Orange is the New Black

Not quite Velma and Roxie, but just as fun to watch...

I tried to go back to work yesterday, but it turned out to be too much and I ended up at the doctor's office in the afternoon, where I was told to take some more time off. I have some internal bleeding in my leg and possibly a slight concussion. All things considered I still consider myself to be extremely lucky, even as I lie on the couch, an ice pack on my elevated leg, watching it change colors by the hour from red to yellow to purple and blue, wondering why I didn't buy more chicken at Popeye's before I came home. The downtime has given me to opportunity to binge-watch the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. Just like the chicken, I'm kind of bummed I don't have any more to consume- it's good stuff.

I don't write much about TV because I don't watch a lot of it. That's not because I'm some TV snob- anyone who still thinks TV is a wasteland is living in the distant past- there's a lot of great stuff to watch, it's just that I have a hard time working it into my schedule- I've had the same two Netflix DVDs sitting on my coffee table for months and one of them (Chloe) I've already watched- I'm keeping it around because I'm sure at some point I'm going to want to re-watch the sex scenes between Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried.

Now that's the perfect segue.

Of course it doesn't take much persuading to get me to check out any story involving women in prison- at least for an episode or two, even if Linda Blair or Shannon Tweed are nowhere to be found and the ads make it look more Sex in the Cell Block than Roger Corman. Sex, violence, & bad girls? That's my kind of entertainment.

The show's based on a memoir of the same name (which I haven't read and probably won't) about former debutante and Smith graduate Piper (Taylor Schilling) who's about to start a year-long stint in the joint for being a drug mule ten years earlier, when she was living a very different life as the girlfriend of an international heroin trafficker (Laura Prepon). Today she's a privileged WASP, co-owner of an artisanal soap company with her BFF, engaged to a somewhat nebbishy guy (Jason Biggs). Piper comes across as that annoying type who lives in the Marina and extols the virtues of San Francisco's "diversity."  An early flashback featuring Piper getting hot in a bathtub with another woman hints the story isn't going to be so obviously clichéd, and thankfully the show's excellent writers spend a minimal amount of time on on Piper and Larry's current life before she goes behind bars.

Once inside, the writers flirt with the stereotypes and hackneyed plot devices one expects from the setting, before twisting them into characters and situations which become much more interesting and often unexpected. It's a great balancing act of delivering the condiciones sine quibus non of the genre (nudity, lesbian sex, predatory and corrupt guards, racial stereotypes, sympathetic bad girls, violence, etc.) and playing off them in fresh and original ways. In a somewhat minor miracle, the show's first season never arrives at the preposterous moment.

That's not to say it's perfect- there are a couple of moments that made me feel like it's a non-musical version of Chicago, especially since Schilling is the good-girl blonde and Prepon the bad-girl brunette, complete with Kate Mulgrew as Red, a Mama Morton-type among the diversified cast of inmates. The show droops when it steps outside the prison walls, which fortunately isn't that often, and Prepon is gorgeous to a degree I find distracting, but Orange hits all the right notes when it matters most and if anything, it feels like the writers have a keen sense of when to hold back and when to let loose. No punches are held (has any other show prominently featured an explicit beaver shot as part of the plot?) yet it never crosses the line into gratuitousness for its own sake (for a show about women behind bars). Credit this to a strong group of writers, a singular vision of what the show is about, and an excellent cast, which becomes the real strength of the show as it wisely expands beyond Piper's own story to include those of the other inmates- all of whom develop over the course of the season to be of equal interest.

As I watched the final episode of the first season I wondered how it would end. Although the story line was beginning to spread out in multiple directions, there seemed one thread which needed to be addressed within the little time remaining, and I was beginning to feel like the show would finally disappoint me at this crucial moment. It didn't- in fact it delivered a season-closing note as good as those found on Breaking Bad- and that's about as high praise as I can give it. Strongly recommended.

The Repressed Urges of the Middle-aged Male: Its Roots and Its Consequences

The Seven Year Itch certainly isn't one of Marilyn Monroe's best films, but its appeal is pretty obvious and easily falls somewhere between 5 and 8 if one were to rank her films in some kind of qualitative order. It has some great moments and features arguably her most overtly sexual performance as the young woman (never named) who wreaks havoc in the life of a middle-aged married man (played by Tom Ewell). Monroe doesn't ever actually do anything to totally derail Ewell's life, but within an hour of meeting her he's resumed everything he just swore off- smoking, drinking, and carousing and feverishly plots a way to bed Monroe. His secret weapon in the hunt? Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

The "Rachmaninoff Reverie" is easily the highlight of the film. Ewell's absurd fantasy works so well because George Axelrod's script skewers male lust with a precise combination of mockery and fondness. Of course it certainly doesn't hurt that Monroe was at the apex of her bombshell years and would never be viewed (or filmed) quite the same way after Itch, since Bus Stop (her next film) proved once and for all she could really act. But even with a lesser female presence as the object of desire, the scene would still work because it's so spot on- men really do conjure up the most ridiculous fantasies when they unexpectedly encounter exceptionally good-looking women.

The other reason it works so well is because Axelrod made a perfect choice by using Rachmaninoff's concerto as the anchor of the scene, creating an amusing parody of its use in Brief Encounter a decade earlier.

