The Revelator: Gatsby Part 2, and almost everything else...

It started unraveling a month ago at the Kronos Quartet concert in Berkeley. Isabella and I were seated in front of a very odd couple. Everything they said, all of which was spoken quite loudly, was just off. She asked banal questions and made silly observations in a whining, Queens accent, which he answered with great pronouncements, of which half had little if anything to do with what she had said or asked. After a few minutes of this I had to turn around to see what these two looked like. She was slumping in her seat, almost to the floor, with her eyes closed. He was a bear of a man who looked like there was a large spring from the axle of an automobile stuck in his ass. They both appeared to be close to 70 years of age.

I whispered in Isabella's ear, "Just kill me now. Seriously."

Isabella, who has a way of silently mocking me with a look she perfected at some other time and place in her life, smirked, which meant she was mocking me with empathy.

The lights went down, Kronos takes the stage, and began an unnecessarily amplified performance of Michael Gordon's Clouded Yellow- a work for string quartet that could be a pop song if someone loaded a drum track behind it. It was catchy, it was pleasant, it was a pop confection. For a string quartet. I was a bit confused.

Then came something truly awful: an arrangement by Phillip Glass of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," again amplified, with accompanying non-live accompaniment by a theremin, mandolin and harpsichord. The last time I heard something so completely dreadful in concept and execution was this.

That train wreck was followed by a piece called Oasis by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, which yes, was amplified- in fact everything was amplified in a hall that doesn't need it- and it was an interesting piece except for the canned drips of water that plopped all the way through it, making it sound like a jingle by Enigma for bottled water.

Now, during all of these pieces the two behind us kept on chattering to the point where I turned around and asked them to cease talking. The woman replied,"we're not talking." And then she said something to him about Bob Dylan, to which he replied he didn't like Dylan. All of this took place during the performance.
Then the Alim Qasomov Ensemble came out to accompany Kronos in the Azeri traditional Mahur Hindi Destgahi. Led by father and daughter vocalists Alim and Fargana Qasimov, this piece was interesting for the first five of its twenty minutes and then felt like an endurance test for both the performers and the audience.

Intermission.

The man behind us had been making strange, squeaking and chirping sounds for the last ten minutes. No one else in the full house seems to be disturbed by this. Isabella turns to me and says, "let's go outside."

We sit down and she says, "I need to talk to you about something important."

Inwardly I release a sigh. She's going to want to go home. She's tired and this is terrible. This is actually perfect, because it's exactly what I'm thinking. But it's not what she's thinking.

She tells me something else entirely which has nothing to do with the concert and doesn't mention wanting to leave.

So we go back inside and there's screaming and shouting coming from inside the auditorium. People are saying "Call 911!" I enter the hall to take a look (she doesn't want to see whatever is happening) and there's the man who was sitting behind us being wrestled to the ground by four or five men, somewhat unsuccessfully, since he keeps kicking them and shouting obscenities. The woman is beside herself and I expect her to start keening any moment. We decide to call it a night after 20 minutes of this and no ambulance in sight. I have no idea if the rest of the concert was as dismal as the first half.

The next night, Monday, Isabella and I have a major row.

Tuesday and Wednesday disappeared into a blur of the past colliding into the present and a desire to obliterate it all.

On Thursday I attended the Leif Ove Andsnes concert with The Swede, who had just returned that afternoon from his vacation in Pakistan. That's right- The Swede's idea of a vacation is to travel to Pakistan. Actually, our fine ally, harborer of terrorists and fanatics, was his second choice for a vacation spot, but he couldn't get a visa for North Korea without agreeing to such a rigid itinerary the whole idea became unpalatable to him. Nevertheless, he had a marvelous time celebrating the Prophet's birthday and eating ice cream with young, horny men and told me all about it over dinner and Manhattans before the concert.

I'll admit now that I did enjoy making him spit out a good portion of his drink through his nose when I timed an anecdote about my last visit to this restaurant with the Femme Fatale just right, causing him to exclaim afterward, wiping the bourbon from his chin, "That's why I love you. I thought only gay guys did that shit!"

