The Great Flood

Film and music are natural artistic companions, though unequal ones. Music without visual accompaniment- film or another artistic medium- is easy to experience and enjoy on its own. It needs nothing else to succeed. Film is quite different: rarely does a film make an impact without some sort of sound accompanying it. The presence of sound, dialogue, or a musical score alters our perception of the images we're viewing without the viewer having to do much work.

A film's mood can be manipulated to opposite extremes simply by changing the soundtrack from one thing to another. Imagine you are watching a scene of a woman swimming in the ocean. If you hear the theme from Jaws, you know what's coming, but if what you're hearing as you watch her swimming are the cries of gulls, or the sound an outboard motor, or a delicate moment from a Mozart piano sonata, or a loud passage from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade," suddenly there are different ways to interpret the image- and the narrative- and you, the viewer, haven't done anything but watch and listen.

While the idea of having live musical accompaniment for a film presentation has been around since the early days of the medium, in recent years its become an increasingly popular kind of event for performing arts companies as a way of expanding the audience for a particular performance. If the San Francisco Symphony were to schedule an evening of all-Bernard Herrmann it would lure a certain audience, but it wouldn't be the same audience as the one that would get excited about attending a screening of Psycho with a live performance of the score by the orchestra.

I like these kinds of presentations, as film and music are both mediums I enjoy, but the more of them I attend the more I realize how difficult it is to get it "just right," and more importantly, how easy it is for such shows to go awry.

A recent example of how to do it right was the stunningly wonderful presentation by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival of Abel Gance's Napoleon, with live accompaniment by Oakland East Bay Symphony- an all day affair which more than lived up to the hype and deserved every single bit of hyperbolic praise written about it. 

On the other side of the spectrum, last weekend I attended a show presented by SFJazz which featured a live performance by a band led by guitarist Bill Frisell, accompanying a film by Bill Morrison, in a show billed as The Great Flood. On paper, a collaboration between Frisell, a musician with a deep knowledge of American music, and Morrison, a Guggenheim Fellow who has previously worked with other musicians, sounded great. In the theater, the results were surprisingly disappointing.

Oddly, though there wasn't a single lyric sung the entire night, the show was pitched as part of SFJazz's "Art of the Song" series. The film itself, comprised of little more than historical footage of the catastrophic results when the Mississippi River breached more than 140 levees in 1927, contains no narrative voice-over or dialogue- it's completely silent. The show was essentially Frissell and the band performing a soundtrack to the film onstage while it was screened above them.

The band was great- especially Ron Miles on cornet, whose playing constantly drew my attention to him and away from watching the film showing above his head. Tony Scherr on bass and drummer Kenny Wollesen made for a potent rhythm section behind Frisell's tasty playing, which ranged from hard, metallic squalls to bluegrass-inflected levity. The music was essentially instrumentals which aimed to capture or illuminate the mood of the images of each segment of the film, which each of the musicians viewed on monitors as they performed.

The visual content of the film was interesting- how could it not be given the subject? Though some of it was way too deteriorated to be useful, forcing the viewer to try to make out what was behind the damaged parts taking up most of the screen, overall this footage shot by witnesses on the scene was compelling and well-edited into coherent segments. One particularly memorable sequence showed a well-dressed couple stranded on top of a car as the water rushed by them, continually rising as they stood there helplessly. After a couple of minutes the car started to rock back and forth under the force of the water, and then suddenly they were floating away downstream and off screen, their fate never known to us.

However, unlike Bill Viola's film work for The Tristan Project, which used water imagery repeatedly to great effect, Morrison's images don't enhance a musical experience, they distract from it. Viola's images were slow, often presented in slow motion, and many of the shots were static, allowing the viewer time to interpret their relevance to the music or  to create an association with it on their own. Images of a flood, of rushing water shot by old cameras whose playback speed is already faster than what the human eye sees of the same event, moves at a pace that doesn't allow the viewer time to make associations with the music- and here is where the performance failed to create a sustained link between its musical and visual elements. The film needed to be slowed down, to include a voice-over providing dramatic context, or some songs lyrics needed to be sung to evoke something replicating the era or the event. 

One could listen to the music or watch the film- but the opportunity to experience both in a meaningful way happened only sporadically and as the unconnected performance progressed it became tedious. Seventy minutes of non-narrated historical footage is a lot to take in. Seventy minutes of music with little context, performed without the intent of building toward a climax or showcasing the music itself, quickly becomes aimless. About fifteen minutes in I realized this was going to be a long night, and I soon felt quite restless, as if water was slowly rising around me, leaving me trapped. I even considered leaving, but didn't. I must not have been the only one feeling this way, as I did observe a few walk-outs, but the performers received a standing ovation from a majority of the audience at the conclusion. 

The Cleveland Orchestra in San Francisco

The Cleveland Orchestra came to town this week, the fourth of six visitors lined up for the American Orchestra Series, which brings the leading orchestras of the country to Davies Symphony Hall for two-night stands during the San Francisco Symphony's Centennial Season. While all of the visitors have been impressive, I have to say that so far, and with no small amount of surprised amusement, the Clevelanders have been the band who've impressed me the most. But then it's par for the course, almost expected isn't it, to have lower expectations for Cleveland? I mean that's what America does, right? Remember when the lake caught fire? What about those Browns? Does anyone take the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seriously? How can one when Alice Cooper and Santana are in it while Kiss and War are not?

Sorry, I'm off topic. I'll stop.

