Moravec Wins Pulitzer

The 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Music, announced on Monday, was awarded to Paul Moravec for his Tempest Fantasy, a 25-minute work for clarinet, violin, cello and piano, given its premiere at the Morgan Library in New York City last May. Moravec is an "academic composer," graduate of Harvard and Columbia, has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Hunter College, and currently heads the Music Department at Adelphi University.

Moravec is known to use tonal harmony in new, unusual ways. "I use all the materials available to me," he has said. "My intention is to involve as much of my experience of the world and reality as possible, to capture and project it in musical terms... simply to make beautiful music." He describes Tempest Fantasy as a "musical meditation on various characters, moods, situations, and lines of text from my favorite Shakespeare play, The Tempest. Rather than trying to depict these elements in programmatic terms, the music simply uses them as points of departure for flights of purely musical fancy." The work is dedicated to David Krakauer and the members of Trio Solisti.

Fixin' Hollywood Bowl

That great, often maligned musical landmark of the Southland, the Hollywood Bowl, is about to undergo some major renovation, getting a new shell this summer. This should be a somewhat familiar event, given four previous re-roofing of the largest natural amphitheater in the US. The structure, seating about 18,000, has had four shells since it first opened in 1922 (including two by Lloyd Wright, eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright).

The next, fifth shell is designed by Hodgetts + Fung Design Associates and Gruen Associates. The plan aims to preserve the recognizable, 1920s Modern concentric ring look of the existing shell, improve its acoustics, create 30% more stage space to accommodate a full orchestra inside the shell, and allow lighting and sound technology to be integrated into the design. Construction began last October.

Tandy! — Saluting the Unknown Tenor

WAILUKU — He was discovered and mentored by John McCormack, made his debut as Rodolfo in La Boheme, in Cannes, was coached by Toscanini at La Scala, became one of the first popular recording artists of classical music, gave a command performance for Woodrow Wilson in the White House in 1919, sang leading roles in Paris, was featured as Canio and Manrico in the San Francisco Opera's 1932 season, appeared in numerous films (including Goin' to Town with Mae West and There's Magic in Music)... and yet chances are you have never heard of Tandy MacKenzie.

But now, he is about to be restored to a certain measure of fame, with a play about him to premiere here in the Cultural Center on Maui, the island where he was born in 1892. Wayne Moniz is the author of Tandy! about the talented and unlucky singer, whose career collapsed before World War II, just as he was about to make his Met debut, and although he lived until 1963, the world pretty ignored him later in life, forgot about him since.

Besides dealing with MacKenzie's life and career, Moniz's play dwells into the singer's complex relationship with the Islands, resolved near the end of his life. In an interview with Moniz in the Cultural Center program, Rita Goldman has him describe a scene that's especially meaningful to those who have experienced Maui's Hansen's Disease colony in person:

"In the scene, MacKenzie travels to Kalaupapa to perform for the leprosy patients. He's uneasy, making the trek down the face of the cliff on the back of a mule, worried that his audience may be contagious, worried that they won't be able to appreciate his art. His fears prove groundless. The first person he encounters is his mother's former dressmaker. Surprised, MacKenzie hugs her and asks what she's doing in Kalaupapa. `Ah, just a little leprosy,' she says. `No pilikia [problem].'

"He's introduced to Adeline Balsta, who will accompany him on piano. As he reaches to shake hands, he sees tht she's missing several fingers. `Don't worry, Mr. MacKenzie,' she laughs. `I just have to move all the fingers that I have to make up for the missing ones. I do the Minute Waltz in 30 seconds'." I wonder who will take on the task of resurrecting memories of Keaumoku Louis, another outstanding singer from Hawaii, who disappeared into a past not all that distant.

EMI Cuts Jobs

EMI Group, the world's third largest music company, is cutting 1,500 jobs and a fifth of its "niche and underperforming artists," in an effort to reduce costs in an increasingly difficult market. Restructuring the company is expected to save as much as $150 million in expenses, but its impact on reduced sales cannot be estimated. More than half of the job cuts will be made as CD and DVD manufacturing plants are shut down in the Netherlands and Illinois, substituting outsourced operations. EMI's nearly $4 billion in sales in 2003 represented a drop of 11.1% from the year before, and yet the company regards that as having "outperformed the industry."

As Roasts the Swan, So Dies the Tenor

HONOLULU — In his three-minute role in Orff's Carmina Burana, the tenor is to convey the inexplicably hilarious (if gruesome) demise of the swan with a vocal line that consistently forces an "ordinary" tenor into counter-tenor range. The practical solution is to sing falsetto. Fortunately for the audience Sunday afternoon in Blaisdell Hall, at the Hawaii International Choral Festival, Laurence Paxton was neither ordinary nor practical. He didn't try to sing those extraordinary notes from the chest. He just sang it, dramatically, grippingly, interacting with the chorus, having the audience in his pocket, creating a Moment.

Everything else fell in place as well, in a world-class concert, an apotheosis of superheated German pop/schlock into a symphonic/vocal masterpiece. The baritone was Lorenzo Formosa, a singer without a big voice and apparently fighting a cold, but he kept building the performance until emerging as a superb artist.Alice Berneche's soprano is clean and warm, she held quiet but commanding notes forever, creating a virtual chamber orchestra in her throat.

The main responsibility for this memorable event belonged to the conductor. Karen Kennedy, director of the Honolulu Symphony Chorus and artistic director of the Choral Festival. She created a perfect arch, a seamless line from beginning to end, brought out every note of the snappy syncopation, indulged in the sweeping lyricism of the work, without overdoing it.The main chorus — an amazing instrument, especially the sopranos — along with Kennedy's University of Hawaii Chamber Singers, Randall N. Wolfe's Cincinnati Boychoir, and Takashi Kawabara's Merveille Chorus of Izumi City (near Osaka) all sang their hearts out for Kennedy, a performance of power, not of mere volume.

The orchestra was a vital part of the proceedings, and thereby lies a double myth-buster wherein a choral conductor, Kennedy, led the orchestra in one of the best performances I heard from the band (including a decade of reviewing it back in the distant past. Another conductor was in charge of Haydn's Symphony No. 101, in a performance lacking in precision, humor, charm, elegance and soul. And yet, under Kennedy, all those qualities were richly in evidence (except for elegance, which is not of Orff). Kennedy should be a prime candidate for working in opera.