At intermission the Swede hit the wall and had to leave, which I understood, as I was already surprised and impressed that he even wanted to go in the first place, since he had just got of the plane hours earlier. After he left I spotted Patrick in his usual spot in the front row and went over to say hello. Patrick wrote a most brilliant post about the concert wherein he wonders at one point if he was coherent while we were talking, completely unaware that I was thinking exactly the same thing, but for different reasons.

On the walk home I noticed the Chevy's on Van Ness had called it quits, and this surprised me for some reason, though it probably shouldn't have- after all, who wants to eat at a Chevy's when you're in San Francisco?

The next night was Gatsby.

Now I must confess to a dilemma concerning how much of this story I want to reveal. On the one hand, I'd like to put it all out there in an effort to be done with it, as it's colored (and explains) so much of the last eighteen months. On the other hand, the last time I wrote something like I've intended to post here, it seemed to freak some people out- some actually stopped talking to me and I felt a frost for months afterward. Apparently I had crossed a line by revealing too much of the backstory of my relationships to the characters found here. And what I wrote back then is nothing compared to what I've detailed about what went on at the Gatsby performance, and other things I've considered writing and then thought better of it, realizing it belongs in a different blog, if not another medium entirely. Conflicted, I asked two people whose opinions I trust- Isabella and Lily Bart, if I should write it and they both said write it, but don't publish it. Isabella felt even more strongly about this after I let her read the finished piece. So what follows is only the beginning of what I originally wrote and intended to post, and that's all there's going to be.


Isabella and I had really been looking forward to attending this performance together but the row dashed that plan. CC couldn't make it, so I ended up going stag. I picked up my ticket and as I was making my way toward the door the I saw the Femme Fatale ahead of me in all of her carefully constructed glory- a sight I had come to expect, since it was recurring with an ever-increasing frequency. I quickly looked around for the Cuckold and spotted him ten feet ahead of her.

I came up behind her shoulder and said quietly into her ear,  "Why don't you just introduce us?"

She looked at me steadily, as if she had expected this to happen.

"Okay, I will," she said, with an unsettling coolness in her voice and expression- as if this was all going exactly according to her plan....

She caught up to him and turned him around by the shoulder,
"I want to introduce the two of you," she said...

Use your imagination to fill-in the gaps from there. Was it ugly? Yeah, it was. If you think about what happens in Gatsby, add a heavy dose of adulterous noir, you'll have a pretty accurate picture of what followed. At the conclusion of the show, they went one way and I went another- just as we have for the past year, except for the brief interludes when she left his house for mine.

The next day I went to see the broadcast of Gotterdammerung- another outing planned with Isabella which I was now doing solo. Afterward I ran into Jim, an old theater guy from New York whose niece I dated shortly after I first moved here in 1992 and for another stretch a dozen years ago. I expected to see him, as he had also attended the other three installments of the Met's Ring broadcasts, and I was glad he was there. He's full of amusing anecdotes and strong opinions. We went for coffee after the broadcast and chatted for a couple of hours. It was the first time in the nearly twenty years I've known him we didn't talk about opera or theater and on that afternoon I couldn't imagine better company than that 80 year old man.

At this point I'm beginning to feel like Corky Corcoran- not the musician, but the character in the Joyce Carol Oates novel (read it if you haven't- it's a marvelous book).

Two days later it was Valentine's Day and Isabella and I decided to stick with a slightly modified version of our original plan, which was to go hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who were visiting town for the first time in over 20 years. The concert began with Arthur Honegger's Pacific 231, a six minute piece ostensibly about locomotives which was thoroughly delightful in its chugging glory, but when the train reached the station, the subtlety of the "locomotive" euphemism disappears completely into an orchestral orgasm more obvious than the trombone exhalation ending the rape scene in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Some enterprising stripper should use the piece in a routine.