Such a bland name for a post, isn't it? But there was only one other possible choice and it felt too easy- and then Brian took it, so I couldn't use it even if I wanted to. Oh well. I have no connection to the city of Cleveland except for an ex-girlfriend who came from there and then decided to return after living in L.A. for fifteen years. But I don't want to write about her in this post. What can one say about Cleveland? Does anyone not originally from there go for a pleasure visit? Well, should I ever find myself there I do hope it's during the Orchestra's season. Good grief, what a band!

The first night's concert featured works by Mendelssohn, Saariaho and Shostakovich and it became evident early in the concert the orchestra possesses a magnificent sound, the strength of which emanates from its string section, but I wouldn't want to give the impression that's where it stops. During the first movement of Mendelssohn's 3rd Symphony, the Scottish, the orchestra perfectly captured the feel of a rolling tumultuous sea before turning it into a swashbuckling romp. Principal oboist Frank Rosenwein's playing shone especially well through the orchestra's blended sound.

The second half revealed Music Director Franz Welser-Möst's real strength to be a mastery of tempos. Kaija Saariaho's Orion,  a commission by this company and the one I was most looking forward to hearing on this night, was stunning. The orchestra for this work is immense- one of the largest I've ever seen onstage, including a battery of percussionists. The first movement is full of chugging, Hermann-esque sounds of ominous energy. Sounds came from the musicians that were almost impossible to identify and I found myself scanning them constantly to see who was playing what, or which instrument(s) was responsible for what I was hearing. In 3 or 4 places the music hung in the air before evaporating into silence, with Welser-Möst wringing every possible moment of dramatic impact from it before the only sound left was total silence before commencing with the next part- you could feel the audience's rapt attention- I've never, ever heard it so silent in Davies, and the house looked to be at capacity. The piece didn't receive a standing ovation, just hearty applause, but I certainly thought it merited one.

After that came Shostakovich's 6th Symphony, and the wind section of the orchestra shone brightly here, with especially notable playing coming from Mary Kay Fink on the piccolo. I also appreciated the restrained, thoughtful playing of Paul Yancich on the timpani. The second half of this concert rivaled anything else I've heard this season in Davies for simply superb execution and musicianship. I left the hall that evening greatly impressed.

The next night I returned for more, especially looking forward to hearing the Beethoven Violin Concerto- a personal favorite of mine. The soloist was Nikolaj Znaider, with whom I was unfamiliar- I'm not sure the Danish performer has ever made it this far west before (though the program noted he frequently plays with East Coast orchestras). Even a substandard performance of this masterpiece holds many pleasures, and though I found this particular performance to have some oddities, if I could combine it with the second half of the previous night's performance it would have been something close to perfection.

Welser-Möst made some fascinating decisions regarding the tempos of the piece, especially in the first movement, with each section performed at a different pace than its predecessor, all of them slower than I would have expected, which gave the orchestra room to stretch the grandeur of it to maximum effect. Like in the Saariaho work the night before, the phrases hung beautifully in the air. Znaider, on the other hand, seemed intent to work with a cross purpose, playing as fast as possible within Welser-Möst's slower, expansive tempo. It was strange, and while conceptually I thought it an interesting choice, I frequently found myself disliking what I heard- this was especially true in his rough and tumble treatment of the cadenzas, where Znaider's earthy folk-inspired playing jarred against the elegance of the orchestra to ill effect.

The pizzicato of the second movement never sounded more like a dance than it did here, and the lyrical waltz of the third brought out all of the exuberant joy of it shares with Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the relation between the two being well rendered under Welser-Möst. Despite my qualms with Znaider's approach, it was still a pleasure.

As was Thomas Adès' Dances from Powder Her Face, his chamber opera that I hope will one day show up on a stage in this city. The fifteen minute piece elicited laughter from the audience- the music easily conveys the more farcical elements of this work about the "Dirty Duchess." There's a heavy, heady mix of musical genres within the score and the orchestra handled it with panache. The final piece were three of the six symphonic poems from Smetana's Ma Vlast (My Country), which were richly performed with robust tempos, but I have to admit to feeling like the visit to Bohemia was longer than I would have stayed on my own itinerary, though the first, The Mighty Fortress, was certainly evocative of a lonely, forbidding castle.

Love/Hate

Love/Hate

I've done it. More times than I can remember, though at some point now that I think about it, I rarely do it anymore. Walking down the street, standing in an elevator, waiting in a line, I see someone- a total stranger, who strikes my fancy and prompts my imagination to take off into Romantic Fantasy land. In my particular case it's usually something visual that catches my eye. A confident walk, an accordion skirt, really great shoes, or a gap between two front teeth suddenly exposed by a smile. Or a thousand other things. I'm often susceptible to eyes and boots. Let's call the instigating "it factor" of this experience the "trigger." Sometimes triggers come in pairs, and like the double trigger on an M1946 Sieg automatic rifle, this can produce an especially effective result.

With Isabella it was her large, dark eyes coupled with a voice trained in the theater. The Femme Fatale was wearing a mask when we met which hid everything except her piercing eyes, though it was her name which really caught me. Maria Gostrey was flaunting a Cavalli gown and a Marilyn Monroe walk- she captured my imagination before I even saw her face. Long before I actually met her, I used to admire CC from a distance because of the clothes she wore, which I observed from the window in the apartment of another woman I was dating who lived across the street from her. I would watch CC go in and out of her flat on Pierce Street as I sat in the window of this other woman's apartment, fantasizing about the woman across the way, CC, with her great clothes and determined gait. Some months later, when she took me to her flat after our second date, you might imagine my surprise at learning I was in the presence of the woman I used to admire from a window right behind us. Suddenly a former fantasy had become reality.

