THEATER


Pearl Theater
Uncle Vanya - Anton Chekhov

We're headed back to the small, off-broadway theater!

Read the final sentence in the review by the New York Times.  "Sadness" and "emptiness"...

Synopsis: 

The arrival of a worldly professor and his bewitching wife have shattered the drowsy peace of Vanya and Sonya’s country estate. In a series of flirtations, disappointments, confessions, and revelations, this motley collection of parochial nobodies demand their moment in the sun—but never seem to know what to do when they get it. Quietly powerful, slyly comic, Uncle Vanya invites us into a world of agony, ecstasy, and absurdity—of passionate outbursts and smothered hopes, and of large dreams crammed into little lives.

Check out “The Pearl's UNCLE VANYA” by The Pearl on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/105903523

THEATER REVIEW

On a Russian Farm, Where Frustration Grows

Hal Brooks Directs ‘Uncle Vanya’ at the Pearl Theater

By LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESSEPT. 23, 2014

Chekhov didn’t make it to the People's Climate March that flowed through Midtown Manhattan on Sunday — being dead does get in the way — but he was with the environmental activists in spirit. In “Uncle Vanya,” which opens the season at the Pearl Theater Company, this playwright’s 19th-century worries over an ailing earth are startlingly contemporary.

“The forests are disappearing one by one, the rivers are polluted, wildlife is becoming extinct, the climate is changing for the worse, every day the planet gets poorer and uglier,” Astrov, the doctor, tells his friends. “It’s a disaster!”

Finding immediacy is never a problem in Paul Schmidt’s vibrant, loose-limbed translation, which Hal Brooks, the Pearl's new artistic director, wisely uses in his production. There’s no groping through layers of musty language to find our connection to Chekhov’s little band of privileged malcontents, stricken with ennui as the Russian Empire sleepwalks toward its end.

Even so, there is an unintended remoteness to Mr. Brooks’s production, which comes to life only intermittently. It can be clever in its staging but erratic in its tone, as if more time were needed for Chekhov to soak into the actors’ bones. Along with her middle-aged uncle, Vanya (Chris Mixon), Sonya (Michelle Beck) has toiled for years to support her professor father (Dominic Cuskern) in the city. He lives off the proceeds of his daughter’s country estate, which the set designer, Jason Simms, renders with splendid airiness.

Now the professor has retired to the country with his young wife, Yelena (Rachel Botchan), and Vanya has fallen in love with her. So has Astrov (Bradford Cover), who, in turn, has captured Sonya’s heart. Romantic comedy is afoot. So, for Vanya, is midlife crisis: What does he have to show for his decades of selflessness?

But there’s a lopsidedness to the telling here. The performances by Mr. Mixon and Mr. Cover are funnier and more fully realized than those by Ms. Botchan, and Ms. Beck, whose undimmed youthful glow is persistently at odds with Sonya’s supposed plainness.

Brad Heberlee makes a nice Waffles, the poor neighbor, and Robin Leslie Brown is especially fine as Marina, the nurse. But with the strong imbalance in the principal roles, the play becomes mainly about Vanya and Astrov, and poignancy goes missing. Vanya surrenders at the end, as he always does, but in place of the sadness that should be there, we feel only emptiness.

LINCOLN CENTER

Jazz at Lincoln Center
Marcus Roberts: Piano Masters of Melody

Marcus Roberts (born August 7, 1963, in Jacksonville, Florida) is an American jazz pianist. He achieved success as a stride pianist who celebrates classic standards and jazz traditions. Roberts has also distinguished his solos by accompanying himself with walking baselines. Interpreting Thelonious Monk, he adds creative dissonances to Monk's compositions.

Blind since youth due to glaucoma and cataracts, Roberts attended the Florida School of the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, Florida, alma mater of another distinguished musician, Ray Charle. Roberts began playing piano at an early age and then studied the instrument with pianist Leonidas Lipovetsky while attending Florida State University. In 1985, he got a break when famed trumpeter Wynton Marsalis chose him as his new sideman. Roberts became a close friend and disciple of Marsalis, and collaborated with him on many projects during the ensuing years.