Next came Mason Bates' Alternative Energy. It's easy to be skeptical about seeing Bates as a serious composer. First, he comes off too easily as an orchestra's dream of who could lure in a younger audience- he's young, good-looking, and cool (lives in Oakland, and he's also a club DJ as well as a composer). Second, he incorporates electronic elements into most, if not all, of his compositions. But I really enjoyed his B-Sides, commissioned by SFS a couple of years ago and I was looking forward to hearing this new work, commissioned by Chicago, where he's currently one of two young composers-in-residence.

Don't let anyone tell you differently- Bates is the real thing. Alternative Energy turned out to be one of the most interesting and engaging contemporary works I've ever heard and if one were available, I would buy a recording of it tomorrow. The twenty-five minute, four movement piece was engaging from the first note, moving from Coplandesque hoedown to thumping beats that caused 70 year old conductor Ricarrdo Muti to show us his disco moves from the podium, baton in hand, as Bates' work stopped in four distinct places and times during an aural history of how things will fall apart in the future.

Sadly, Cesar Franck's Symphony in D didn't have the same impact after the intermission.

The next night I returned to see Chicago's next program, this one featuring Night Ferry, a work by their other composer-in-residence, Anna Clyne. Again, this proved to be the highlight of the evening. Clyne's work begins with the most evocative musical rendering of the sea I've ever heard and just grew more interesting as it went along. By turns hypnotic and violent, it ends with a gong being struck which dissipates into nothingness like a black sea left behind at night on a moonless night. I'd like to thank whoever decided to bring Bates and Clyne to Chicago- their works were wonderful to hear.

Again, as it was the night before, what followed was decidedly less interesting- Schubert's The Great Symphony, with its endless repeats, just felt tedious after Clyne's piece. This made it hard to really come to a conclusion about the Chicago orchestra- they gave excellent performances of works no had yet heard, but the familiar didn't leave much of an impression. I was seated next to Axel that second night, who marveled at what he described as their "blended" sound, but I found it more difficult to get an impression of what made the orchestra unique beyond the obviously high-caliber playing from every section.

Two nights later I was back at Davies, this time with Lily Bart, to hear former music director Edo de Waart conduct a program that proved to be much better in the house than it looked it on paper, which was a strange brew indeed.

It began with the Prelude of Franz Schreker's marvelous opera Die Gezeichneten (The Stigmatized), which in de Waart's hands sounded even lusher than I had remembered it when I saw it performed by LA Opera under James Conlon a couple of years ago. Schreker's music nods to Wagner, but the debts to Mahler and Strauss were what really came through in de Waart's hands. One can only hope the glory of this music encourages the company across the street to one day bring the whole thing to town.

This was followed by Simon Trpceski as the soloist for Rachmaninoff's fourth piano concerto. Trpceski gave a magnificent performance of a difficult but flawed piece- the fourth lacks almost everything which makes the second and third concertos so thrilling and absorbing- the decadent, lush melodies and over-the-top solos. Still, his jazz-influenced playing style was impressive and I look forward to his return. de Waart and the orchestra sounded fantastic alongside him.

The last piece was Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3, Organ, featuring Jonathan Dimmock as the soloist- an almost ridiculously over-stuffed work that was delightful to hear and played with serious earnestness. It worked remarkably well. de Waart hasn't been on the stage of Davies in a very long time, and I hope this strong performance, and the justly tremendous reception it received from the audience, causes the powers that be to bring him back again soon.

The next night Lily took me to a small salon out in the avenues, where we were part of a tiny audience watching two performers doing a spin on the theme of "Death the trickster"- one by a singer-songwriter whose cycle had a decidedly David Lynch-like quality to it, the other by a marvelously gifted magician with a flair for the dramatic and theatrical. The theme struck a chord with me, and a couple of days later, taking in everything that happened in those previous two weeks, and how it felt like the culmination of the past two years had just been bluntly pushed through the end of funnel lined with razor blades, something shifted inside my mind and I went undergound for awhile. But I'm back. And that's all there is.