The point of all of this reminiscing is to say I was intrigued when I read about the plot of the new opera Love/Hate: a string of vignettes revealing the romantic fantasies and memories of two people meeting as they stand waiting for a bus on a rainy morning. You might understand how I was sympathetic to the idea this could be great material- especially for an opera. Boy meets girl, triggers are pulled,  fireworks follow (hopefully).

So on Saturday night I rode over to the ODC Theater to check it out. I arrived early, and when I turned off the bike's engine I could clearly hear Ao Li's voice filling the street outside as he warmed up from somewhere inside the building, which I found charming. There was already a "sold-out" announcement on the door as I went inside. Waiting in line for my ticket I noticed Sheri Greenawald of the SF Opera Center come in through the opposite door, and spotted a couple who run a local opera company seated at a table, chatting away with another couple. I looked around and spotted another familiar face- a woman I've seen many times before at various performances whom I've never met and whose identity was unknown to me.

Coffee and coffeecake now in hand, I went over and introduced myself, with no other intention than to find out who she was because I see her so frequently. I figured she was either a journalist of some sort or worked in the arts. It turned out to be the latter- she works for SF Opera, and when she told me what she did I felt awkward for a moment, quickly recalling the many critiques and rants I've written about things in which she probably had a direct hand. She didn't recognize my name (my real one, of course), though when I told it to her I could see her searching her mind for a link. I think she came up blank, which is probably for the better. We had a nice chat and I was grateful I haven't written anything snarky about her employer or her department in awhile, though it was one of those situations where after it was over I had an entire list of things I wished I had said in place of the things I actually did. All nice things, of course. Nicer things. Different things. Oh well.

You've no doubt noticed by now I'm taking an awfully long time to get around to discussing the opera itself. This isn't a coincidence. Perhaps I should begin by quoting a line sung by one of the characters: 

How did things get so fucked up?

Surely there's an unwritten rule somewhere that says don't write lines or use a title that is ripe for some sarcastic bastard to use to skewer your own work, unless you're 100% certain what you've created is gold. I can imagine someone sitting in front of their computer thinking maybe I should just make a list of things I loved/hated about Love/Hate.

What I loved:

Okay, next column.

What I...

Never mind.

You see where I'm going here, don't you? Of course you do. Actually, it's not all bad, but there's only so much bait I can refuse.

The performers were all quite good and approached the material with admirable earnestness. There just wasn't much for them to work with because the libretto by Rob Bailis doesn't give them anywhere to go and with no destination to arrive at, composer Jack Perla's music skittishly jumps from one genre to the next without ever forming a cohesive whole. More than once I felt like I was watching an episode of "Glee" in which the cast performs a parody of "Friends."

The opera begins with what turns out to be a recurring leit motif (inserted late into the creative process according to Bailis during a post-performance Q&A). Laura Krumm and Ao Li (annoyingly named George and Laura, as in Bush) meet at a bus stop. He asks her name, and on hearing it sings a line from the theme of the film with the same title. She asks his, and on hearing it alludes to his namesake the curious monkey. If this wasn't awkward enough to begin with, George is wearing a silly raincoat and hat the exact same color of the cover on the children's books and gives his profession as "computer geek." Laura's an English teacher. While this may have been seen by those involved as either funny or realistic, its proximity to racial stereotyping made me feel a bit queasy. And it was repeated three times, maybe four.

Not the best choice for the leading man. Just sayin'.

Going back to that unwritten rule for a moment, about that inclusion of the riff from The Doors' "When the Music's Over"... oh, never mind.

The strongest moments of the work are when both George and Laura reminisce about past lovers who happen to be of the same sex. But while the inclusion of this bit of their personal histories  worked individually as vignettes, featuring the most realistic lines of the libretto and the best dramatic staging, they didn't make much sense in the larger context. The sudden jerking of the characters sexual preferences/lives/identities into a different world was jarring rather than illuminating, and I couldn't help but wonder if I'm the only one who thought if the strongest part of the libretto deals with same-sex relationships, why not just flip it, make the characters gay, and have this scene be about their past experimentation with straight people? It seemed to me these scenes were where Bailis's heart was- why not follow it? It would have rang truer to me.

Now that's entertainment.

Thomas Glenn and Marina Boudart Harris rounded out the cast of four, with everyone playing at least two parts. Li, who spoke little if any English when he arrived in the U.S. a couple of years ago, impressed me with his command of the language and his ability to deliver nuances within the lines. He possesses an incredibly rich, strong voice. Both Krumm and Harris hit a rough spot at one point, but each has a highly appealing presence onstage and a lovely voice. It will be worth watching to see how these talented young singers, both first year Adler Fellows, develop.  Glenn, whose elastic physicality reminds me of Jim Carrey, is always a pleasure to see perform and last night was no different. He seemed especially comfortable in the moments that were more musical theater than opera- of which there were many. That's another thread I'm going to just ignore at this point, though whether one considers Love/Hate to be a musical or an opera (and what the difference is between the two at this point) is a subject well worth ruminating about. But I do have other things to accomplish today, so no, I'm not going down that path. 

The program doesn't list anyone in charge of costumes. This was too obvious. 

What wasn't obvious was the purpose of Laura's sheep. Was this supposed to make the audience think she's a bit "off"? A clue to the absurdity of romantic fantasizing? To the absurdity of romance, period? A vague allusion to Albee's goat? A MacGuffin? All of the above? 

The music, led by David Hanlon, was well-performed by Michelle Maruyama on violin, Adelle Akiko Kearns on cello, Ryan Ibbetson on clarinet and Robert Mollicone on piano and electric keyboard.

