Love and All That Jazz

On the face of it, there may seem to be little in common between George Antheil's A Jazz Symphony, the world premiere of Nathaniel Stookey and Dan Harder's ZIPPERZ: A soaPOPera, and Sergei Prokofiev's suites from Romeo and Juliet. But on Friday Michael Morgan and his Oakland East Bay Symphony knew something that their enthusiastic Paramount Theater audience was soon to learn — that love and jazz have no bounds. Love actually did have its bounds, in the case of composer Stookey's distinctly colloquial, minimally operatic ZIPPERZ: A soaPOPera, to Hander's lyrics. Large "parental warning" signs at entrances proclaimed something to the effect that the experience might not be suitable for children and minors. While I doubt that many youth in Oakland have managed to avoid either hearing common four-letter words or overhearing or seeing simulations of heterosexual lovemaking, OEBS was thus saved from lawsuits and the wrath of the self-appointed public moralists. Nonetheless, those youth who did manage to get past the armed guards and adolescent-sniffing pit bulls undoubtedly joined the adults in laughing as the expletive "Shit" made its way across the footlights. Stookey's pop creation tells the story of a love affair, from two different perspectives. Hence the decision to set Harder's "zippered" libretto, a droll point/counterpoint, spoken/unspoken dialogue that fuses two independent yet intertwined sets of lyrics. For the amplified, pop voices of Eisa Davis, a fabulous singer born and raised in the Bay Area, as well as a songwriter, actor, and playwright who can be heard on the original cast recording of the Tony-winning Broadway rock musical Passing Strange, and Manoel Felciano, who is appearing in A.C.T.'s Rock ‘N’ Roll and was nominated for a Tony Award for his portrayal of Tobias Ragg in Sweeney Todd, Stookey has fashioned a two-act, concert "soaPOPera" — actually, more a "sopera" — whose profundity, to the extent any exists, derives from its everyday banality. Act 1, with scenes titled "Meeting," "Waiting," and "Dating," seemed reminiscent of cartoon dialogue, where the eyes (and ears) journey from one bubble to another. The experience was novel, the music often toe-tapping, but the dialogue overfamiliar. The postintermission Act 2 included a "tighter and tighter and tighter" love scene, depicted by two fully dressed singers who metaphorically undressed and caressed each other while standing on opposite sides of the stage. As steamy as that fantasy may sound, the actual music got no closer to an aural climax than André Previn did in his rape scene for San Francisco Opera's world premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire. Often, the orchestra sounded a bit ominous, as if something deeper was destined to occur. It didn't. One passage sounded vaguely like music from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet. There was also a humorous exchange in which the orchestra echoed the characters' "Yes ... Yes ... Maybe ... Maybe ..." But even "I do" sounded ominous. Perhaps all those minor chords were preparation for the hardly warranted major resolution at opera's end. And there you have it.

And All the Rest

George Antheil, by contrast, knows how not to overstay his welcome. How can anyone resist his forever witty, quirky, short Jazz Symphony (1925), with its off-kilter rhythms, its Ivesian journey between fragments of jazz melodies, its occasional South American flavor, and the final flourish that seems a cross between an inane waltz and carousel music? Pianist Ellen Wassermann had a ball with the piece, nailing the music to the wall with her totally idiomatic, swinging touch. Percussionist Ward Spangler had a similar field day. Unfortunately, either Morgan's tempo (which seems in retrospect considerably slower than Eiji Oue's on his CPO recording) or his sluggish conducting appeared to be in marked contrast to the instrumentalists' freedom, producing a curiously leaden, bull in a china shop effect. Score it Antheil 10, OEBS 5. The orchestra at last seemed inspired by the deepest and best-conducted music of the evening: eight excerpts from Suites 1 and 2 of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. The solo flute and clarinet were especially sonorous. Although not even a Heifetz or a Hahn could transform the Paramount's wiry acoustic, which is markedly unflattering to high strings, Oakland's forces managed to produce some of the most tender and affecting playing I've ever heard from them. Swept up by the grand climax of the penultimate section, the audience could not restrain its early applause. It was a lovely performance.