In the film Ewell is home alone reading of a book entitled "The Repressed Urges of the Middle-aged Male: Its Roots and Its Consequences" when his wife calls and he steps outside during the call. After hanging up with his wife he's about to go back inside his apartment when a potted tomato plant crashes down from Monroe's balcony, nearly missing him.

His initial anger turns immediately to neighborly forgiveness once he sees Monroe's the culprit. He invites her downstairs for a drink, which she happily accepts. She just has to take her underwear out of the freezer first.

As he's getting ready for her arrival he peruses his albums, pondering out loud what to choose as the soundtrack for the great seduction that's about to unfold: "Let's see... Debussy... Ravel... Stravinsky... Stravinsky would only scare her." He let's out a little gasp, pulls a record from the collection and says, "Here's the baby, Rachmaninoff... give her the full treatment, come in like gangbusters."

He puts the album on the turntable, takes a sip of scotch, pulls a suave drag from his cigarette, and a dreamy look comes into his eyes. Looking off into somewhere only he can see, he goes on, "Good old Rachmaninoff... the second piano concerto, never misses," like he's done this a hundred times before.

As the piece begins, Ewell's dreamy look quickly morphs into a lecherous leer as he looks toward the closed front door of his apartment, and as the piano's opening chords descend into the orchestra's swirling accompaniment, an opaque Monroe descends down the stairs and through the door like a ghost. Monroe has never looked sultrier onscreen than she does here- she's palpably provocative, dressed in a skin-tight gown (tiger striped, no less), to the point where you can almost see steam rising from her. Seen on a large screen, she's perhaps best described as a disruption in the natural order of things.

Ewell is now seated at the piano dressed in a red smoking jacket, nonchalantly playing the piece, and in an affected European drool offers, "You came. I'm so glad."

Monroe writhes at the opposite end of the piano and snarls, "Rachhhhhmaninoff."

He replies "The Second Piano Concerto," as if this was the most inevitable thing in the world for him to be playing.

She looks down helplessly, avoiding his eyes, and says, "It isn't fair."

"Not fair? Why?" he replies, never missing a note.

"Every time I hear it I go to pieces."

"Ohhh?"

She approaches him and asks "May I sit next to you?"

"Please do."

She sits down next to him on the bench and turns her body toward the camera. To the audience, that is. She brings her long, dark cigarette to her mouth and inhales deeply. She sets the cigarette down and begins to caress herself.

Sorry.

Perhaps I'm getting a little carried away here. Well, no I'm not. That's exactly what happens. In the movie, I mean.

Marilyn Monroe on a subway grate in Manhattan.

This entire scene of The Seven Year Itch played through my mind in a flash as I watched Khatia Buniatishvili stride onstage at Davies Symphony Hall last week, where she was the guest soloist with the San Francisco Symphony for- yes, that's right- Rachhhhhhmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

Buniatishvili wore a white gown, skin-tight, with rhinestone sequins hugging every curve with cascades of something resembling mohair flowing from her thighs to the floor. Monroe would have applauded it. Monroe would have looked sensational in it. Kind of like she did at Kennedy's birthday at Madison Square Garden, and with a physique rivaling Monroe's, Buniatishvili's entrance caused my brain to fall out my skull, land somewhere on the floor, and roll under the seat in front of me. All I could really think to myself was fuuuuuck as she smiled, bowed slightly and took her seat at the bench, smiling like an ingenue.

It took me about four or five minutes to focus on the music and it was only then I realized that good old Rachmaninoff was having a rather turgid time of it in the first movement, with guest conductor Vladimir Jurowski and the orchestra out of sync with the pianist and nothing coming from the stage that would have made anyone writhe in ecstasy. Though I had a great seat where I could watch Buniatishvili's fingers on the keyboard and see her from a perfect forty-five degree angle, I found myself slightly envious of Alexander Barantschik's view.

The second movement only picked up with the contributions from the soloists of the orchestra, who rendered its lilting theme with grace, but it felt constricted and remained so through the third movement and though Buniatishvili played it with enough physical conviction to make her rise off the bench at moments, it sounded much tamer than it looked. Still, as she took her bows and the audience gave her a standing ovation, I couldn't help but think she's the sexiest woman I've ever seen on a stage. Any stage.

Khatia Buniatishvili on a red carpet in Germany.

During the intermission I stepped outside and encountered an acquaintance. We discussed what we had just seen and heard. I was more interested in the former, he the latter, but I couldn't help wondering if that was a decorous decision on his part and not reflective of his true thoughts on the matter. He was accompanied by a woman who was being accosted by a butch woman on a mission and I was trying to parse out exactly what was going on before giving up and returning inside.

I was seated next to a former rabbi and his wife, who had just returned from a European cruise. I asked him what he thought of Buniatishvili. I didn't ask his wife.

The second half of the concert featured the first North American performance of excerpts from Prokofiev's score for Sergei Eisenstein's film Ivan the Terrible, arranged by L.T. Atovmyan into a kind of mini-opera featuring two singers (mezzo-soprano Elena Zaremba and baritone Andrey Breus) and chorus. It was an exuberant performance all around- the chorus sang with boisterous precision, and the soloists not only sang it well, but seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. Zeremba was often tapping her feet and moving along to the music, and Breus wore traditional  boots and trowsers, looking somewhat ridiculous with a whip in his hand. Chekov's gun maxim should have been applied here more forcefully than it actually was during "The Oprichniks" sequence. Nevertheless, Jurowski, making his debut appearance with the orchestra, showed why his appearance was highly anticipated, providing real contrast between this part and "Swan" segment before guiding the strings and flutes through the instrumental "Anastasya" segment, which was drenched in the uniquely Russian sound.