The dark art of Christian Cagigal

Christian Cagigal. Photo by Julie Michelle

Lily Bart managed to get a ticket for me to the sold-out, final performance of Christian Cagigal's latest show, The Collection, which just completed a nightly from April Fool's Day through Friday the 13th. The dates were certainly not a coincidence, but rather a fortuitous opportunity on the calendar for Cagigal's unique, theatrical blend of dark-hued magic and mentalism. Little did I suspect when I entered the darkened theater, with its walls lined with macabre oddities, that I would become part of the act.

But at the end, there I stood under a spotlight wishing the most grievous bodily harm to befall someone who shall remain unnamed. We'll see if he made it through the night. Perhaps I left my soul in the theater, cajoled from me by a master. All I know is that like a vampire, I no longer appear in photographs and my longstanding belief that I possess ESP was borne out in front of a room full of witnesses last night. Yes, it's true.

More than that I shouldn't reveal, except to say that having now twice seen him perform feats with no logical, earthly explanation, I'm an admirer- and a believer. If you have the opportunity to see the man at work don't miss it. He'll be performing a new show, Now and at the Hour, in Montreal and Chicago during the month of May.

Uncut version of A Serbian Film to be released in the U.S.

Invincible Pictures, the U.S. distributor of Srdjan Spasojevic's A Serbian Film, announced on its Facebook page today that it will be releasing an uncut version of the film. I'm not sure I ever want to see it again, but its brutal brilliance is undeniable. However, I do wonder how many times Invincible is going to end up in court defending the film against all kinds of anti-this-and-anti-that laws, but I guess they've already hired a decent lawyer.

The inevitable lawsuits will be the best publicity they obviously couldn't buy with their original botched, edited release last year.

Fangoria has more details- a streaming version available from Invincible's FlixFling service (which didn't work for me when I tried to use it- caveat emptor!) on May 1, and the DVD available May 22.

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

Though I pleaded with her for three weeks in a row when it was playing locally in a theater last fall, Isabella absolutely refused to see The Human Centipede 2 with me. Since it was only playing at midnight, I never did see it on the large screen. The thought of me, a middle-aged man, attending a midnight movie by himself, especially this one, just seemed too depressing. At midnight the audience would likely be filled with drunken teenagers who just wanted to see how gross it was and most likely they would be yelling unfunny jokes at the screen through the entire thing. And I take this sort of thing seriously- I hate it when people yell out lame jokes while watching horror movies. In fact I usually loathe most of the audience at horror movies, which is why its best to see them as part of a genre festival, where the audience is comprised of serious fans, and not a bunch of goofs out on a date.


For the four of you who may not know about The Human Centipede, the first film was about a mad doctor who dreams of stitching together human beings cheek to jowl, so to speak. He succeeds, using his own "100% medically accurate" procedure, creating the title creature out of three humans. The film garnered a tremendous amount of notoriety and featured an unforgettable performance by Dieter Laser as the doctor, giving Udo Kier's performances in the Warhol/Morrisey films of the 70's a run for their money in camp nastiness.

The movie itself, written and directed. Tom Six, actually wasn't very good. In fact I thought it was kind of lame, but Laser was a lot of fun to watch and I did sit through the whole thing if for nothing else to see how it all came out in the end. It certainly wasn't as horrific as Martyrs or A Serbian Film, and if it wasn't for the mostly implied coprophagous element of the central plot point, no one would have paid much attention to it at all. At the time of its release, Stuart Gordon's 1985 film Re-Animator was much more beyond the pale with its severed-head cunnilingus scene.

But people did pay attention, and the film was even satirized on South Park (don't take that as an endorsement- the appeal of that show has always been inexplicable to me). As John Waters proved with 1972's Pink Flamingos, making a movie featuring people eating shit will get you noticed. For fans of horror, The Human Centipede became mandatory viewing- the latest movie to up the ante in the decade-long run of the genre's extreme, torture-porn wing.

And many of those fans came away disappointed- after A Serbian Film, Martyrs, and the much lesser Inside, to name a few, The Human Centipede came off as little more than a county-fair freak show to an audience that has been increasingly exposed to things they never expected to see in a film, albeit one with a nauseatingly great premise.

However, a film doesn't have to be great to become a franchise, so a sequel was announced, accompanied by a teaser trailer featuring director Six responding to his critics by telling us to "prepare for part 2, which really will be the sickest movie of all time." Notice he didn't make a claim for the scariest, nor the most disturbing- just the "sickest," featuring "the sickest bastard of all time: Martin."

How could one not want to see it after hearing that pitch? Count me in.

In his three-star review of Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects (2005), Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Here is a gaudy vomitorium of a movie, violent, nauseating and really a pretty good example of its genre. If you are a hardened horror movie fan capable of appreciating skill and wit in the service of the deliberately disgusting, "The Devil's Rejects" may exercise a certain strange charm.  If on the other hand you close your eyes if a scene gets icky, here is a movie to see with blinders on, because it starts at icky and descends relentlessly through depraved and nauseating to the embrace of road kill. 

How can I possibly give "The Devil's Rejects" a favorable review? A kind of heedless zeal transforms its horrors. The movie is not merely disgusting, but has an attitude and a subversive sense of humor. Its actors venture into camp satire, but never seem to know it's funny; their sincerity gives the jokes a kind of solemn gallows cackle. 

Ebert's take on The Devil's Rejects pretty much sums up my reaction to The Human Centipede 2, except that I would give it at least another 1/2 star, possibly even four.

