Thursday, March 22, 2007

Wanna be a movie star?

National Treasure II (the sequel to the Nicholas Cage movie about treasure maps written on the back of the Declaration of Independence in the National Archives) is going to be shooting in Washington for about three weeks very soon. They are looking for 2,500 extras. Extras are the people you see in the background walking down the street, sitting in a room, etc., etc., and are not speaking parts. They are, however, paid to be in the movie, whether they actually get face time in the final cut or not. The pay usually isn't great—like $100 for an **entire** day (you might be looking at 12-15 hours, or maybe just 2)—but it's a lot of fun! You don't have to be union for this movie. So, if you're interested, act now! Go to this Web site for details:

http://www.extrasnow.com/national_treasure.php

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Music of Finland

One of the lovely things about living in the Nation's Capital is having the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts just a couple of blocks from where I live, and having the National Symphony Orchestra as one of the symphonic ensembles in residence at the K.C. Considered one of the top orchestras in the world, the NSO has both the reputation and the money to be able to put together programs featuring not only the world's top artists, but the top artists who are experts in their particular sub-area of musical style and performance.

Thus it was this week when NSO brought together the renowned Finnish conductor, Osmo Vänskä, music director of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra (the top group in Finland), and the spectacular Finnish violin soloist Leonidas Kavakos to play an all-Finnish concert featuring the music of 21st century composer Kalevi Aho and the now-old war horses of 20th century composer Jean Sibelius. We were pleased to attend the middle performance of this concert this past Friday night, the fifty-eighth birthday of composer Aho.

And what a remarkable evening it was!

NSO opened with Sibelius's Rakastava, Op. 14, a short three-movement tone poem for strings that originally had been conceived as a collection of love songs for a capella male voices. This opener gave us a chance to watch Maestro Vänskä at work; he is, to say the least, a unique conductor. From our vantage point on the fourth row just off the left center aisle (I like to sit in this general area to watch violin soloists "up close and personal"), we could see all the gestures and movements Vänskä used to coax the music from his charges. He is not a man to stand there waiving his arms in traditional one-two-three-four conducting patterns. Rather, he would bend over and droop; he would hold his arm in the air; he would glide with his hands; he would beckon encouragingly; he would do everything but using a traditional conducting pattern. And yet, not only did the musicians stay together, they brought forth incredible diversity of sound from the most delicate pianissimos to the most thunderous fortissimos.

They reserved the balance of the first half of the concert for the NSO premiere of Aho's Symphonic Dances: Hommage à Uuno Klami. Aho wrote this ballet in 2001, and shortly thereafter it received its premiere and first recording with the Lahti Symphony with Mo. Vänskä on the podium. The suite consists of four movements: Prelude, Return of the Flames and Dance (these first two movements being performed without a break between them), Grotesque Dance, and Dance of the Winds and Fires.

Aho has a very rich, full orchestral style, making frequent use of many of the orchestral instruments oft limited to "color" punctuation for the strings and woodwinds. The expanded percussion section all got a big workout in this piece. Aho likes his music to be loud; one might even consider some of the passages to be bombastic.

The Prelude was marked for its use of bells and chimes, and for introducing a theme that would be repeated throughout the work. By the time they played their way into Return of the Flames and Dance, the music could best be described as a cacaphony of sound; yet, the musical "noise" was still musical, devoid of the unfortunate mandatory dissonance and atonality that was demanded of so many 20th century composers. Grotesque Dance was the dream of the lower register instruments across the stage, being a tour de force for the double basses, tubas, contrabassoons, and the like. For the Dance of the Winds and Fires, they created a wind noise the origin of which I (and several other people I asked in the audience, including the usually all-knowledgeable ushers) could never determine.

My only criticism of the Symphonic Dances was the ending. Aho had built up his last movement to an incredible "noise" and music highlight that I could see was inspiring people to prepare themselves to leap up in uproarious applause upon its conclusion, but he didn't end it there; he opted to return to the original musical theme of the prelude in soft, pretty, and almost delicate tones. He thus cooled the audience's ardor, whereas I as a composer would have gone for the thrill and the cheap applause and acclaim.

After a too-short intermission (we were still some ways back in the bar line to get our wine when they began ringing the bells summoning the audience back into the house, and, thus, had to return thirsty), we went back to hear the Sibelius Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op.47, featuring Leonidas Kavakos as soloist.

Kavakos made his entrance in a most unusual ensemble. Now, the conductor and the men of the orchestra were all attired in the traditional white tie and tails; Kavakos wore what appeared to me to be a black Nehru jacket. He wore tuxedo trousers (the stripes down the sides are different than those adorning tail coat trousers) and his jacket was squared off in back like a tuxedo jacket with no vents. The buttons up and down the front were hidden behind a placket. A low Nehru-type collar appeared at the top. For those of you who weren't alive then, Nehru jackets were a brief unfortunate fashion statement in the 1960s where gentlemen wore these lightweight jackets that buttoned literally all the way up the front to the neck, eliminating the need for a traditional shirt, and featuring a little stand up collar. Kavakos's version looked a little too big for him, I thought, and then at the conclusion of the evening during the curtain calls, I noticed that he was wearing a black t-shirt underneath.

As Kavakos took his place, I thought he was one of the few musical artists I've ever seen who actually looked younger and more handsome in person than he did in his promotional head shot photograph printed in the program. He is a young man, probably in his mid-thirties, and he has a tall, slender body topped with a mop of longish, unkempt dark hair on his head; he wore a three-day stubble of beard.