Zeremeba conjured her best Ulrica for "The Broad Expanse of the Sea," making me realize it's been too long since she's appeared across Grove Street. "The Fall of Kazan" featured wondferul playing from the tubas (!) and cellos before culminating in a loud finish which sounds like Prokofiev doing Fasolt and Fafner in Russian. "The Glorification" featured some extremely tricky parts for the clarinets, and brought things to an end with Russia united and still standing. It was a blast, and well worth hearing.

The concert began with Scriabin's brief Reverie, which was played so wonderfully it came across as much more than the amuse bouche I expected.

Gala night

We stood in front of the Grove Street entrance to Davies Symphony Hall. Her much-younger friend had gone inside to call her brother, who was coming to pick them up and return them to some place she was embarrassed to admit. The last of the crowd was making their way home and the staff were dismantling the bars, tables, and other items which less than an hour before had created a kind of pop-up beer garden on Grove Street, albeit an elegant one with jugglers, stilt-walkers, and musicians.

"So I've only been back here for a little while. I've been living in Europe."

"Oh. What were you doing there?"

"Living," she replied.

"Ah, I see. Were you a performer of some sort?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she replied.

"Where in Europe were you living?"

"Paris. But I've also lived in Sweden. And Jerusalem. But I was born here. In Southern California."

"I see. Were you an actress? A dancer?"

"Yes. It's so flattering you recognized me from the play. I think I remember seeing you in the audience."

"Perhaps it was after the show, while you were leaving the theater?"

"No, I think I remember you from the audience. Is there anywhere to sit down? I'm getting cold."

We went into the lobby, which was still open, and sat down on one the benches. She crossed her legs, exposing a vintage-looking garter. I felt a slight pressure rise behind my eyes at the sight. Though she had been revealing much throughout the evening, the sight of this garter, so reminiscent of another time, and another kind of woman, made an impression on me altogether different.

"I didn't really like the play," I said, "but you were quite memorable."

"What didn't you like?"

"It was essentially a short skit that lasted over an hour. And the casting didn't make sense to me."

"I can see that. I talked to the director about some of the cast, but there was nothing she could do by that time.

"I've been to Stockholm. It's a lovely place."

"You know I'm married?"

"No, I didn't. How would I?" I paused for a moment and then also asked, "He's younger than you, isn't he?"

"How did  you know?"

"I just know these things."

"But I'm not monogamous."

"Is he?"

"Yes."

"Poor bastard."

"He's Irish. I like women- I have a girlfriend."

"I'm going to guess... she's older than you?"

"No, but she's not as young as my husband. She's four years younger than I."

Her friend came out of the hall and into the lobby, and stumbled to a seat next to me.

The friend turned to her and said her brother would be here in a few minutes. She then turned to me and slurred,"Tennessee Williams. Fucking Streetcar Named Desire. It's the most brilliant thing ever written, don't you think?"

This led to a digression into theater, living on the down-low, and the film Far From Heaven.

"I love that film," said the one with the garter.

"It's wonderful," I replied.

"Oh, he's here!" the other said.

The gartered-one smiled, whispered something in my ear, bit it gently, and then off they went, back to wherever it was they came from.

As for the concert? You can read a highly accurate account of it here, though I wasn't as taken with the Bolero as everyone else was. I wanted more of a thrust, and a larger climax. 

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.

The Yodeling Dominatrix

The first time I saw her, I thought she would be perfect as Maria von Trapp in a Russ Meyer remake of The Sound of Music. Sure, she caught my eye- with that figure and those legs in that get-up, how could she not? True, she was funny, but there are lots of funny women, though I can't think of one who looks quite so good. She wore her hair in pigtails- something I'll admit having a fetish for, but even that small, delectable detail, which under normal circumstances would have caused me to lock my gaze on her like bear trap snapping shut, couldn't gain my full attention. She was a sexy red clown competing with a table full of food and booze, people chatting away and a circus swirling around her. 

But it's true what they say- that clothes make the woman, because the second time I saw her (I have no idea how much time had elapsed- an hour? two? twenty minutes?) she strode to the center of the floor, all 6'10" of her, in a pleated, skin-tight, black pleather dress. The front was cut low, removed actually, the better to expose a blood-red, patent-leather bra. It was like my brain split in half- everything stopped, yet I was aware of of every single sensation, like I had plunged underwater. I heard the distinct crack of a whip- a well-made one, signaling a baptism was about to start.

The familiar chords of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" started up somewhere from the stage, the drums kicked in, she took over the room, strutting in time to the beat. A remarkably tall siren beckoning from the deepest recesses of my repressed fantasies, I couldn't take my eyes off of her. She sang with a German accent, which only made it all the more decadent and delicious- Marlene Dietrich on a "one-way ride." Then, where the chorus was supposed to be, she let out a tremendous "Yodel-ay-hee-huuuuu!" and I think the audience went a little nuts. I'm not certain, because my brain split into quarters at that moment.

The Yodeling Dominatrix had arrived and proceeded to turn the audience of Teatro ZinZanni into her slaves.

I had to meet her.

