Let Dr. Adams Tell You How to 'Go Out in the World'
It's the month of May and people like me who have been asked to speak at college commencements are feverishly thumbing through their copies of Bartlett's Quotations or searching Wikipedia for some golden little nuggets of wisdom or humorous anecdotes with which to begin their speeches.
Adams delivering the commencement address Photo courtesy of the Juilliard School
See Adams' blog on this, including a conversation with Marcel Proust, and a link to a great — if misspelled — "Sir Derek Jacboi" video.
After greeting the new world "full of very exciting young women composers, many of whom have genuinely transformed the musical landscape with their talent, wit and imagination," Adams recalled his own college days in the '60s, the Vietnam War, and how "at my own commencement ceremony several protesting students tried to take over the podium and had to be removed by class marshals."
With current events, he pointed out, "the world that awaits this year’s graduating classes is no less volatile, no less unpredictable."
Adams thanked "all of you students who, against all odds and against all the pressures to do otherwise, have chosen to have a life in the arts." Against a "disposable life ... centered around material gain and finding the best possible comfort zone for yourself," and "living in a fractured virtual environment where staying focused on a single thought for, say, a mere seven seconds presents a grave challenge," Adams counseled life in the "mind-bendingly and refreshingly difficult" world of the arts.
(The seven-second reference, Adams said, came from a Google researcher in San Francisco who established 7.3 seconds as the amount of time that an average viewer stays on a YouTube site before jumping to another page.)
For Adams' brilliant description of the hardships and rewards of being an artist, see the full text of his address, but for the 7.3-second jumpers, let me quote just a few paragraphs here about what he is looking for when students show him new scores:
... to be surprised, because surprise wakes me up to the world, surprise makes me see something or feel something in a way I never before expected. Nowadays, with all the arts so instantly available via technology, we're finding it ever more difficult to be surprised by something. We can hear or see just about anything online now, but how often are we bowled over, how often have we been forced to stop all other discursive mind wandering and just sit there in astonishment, listening or looking in rapt amazement?
What does it take to move us from our customary place? (And by the way, that is what the word "ecstasy" literally means: "ek-stasis," to be moved out of one's place.) And that is what we want when we confront a work of art, whether it's a completely new creation or an impassioned performance of masterwork from the past.
In order to achieve that element of surprise you have to set up expectation. The quality of the surprise — what Melville called "the shock of recognition" — depends on how carefully, how knowingly these expectations have been set up. And whether you are a master playwright, or a subtle and probing lieder singer or a speed-of-light jazz improviser, your expertise in setting up expectations depends on two factors that would at first glance seem to be contradictory:
One is supreme technical mastery, mastery of a kind that is so secure and so thoroughly internalized that it functions at an almost subliminal level. ... And the other is having a gift for the outrageous, having the willingness and readiness to make that sudden, spontaneous departure from the norm, the ability to depart from the script and make the unexpected leap out of the box, and to do it precisely when it's least expected.
Marina Mahler, the composer's granddaughter, with MTT at the May 23 rehearsal in Vienna's Konzerthaus Photo courtesy of Oliver Theil
San Francisco Symphony's Oliver Theil sent an e-mail while riding TGV, the French high-speed railroad, reporting that the speed is at 187 miles per hour. (Impressive, and up from what it used to be, but way short of Japan's experimental Maglev, at 361 MPH. And the speed in the U.S.: Better drop the subject ...)
Theil is the multitasking SFS director of public relations, who also reports on the orchestra tour and takes excellent photos. From the TGV ride, he sent excerpts from reviews of SFS concerts last week, e.g.:
Die Presse (Vienna)
Michael Tilson Thomas' reading [of Mahler's Symphony No. 9] was impressive, with its structural clarity and the courage to present the various disruptions and outbursts unsuppressed and then approach the sensitivity of the closing Adagio with the utmost subtlety. It was clear, not only from the silence of the audience at the end of the piece but also from the standing ovation that followed, how excitingly and profoundly the musicians from San Francisco are able to convey Mahler's message.SFS violinist Naomi Kazama Hull warms up in the Vienna Konzerthaus
Der Kurier (Vienna)
In a meticulously interpreted Fifth Symphony by Beethoven, the Americans demonstrated their proficiency in the classical repertoire. They brought out delightful passages which are rarely heard with such care and precision.
[In the Mahler] one heard the best qualities of this first-class American ensemble — its broad dynamic range, the precision of its ensemble playing, and its ability to accommodate stylistic demands and even the subtlest shades of expression or sudden shifts.