His best accessory, though, wasn't his jacket or his hair, it was the 1692 Falmouth Stradivarius violin he played. What an amazing instrument! The 300-plus year-old instrument had been well-cared for, and had the sheen of new varnish. It had an incredible sonority, sometimes resonating so much that it had the sound of being miked (which, of course, it wasn't). The distinctive sound rang out clearly over the full orchestra, and the instrument allowed pianissimo passages to be played with incredible delicacy that was easily heard yet still very, very pianissimo.

He also had a very interesting bow. I could never really get a good look at it, but it certainly was not "standard issue;" I'm not a violin expert who can see bow shapes and identify makers and eras. This bow used white horse hair, one strand of which broke during the first movement and then waived and flailed in the air until at a convenient break in the violin part, Kavakos was able to bite off with his teeth the errant filament.

The concerto, of course, has become well-known and is a popular part of the violin concert repertoire. Kavakos has an intimate relationship with the work, including having been the only person approved by the Sibelius family to record the original version of the piece, which he did with Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony. This particular performance was spellbinding, and Kavakos is one of the very few solo artists I've seen rewarded by the audience with an immediate and nearly universal standing ovation. After leaving the stage, he was gone a long time until he returned by audience demand for another bow. Again, after an unusually long wait, he came out a second time, this time to play an unannounced encore that sounded like it must have been a virtuosic rendition of an old folk song. I particularly noticed how during the encore, even the orchestra string players watched him with rapt attention.

If only all of the concerts I see every year could be this memorable!

river

This is a picture of rowers on the river outside the Kennedy Center Friday night.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

The carnival

Last night we went to see the Kennedy Center's own production of Carnival!, a 1961 musical directed and choreographed by Robert Longbottom with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill ("How Much Is That Doggie in the Window") and script by Micheal Stewart (Bye Bye Birdie; Hello, Dolly! 42nd Street). It is based on the 1953 movie Lili and the original 1950 story from The Saturday Evening Post called "The Man Who Hated People" by Paul Gallico. While is is not a commonly familiar musical, it does have one popular and well-known song, "Love Makes the World Go Round."

Carnival! tells the tale of a young orphaned girl who falls in love with the carnival and develops a complex relationship in the life of a puppeteer and his puppets.

While Lili is a much-loved movie musical from the 50s, I did not find the stage musical Carnival! to be as successful. The script is weak. What's more, musically, some of the most important and most emotional songs just didn't go anywhere. The Kennedy Center reworked things a little bit to combine the original two acts into one, long, two-hour act. Because all the angst and love duets traditionally happen towards the end of a musical, that made it a little challenging to maintain interest at the end.

Where the musical does succeed is in on-stage spectacle. There are several production numbers that dazzle, with fine choreography, sparkling costumes, spectacular props, magic tricks, and all kinds of acrobats, aerialists, and actual circus-type performers. Kudos to the technical and stage crew for designing and executing extraordinarily difficult "big top" shows that suddenly materialize and disappear during the course of the show. Even the Eiffel Tower arises from the stage's center trap!

Some of the performers stood out as well. Johnathan Lee Iverson was larger than life—and extraordinarily tall!—in his role as carnival owner and ringmaster Schlagel. Natascia Diaz was great in her small belter role as Rosalie, the on-stage assistant and off-stage unappreciated love interest of the carnival's star magician. Rosalie has a great line: "I sang an M above high L when I was Carmen in Aida." Four tall, slender dancers were the "roustabouts" who moved set pieces, provided a foil for the magician, and engaged in a lot of athletic choreography.

After the show, we met the magician, Marco the Magnificent, played by Sebastian La Cause, as he came out the stage door, and we got his autograph. He gave us a fine on-stage portrayal of the aging, egomaniacal, over-sexed carnival star, showing great dance training, but, perhaps, not so great singing training. He lost his accent during his song and didn't support his voice well (necessary even with the heavy miking they used). There may have been a little type casting here: La Cause has his own Web site that gives not only his daily workout training routine but a huge gallery of photos of him in varying degrees of (un)dress and an entire section he calls a "beefcake gallery" for him in more muscular, athletic poses.

The two stars of the show are Lili, the young orphaned girl, played by Ereni Sevasti, and Paul, the carnival puppeteer, played by Jim Stanek. Both had their strengths and their good moments, but on the whole, their chemistry together was lacking and both, both individually and as a couple, were miscast.

The diminutive Miss Sevasti began the show the model of young innocence, though I wasn't so sure if she was playing a teen-aged girl or perhaps one a bit older who was a bit slow and/or certainly greatly naïve. She had an old-fashioned, tight vibrato singing style that was wonderfully "period" for this piece, and she had a solid, clear, high top. Towards the end of the show, though, when she and Paul have their "crisis" and falling out, her anger and attitude gave the impression more of a strong, somewhat older woman, rather than a wounded and angry girl. I also never really felt any emotional connection from her towards the other principal characters.

Stanek was even more miscast. His character is a former star dancer whose leg was injured in "the war," leaving him unable to dance; he is bitter about his disability and angry to those around him. Unfortunately, I felt that instead of angst and anger, his characterization was mostly petulant. And, interestingly enough, the original "Paul" on Broadway was the late Jerry Orbach, the gruff-voiced detective on the Law and Order television series. Some of the worst musical writing and songs fell to Paul's character, and much of those songs was centered in the lower vocal mid-range, with a definite baritone tessitura. The problem is that Stanek is a lyrical tenor, and he very simply did not have the lower notes, thus he couldn't do anything with the bad music and difficult songs. I don't blame him; I blame the casting director.

I don't mean to cast a pall over this entertaining musical. It was a pleasant enough evening. I found it interesting, though, to read the reviews in The Washington Post and Variety, both of which greeted Carnival! with glowing reviews and high praise. Did we see different musicals?

Carnival! runs through March 11 at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater.