LECTURE

New York Public Library
William Shakespeare - From Stratford-on-Avon to the New York Public Library

Several of us were given the opportunity to actually hold and turn the pages of an old, authentic folio of Shakespeare works and engravings.  Quite an experience when its role in Western Civilization is considered.

"Discover the world of William Shakespeare at the NYPL on his celebrated birthday. Ponder textual problems in the quartos and folios.  Explore illustrated editions of the plays and poems.  Experience Shakespearean research through 21st century databases.  After the lecture, twenty members of the audience (drawn by lot) are invited to view the Shakespearean holdings, including the First Folio, in the Library's Berg Collection of English and American Literature.

Robert Armitage is the Humanities Bibliographer at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, NYPL.  His popular lectures on the Library’s collections include Elusive Jane [Austen], Out of the Blacking Factory [Dickens], Subversive Shaw, and others." 

LINCOLN CENTER

Appel Room
The Music of Gershwin - Michael Feinstein

"Michael Feinstein celebrates Gershwin's deep connection to jazz, both in his personal roots and influences. Gershwin was a formidable stride pianist, whose first-hand gurus were Lucky Roberts and James P. Johnson, and through his audacious themes and ingenious chord sequences, thousands of musicians have used Gershwin's work as a jumping off point for classic improvisations."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miIg9rmM5Vs

Still the Gershwins, but Dig That Pace

Michael Feinstein and Company Celebrate Vintage Jazz

By STEPHEN HOLDENAPRIL 25, 2014

        

Michael Feinstein singing in "The Music of George Gershwin."

Michael Feinstein has been preaching the gospel according to George and Ira Gershwin for so many years that you might think he would run out of things to say or ways to present their work. But “The Music of George Gershwin,” the season-opening concert of his jazz and popular song series at the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Wednesday evening, was a gusher in which the great vintage-jazz band Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks and three guest singers examined the Gershwins’ legacy through a focused nostalgic lens.

As a pop music archivist, Mr. Giordano has amassed one of the world’s largest collections of vintage orchestral arrangements (some 60,000), which he and his band delivered with a lighthearted enthusiasm matched by their precision. As a bandleader, Mr. Giordano, who plays bass, bass tuba and bass saxophone, takes standards back to their roots and infuses them with a quick-stepping effervescence that strips away any tendencies toward ceremonial grandiosity.

Many, though not all, of the selections heard on Wednesday used vintage arrangements that picked up the pace of songs that too often are given a solemn, monumental treatment. A likable curiosity was an old arrangement of part of “Rhapsody in Blue,” recast as a fox trot.

The singers — Catherine Russell, Carole J. Bufford and Allan Harris — applied their personal stamps to songs both famous and obscure. Mr. Feinstein’s splashy pianism and creamy voice provided a core of romanticism.

Ms. Russell’s peppy “The Man I Love” brought to mind a sound that, in her words, conjured “a family sitting around a radio.” Mr. Harris, whom Mr. Feinstein introduced as the heir to Nat King Cole, sang a warm, friendly “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” Ms. Bufford, a latter-day Ethel Merman, delivered a sensational, hard-boiled “Sam and Delilah,” a song that Merman introduced in “Girl Crazy.”

When the musicians gathered for the finale, “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” the sentiments of the infrequently performed opening verse sounded as fresh as if the song had been written last week:

The more I read the papers

the less I comprehend

the world and all its capers

and how it all will end.

LINCOLN CENTER

Avery Fisher Hall
New York Philharmonic

Gershwin & Bernstein
Makoto Ozone - Piano

The pianist is both a jazz and classically trained artist.  He regularly performs at jazz clubs in New York.  This is a one-performance concert and it cold out quickly.

After Rhapsody in Blue, the pianist called up a bass viol, trombone, and tenor sax player and they played some cocktail room jazz.  Big Hoot!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUYaxMFy2e8

"In this special non-subscription concert, Alan Gilbert leads a salute to two of New York’s finest composers, featuring the remarkable jazz virtuoso Makoto Ozone and his very personal take on Rhapsody in Blue. 

“The evening’s highlight was Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Makoto Ozone.… Ozone’s crystal sound was perfect for the Rhapsody in Blue, evoking New York City skyscrapers at night…. The Philharmonic deeply understands the hybrid charms Gershwin’s music has: the impressive jazz part for trumpet, musical comedy–style dance, and the gorgeous, Rachmaninoff-like intertwining of orchestra and pianist.” — Nikkei, reviewing a concert on our recent ASIA / WINTER 2014 tour."

From Japan, a Jazzy Interpretation of Gershwin

Makoto Ozone Plays With the New York Philharmonic

By CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIMAPRIL 23, 2014

        

 

New York Philharmonic Standing from left, Joseph Alessi, on trombone; Allen Won, on saxophone; and the bassist David J. Grossman joined Makoto Ozone on piano in a concert Tuesday at Avery Fisher Hall. Mr. Ozone had played with the Philharmonic on its Asian tour in February.