SFO's Madama Butterfly - a DOA Disaster

Chad Newsome is now a bonafide opera aficionado. As the lights came up for the intermission of tonight's opening of SF Opera's Madama Butterfly he looked at me before I said a word (I was trying to not be a bad influence for once and was holding back my opinion and as well as my nose) and said "Should we just leave?"

I replied, "But I've already recently left a performance at intermission (Scapin) and I can't in good conscience write my post about this if we leave- there are two more acts to go." So we stayed and suffered through what has to be one of the worst operatic experiences in recent memory. How bad was it? Ten minutes in I was trying to recall the word Alex Ross used for his New Yorker review of last year's Tosca at the Met. Then it came to me- FIASCO. I thought that to be a bit much to describe what we just witnessed, but DISASTER would be a fair word to use without resorting to hyperbole. This mess ranks with the Macbeth of 2007, the Joan of Arc of 2006, the Otello of 2002 and the 1999's Tristan and Isolde for being the worst thing I've seen and heard on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House. I'm not even sure where to begin this catalogue of crimes against Puccini and the people who paid good money to see one his best works.

Obviously there were a lot of people attending an opera tonight for the first or second time- how else to account for the standing ovation it received at the end? It must have been because people could finally stand up after a dreadfully long second act and figured they just couldn't stand there and not applaud- how would that look to the person in the next box?. Perhaps it's just the shallowness of the Tuesday night audience, aka known as "Society.". [Note: Lisa has correctly reminded me it's always done in the two act version here in SF- it's just never felt so long before- so I have altered and removed some comments regarding the length of Act II-  which does make the ovation even more puzzling! - JM].

Conductor Nicola Luisotti, supposedly an expert in this repertoire, led an uneven, flaccid orchestra that seemed immune or blind to his flurried arm movements during a failed attempt to pump some life into this horse that hit the stage dead on arrival. Entire sections of the score were barely heard, tempos were as weak and uneven as the arguments of a  Meg Whitman campaign ad, only to be made up by ridiculous excesses in volume by the percussion section as if to say "if we play it loud they'll think we mean it!" After arriving in San Francisco Luisotti took awhile to impress me, finally doing so in last season's Salome and the summer's Fanciulla, but after this I'm afraid we are back to square one and all your best efforts are now undone maestro.

I'm sure Svetla Vassileva has had triumphs in other roles, but Butterfly is not going to be one them, at least judging by tonight's example. Off-key, screechy and often looking lost, from the moment she opened her mouth the evening appeared doomed. Even "Un Bel Di," one of the most famous arias ever written, barely made an impression and garnered no applause, no doubt aided in this massacre by a complete absence of control and rhythm by the orchestra. It came from nowhere and disappeared into a void.

Stefano Secco's Pinkerton not only could barely be heard for most of the evening, but it's hard to believe he's Italian. His minimal stage presence, coupled with an ill-defined conception of the role, led to the most milquetoast Pinkerton I've ever seen.

Daveda Karanas' Suzuki made me wonder what Catherine Cook is so busy doing that we couldn't bring her back. I know she lives around her- I've seen her having breakfast at Stacks. Need I say more?

Even the always reliable and usually easy on the ears Quinn Kelsey had a difficult go of it as Sharpless.

Thomas Glenn's Goro was just a casting mistake. Glenn is a fine young singer who has delivered some memorable performances from that stage but not tonight. Not likely to be fixed by the next performance either.

Austin Knees was the only one onstage who fared well as Prince Yamadori, which is the opera's most forgettable role. Where does the pain end?

Certainly not with the set, which finally replaced the one SFO has been using since the Ford administration. Looking like a pimped-out version of Trader Sam's done Japanese style, it offered nothing new that was an improvement over the raggedy one that's been retired, though I did like the ninja stagehands who came out to move the thing in circles which proved to be nothing more than busywork to make it look like something was actually happening onstage when in fact there wasn't.

And what of the boats? Really- what was that nonsense all about? Do you remember at the end of the brilliant Katya Kabanova a few year back that Hazmat team that came onstage at the end and disrupted what until that point had been something close to perfection? Well, this Butterfly never came close to that Katya on any level, but those damn stagehands walking around with the boats made about as much sense as that Hazmat crew.