And I'll quote Ebert's review again before going on:

OK, now, listen up, people. I don't want to get any e-mail messages from readers complaining that I gave the movie three stars, and so they went to it expecting to have a good time, and it was the sickest and most disgusting movie they've ever seen. My review has accurately described the movie and explained why some of you might appreciate it and most of you will not, and if you decide to go, please don't claim you were uninformed.

It should be enough to just state the film really is about a very creepy lunatic who kidnaps twelve people by hitting them over the head with a crowbar, loads them into a station wagon, and takes them to a deserted garage where he begins to assemble his own human centipede fashioned from the unlucky victims, including a pregnant woman, with tools taken from his kitchen drawer. And a lot of duct tape. And a staple gun. You really don't need to know any more than that.

Except that its a pretty damn well-made film, with an absolutely knock-out performance by Laurence R. Harvey as Martin, the heretofore undiscovered love-child of Peter Lorre and Jabba the Hutt. Shot in richly saturated black and white, it's very good looking and while the plot is obviously preposterous, there aren't any jump-the shark moments in the script. It moves with an Aristotelian flow from the first scene to the unexpected denouement, with an equal balance of moments that are so gross they are actually funny and others that actually made me say "ewww" out loud, which I think is a first.

Even though the version I watched on Netflix's streaming service was edited (the notorious barbwire masturbation/rape scene was cut, along with I don't know what else), it still feels like Six didn't pull a single punch, hell-bent to live up to the hype he promised in the trailer. Is The Human Centipede 2 the sickest commercial movie ever made? I don't know- who really cares about such distinctions once you're past puberty? Does it deliver the goods? In spades.

I have no idea what Six has planned for part 3 (yes, there will be a third and final installment), but the next time, even if I have to see it alone at midnight, I'll be there. 

Certitude and Joy

Pier 7, San Francisco. Photo by Travis Jensen.



Though it's been almost three weeks since I've seen it, Erling Wold's chamber opera Certitude and Joy is still rambling through my consciousness. I haven't written about it in depth partly because I haven't felt I can really do it the justice it deserves- there are only three other operatic/musical experiences I've attended with which I can really compare it to in its visceral, unexpected, and thought-provoking impact: the first time I saw Wozzeck, the premiere of John Adams' El Nino, and The Tristan Project in Los Angeles a few years ago. That's some heady company. Those were all major productions- artistic endeavors put on by large companies and I know it seems absurd to compare them to a small work by a little-known composer making its world premiere in a tiny theater on a shitty street in San Francisco. But it's true.

In his notes about the piece Wold comments that on rereading the text he noticed many threes in the libretto and the score. The opera's libretto consists of three interwoven spiritual experiences: Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac; Lashaun Harris' completed sacrifice/murder of her three children when she threw them into the bay from San Francisco's Pier 7; and Wold's own conflicted attempts to find spiritual reconciliation in a world that holds the first to be an act of admirable faith and the second to be an instance of reprehensible insanity. The genius of Wold's libretto is its ability to successfully and simultaneously create a palpable sense of horror and empathy for both stories, casting doubt about how we as a culture view religious certitude and what is an acceptable source, or definition of, joy.

Heavy stuff, expertly portrayed by three pairs of performers who respectively sing, dance and act each role, sometimes creating jarring contrasts, at others emphasizing a particular theme, trait, or event. The lines between the characters blur, as do the portrayals, and Abraham, Wold and Harris become multi-faceted representations of the same being- or at least a singular manifestation of the search for religious certitude and joy.

To blur the line even more, Wold inserts himself into the show, creating his own meta-commentary, so that suddenly there are two people performing as the same person, while two others are simultaneously doubling him- a fun-house mirror of a soul. It sounds confusing but it was incredibly well-delineated and easy to comprehend.

The singers were Laura Bohn and Jo Vincent Parks. Parks has an impressive baritone and a keen acting ability, but Bohn, who gets to deliver one the greatest extended arias I've ever heard, was simply astonishing.

The actors were Bob Ernst as Wold and Talya Patrick as Harris. Ernst perhaps had the harder assignment, and handled it extremely well as large parts of the libretto call for him to recite lines that fall just shy of delivering a sermon. Harris actually brought tears to my eyes during the courtroom scene, delivering a key line with such perfect timing and skill I gulped hard and still couldn't keep my eyes from tearing. In fact, recalling it now produces a similar effect.

The dancers were Kerry Mehling and Travis Santell Rowland. Rowland doesn't have a dancer's physique, which made his ability and performance all the more impressive. Mehling is a sensual, sinuous presence with the ability to convey myriad emotions through movement.

The direction by Jim Cave added meaningful elements without drawing attention to itself. One superb moment came when Bohn and Patrick mirror one another and extend their hands slowly to touch the other's fingers. Is it a moment meant to portray Harris' schizophrenia? Or is she simply seeing herself from the other side of wherever it is her God sent her in her mind? Or was it meant to evoke Michelangelo's Creation? Pick an interpretation. They all work.

The score was performed on two pianos by the the ZOFO duet of Keisuke Nakagoshi and Eva-Maria Zimmerman. Zimmerman sounded like she had a slightly better grip on its demands than Nakagoshi, but Wold's music- complex yet highly accessible, had me constantly drawn in and wondering what it would sound like fully orchestrated. It turns out some of it has been, and you can hear it here. I've found myself listening to it repeatedly ever since, though it's not quite how I imagined it as I was listening to it for the first time on the pianos. Never has the score of a contemporary opera grabbed me like this one has.