After the show we were introduced. She immediately held me in the palm of her hand and within minutes (moments, actually) at her feet. I dared to touch the eight-inch heels without her permission. She bent me over and held her crop aloft- a warning to behave. I succumbed. You would have, too.

Two weeks later we had our first rendezvous at one of my usual haunts. She had arrived before me, so the hostess led me to her. It wasn't so much that she sat in the booth, but was holding court waiting for a supplicant- at least that's how I felt. Everything she wore was skin-tight- including alligator boots which climbed to her knees. I thought the encounter would last an hour, maybe one and a half at the most. Seven hours later I returned to my apartment, spent, tired, and in a daze. That's what happens when one spends time in the company of Manuela Horn.

We ate. We drank. We drank more than we ate. We were told we had to leave.

Our next stop was for some real food, though more beverages were brought- Manhattans, of course. She ordered sausages, as any true Austrian woman would. Delicious, thick, juicy sausages, which she ate with her hands. I used my fork simply as a matter of defense, though it was of no use. I was aware we were seated in the middle of the room and all eyes, regardless of gender, were on her. I watched her too, with what? Desire? Lust? Fascination? Does it matter? All I can remember was the slow-motion sensation of watching her lick the juice from the tips of perfectly formed tendrils (merely fingers on most humans).

I felt the genie spring from the bottle. It was one of those moments you live for.

"Come with me," she said.

Helplessly, I acquiesced.

Soon we were in another part of town to see a show featuring performers who were friends of hers. As we walked in the door she was greeted by numerous people and I understood what Arthur Miller felt when he entered a room with Marilyn. There's no place for you. You don't exist- you are merely there, sucking up space where a well-wisher would like to be- to get closer to her. The fact that you are there with her doesn't even register because she's already taken up all of existing space in the room just by her presence alone. It's an ineluctable truth.

Then the party girl came out (I've learned it doesn't take much)- she lives for a good time and loves to entertain people. The show was pretty damn funny and included a pudgy, naked man dancing onstage holding a tissue over his genitals. She acted as if it were the kind of thing one sees everyday. After it ended, we wound up at Martuni's and somehow the hour passed midnight and then the cast of "Hair" came in and took the place over. Before taking my leave of her, we agreed to meet again and I watched her watching me as the train pulled away from the platform. I would think of the look on her face at that moment for days afterward.

The next morning I awoke exhausted and elated. She had told me about being on "America's Got Talent" as the Yodeling Dominatrix and of her day-to-day experiences working with companies like Cirque du Soleil and Teatro ZinZanni. It was illuminating and more. She has such a unique presence- intimidating and mysterious because of her looks and height, but completely open and unpretentious. She's a pussycat, truth be told, and she likes to purr.

A week later she arrived at my apartment early in the evening in white pants, black turtleneck, a short, white jacket trimmed in faux fur, fivefinger shoes, an eight-inch-wide leather belt, a jaunty black cap over her long blonde hair... and a black, well-oiled, hand-tooled whip. She had been eating oysters all day in Tomales Bay. I had prepared a pot roast and bought some Italian wine. Once again, the gaping disparity opened up before me.

I wanted to know where the Dominatrix came from. How did a mother of two, well-versed in the nuances and history of traditional yodeling, learned from her father as a child, end up dressed in pleather, expertly wielding a whip? Somewhere beneath the surface there was a different truth, and I wanted to uncover it. It turned out to be simpler than what I constructed in my imagination, yet layered with textures from a surprising array of life experiences.

Her physical stature impacted her career in unintended ways. Sure, she would love to be cast as Juliet, but a stage director once told her, "We can't hire you- where are we going to find an entire cast over six feet tall? Romeo would have to be almost seven feet!" Instead of fighting it, she's made it work for her by creating her own cast of characters. The Yodeling Dominatrix is just one facet of who she is- as is the Oktoberfest girl, and there are more- Roxie the gangster moll, a sexy milkmaid named Gretchen, the stern Fräulein Brunhilde von Schmetterling. She's a singer. A comedienne. An entertainer first and foremost. And she lives for it.

She also admits to relishing the control she has over people when she's dress to thrill. The power of the role intrigues her and its pull is strong. There was a man in Seattle in who came repeatedly to see her in a show and each time he'd ask for her crop across his behind, always requesting it land harder than the last time. The dominatrix persona creates an invisible but palpable psychological boundary between her and the audience.  That so many wish to cross it is something she ponders often, causing her to want to understand the triggers of desire she pulls in people.

But there's also a playfulness to the masquerade. Take a look at this video on YouTube called Parenting 101 with the Yodeling Dominatrix - instructions and helpful hints for parents to "train your kid like you train your dog."

Manuela  told me about Mr. Big, a fearless 3'2" dwarf she works with, whom she met at an erotic fair. Sometimes she dresses him up in drag. I flashed back to 1987, when I was working as a DJ in a North Hollywood strip joint, and Herve Villechaize used to come in frequently to take home one of the dancers- a six-foot-tall heavy metal queen named Jana whose hair added six additional inches to her height. He'd come over to the booth, say hello, and then pull out a gun- his most recent purchase, usually. They were always ridiculously large handguns. Watching them leave together always made me smile, knowing the gun would be brandished again before the night was over.