Jose Maria Condemi, Clarke Dunham and Harold Prince- please, don't come around here no more. You have no interesting ideas, nothing to say, and just sucked away three hours of my life with one of the most banal, unimaginative productions I've ever had to endure.

And for all you biddies seated in rows R through T, right side orchestra, near the far right aisle, shut the fuck up, would you please?

A complete failure- trade in your tickets folks. Don't say you weren't warned.

A side note to Heidi Melton- you looked really hot tonight.

Jimmy Scott at Yoshi's and a night that becomes a debacle

The night held such promise. I seriously don't know what they hell was going on in the universe that caused what should have been a delightful evening to be one that had nothing but arguments and strife going on all around. It started with an agreement that Chad Newsome, Mr. Chang and I would meet at Morton's after work to partake in their delicious $6 sliders and some drinks. I got there first, followed by Chad, with Mr. C bringing up the rear, leaving enough time for Chad and I to order Anchors and blue cheese fries. Now I generally like the bar at Morton's except for two facts: they have televisions in it, which I loathe, and the San Francisco Morton's is the only one in the country which doesn't have drink specials to match the food and I think that pretty much sucks. But the sliders are tasty and at the price they make a great meal. Besides that, it's just blocks from my apartment on my way home from work.

Mr. Chang is one of two close friends I have whom I would label a "conservative," though I try to not hold this against him, because other than that he's a perfectly great guy and at times is downright hilarious. We are seated near one of the TVs which is tuned to Keith Obermann, or whatever his name is, whom Mr. C has a problem with, and proceeds to tell Chad and I about it. Having just read two lengthy articles in the NY Times and the New Yorker about these ridiculous Tea Party people who seem to represent the latest twist in the long, sad, American tradition of "great awakenings," my patience for such discussions is pretty much non-existent and I refuse to allow Mr. C to spout this Fox/Beck/Rush/Newt drivel unanswered, which leads us inevitably to Sarah Palin. The problem here is that Mr. C is trying to link Obama's use of a teleprompter as somehow being equal to Palin's crib marks in her palm. I categorically think this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard which takes us down the rabbit hole for an hour and a half of heated discussion which just bores the shit out of Chad, a fellow liberal Berkeley grad like myself, who has just endured a day that included 6.5 hours of sitting in useless meetings while in the employ of the West Coast's largest bank. While I have empathy for his situation, Mr. C has really raised my ire with this, so let me be perfectly clear: if you think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President of the United States you are an ignoramus. Period. In fact, you are an extreme ignoramus- ignorant- a chump! I won't say you're stupid, but you obviously need an education. This has nothing to do with Obama, congress, or anything else currently going on in American politics. The fact that people take Sarah Palin seriously is frightening, and frankly, it's embarrassing. Okay, enough of that.

So we finished our argument and food and left, with Chad beating a hasty retreat as we had just exhausted him further and provided zero fun for him after a long, crappy day. I can't say I had a good time either, because what fun is it to argue over common-sense basic facts? It's not. Even Mr. C didn't enjoy this, because he's not used to me calling him out in a heated fashion, which I have to admit I did. But I figure the best way to make your point with a right-wing military veteran is to essentially call their position that of one only one a "pussy" would take and if he doesn't like certain things about the country that's just tough shit. Deal with it, or put yourself in a position of power where you can exploit the rules that favor the elite. Life is short, there probably is no god, so get on with your life and have a good time.


And on that note, I headed over to Yoshi's to see Jimmy Scott. The last time Scott, who is now 84, had a gig scheduled in town it was cancelled because he had to go to the hospital. The fact that he's still performing (and recording) at this age is something of a miracle, but he has probably never been more popular than he is now because over the past twenty years or so his genius has finally gathered some attention due to some great late-career recordings. The show was sold out.