Certitude and Joy ends in sudden darkness, with only the sound of someone gasping for air. It was the perfect conclusion to an absolutely brilliant work. I hope to see it again one day, performed with an orchestra.

The Met's Manon

In general I'm not a tremendous fan of French opera, but the stellar cast of the Met's current production of Massenet's Manon led me to to the cineplex yesterday to watch Anna Netrebko and Piotr Bezcala as the doomed lovers in one of the three operas based on Abbe Prevost's 18th century novella (Puccini and Auber have also adapted the story).

It's a glorious pairing of two vocal powerhouses with a solid supporting cast, everyone is decked out in great costumes, and everyone pretty much ignores the fact that they're stuck in a surprisingly poor production. Not that there's really much one can do with an opera like Manon, which is why I tend to shy away from French operas in the first place. The story (as told here) makes little sense dramatically, but with the opportunity to belt out a fantastic aria in each of the six scenes, it's easy to see why singers like Netrebko and Bezcala would be drawn to the material. No matter how lame the activity going on around them, they were sensational and had great chemistry together, which only exacerbated the disconnect between the quality of the singing and clueless production and stage design.

It's been awhile since I've heard Netrebko sing, and I was pleased to hear that while her voice has grown slightly deeper (richer?), it's still a thing of beauty. Bezcala was also an incredible joy to watch and hear. The other standouts in the cast included Paulo Szot as Manon's cousin, who wasn't slimy enough to make the interpretation really work, and David Pittsinger who was the epitome of class as the elder des Grieux.

But the set was a disaster from the moment the curtain rose, revealing a stark gray box with a staircase leading up to a promenade outfitted with handrails that looked they came from an office park in Tuscon. The next scene featured the lovers in a tiny room floating above the stage (bringing to mind Boheme), with another staircase from Tuscon leading down to the floor, but at least this staircase was put to good use when Netrebko and Bezcala stopped in the middle of it and she raised herself up by her arms, wrapped both of her legs around his waist, and pulled him to her. I almost forgot everything, including my name. It was brief, but I found it incredibly sexy and real.

The nonsense with the theme of "how one gets from here to there" continued in the next act as the stairs were replaced with wheelchair ramps, which ballerinas had to navigate around corners and through crowds to make it center stage to perform their dance (the presence of ballets are another reason I avoid French operas). It looked awkward for everyone involved, and only got worse as the ballerinas were carried offstage screaming as if they were being abducted, which didn't any sense at all.

The next scene in the St. Sulpice church had everything tilting, suggesting what? The off-kilter perspective of the characters? A world out of balance? That religious institutions are crooked? To the left onstage stood the bed from the second scene, suggesting des Grieux hasn't gotten over the loss of Manon, and the bed looked ridiculous in the church. But when Netrebko pulls up her dress, rips open Bezcala's shirt, and pulls him down onto the bed, well, that was hot, so I did momentarily forget how silly it looked in the first place.

The third act's two scenes didn't fare any better, and in the gambling den none of the actions or motivations of the characters made any sense based on how they had been portrayed thus far. Oh well- the singing was still splendid and it's worth seeing for that alone. I'd give director Laurent Pelly a pass on this one- he scored with the costumes at least, and his La Fille du Regiment was a total success on every level, so I'd be willing to see what he does next. Conductor Fabio Luisi led the orchestra in a clear, shimmering performance.

Tin Hat

Tin Hat: photo by Peter Gannushkin

Do you ever stop to think about how much your life can change in eight short months? How different it is? Or not?

The reason I bring it up is because it was almost eight months ago to the day I saw Carla Kihlstedt perform for the first time. Now I was heading back to see her again. This time in a different room, but at the same venue. This time with a different set of musicians. And like last time, to hear her perform music inspired by a poet, but this time a different one than the last. It's all different, isn't it? And the Necessary Monsters who haunt me now are different than they were eight months ago, aren't they?

Then why did all of this feel so disturbingly familiar to me?

The answer is because while poets may change, monsters remain the same in their necessity. Treading the same ground once again, I felt like an observer to my doppelganger's life rather than a participant in my own. What I've really become, I'm convinced now, is The Collector- the one who vainly tries to keep all the monsters at bay by organizing them into neatly stacked boxes. But the monsters escaped their boxes this week. One by one, released by my Double, so we could lead parallel and incompatible lives together and remain cruelly apart.

Whatever.

Tin Hat began the first of two sets with "Open His Head," the first of many songs set to the poetry of e.e. cummings from their forthcoming album, due in August. Three songs later, as they were performing "yes is a pleasant country," the structure of these became apparent to me: layers of sound set down in gentle pieces, patterns emerging out of fragments, slowly building until they bloomed into melodies which suited the poetry quite beautifully, and I was captivated by how well the music evoked the tone of cummings' poems. If it took me awhile, that was more likely due to events of the day, not the musicians, all four of whom play expertly within their oddly configured musical quartet: Carla Kihlstedt on violin, Ben Goldberg on assorted clarinets, Mark Orton on guitar, and Rob Reich on accordion or piano.

Then the poetry stopped and the group performed an instrumental featuring Kihlstedt playing a Roma-inflected violin line with Goldberg on what I think was a bass clarinet- I'm not sure I've ever seen such an instrument before. An older instrumental followed, "The Last Cowboy," with Orton plucking out a novelty line on his guitar similar to the one used in Waiting for Guffman in the scene where Lewis Arquette explains Blaine's history before the cast sings the "Stool Boom" song, followed by another song before "Foreign Legion," which Orton said was inspired by fear brought on by watching an Abbott and Costello movie, concluded the first half.

