson’s Neruda Songs, which was featured as part of the “Americas and Americans” festival was one of those moments where you were tempted to think that there still might be some way he can make his tenure here something really worth hearing. His conducting during a concert performance of Bizet’s Carmen at the Hollywood Bowl this summer wasn’t half-bad either.

Honorable mentions: Riccardo Muti leading Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Claus Guth’s take on a start-studded Don Giovanni in Salzburg. The magnificent Lieder recital of Anja Harteros also in Salzburg. The Metropolitan Opera’s Der Rosenkavalier from way back in 1/10 and the Met Opera orchestra's two appearances at Carnegie Hall this year with Diana Damrau and later Pierre Boulez conducting Schoenberg’s Erwartung. Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten and Catan’s Il Postino, also helped to round out one of L.A. Opera's strongest years ever. San Francisco Opera’s production of Werther from 9/10. Messiaen’s Harawi presented by Piano Spheres with Vicki Ray and Elissa Johnston in 4/10. Oh, and the sound of bicycles swooshing by on Grand Avenue downtown in Mauricio Kagels’s Eine Brise in one of the many fun moments brought to us courtesy of Monday Evening Concerts.

Next up – the theater.

Labels: Best Of

Film series and retrospectives are a dime a dozen in L.A. There are a number of venues and organizations around town involved in exhibiting and/or preserving films of all stripes. On any given weekend the revival and repertory film scene in L.A. can be a bit overwhelming. So it is an accomplishment that REDCAT manages to offer something unique, important, and off the beaten path with its own film and video series on mostly Monday evenings in the Fall and Spring. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. The Jack H. Skirball series, curated by CalArts faculty member Bérénice Reynaud and School of Film/Video Dean, Steve Anker screens material you’ll see nowhere else. The screenings focus heavily on experimental works from all over the world and almost completely eschew the type of mainstream commercial or “art house” film production that still dominates much other public film programs around town. Some of my best evenings at REDCAT have been in the film series from the documentaries of Ulrike Ottinger to the salvaged late 20th Century assembled by William E. Jones. Much of this superb and provocative programming unfolds under the watchful eye and sharp, dry wit of Reynaud who is an absolute rock-star of the first order. Half of the pleasure of these programs come from her incisive commentary and intelligent questioning and make these evenings a must see for anyone interested in the art of the filmed images.

The Spring portion of the film series started on Tuesday with an event entitled Music + Image which was presented as part of the omnipresent Pacific Standard Time art collaboration around town. The focus was on short video works made during the early to mid-1980s expressly for television by a variety of American artists. All of these works are included in the Long Beach Museum of Art’s Exchange and Evolution: Worldwide Video Long Beach, 1974-1999, a retrospective of video work shown at the museum over the last 25 years. Exhibit curator Nancy Buchanan was on hand to speak about the films as were several of the artists including Carole Ann Klonarides, Michael Owen, and director and 80s pop icon Toni Basil. The 14 short films shown in the program explored some of the fertile artistic ground that the monstrosity that would become MTV grew out of. While a few of the films could be considered traditional “music videos” most were not although all of them explored a rapidly changing relationship between sound and image in the early years of this kind of video art. Purely abstract visual works like Bob Snyder’s colorful Icron and Tempest from DeWitt, Sorensen, and Winkler gave way to a variety of more narrative and structured works. There were at least two seminal early “music videos” including Laurie Anderson’s O Superman (above) and the Toni Basil and David Byrne-directed clip for the Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime.

My favorite pieces though were some of the earliest that exploited the whole notion of recording video images to begin with. Cynthia Maughan’s Thank You, Jesus consists of little more than static black and white images of a well-appointed period living room from 1981, The rooms in this suburban home act as imagined settings for a hysterical voice over monologue about a woman meeting Jesus in a dream and rejecting much of what she imagines he has to offer. Dara Birnbaum’s 1978 Wonder Woman (at the top) is exactly what it says – a collection of short sequences taken from the 1970s television program of the same name starring Lynda Carter which are rapidly repeated creating an endlessly spinning Carter responding to staccato explosions in the background. The piece ends with the nearly nonsensical text from a novelty disco hit of the era on the topic of the character projected onto a blank blue screen underscoring some of the sexual politics under critique in the piece.

The screening was followed by a fascinating Q and A where the panel explored the loss of a spirit of experimentation in the video arena by the start of the 1990s. It was a fascinating discussion, but this is standard procedure in the Skirball series under Reynaud’s tenure. There are at least 10 more screenings between now and the end of May including a new work from Lee Anne Schmitt on Feb 13th, works form Daniel Eisenberg and Sharon Lockhart in March and April. And Bill Morrison will bring his collaboration with Johann Johannsson, The Miners' Hymns on April 23rd. Check out the full schedule and mark your calendars now.

Labels: REDCAT 11/12