I asked her to tell me more about the erotic fair, deciding Herve and the strip joint were best left undiscussed, and she did. Somehow I knew we shouldn't linger too long on this topic, but I kept asking her for more details, which she gave. I found her forthrightness disarming. Nothing was off the table with her. She appreciates burlesque, erotic art, and painting naked bodies. This was a tangent I could have stayed on forever, but I also knew I could end up chained to it, so we moved on eventually, though not before I had some interesting images set in my mind.

We talked about music. I have this fantasy of her incorporating Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" into her act. She wants to be on David Letterman and the idea of Paul Schaffer leading the band through the classic riff as Manuela towers over Letterman is almost too delicious to contemplate. I can hear her yodeling in the part where the guitar slides downward after "wanna whole lotta love.... yodel-lay-hee-huuuuuu, wanna whole lotta love... yodel-lay-hee-huu." I see it as the first step in her inevitable path to world domination- "... you... need... me... BAM. BAM... whoaaa, yodel-lay-hee-huu!!!"

She's committed to furthering her career as a singer and has a recording studio in her Seattle home. After her current appearance in Teatro ZinZanni's "On the Air" closes, she'll resume work on an album of  covers including "Highway to Hell," "Tainted Love" and "Like a Virgin"- all with yodeling of course. She also wants to move toward rock, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Zeppelin cover will get made one day.

Manuela also performs in her own shows, where she incorporates a variety of her characters. Next she year she'll take her act on the road, hitting festivals and rock concerts in her "Rock and Yodel Show", bringing the party with her, and encouraging audiences to "Get your yodel on..." She loves to see people having a good time and she feeds off of the audience's energy.

There's a joyful exuberance in everything Manuela does. She can walk into any room and own it without an effort. But underneath the raven-haired dominatrix in her pleather dress exists a thoughtful, inquisitive blonde who speaks in a soft voice with a lilting German accent. This is the woman who really entertains the audience- who knows that life's not always a party and that's the very best reason to have one.

She can't see herself ever retiring. Instead, she wants to die onstage- to take a final bow and then expire on the spot- in about 70 years. She imagines she'll be naked, with her costume projected onto her. I hope to be there that night, in the front row of the audience.

Manuela will be performing with Teatro ZinZanni in the company's terrific On the Air-   their last production before the Speigeltent comes down and relocates to Broadway and the Embarcadero sometime next year. The final show is New Year's Eve, leaving you plenty of time to hear her yodel (and get a spanking should you desire one).

While it's best to experience Manuela live and in the flesh, if you're too timid to seek her out in person, you can find her here:
Manuela Horn.com
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Blame Ken Russell

Do you ever wonder where your own particular fetishes/quirks/peccadilloes came from?  Today  I realized where mine began. It was all of those damn Ken Russell films I saw starting at the tender age of 7, when my mother took me to see "Women in Love" at the drive-in. I haven't missed many of his films since. Sex, horror, rock and roll, and classical music- there you have it- Marcher explained. Though the films were often awful, he was a true master of the indelible image. Here are a few of the tamer ones which will never leave me.

This should explain my bathroom to anyone who's ever wondered "what's with those photographs?"

Thanks for the memories, Ken (and the therapy bills).

Strange Magic

Last night got strange. Strange in that way where suddenly things are outside the known boundaries and no one really knows what's going to happen next but everyone's having fun at the moment and is willing to ride the train to wherever the next station is. It was as if all of a sudden we decided to become alternate versions of ourselves. Or looked at another way, maybe we were all just being ourselves, all at once and altogether.

It didn't start off unusually. I met GG at Urban Tavern for dinner. She was late, as I expected she would be since she usually is, but why complain? There's something immensely pleasing about watching a six-foot tall redhead (I suspect she's actually taller than that but won't cop to it) in a tight black dress slit all the way up the side in pearls and heels saunter up to your table. She towers over me and something about that has always excited me (she was seated the first time we met- I had no idea). I know it does nothing for her.

I'd ordered drinks for us while waiting and soon we were discussing the latest machinations of the Femme Fatale and what had happened with Penelope. After dinner we took a cab over to Davies, in which I noticed she was wearing thigh-high stockings. These always have a certain, well-defined effect on me. We picked up our tickets with minutes to spare and settled in to hear Vasily Petreneko take the reigns from MTT, leading Joshua Bell and the orchestra in the first guest conductor-led performance of the season. The last time Petrenko was here he impressed me so much I declared he should be MTT's successor when the day finally arrives. After last night I'm not so sure. Nothing went wrong, but the magic wasn't there in the same way. Some of that may be my response to the incredible performances I've seen led by MTT in the past month.

It began with an absolutely delightful version of Shostakovitch's Festival Overture taken at a breakneck pace. Flutist Tim Day again rocked it, as he has so often in the past month. If only the rest of the evening had the oomph behind it displayed in the opener it would have been an enchanting evening. Joshua Bell came out after it was over in an ensemble that was a sartorial mistake, though no one seemed to mind. Bell, a favorite of the audience for obvious reasons, did justice to Tchaikovsky's Meditation, from Souvenir d'un lieu cher, arranged by Glazunov, and though it was smooth as silk, the performance lacked passion and fire.

Though GG (and much of the audience) disagreed with me, passion and fire was also absent from Glazunov's Violin Concerto, which followed. Yes, Bell performed superbly, but there was something missing from it all. A bite, a hunger to take this unjustly rarely performed piece and make its performance something special wasn't there, despite Bell's command and amazingly fleet fretwork.