It is touching to see these Americans going to all of the places Mahler was associated with, and looking for the key to the individual passages of his symphonies. They approach even things that might seem obvious to Europeans with the enthusiasm of discoverers. This may also be the key to their artistic persuasiveness.
"These Americans" are today in Paris, gathering more glowing reviews, and going on to Spain on Wednesday.
San Francisco Girls Chorus — "five-time Grammy Award winners," a description always included in announcements with justifiable pride — will give two performances of its season-ending program at the S.F. Conservatory of Music, on June 9 and 11.
Given jointly with the Sonos Handbell Ensemble and the Cypress String Quartet, the concerts also serve as a showcase during the national conference of Chorus America. SFGC and Chanticleer are cohosts of the meeting.
The program, led by Artistic Director Susan McMane, include some of the chorus' important commissions from the last decade from Chen Yi, Libby Larsen, and James Meredith (of Sonos and the Young Musicians Program), and features a premiere by Tania León.
The Conservatory Concert Hall is a quarter of the size of Davies Symphony Hall, where the Girls Chorus does well filling up the house, so good luck getting tickets. Try calling (415) 392-4400 or go online to City Box Office.
In Musical Headlines: Tozzi, Summers, Zambello, Iisaka
*A great bass, a San Francisco favorite for decades, Giorgio Tozzi died Monday at age 88. Besides the Metropolitan Opera and Europe's top houses, it was the War Memorial where Tozzi sang most often, from a 1955 Aida (Ramfis) to a 1978 Tosca (Scarpia). His Phillip II in Don Carlos and singing the title role of Don Giovanni were especially unforgettable. Tozzi will also be remembered for such varied accomplishments as singing the title role of Boris Godunov in an NBC TV cast in 1957, to Grammy Awards for Mozart and Verdi roles, to spectacular Broadway and film careers in South Pacific.
* Patrick J. Summers, Merola Program apprentice coach in 1986 and 1987 and a frequent guest conductor in San Francisco since, has been named music director of the Houston Grand Opera. Accepting the appointment, Summers thanked former HGO General Director David Gockley, "who brought me to Houston in the late 1990s, for the many years we worked together."
* San Francisco Opera Music AdvisEr (sorry, their official spelling) Francesca Zambello has been named music advisor of the Washington National Opera, "not exactly replacing the outgoing general director Plácido Domingo," says the The Washington Post, but in a position that carries more than the usual power.
* San Francisco Classical Voice writer Ken Iisaka has placed among the six finalists in the Forth Worth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, having gone up against some 70 competitors from around the world. First prize went to Christopher Shih, a Maryland physician.
Sunday's War Memorial Opera House premiere of Wagner's Siegfried and next Sunday's Götter are part of building toward the upcoming Ring of the Nibelung, the first one of this young century (the last cycles were given in 1999). Rheingold on the Opera stage Photo by Anonymous
Francesca Zambello's attention to detail and a sense of playfulness score frequently in the otherwise mostly dystopian production, such as having cases of beer outside Mime's poor-white-trash trailer. Not just any beer, but Rheingold Extra Dry (personal comment from long-ago New York days: yuck!), and judging by what one peeled-off label reveals: actually cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon (another yuck!) with the Rheingold label pasted over.
With old memories revived, I looked into Rheingold (the beer) history, and was impressed by the fact that almost a century after it was founded in 1883, it became one of the first American "light beers" and commanded great loyalty (not mine) in New York in the '60s.
According to The New York Times: "Rheingold Beer was once a top New York brew guzzled regularly by a loyal cadre of workingmen who would just as soon have eaten nails as drink another beer maker's suds."
And who can forget the "Miss Rheingold" pageants and company ads, both featuring a wide range of minorities from the mid-'60s on? Brooklyn-based Rheingold was the official beer of the Dodgers, with ads featuring the likes of John Wayne, Jackie Robinson, and the Marx Brothers.
Apparently, after several stop-and-start incidents in recent years, the current owners of the brand are still producing Rheingold beer. If only Wagner had lived long enough to see Zambello's fusion of such an appropriately named beer and his Ring!
Left Coast Chamber Ensemble founder Kurt Rohde — winner of many awards, including the Rome and Berlin prizes — will present three new works, part of the Ensemble's preparation for producing a CD of his compositions.
The Friday, 8 p.m., concert in Old First Church will include Concertino for violin and small ensemble (2009-2010), ONE for speaking pianist on texts of Paul Mann (2009), and Four Remixes for piano trio (2011).
The soloist for Concertino is Axel Strauss. Four Remixes, inspired by rock music, is performed by Anna Presler (violin), Tanya Tomkins (cello), and Eric Zivian (piano). Pianist Genevieve Feiwen Lee is featured in ONE.