Scott's a natural contralto. The first time I heard him I was dumbfounded to learn I was listening to man. If you can compare him to any singer, which may be a mug's game, it would have to be Billie Holliday, who was a huge fan of his and saw all of his shows whenever they were in the same city. Since Scott's been singing since the 40's, I'll leave it to you to decide who influenced whom. He has some affliction and has never stood more than 4'11", so he's often referred to as "Little Jimmy Scott," a moniker conferred on him back in the days when he used to sing with Lionel Hampton. Yeah, the dude is old. And he looks terribly frail- like he's going to die any minute. Since he's wheelchair-bound it's hard to tell how much he's shrunk in his old age, but seriously, when his wife wheeled him out onstage my initial thought was "Gollum Sings the Blues."

But there simply is no other voice like his. No one sounds like him. It's a voice as immediately identifiable as Billie's, Louis Armstrong, Lisa Gerrard, Joni Mitchell, Bon Scott or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It's just that unique of an instrument. Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Scott- all in the same league.

He's touring with a four-piece band called the Jazz Expressions, who open the show with an Ellington number done at a level that doesn't embarrass but doesn't impress me, either. It's just a ho-hum opener. But what can one expect with such a generically named outfit [nb- the line-up on the website is different than the line-up which performed at the show]? Seriously- that's the best name you guys could come up with? What is noteworthy is that the show starts about half an hour late (more on this to come). Scott's wheeled onto the stage sometime after 8:30 to a standing ovation.

The set features a number of tunes showcasing Scott and the band to increasingly effective effect. By the end of the show the Jazz Expressions have proved themselves to have some serious chops, with the exception of the piano player, who always seemed to pitch his solos in a key or two higher than really fit the music. But I liked these guys, and at one point I wished they would just ditch the whole thing and launch into "C-Jam Blues"- a tune they seem born to play- but didn't.

Scott is a prime example of how looks can deceive. I seriously thought he could die at any moment- that's how frail he looked. But there he was, in total command, on top of every tune, wringing the nuance out of every lyric and most impressively, his timing was impeccable. I don't believe I've ever seen a singer with such a natural understanding of where and how to turn a phrase, lift a note, stretch one out and convey emotion with nothing more than a slight shift in key. Does that mean he sounded great? Unfortunately no, but he sounded pretty good. There were definitely some rough spots, and he held the mike too close, which, encumbered by a bad microphone mix, made him sound less than pristine. Still he impressed, and then some. Still he was Jimmy Scott, up there on the stage, making jokes about his wife, his age, and in total command of everything going on around him. Yes, it was impressive. The Jazz Expressions seemed to gather strength and steam with every song, each one actually jamming better and with more force than the last, and by the time they drew it all to a close over an hour later, this quartet had seriously rocked the house.


So what the hell was wrong? Oh lord, plenty. I'm about to delve into an area which fascinates me but is bound to be a bit of a contretemps. Yes, let's talk about racial and social interactions in contemporary America. So, when I get to Yoshi's the place is pretty much already full. I take a seat near the back, centered toward the stage, prime for what's available. Yoshi's has a weird "reservation" policy about certain tables which I've never quite understood, and it's in full-effect tonight. There are three black women (just for clarification I never assume a person is African-American- how would I know where they are from based on the color of their skin?) seated at a table to my left, who were there before I arrived. Later on, two white women, approximately in their 40's, a redhead and a blonde, take one of the reserved tables in front of me and the black women. The redhead is overweight by anyone's definition.

As I mentioned, the show starts late. What is interesting to me at this point is how many people keep trickling into the club. Hello? Where have they been that they are entering a show with a published start time of 8PM a half-hour, an hour, or an hour and a half late? Mid-way through the show, another black woman joins the aforementioned group and they start to chat. Not loud enough so one can hear what they are saying, but loud enough to notice without trying to do so. The overweight white woman seated in front of them tries to "shh" them. Mistake number one, girlfriend. First of all, you are in what has historically, and now politically, been deemed a neighborhood that is central to the Black history of this City. Two, have you so little life experience that you don't know that a white, fat woman shhishng a group of black women out on the town is going to get you nowhere at best? The women ignore her and continue to chat amongst themselves until the redhead turns around and hisses "Shut up!"