The absence of fire continued after the intermission, when it was just Petrenko and the orchestra performing Elgar's First Symphony. Like the Glazunov, there was nothing wrong with it, and sections bloomed beautifully, but it seemed a bit perfunctory, the orchestra never becoming seriously engaged with it all despite Petrenko's efforts. I know I'm in the minority with this response but there you have it. After the serious glory of what took place on this stage in the past month, last night was a bit of let-down. It had to happen sometime, I just wouldn't have expected it to come under a performance led by Petrenko.

Afterward, GG and I made our way over to Sugar to meet Isabella and the Swede (formerly the Elder Swede but since the younger one is pretty much MIA these days I'm officially discarding the epithet).  Isabella and the Swede had been out on a "date" of sorts, though only in the platonic sense. Isabella had wanted to meet GG for awhile, based no doubt on my appreciation of her, always expressed in no uncertain terms.

Unbeknownst to me, bets were placed about my own response to what would happen with this particular grouping, the terms of which I remain still in the dark about, only knowing that one was a winner and the other not. I have photographic evidence of what occurred, but I don't understand it and await an explanation for exactly what the hell that was all about. Just because I have photos doesn't make any of it clearer. All I'm willing to divulge at the moment is this morning I overslept, and I received an email from Isabella saying "you seem to generate a special kind of energy" and a follow up text calling me "an evil man" after I had sent her the pictures.


GG and I unexpectedly ended up having lunch together today, but it was the last thing she wanted to talk about. Her response upon seeing the photos was "haha, oh, mah god :-)." Read into it what you will. I'm keeping the photos to myself, because afterall, I love those two women.

Ladyland

I'm pleased to note this is the 500th post here on A Beast in a Jungle. I've been pondering for awhile what it should be about and wanted to acknowledge that I consider this blog to be about performances which take place on stages and off. Even the writing of it is a performance of a certain kind. In that spirit I considered revealing the  true nature of my involvement with Penelope, the Femme Fatale, Isabella and the other women threaded through here. Three drafts sit in the queue.


However, I couldn't quite wrestle that beast under control- the subject remains a convoluted tangle of threads in reality, never knottier than its current state. In the end I thought it best to leave the subject behind the curtain. Instead, I've decided to engage in an unconscionable act of self-indulgent flattery and publish two "fan letters" to mark the occasion. 


From Edith W.:

o 

So I stumbled into the vortex that is your blog just now and had to extricate myself immediately 1) because it's brilliant and reminded me of what makes you "you," and 2) because where I stumbled was the post about running into your ex fiancé. it made me paranoid (because yes, I am self-centered) and wondered if all of your ex-es are like characters in your head. then again, maybe that's the Marcher reference.

I think I told you this in an email some time ago, but last year I taught a course on Henry James for retirees at the senior center....we read The Ambassadors and Wings of the Dove. This September I agreed to return and work through Ulysses. I realized pretty quickly that this little side-gig could easily be called "books that remind me of Mark." I remember like it was yesterday...being in your attic apartment in Berkeley and your copy of Ulysses on the night stand. Did you know they haven't made a newer edition since that horrible art-deco looking cover?

Anyway.... about the blog. Your brilliance never ceases to inspire (and excite)....as it ever was.

From R. S.:

I should have written long ago to say how much I liked your post on whispering in public places (great title). Everything since then has been great, too. I'm starting to think you're piecing together a novel here, bit by bit. I've been thinking about a few novels I've read that combine serious engagement with music and interesting plots. I was slightly acquainted with this NYC novelist and opera fanatic named Richard Brickner who wrote a novel in the 70s or early 80s called Tickets, all about attending the Met and the social relationships that surrounded that. What I like best about your posts is the restraint and the mystery--there's intense stuff and it comes across powerfully, but you always leave the reader wondering and wanting to know more. I find that withholding quite addictive, and it does indeed resemble my very favorite thing about reading HJ. Last month I finally read The Beast in the Jungle and it certainly works that way.

... I really like this notion of acting like a character in a novel.  Personally I've always thought of myself as Isabel Archer, which I certainly should have grown out of by now, but haven't.

And there we are!

10 1/2 weeks: the Fadista and the Femme Fatale

Ana Moura- the fadista

Knowing it was inevitable didn't make it any easier to see her face and in the back of my mind I often wondered during these last 10 1/2 weeks how I would react when it was finally in front of me. My imaginings of the moment lurked in the darker part of my consciousness like a beast in a jungle, waiting to devour me once I came upon it if only given a half chance. Though I certainly wasn't ready for it, I felt- no, I knew- it would happen at this performance. Some things you just know, and as she once told me, I possess a "Gypsy-like" way of knowing certain things. This prescience (for what else can you can call it?), saved my life on more than one occasion, the most memorable being when it kept me from sitting in the front seat of a car for no apparent reason (and much to my mother's protestations), only to avoid being there 10 minutes later when the entire passenger side was creamed by a car running a red light.  In retrospect it's more than odd I possess this "gift" yet there are so many things I willfully turned a blind eye toward for months on end- the things we choose to ignore, because the fantasy has much more appeal than the reality. Yet there we were, to hear music that was centered in the reality of matters of the heart, of life, the reality of what is- not the fantasies of people who pursue an illusion. Fado is a Portuguese version of the blues- or Greek rembetika- music which reflects life,  giving it a universal, indestructible appeal.