Here’s something you don’t see every night at Avery Fisher Hall: the members of the New York Philharmonic tapping their feet and nodding their heads, smiling, during a concerto’s cadenza. And here’s another: the orchestra’s principal trombonist, Joseph Alessi; its bassist David J. Grossman; and the saxophonist Allen Won coming to the front of the stage to join the soloist in a Thelonious Monk encore.

The cause for this unusual behavior was Makoto Ozone, the Japanese jazz pianist known for his collaborations with Gary Burton, Chick Corea and Branford Marsalis. In February, he joined the Philharmonic on its Asian tour in performances of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” that were so successful — and evidently, fun — that the orchestra’s music director, Alan Gilbert, arranged for an out-of-series concert with Mr. Ozone in New York.

On Tuesday evening, Mr. Ozone gave a thrilling, virtuosic and unabashedly personal rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue” that was the highlight of a Gershwin and Bernstein program. The orchestra, whose members donated their services to the Philharmonic’s general fund for the occasion, played with palpable enthusiasm.

Putting a jazz pianist in charge of Gershwin’s solo part makes sense: Much of the work’s appeal comes from the way the luscious orchestral texture meshes with the free-sounding, bluesy piano part. But the work also requires a familiarity with the language of classical Romanticism. In a series of dazzling, improvised cadenzas, Mr. Ozone showed how much classically grounded technique can expand a jazz pianist’s freedom: It opens that many more musical worlds to roam.

There was Mozartean wit in one impishly off-kilter passage and milky Impressionist colors in another. One improvisation saw Mr. Ozone, hands crossed, adding tufted offbeat accents to the robustly voiced melody. In another, his voicing was so nuanced that it created a spatial effect, as if two pianos were playing with one gradually moving away from the other.

Mr. Ozone’s first encore was his own “Mo’s Nap” for piano and orchestra, a limpid reverie that features a halting and tender clarinet solo. In “Blue Monk,” joined by Messrs. Alessi, Grossman and Won, he showed how deep stylistic versatility runs in the orchestra.

That was also evident in the confident and exuberant performances Mr. Gilbert drew from the orchestra in Bernstein’s “Candide” Overture — dispatched with brisk cheer — and his Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story,” which featured a memorably wild Mambo. A vivid rendition of Gershwin’s “American in Paris” closed the evening.

MOMA & LINCOLN CENTER

Metropolitan Opera
La Cenerentola - Rossini

Lunch at The Modern and then a swing through the 5th floor where "The Biggies" are.

Three peerless Rossini virtuosos star in La Cenerentola—a vocal tour de force for mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, singing her first Met performances of the Cinderella title role, and tenors Juan Diego Flórez and Javier Camarena, who share the role of her Prince Charming. Alessandro Corbelli and Luca Pisaroni complete the cast, with Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi leading the effervescent score.


The NYT's review.

“La Cenerentola,” Rossini’s version of the Cinderella fairy tale, is Cinderella’s show. The Metropolitan Opera has a dazzling, plucky and endearingly poignant Cinderella in the superb American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who triumphed Monday night when the company’s 1997 production, which gives this 1817 classic a 1930s look, returned to the repertory.

The ovations were just as lusty, and equally deserved, for the Mexican tenor Javier Camarena as Don Ramiro, the prince, especially after his exciting account of the character’s bravura aria during the first scene of Act II.

The aria comes after Cinderella, having attended the prince’s ball in a glittering gown and kept her identity secret, forbids the prince to follow her home, insisting that, if he truly loves her, he must search her out. With the gentlemen of the court (the chorus) behind him, Mr. Camarena’s prince first expressed his romantic yearning in melting, pliant phrases. Then, as the prince found his resolve, Mr. Camarena dispatched the aria’s impetuous runs, capped by thrilling top notes including an effortless high D, finally finishing with a glorious high C he seemed almost reluctant to cut off. As he raced off the stage, the house erupted with applause and bravoes. The ovation went on so long I thought Mr. Camarena was going to have to break character and return for a bow. He didn’t. 

That the extraordinary Ms. DiDonato was such a marvelous Cinderella, though a delight, was not really a surprise. She has become a mainstay at the house. But it’s only recently that Met audiences have come to realize what a prince among tenors Mr. Camarena, 38, has become. Last month he won over audiences and critics for his superb Elvino in the Met’s revival of Bellini’s “Sonnambula.” Juan Diego Flórez was supposed to be the tenor for this “Cenerentola,” but he withdrew from the first three performances because of illness, and Mr. Camarena agreed to take over.

Mr. Camarena has good technique, plenty of power, rhythmic vitality and feeling for the bel canto style. Still, what makes his voice exceptional is something very basic: his beautiful sound. Throughout his range his voice is warm, honeyed and penetrating, whether in gentle pianissimo phrases or bursts of intensity. He also has a charming, boyish stage presence.