The musicians let Orton assume the duties of "front man", and while there's a certain charm to the idea of using a casual approach to create the impression of we're-all-just-hanging-out-at-home-together vibe, Orton's patter didn't particularly serve the music or his fellow musicians especially well.

The second set began with the 24th of 95 Poems and closed with "sweet spring." In between, something odd must have been happening that I missed, as Kihlstedt remarked that out in the audience "a conflagration" was taking place. I didn't see it, but the second set did have some incredibly sensuous music, and I couldn't help but wonder what it would have sounded like in my apartment, with the light of the bright, full moon shining in through open windows on this cold, crisp night.

On a side note, the same two people who made a hash of the sound for the Sierra Maestra concert in this same location the night before were on the job again, and this time, to my surprise, they filled the room with a warm and beautiful sound. It sounded terrific.

The concert was presented by SFJazz.

Sierra Maestra in San Francisco

SFJazz brought the Cuban son band Sierra Maestra back for their third visit to San Francisco, the first in many years, and the house was pretty packed when I walked in a few minutes after the show had already begun. The nine piece band was already in prime form and had a bunch of people dancing on the sidelines. Everything lead singer/guitarist Jesus Diaz said between songs was in Spanish, so the only thing I understood completely was when he introduced trumpeter extraordinaire Yelfris Espinosa as being younger than the band itself- true, since they formed in 1976.

They tore through an hour and a half long set, anchored by the five-piece rhythmic machine of Carlos Mansfarroll on guiro, Nico Menendez on bongos, congas and bells, Alejandro Galarraga on bells, congas and bongos, Barzaga Sosa on claves and vocals, and Virgilio Decalo on maracas and vocals. As a unit, the five of them were incredibly tight, but Luis Pino's electric bass played a large part in keeping every body in the house moving with his sinuous lines. But the band's secret weapon is tres player Emilio Batista, whose ability to create an amazing array of sounds from the tiny cousin of the guitar without added electronic effects was impressive.

The sound mix was really off in the beginning of the show, which had the band sounding like they were being played on the radio of a 1955 Bel-Air- which would be fine if you were in one, but they deserved better than the mix they were saddled with, which two techs tried to improve with only partial success- perhaps because only one of them seemed to be actually listening to what was going on. Fie!

Still, that didn't stop anyone from having a great time, myself included, as well as the band, who genuinely seemed pleased to be performing for the audience and their enthusiasm just made the gig that much more enjoyable. It was the perfect way to let go of what unexpectedly turned into the longest work day I've had in years.

SFJazz has a slew of great musicians coming to town in the next month, beginning with Carla Kihstedt's Tin Hat this Thursday night, which I'm really looking forward to seeing. Tickets are still available.

Keith Jarrett and Elizabeth's blue vein

I noticed her as I walked across the BART platform, waiting for a train to take me over to Berkeley to see Keith Jarrett perform his first solo improv show at Zellerbach in thirty years. Everyone noticed her. One couldn't help it- the girl, in her early 20s, with the straight, strawberry-blonde hair, blunt bangs, orange-sherbet-colored lace bustier worn as a blouse and a foam-green H&M-looking jacquard bolero jacket over it. The jacket, like the inexpensive and unflattering jeans she wore, didn't draw any attention from her breasts, which the bustier-as-blouse displayed as if they were extremely rare, exotic, honey-colored melons plucked from some fantastic Eden and placed upon the girl's chest by none other than Satan himself.

Not from around here, I thought, wondering if the girl appreciated the attention she was getting from both sexes, or if she found it annoying. She feigned obliviousness to the allure of the breasts quite well, as if there was a thought balloon over her head  which read What? These? Yes, aren't they nice?

I went over to sit down on an empty spot on a bench, opened up my book, and having ten minutes until the train arrived, read the same sentence about thirty times, all the while noticing people notice the breasts. While I was sitting there trying to read Understanding Toscanini, I was listening to Blue Oyster Cult's Secret Treaties album on my phone. "Career of Evil" came on, and I think I sang along with the line "I'd like... to do it to your daughter in a dirt road..." out loud without really thinking about what the small, elderly Asian woman seated next to me must have thought. She got up a moment later and wandered off.

The train arrived and the breasts were already on board when I stepped into the train, sitting on the seat next to the opposite door, illuminated by the harsh florescent lights of the train- lights that make 98% of the population look like cadavers, but only served to draw attention to a gorgeous blue vein that lay just beneath the stage-left breast, which I'll call Elizabeth. I found myself momentarily mesmerized at the sight of Elizabeth's blue vein- a glorious imperfection which made Elizabeth and her veinless twin all the more perfect in my eyes. So perfect in fact, I sat facing the other way, next to a heavy-set Latino man and across from a guy who looked like Refrigerator Perry who was talking on a cell phone. I went back to trying to understand Toscanini, but my attention was drawn to these two guys, who were obviously marveling at Elizabeth and her sister.

I felt somewhat sad- not only for these two pathetic guys, but also for the bearer of the objects of their desire. I'm judgemental that way. Elizabeth and her sister deserve better from everyone involved. I wish I had a picture of that vein. I'd put it on the wall of my bathroom.

At the Downtown Berkeley stop I got off, and so did the Blonde, who went in a different direction, followed like the Pied Piper by an assortment of admirers. I bet she's thinking about me at this very moment. Life is like that- sliding doors and all that kind of thing.