With Marsalis' support, and soon after joining him, Roberts began releasing his own records. His albums tend to be homages to past jazz greats. On a piece such as Nebuchadnezzar, Roberts uses traditional harmonies and chords, then builds an expansive tonal and melodic structure. He is renowned as an interpreter of Monk, Ellington, Morton and Gershwin, among others. He provided the soundtrack to the 1999 film Guinevere .

An instrument of multitudinous function, the piano has played an integral role in the development of jazz since the days of ragtime and remained a central component in the evolution of the music. The prodigious Marcus Roberts has a long history of treasuring the tenets of jazz through his work, which for the last quarter century, has epitomized preservation through innovation. Since his Jazz at Lincoln Center debut in 1987, his presence has been deeply significant, and his recorded and commissioned works have honored some of his most revered predecessors of the piano. For this occasion, Roberts will focus on four influential melody maestros possessing an original style that greatly influenced his approach to melodic composition: Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, and Chick Corea. Joining Roberts will be The Modern Jazz Generation, featuring Rodney Jordan, bass; Jason Marsalis, drums; Alphonso Horne and Tim Blackmon, trumpets; Ron Westray, trombone; Corey Wilcox, trombone and tuba; Ricardo Pascale, saxophone; Tissa Khosla, baritone and tenor saxophones; Stephen Riley, tenor saxophone; and Joe Goldberg, clarinet.

LINCOLN CENTER

New York Philharmonic
Alan Gilbert Conductor
Kari Kriikku Clarinet

Unsuk Chin - Clarinet Concerto (U.S. Premiere–New York Philharmonic Co-Commission with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra)


Mahler - Symphony No. 1

It's been several months since we've heard "The Sound" of "The Band."  We're excited.  Mahler is a great way to start the season.

MUSEUM

The Rubin Museum of Art
Art of the Himalayas

http://www.rubinmuseum.org/

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

The museum is in a former site of Barney's Department Store.  The space is beautiful with a large circular staircase going from the ground floor up at least 4 floors.  Interestingly, Barney's is opening a "Chelsea Store" immediately adjacent to the museum, its former site.

We were there on a Friday night which targets young people.  The museum restaurant basically turned into a bar and it was packed with "30 Somethings".  Lots of activity.

The pieces are all from the Himalayas.  Lots of Buddhas sitting in the contemplative pose.

THEATER

Longacre Theater
You Can't Take It With You

Ballet Dancers, Snake Charmers, Skyrocket Makers, Cunning Revolutionaries, Xylophone Players,
Wall Street Tycoons, G-Men and Russian Royalty.

AT LAST, THE BROADWAY COMEDY WITH SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE!

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, one of the most popular comedies in America is back—with a hilarious ensemble cast ready to light up Broadway.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning, uproarious family affair is led by the legendary James Earl Jones, and features an outrageous cast of 20, including Golden Globe® nominee Rose Byrne (Neighbors, Bridesmaids), Tony Award® nominee Kristine Nielsen (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike), Tony Award® nominee Annaleigh Ashford (Kinky Boots, Masters of Sex) and Tony Award® winner Elizabeth Ashley.

Long before “Modern Family,” there was the Sycamore family. Now in previews at the Longacre Theatre, you can join this madcap clan as they live, love and laugh in an evening sure to end up with fireworks. Don't let them light the fuse without you!

SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2014

These pictures are from the terrace of our building.

LINCOLN CENTER

Juilliard
Paul Recital Hall

Paul Jacobs - Organ

Max REGER Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H, Op. 46

J.S. BACH Chorale-Prelude: Von Gott will ich nicht lassen, BWV 658

J.S. BACH Prelude and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 539 (The “Fiddle”)

REGER Intermezzo, Op. 80, No. 10

REGER Introduction, Variations, and Fugue on an Original Theme, Op. 73

We are finally getting back to "The Season."  Our performance subscriptions begin to ramp up this month for the 14-15 Arts Season in New York City.  It's been a great summer but we're ready for some music!