I will not soon forget the way he and Ms. DiDonato sang the beguiling duet in the first scene. The prince appears disguised as his valet, to determine what the eligible women in his realm are truly like. He is immediately captivated by the guileless sweetness and touching beauty of Cinderella, in a frumpy servant’s dress and apron. The voices of these two fine artists blended affectingly as they conveyed the hesitant longing of this lovely duet, supplely conducted by Fabio Luisi, who drew a crisp and stylish overall performance from the orchestra.

The downtrodden Cinderella is treated as an all-purpose housemaid by her blustery stepfather (the baritone Alessandro Corbelli) and her sniping stepsisters (Rachelle Durkin and Patricia Risley). But the inner strength of this Cinderella could not be broken. You could sense the audience rooting for her during Ms. DiDonato’s ebullient account of Cinderella’s final showpiece aria, the music of a joyous young bride. She sang with impish glee, dispatching virtuosic runs and turns, leaping from her chesty low register to gleaming high notes.

This Cesare Lievi production is as frustrating as it was at its premiere. Some mysterious elements of the story are effectively drawn out with quasi-surreal imagery. The prince’s courtiers, wearing black bowler hats, their faces almost pasty white, look like figures out of Magritte artworks. Alidoro, formerly the prince’s tutor, an angelic figure who appears in several guises and fosters the romance of the prince and Cinderella, comes across as delightfully spooky; the robust bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni was terrific in the role. In his Met debut, the Italian baritone Pietro Spagnoli brings a muscular voice and comedic flair to the role of Dandini, the prince’s valet, who, at his boss’s command, pretends to be the prince in the first part of the story.

Yet the real humor of “La Cenerentola” comes from the ensembles that run through the work and from the way Rossini presents the characters as utterly baffled by the entanglements they fall into. This production turns many ensembles into dumb slapstick routines, especially a spaghetti dinner near the prince’s palace that devolves into a food fight.

The big news here is that Ms. DiDonato has brought her winning Cinderella to the Met, and that Mr. Camarena has emerged as a major tenor. As of now, there are just two more chances to hear him as the prince. He is not scheduled to sing at the Met at all next season. Sadly, this is just the way things happen in a field where in-demand singers are booked years in advance."

THEATER

Linda Gross Theater
Three Penny Opera

We awoke this morning to a Mustang car being on the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building and snow on the roofs of the buildings around us.  Two pretty crazy things.

We're going to walk south today to a new theater for us.  It'll be fun.

Three Penny Opera compliments our attendance at Cabaret.  We're getting decadence down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threepenny_Opera

Here's the NYT's review.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/theater/atlantic-theaters-decadent-decorous-threepenny-opera.html?_r=0

THE THREEPENNY OPERA / MARCH 12 – MAY 11, 2014

“A CHIC-LOOKING MUSICAL

that moves efficiently and with a stylish gait. Ms. Clarke does a fine job of composing decadent yet decorous stage pictures.

Mr. Park is vibrant. Ms. Osnes performs with

GORGEOUS MUSICALITY!” 

- The New York Times

“AN ENERGETIC AND FLUID PRODUCTION!

Martha Clarke’s dreamlike presentation retains the essential core of dark humor that softens the bleak heart of this musical.

A FINE ENSEMBLE!” 

- Associated Press

“I’VE NEVER HEARD A PRODUCTION BETTER SUNG OR PLAYED!

F. Murray Abraham is JOYOUSLY CYNICAL.” 

- The Wall Street Journal

“Not until Atlantic Theater Company’s new intimate version by visionary Martha Clarke have we had

A HIGH PROFILE ‘THREEPENNY’ THAT CAPTURES THE PLEASURES AND CRITIQUES OF CORRUPTION, SUBVERSIONS AND DEBAUCHERY.

The gnawing heat and the cold heart are palpable.

GRAPHIC EROTIC ALLURE!”

- Newsday

“EPIC MUSICAL THEATER!

Martha Clarke brings her fruitful imagination to bear on Brecht and Weill’s classic.” 

- Time Out New York

THE THREEPENNY OPERA

books and lyrics by BERTOLT BRECHT

music by KURT WEILL

English adaptation by MARC BLITZSTEIN

directed and choreographed by MARTHA CLARKE

Linda Gross Theater, 336 W 20th St.

Running Time: Approximately 2 hours with one 10 minute intermission

Contains Nudity and Adult Situations

Inspired by the art, style and sensuality of Weimar Berlin, legendary director and choreographer Martha Clarke joins forces with the Atlantic to breathe new life into the original Marc Blitzstein translation, which premiered in 1954 at the Theatre de Lys, now the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Threepenny follows the charismatic scoundrel Macheath and his exploits in 19th century London. In this “opera for beggars,” an assortment of characters maneuver for advantage, revealing a profoundly corrupt society and asking the question: Must one be a criminal to survive in this world?