Zellerbach was packed with Jarrett's fans, a vast portion of which seemed willing to applaud anything he played as if it were the most brilliant music ever performed. And some of it came pretty damn close to that, but not all of it. It took him awhile to find the perfect groove, beginning with a Bach-infused mid-tempo workout which he slowed down to a ballad, with snippets that sounded like  "Someone to Watch Over Me" escaping at moments.

Jarrett paused, turned to the audience and said, "Sometimes subject matter gets in the way," before returning to the ballad, which increasingly took on bop elements, with Jarrett starting to rise from his seat and do his thing, moving into Brubeck territory as he increased the tempo.

He began the next part by slapping out a rhythm on top of the piano, setting a beat, which he sat down on followed on the keys, and here is where the set took off into the rarefied musical expressiveness the audience had come to hear, creating an increasingly dramatic yet melodic web of intricate flourishes drawn with his right hand while the left chugged along in an almost barrelhouse meditation. It soared into a beautiful ballad.

The next part began with a riff that sounded like "All Blues" and I realized the futility of trying to figure out where he was going as I couldn't quite believe that there was something like "Sweet Home Chicago" coming from the man's hands. At that point I just decided to roll along with him and see where it went.

Intermission was followed by an incredibly Romantic-era bit of classical playing that was stunning as much as for its beauty as for Jarrett's virtuosity and I had this crazy thought float into my mind that if a remake of The Seven Year Itch were made, with Jarrett cast in the Tom Ewell role, this is what he would play in the scene where Ewell imagines himself successfully seducing Marilyn Monroe by playing Rachmaninoff. And it would have worked.

After that, he drew a blank on what to play next- as if he had just peaked and he knew it. What followed in the remainder of the set never reached the same heights, but he came close during what proved to be five encores when he acquiesced to numerous shouts from the audience for "Over the Rainbow" and gave the crowd what it wanted and then some. It was gorgeous. Perfectly paced, he played it with a delicate, thoughtful beauty I can't describe in any other way. "Summertime" and "I'm Through with Love" were two of the other encores, and the former would have been more memorable had Jarrett not "sung" along with it. But that's what the man does, and all in all, it was worth it to watch a true master willing to wing it.

The ride back to the City was uneventful, and I managed to understand more Toscanini without Elizabethan interruptions. The concert was presented by Cal Performances. 

Au revoir

After running this game for three years,  this weekend it all finally caught up with me. I had been out with Chad Newsome, who had requested my presence at a poker game. We took a cab to Stockton and Jackson in Chinatown. When we arrived we were were escorted to a basement underneath a restaurant on Jackson Street. But there was no poker game. What we actually entered was a "party"-  like a certain scene from Requiem for a Dream- the one where Jennifer Connelly gets all dressed up to step off the point of no return.

"Happy birthday," Chad said, after the door closed behind us. 

Three hours later, we left. Sort of. I really don't remember. What happened after that was a bit of a blur, though I do know that it involved Iris and Veronica- how Chad got those two in the same room is really beyond me, since anyone who knows them knows this is like seeing hell frozen over, with transvestite car-hops skating over the ice delivering Manhattans to the damned. There is no love lost between these two after serving the same clientele for so many years.

What I do remember is that when I got off the elevator yesterday morning, I smelled something familiar in the hallway as I made my way toward my apartment. A perfume I recognized. The door was unlocked, and when I walked in I found Penelope, Isabella, and the Femme Fatale all seated on the floor around my coffee table. In the center was a vase full of yellow tulips and a small box, neatly gift-wrapped next to it. Beside it were two bottles of Woodford, one half-empty, and each of them had a glass in front of them.

Isabella poured me a drink- my customary double, dropped a single ice cube into it, and placed it gently in my hand. Her fingers caressed mine as she let go.

 

"Just this once,"she said,"we're all here. Because it's your birthday."

"There's a caveat, however," Penelope added.

"Really? And what is that?" I asked, still stunned to see all of them in my apartment, though Isabella has a key.

I looked at each of them in turn. Penelope first, as I've known her the longest, then Isabella, since obviously she was the executioner, and finally the Femme, whose presence here was the least likely but certainly the most appropriate in such a bizarre situation. I felt like I had fallen into a real-life version of A Serbian Film  and that at any moment a huge goon was going to come out the bathroom, bludgeon me, and chain me face-down to a bed.

"No more Beast," said the Femme Fatale. "It's done. Over. No more writing about any of this."

I took a sip of the Woodford. Forty days on the wagon down the drain in a single sip. I can't tell you how good it tasted. I took another, and drained the glass.

The Femme rose and put her hand on my chest. Isabella got up behind her. Penelope remained on the floor, eyeing the three of us warily.

"Is it a deal?" asked Isabella.

I didn't say anything, thinking about what all of this really meant. And what it was going to mean. And what was going to happen after I answered, either way. Would they all get up and leave if I said   "no"? What exactly were they planning if I said "yes"?

"You heard her," Penelope said quietly, with a tone she always uses when she sees no ambiguity in front of her.

I looked at each of them one at a time, only somewhat conscious of what was actually happening, knowing I still had a few hours to go before I was going to fully shake off the adventure with Chad.

The three of them. Or A Beast. It actually wasn't a hard decision. After three years, all of this has exhausted me. What none of them knew was that I was already there. Someone, or something, just needed to give me a push.

"Yeah, it's a deal," I replied, reaching out a shaking hand to Penelope. 

And with that, I squared off against A Beast in a Jungle. It leaped at me and I surrendered to it, letting it maw me with its six well-manicured hands.

Thank you for reading this for the past three years. It's been an interesting journey and I appreciate everyone who's enjoyed it and encouraged me. But a deal is a deal.

And this one is certainly worth it.

Au revoir.