Paul Jacobs is considered by many as the finest organist living today.  We are seeing him by buying two $30.00 tickets for a Faculty Recital at Juilliard!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Jacobs_(organist)

http://www.juilliard.edu/about/newsroom/2014-15/grammyr-award-winning-organist-paul-jacobs-performs-works-bach-and-reger

http://www.pauljacobsorgan.com

"In 2003 Jacobs was invited to join the faculty of the Juilliard School and the following year, was named chairman of its organ department, making him one of the youngest faculty appointments in the school's history.^[1] Winning accolades and awareness for the pipe organ from both critics and audiences alike, Jacobs has performed on five continents, and by the age of 32 performed in each of the 50 United States. His repertoire includes music from the 16th century through contemporary times, including new works written for him. He has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony, and the Pacific Symphony.

Jacobs is known for playing demanding programs exclusively from memory. He has memorized the complete works of Olivier Messiaen, as well as the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, and Cesar Franck.

In addition to numerous awards and honors, Jacobs was the first organist to be given the Harvard Musical Association's Arthur W. Foote Award in 2004. He received the Yale School of Music's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2005, and in 2007 he was awarded the William Schuman Scholars Chair at the Juilliard School."

The New York Times' review:

MUSIC | MUSIC REVIEW

Who Said ‘Massive’ and ‘Foreboding’ Can’t Be Enjoyable?

Paul Jacobs, Organist, Plays Max Reger’s Works at Juilliard

By JAMES R. OESTREICH

SEPT. 11, 2014

Paul Jacobs playing the Holtkamp pipe organ in a concert of Bach and Max Reger at the Juilliard School.

The program notes might have scared anyone away. Max Reger is “frequently described as one of the most ‘difficult’ composers in the whole classical canon,” they began, going on to call Reger’s musical language disorienting and complex, his harmonic and textural juxtapositions jarring and his music in general “something at once massive and foreboding,” all in the first paragraph.

This for a most appealing evening of works by Reger and Bach, performed by Paul Jacobs on the Holtkamp pipe organ in Paul Hall at the Juilliard School on Wednesday. Happily, Mr. Jacobs, a personable speaker as well as performer, offered his own take on Reger from the stage, calling him a composer “near and dear to my heart.” Then he showed why.

He started with a work he would ordinarily use at the end, he said, Reger’s wildly virtuosic tribute to Bach, the Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H (those letters, in the German musical alphabet, representing the notes B flat, A, C, B natural). Mr. Jacobs had spoken of Reger’s wit and irony, which came through beautifully in the simple hushed start of the fugue, soon to grow loud, hectic and huge. The effect was undercut only slightly by a brief outburst caused by a pedal slip.

After two works by Bach, a chorale prelude and the Prelude and “Fiddle” Fugue in D minor (BWV 539), Mr. Jacobs turned back to Reger, with an ineffably tender Intermezzo (Op. 80, No. 10) and the huge Introduction, Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme.

Mr. Jacobs called the variations piece, lasting some 30 to 35 minutes (“depending on whether or not I know all the notes”), a fantasy fairy tale, by turns gentle, furious and magical. He also spoke of the difficulties of choosing the registrations to color so vast and varied a creation, saying that he had worked at the stops till 3 a.m.

It was time well spent. There really were moments when the sound turned magical amid the many when it roared.

The audience — by now Reger lovers all, it seemed — responded with a clamorous ovation. “That was intense,” Mr. Jacobs allowed, seeming surprised himself by just how intense. So he offered what he called a little fugue as an encore, Bach’s A minor (from BWV 543): little only by comparison and wonderfully played.

The only significant blemish on the evening was a thudding, rumbling noise coming into the hall during Bach’s lovely, intimate prelude on “Von Gott Will Ich Nicht Lassen” (BWV 658), evidently caused by dancers on a floor above.  

CONEY ISLAND

Carolyn had Jury Duty today and that gave me the opportunity to do something I wanted to do but she didn't.  I wanted to ride the train to Coney Island and eat a Nathan's hot Dog.  Mission accomplished!

Getting on the train was at the 34th Street/Herald Square Station.  I rode the F out and the D home.  Each way was 50 to 60 minutes.  The train ends right at the Coney Island Amusements.

 

 

 

 



SCULPTURE

Split Rocker - Jeff Koons
Rockefeller Center Plaza

http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/jeff-koons-split-rocker

We took a short Labor Day walk to Rockerfeller Center Plaza and back.  We chose to go up 5th and then come back down 6th, 1.5 miles total.