The ensemble musicians include Michel Taddei (double bass), Jeff Anderle (clarinet), Rohde (viola), Leighton Fong (cello), Loren Mach (percussion), and Stacey Pelinka (flute). Matilda Hoffman conducts.
During the same week, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble is offering a program "informed by Italian perspectives" in its usual venues — Mill Valley's Throckmorton Theater on June 2, and the S.F. Veterans War Memorial Building Green Room on June 6 — and then adds a free performance of an abbreviated concert in Oakland's Peralta Hacienda Historical Park.
There is a good reason for the unusual venue. The park served as the inspiration for a premiere on the program, Luciano Chessa's Sextet. The Italian-born composer is now a Bay Area resident and on the faculty at S.F. Conservatory of Music. He was intrigued to discover that, before the Gold Rush, the Peralta family settled in what was to become Alameda County, and held land grants for most of the area.
The Peraltas, Chessa says, repudiated slavery and treated native workers at their rancho with decency. He was also impressed by the beauty and utility of the park in which the 1870 Peralta house has been restored.
Brion, by Harold Meltzer, is a West Coast premiere, a sextet inspired by the architectural details and unexpected traces of bright primary colors in a cemetery near Venice.
The "Fandango" Quintet for Guitar and Strings, by an 18th-century expatriate, Luigi Boccherini, completes the program. The Italian composer lived in Madrid after moving there in 1761.
The item in the last column about the Pacific Musical Society winners' concert, at the S.F. Conservatory of Music on June 4, mentioned only four of the 11 youngsters participating in the concert, and up with that we will not put.
Here's the full list of winners/participants (though composer Carlozzi is the sole winner in his category, he will not play — but there could be an additional item about that next week):
* Philadelphia Orchestra's bankruptcy filing now is placing a $50 million portion of its endowment in jeopardy. The contribution from the late Leonore Annenberg in 2003 specified that in case of bankruptcy (somebody had a premonition), the Annenberg Foundation may ask for the money back. The case is pending.
* World's shortest-lived company: the Irish National Opera Company has closed down without presenting a single production. Founded two years ago, the company was unable to get off the ground, and Ireland’s deep economic crisis made funding impossible. Even sadder: This was to be the organization replacing Opera Ireland, which ceased operations last year to make way for the new national company.
It's fortuitous that Saturday's Financial Times spent two full pages, in such featured positions as the cover of the Life & Arts section, about the Gaga Phenom.
Unusual presence in S.F. Classical Voice
Along with many — probably most — classical music fans, I've been neglecting all the hype about Lady Gaga ... until watching her "Born This Way" on the season-closing Saturday Night Live. Hate to admit it, but I was taken by the raw energy oozing from her, reminiscent of a manic performance of The Rite of Spring (which also was called a "culture shock" in its time). Of course, saying so elicited responses even from friends, running the gamut from ridicule to pity.
It's a good thing that I know a noted musicologist who encompasses, in his interest and study, everything from obscure classical works to ethnomusicology, the Beatles, the Dead, and now — probably — Lady Gaga. I believe that these pop/rock-to-classical outreaches are of more value than overhyped classical-to-pop excursions such as a blind tenor, or Pavarotti's unfortunate film, or a waltzing violinist-conductor with long hair, or, certainly, the flat-footed "Lord of the Dance." Philip Glass' worst work is the would-be-pop Songs From Liquid Days.
Let's not overstate the case: While Lady Gaga's energy, intelligence, professionalism, exceptional work ethic, and support for worthy causes are impressive (see Stephen Fry's interview with her), for the time being I agree with Peter Aspden's verdict in his analysis of "Gaganomics":
... her music, the least impressive thing about her, is derivative and monotonous. Her fashion sense is cultish and peculiar. No one is going to wrap themselves in raw meat on a Saturday night out in Bolton.
An early New York Times assessment of her had the same duality, saying that "Lady Gaga's main creative act is the act of being Lady Gaga," but adding:
Still, there is much to recommend Lady Gaga. She has the gumption of vintage Madonna (some of it, anyway), a husky voice kept mostly in reserve, the unlikely pop persistence of Taylor Swift, the unerring peculiarity of Antony: a combination found nowhere else on the planet.
It's not a strong assertion, only a feeling that there is so much there there that perhaps Lady Gaga's music will also deliver something worthwhile in the future, besides having 445 million hits on Google. Consider that with all her non- or quasi-musical accomplishments, she just turned 25. She has plenty of time to produce real substance, or to become a vague memory.