Oh lord, mistake number two, and it's on. And here I was, just wanting a nice evening of good food, some booze, the company of friends and some great music. Now I'm I'm hearing one of the black women say "You shut up, you fat bitch!" and really, the evening is pretty much ruined at this point. Floor managers are summoned by the white women, who are now put in a position of having to chastise the equivalent to their mothers, which they are not going to do to the white women's satisfaction, and it just goes on and on and on in an ever-escalating bit of white cat/black cat hissy fit. No one wins, the tension is rife for everyone seated nearby, and it sucks. In the meantime, a terribly obese, 60-ish white guy with white hair and a two-inch long pony-tail sits next to the black women and since in reality he doesn't have a chance in hell of scoring with red nor blondie, no matter how fat or old they are, he takes the side of the black women and eggs them on, which makes the whole thing that much worse. Really, I just wanted to hear the music. which Little Jimmy Scott is obliviously delivering with gospel force and ancient grace from the stage.

When I leave, I notice a great exhibit of posters in the lobby from 70 years of "race films" on display to commemorate Black History Month. The posters are fantastic, though my stupid Google phone's camera app can't do them justice. Some of my favorites are below.

Finally, I've seen a half-dozen shows at Yoshi's in the past year and whether or not the shows sucked or they were great , the venue has always impressed me because it was so well-run. Not tonight. Disorganized, bad service and generally shitty all-around, Yoshi's (and San Francisco) had a bad night tonight.

Oh well- there's always tomorrow to look forward to.

Jessica Goldstein- can you explain/translate the above poster for me?

This one was truly gorgeous.

Goodnight everyone.

Truly Gotterdammerung?

Listening to the Met's broadcast of Gotterdammerung today, I was disturbed to hear the audience begin to applaud before the opera had concluded.

That was really sad.

Two nights at Davies: Dutoit rapes Scheherazade and Glass' Music in Twelve Parts

I attended the Friday the 13th performance of Charles Dutoit conducting the SF Symphony and sure enough, a sexy young woman was brutally murdered on the stage of Davies Symphony Hall. The program started like most horror movies, with an Idyllic opening sequence designed to lull the audience into a false sense of familiarity before the mayhem ensues. Debussy's Prelude to L'Apres midi d' un faune was everything we remember from Music Appreciation 101: bright, warm, inviting as a cool breeze on late June afternoon. It made one remember why it deserves its place on the curriculum. In the hands of a great orchestra it's bullet-proof and this performance was no exception.

Next was Stravinsky's Symphony in C- a work I was greatly looking forward to hearing live for the first time and it was terrific. The call and response between the various instruments, the paired melodies, the way each section of the orchestra (even the basses!) had its shining moment and the lovely closing section was extraordinary. I'm not enough of a ballet fan to know if this piece has been used before, but I would love to see Yuri Possokhov create a ballet around this joyous, driving music, composed during one of Stravinsky's darkest moments.

Little did I know it was to be my last happy moment that evening- kind of like when the kids are listening to "Sweet Home Alabama" on their way to the Skynyrd concert before they pick up the crazy hitchhiker in remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Sorry, I know I'm mixing my horror-movie analogies here.

A sense of unease settles upon me when a conductor takes to the podium without the score. I interpret it as a statement for both the audience and the orchestra: I know this piece inside and out, I've led it too many times to discover anything new in it and I'm going to show you how it's done. The program may as well contain an insert which reads "what you hear tonight will contain nothing illuminating about the music being performed. Sorry- and thank you for supporting the arts."

Scheherazde is a beautiful monster of a piece- its opening is the classical equivalent of Led Zeppelin's most thunderous riffs and its solo violin parts are as soaring as those of the guitar in classic rock numbers like "Layla" or Prince's "Purple Rain." It's so melodic it's almost easy to dismiss it as a lightweight piece, and unfortunately on this night it was treated as one.