Scanning the orchestra section of the Herbst Theater, I didn't see them, which didn't surprise me because I know he likes to buy the cheap seats, so they were probably sitting upstairs in the balcony. It was only after the show, when I noticed the table in the lobby for the fadista to sign CDs that I knew that's where they would be. And then, as if on cue, there they were.

It was the first time I've ever seen them together, though I have seen him before. As a couple, they resembled a lemur and a panther placed in the same cage- as if proximity would erase the incongruity. It doesn't. She went off to do something (check her make-up, I presume, but perhaps to text her newest victim), while he dutifully took his place in line for an autograph, waiting for her to come join him. I knew she was the one who wanted the CD and the autograph. The things he's done for her astound me- he knows most of it, if not all, and yet he's still there.

Do you remember the Joe Jackson song "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" It's not quite the song I would use to describe how I felt at that moment, but it comes pretty close. If the song were to really mirror the reality it would have been called "Did She Really Go Back to Him?" When she returned to the line he took leave of her, most likely headed to the restroom, and there stood the Femme Fatale, alone in the queue with her back to me. I approached her from behind and touched her neck. Not a gentle touch, but certainly without the force with which not long ago I used to use at her request. She spun around. Our eyes met for a brief moment, less than a second it seemed, before I turned away from her and made my way into the night.

It was one of those moments you replay in your head, endlessly considering the myriad alternatives of what could have happened at that moment, now irretrievable.

Before all of this, the fadista- Ana Moura- closed out SFJazz's Spring Season with what was essentially a masterclass in the "less is more" school of divadom, from which Beyonce and Gaga might well take some lessons. Taking the stage under a single spotlight in the Fado tradition, dressed in a gown which stated in no uncertain terms she was unapologetic to show off a real woman's figure, Moura proceeded to entrance the assembled for a brief set (less than an hour and a 1/2) that covered a lot of ground and yet at the same time left us feeling as if we had just watched, been witness to, something unique and special.

Moving little more than her left shoulder in what could only be described as a half-shimmy and sometimes moving her hips to rhythm, Ana Moura simply owned the stage. Talent and presence trump flash every time, and she has enough of both to burn. Yet she never more than smoldered, and that was enough- her stage persona is warm and inviting, not distant nor aloof. She knows she's sexy. She knows she talented. She knows that's enough and the rest is just unnecessary when one possesses these gifts. Women like that can make any audience succumb, whether the audience constists of one or a thousand- and collectively, we did. Speaking in Portuguese, and sometimes in English, she led her three accomplished accompanists through a set that left me feeling like I was standing in a gentle rain on a beach during a warm evening. That's probably not what one associates with fado- more commonly found in dark clubs, preferably late at night, but Moura's voice and demeanor transport the listener to a gentler, sultrier place. It's no wonder both Prince and the Stones have wanted to work with her.


For me there was a distinct irony when she performed the Stones' "No Expectations," with its refrain "I got no expectations, to pass through here again" - toward the end the Femme and I were on a Stones jag, writing back and forth the songs we thought most appropriate to our situation like two kids in high school. I left the exchange with "Stupid Girl."

"Fado de Procura," from the album Para Além Da Saudade turned out to be another highlight- a lighter touch giving the musicians a chance to shine with some extra fancy fretwork. Moura's was a graceful, elegant performance. I wish I could say the same about the  myself and the Femme Fatale, but this was fado- the blues, and you and I know it sometimes just doesn't work out that way.


Leaving the Femme Fatale behind, without a word said between us, I made my way into the night, heightened in its usual craziness because it was Pink Saturday in San Francisco- a night when the air surges with electricity as gay people congregate from all over to celebrate in one of their few Meccas. Thankfully I had plans for afterward, so for awhile at least, the encounter I'd left behind was just that- behind me as I went to meet out Isabella. But some things leave a trace long after they've been left behind or abandoned.

To be continued- without a doubt.

Jane Monheit and Leila Josefowicz

It's doubtful those two names have ever been linked before, and I'd guess it unlikely to ever happen again. Both were scheduled to appear here Thursday night, actually within two blocks of one another. At one time, this would have been an easy decision for me to make- Leila Josefowicz is one of my favorite performers and would have been my choice without reservation. However, Jane Monheit is the Femme Fatale's favorite singer (yes, much to my consternation she's not quite gone just yet) so I arranged tickets so she and I could attend the performance, not feeling too badly about missing Josefowicz this time around because she'll be performing with the SF Symphony next season.

Then everything became tangled in a most sordid way. The Femme Fatale decided she couldn't attend the concert because her presence would likely expose something she has deftly kept hidden for months on end. I thought we were past this phase, so you can imagine my state of mind upon learning this. Failing to find someone else to take her place, I arrived at the hall alone and within a few minutes had spotted the other person who held a ticket for her.

After taking my seat I scanned the hall. Where were his seats? Of course I imagined his would end up being right next to my own and there we'd sit- two cuckolds separated by two seats meant for the same woman. Like something out of one of Woody Allen's bitter movies of the 90's.

I saw him take his seat across the hall- directly in my field of vision should I glance up from the stage. Now, I'm not one who really believes in Karma, but there was certainly some sort of cosmic retribution taking place here, yet I for one found it somewhat distasteful the person to whom it should be directed wasn't even present. Which is why I don't believe in Karma.