There stood Dutoit, sans hockey mask or a chainsaw, but nevertheless the sense of dread was suddenly palpable. Suddenly half the audience leans forward, obliterating the view of the other half seated behind them, thus causing even more movement, and then as the music begins with those huge, awesome and terrible swells, heads began swaying to the melody and suddenly I felt as if I'd been transported to a Celione Dion concert.

Still, for about two minutes it's perfect- the orchestra creates a surging wave of sound for the opening of "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship" and concertmaster Alexander Barantschik plays the first solo violin part with a fluid and delicate beauty.

Then Dutoit proceeds to slaughter the piece by leading it at a breakneck pace that removes all the blood, nuance, tension and melody from it. The soloists, especially the oboe, clarinet and piccolo seem to be doing everything they can just to keep up (and they are terrific despite the speed at which they are being led). The next two movements are so completely disheartening, so taken for granted, it was like attending a fundraiser for the culinary arts and being served a chicken breast with frozen vegetables. Even Barantschik seemed to lose all interest and he's the most serious and intensely devoted musician onstage. The entire orchestra just seemed to capitulate to Dutoit's "let's just get this over with" ethos for the remaining forty or so minutes. The final movement did manage to provide some brief moments of beauty in spite of the orchestra's (and the audience's) complete abuse.

The audience, one of the worst-behaved I have ever seen, of course gave it a tumultuous ovation. I left the hall feeling depressed.

Three nights later, I arrived early to get my ticket at the will call office and found Davies buzzing with the most diverse-looking audience I've ever seen there, all gathered to experience the West Coast debut of Phillip Glass' Music in Twelve Parts.

Fie on San Francisco performances for completely mucking up the will call line and causing about a quarter of the audience to arrive late and shame on them for allowing latecomers to be seated in a steady, distracting stream throughout the first of the evening's four sections.

I thought I was going to be lucky since the seats next to me remained empty until the first imtermission, but then my good luck turned sour when an obese couple squished in next to me. Call me names if you like, but I hate feeling squashed and cramped in my seat because someone can't fit into theirs. Buy a box seat if you can't fit into a regular one- you have no right to a third of mine. To make matters worse, they smelled terrible. I actually had to go find another seat to prevent the rest of the evening from becoming an endurance test of nausea and resentment.

Oh yes, about the music.

Music in Twelve Parts, composed between 1971 and 1974, is normally performed over three evenings and represents a summation of Glass' technique and thoughts on composition at that point in his career. It is considered a highly influential landmark in 20th century music. This performance was the first time the work was to performed in its entirety on the West Coast, broken up into four hour-long movements of three parts each with an hour break for dinner. That's right- a five-hour long minimalist marathon.

But it was anything but minimalist. The Phillip Glass Ensemble is comprised of seven musicians- three with keyboards(including Glass), three who alternate between assorted winds and horns, and one amazing vocalist (Lisa Bielawa) whose stamina was beyond belief. Starting with a base melodic structure that appears deceptively simple on the surface, the musicians constantly develop it into new variations and directions until it gradually transforms into another melody entirely, one note change, one slight shift in tempo at a time. It requires constant attention to follow and it would take me too long to find the right analogy to aptly describe it. The result, however, is fascinating and compelling. The listener is drawn into the sound while trying to follow and identify everything going on within it- and there is a lot going on in this music of surprising depth.

Lisa Bielawa's vocals were an integral part of the whole, and for me, the anchor to the entire work. During the two or three sections she sat out to rest (well-deserved, I might add) the intensity of the sound was noticeably diminished for me and became less interesting. Others disagreed with me, so I'm willing to attribute this opinion to my interest in voice. I have to say that her performance was unlike anything I've ever witnessed- akin to singing the last act of Siegfried and then all of Tristan and Isolde in one concert. She was incredible.

For me, Twelve Parts was one part too long, as the final part lacked Bielawa's vocal and I could no longer follow the subtlety of the variations. I was just too full to have another serving.

It was an interesting, often mesmerizing, intense musical experience- the kind of rare opportunity we to get experience regularly simply because we live here in San Francisco.