Monheit and her three piece band (Michael Kanan on piano, Neal Miner on bass and Monheit's husband Rick Montalbano on drums) took the stage to warm applause and began the set with "While We're Young" and followed it with "Look For the Silver Lining" and "This is Always," all from her most recent recording, Home. Next came a song she hasn't recorded but wants to, "That's All"- recently covered by Michael Buble, but I'd recommend Nat King Cole's version instead. Monheit noted she originally thought of this as a song for lovers, but now that she's a parent she sees it apropos of more than one kind of relationship.

She had begun to lose me with this between-song banter and her version of "Moon River" unfortunately finished the job. Mercer's wistful lyrics can certainly be taken down a dark path and I can imagine the song sounding quite bleak if sung by the literary Golightly instead of Hepburn's lighter version. Undoubtedly the song had a simply gorgeous introduction courtesy of Kanan, but midway through Monheit began to scat in ways that conveyed sheer, unrelenting angst to my ears- and it just stopped the song dead in its tracks for me. It's an interesting, valid approach to the song, but I just couldn't go with it coming from her. Partly because there is nothing believable about hearing Monheit do angst- she had just finished telling the audience her toddler was sleeping in the dressing room and making jokes about how Montalbano would soon be snoring while she was going to be up all night. Sure, I guess there can be angst in that scenario for an artist, a mother, or a family on the road, but these asides were conveyed with warmth and reassurance, not in a way that possibly signaled a fragile state that could fall apart at a moment's notice backstage after the show. It was a Dick and Jane act, not Dick and Liz.

Then, to make what we had just heard seem even more incongruous, she described the next tune, Pal Joey's "There's a Small Hotel" as the "kissing song" because whenever and wherever they play it they spot people smooching in the audience. I looked around, but didn't notice any. Perhaps it was taking place right behind me- there had to be some reason that guy kept kicking my seat. She followed this Home's opening track, "A Shine on Your Shoes," then another tune from Pal Joey,"Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" and ended the first set with Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek."

By this time I was the one feeling bewitched, bothered and bewildered. Of course this is just my own preference, I know, but I like my jazz singers to be of two types: those who can wrench the listener's emotions using nothing more than their voice applied to the lyrics (think Jimmy Scott or Billie Holliday) and those who expose something about themselves via the songs they're singing (think Rickie Lee Jones or Edith Piaf). Warm and fuzzy banter is a bit of a turn off for me in this medium unless its part of the shtick (ala Michael Feinstein).

Monheit's sunny demeanor matches her voice, but it also removes the mystery in it, and her voice is unique in that the crystal clear, gleaming tone in it always carries a hint of something darker lurking within. There's a shadow against  all that sunlight when you listen to her recordings and it's what got my attention when I first heard her. That darkness came through in "Moon River," but the sunny proceedings (aided to some extent by the brightness of the hall itself, just felt wrong to me. Of course, that could have just been my state of mind at the time, right?

At intermission I decided to take a walk down the street and skip the second set, thinking it would be more or less more of the same. I rarely do such a thing but since I wasn't really enjoying it I thought why not catch the second half of Josefowicz's concert?

I took a seat in the nearly empty balcony in time to hear the Largo of Shostakovich's Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 134. Then came the intermission and I ran into Patrick, whom I knew would be seated in the front row. I asked him if there were any empty seats up there, and for the second half of the concert enjoyed watching Josefowicz perform from close proximity.

Leaving the other performance for this one turned out to be a smart choice for me.

Josefowicz was accompanied by pianist John Novacek, whose heavy-handed approach worked well during Stravinsky's Duo Concertant once the duo got past the Cantilène, in which Josefowicz seemed to struggle against. The Gigue, on the other hand was everything one could hope for and her frenzied playing during the Dithyramb was thrilling. The music stand often obscured her left hand from my view, but watching her face was almost as illuminating as listening to her attack this music.

Next up was a work by a contemporary Estonian composer (unfamiliar to me)- Erkki-Sven Tüür's Conversio, which is a jarring, clashing, rhythmic bit of pugilism between the violin and piano that eventually ends with the violin dissolving the last notes in a quiet tremolo. This was exciting to hear and both Josefowicz and Novacek appeared fully engaged with the piece. I would certainly like to hear this almost violent piece performed again.

The final piece was Schubert's Rondo Brilliant for Violin and Piano, D. 895, which again featured Novacek playing extremely heavy-handed and I thought the approach undermined the work to a certain extent. The program notes explained the score calls for each to player to "hammer it out to launch the Rondo" but Novacek never put the hammer down. Josefowicz hit just as hard, and while it worked well in the more forceful part of this work written for virtuosos of both instruments, the softer passages lacked the contrast which would made the more robust elements all the more impressive.

They performed Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" as an encore, which Josefowicz and Novacek recorded for her "Americana" CD (and it was the only piece on the program performed from memory).

After the concert I returned home and found the Femme Fatale in my apartment, dressed in her usual head-to-toe black, listening to the only disc she's every brought over to my place I actually loathe. We then went to the corner store, bought a bottle of Bulleit, and over nightcaps, tried to forget for at least a moment how a love affair can become so distressingly twisted and convoluted.

Monheit's show was presented by SFJazz. Josefowicz was presented by San Francisco Performances. Josefowicz donated a portion of her fee to Classical Action:Performing Arts Against AIDS.