The vaunted acoustics of the EMPAC concert hall were even spiffed up for the occasion. A computer-aided loudspeaker system, designed by Jonas Braasch and a team of students, recreated the sound of a two million gallon cistern in Washington State where Oliveros made a landmark recording almost 25 years ago. The lush reverb, lasting about 45 seconds according to the program, makes an ideal compliment to Oliveros’ musical aesthetic.

Not everything on the program was actually written by Oliveros though. For that matter none of the pieces really functioned from a traditional score. But Oliveros’ system of “Deep Listening” was apparent throughout the night. All of the pieces were meditative and organic, which isn’t to say that they were always hushed or fragile. Rather they were thoughtful and collaborative, attuned in the space and the moment.

The opening, “Land of Snows,” did have a particularly reverent feel. Oliveros and Stuart Dempster launched it with a few finger cymbals, then blew various sized conch shells. Brian Perti played the dung chen, a brass horn at least 10 feet in length that’s common to Tibetan Buddhist ceremony. Three additional wind players sounded on didjeridus quietly in the back of the house.

In the next selection Oliveros, Dempster and Perti became an improvisational vocal trio. Their pacing was based in breath, their pitches seemingly random. It seemed to illustrate that all sense of dissonance fades away given enough time.

Amidst such soulfulness, the speeches paying honor to Oliveros felt rather intrusive and high minded. But Michael Century struck pay dirt in contrasting how a century of iconoclast composers – Ives, Cowell, Cage, and others (mostly men) – shattered traditions, while Oliveros’ work has been one of integration. He even went so far as to coin a term to describe her: “sona-accordionist.”

Besides being a composer, Oliveros is also an accordionist and she played an electrified version of the instrument at one point. More than a dozen percussionists from RPI, SUNY Albany and the Empire State Youth Orchestra took to the balconies around the hall for another piece. The evening ended with a trio of trombonists who moved about the hall before leading the way to the festive reception in the cafe.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Oliveros wins Columbia U’s Schuman Prize

Pauline Oliveros: Making Conscious Connections

Pauline Oliveros: A Musical adventurer begins by listening

Steve Blier (pianist, New York Festival of Song) and James S. Russell on April 28, 2012.  Read the touching story in the New York Times.

Billy Hurbaugh (vocalist in the Distinguished Concerts Singers International chorus) and Randall Day on March 19, 2012.  Held during intermission of a matinee choral concert at Avery Fisher Hall, this was the first in-concert wedding at Lincoln Center.  More details at WQXR.  And a surprised on-looker captured this video:

Dan Kempson and Zachary Altman, both baritones, on November 19, 2011.  Via the New York Times.

And just to up the ante for style at any future wedding, gay or straight, here’s a flash dance from a wedding reception with two handsome grooms:

Matthew McCright

So it was an interesting departure for McCright that his latest recording project was of music by Gene Gutche (1907-2000), a German immigrant who wrote some rather vivid works but did hew to a rather old school tonal idiom.  So I asked McCright to tell the story of how he became connected to Gutchë’s music and why he was passionate enough to devote an entire disc to it.

I first moved to Minneapolis in 2002. As a specialist in new music I began to become involved in the contemporary music scene in the Twin Cities. Naturally I met lots of composers and began playing their music (Mary Ellen Childs, Judith Zaimont, et.al.). They in turn connected me to other composers, and on and on it goes.

I eventually made the acquaintance of Abbie Betinis, composer-in residence at the Schubert Club (an national arts organization based in St. Paul, the twin of Minneapolis). It was through her that Gene Gutchë’s music entered my life. The composer and his estate placed the Schubert Club as the keeper of both his archive and legacy money left to create a performance incentive fund. Thankfully I was awarded money from the fund to perform a few pieces by Gutchë for concerts in the region.

I became quite taken with this music and as I researched more about the composer I discovered that none of the piano music has been recorded. In fact, very little of his work had been recorded despite the success he enjoyed during his life including several prominent orchestras programming his pieces. I decided to take on the task and eventually found that Centaur Records also had an interest in capturing this music for future generations. After some generous funding from the Ditson, Copland, and again the Schubert Club funds, the project has reached its finish.

So much of my work has been about the journey into a composer’s universe; trying uncover the authentic nature of their sound world. In the case of contemporary music, there is not a 200 year performing history to help guide you through the process. This is very much the same with Gutchë.

Although he is recently deceased, his music remains unknown to many. It has been a remarkable process to discover this music and share it with the world.

– Matthew McCright

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Matthew McCright is Minnesota Proud

It’s the latter, the trim and easy-to-use edition, that makes its New York City debut this week at the Manhattan School of Music in three performances (4/25-29).  Steven Osgood conducts and stage direction is by Jay Lesenger.

Corigliano and Hoffman in 2011

There’s tons of places online to learn more about the origins and reception of “Ghosts.”  Something I didn’t find readily was the tidbit that the original title was “A Figaro for Antonia.” John and Bill did innumerable talks around Manhattan in the months leading up to the premiere and I recall one of them saying that whenever they said that the name of the opera, the response was “What?!”

So they came up with a new and much better title, while the opera within the opera bears that vowel-heavy original name.  And the rest is opera history.

Robert Wood,

“Positions 1956” uses various 1950’s instructional manuals, all dealing with “positions”  (sexual, physical exercise, partner-dancing) as source material for a three-part 90-minute musical theater work that follows a year in the life of a newly-wed couple, capturing the end of post-war American idealism as it gives way to the looming uncertainty of the 1960’s. The work has an appealing semi-narrative structure.  There’s an overall sense of going from point A to point B, but with a distinctly non-narrative feel as various series of positions are explored. Part 1 “Marriage Manual” features 13 songs/numbers that deal with sexual positions (“Sideways,” “Doggie and Astride,” “Anal Intercourse”). Part 2 “Physique” uses various exercises as its structural elements (“Washboard Abs,” “Leg Extension”), and Part 3 “Social Dancing” is organized around a series of dances, starting with the tango, and ending with a hint of rock-and-roll.

Cummings’ music uses repetitive structures to great effect, deftly combining minimalist gestures with historical nods to Baroque music, marches and military music, and popular dance forms. There are wonderful musical moments, and some truly creative, funny musical juxtapositions.  Yet this is very much a libretto-driven opera, and what the music does best (as good theater music should) is illuminate the lyrics and the drama, and otherwise keep a low profile.

The lyrics by Korie are masterful. There are moments of great poignancy (“Missionary Position” in Part 1, where The Bride, in a dreamy haze, really does “lie on her back and think of England”) and also some hilarious touches (“Doggie” and “Neck Development”). The best of the rhymes rival those of Sondheim. Two that I particularly remember were: “Foreplay: some want less play, and some want more play,” and “Press your dress and shine your shoes, when you’ve got postpartum blues.”

The singers did a good job with parts that were not easy, both musically and physically. The Bride & The Groom (Amedee Moore and Jesse Blumberg) have to romp around in bed while singing, and Blumberg somehow managed to sing while doing pushups. Their characters don’t develop very much, but that seems about right for young newlyweds in 1956: they’re appropriately clueless. The other two characters, both nicely sung by Vale Rideout, are more nuanced and each sad in his own way: the closeted Trainer at the gym, and the could-have-been dancer now Instructor at the Arthur Murray studio. Stage Director Noah Himmelstein put a fine touch on the whole: there was a lot of physical action to be worked out, and it was done well, particularly in a small space that never felt cramped.

Problems? Sure, there were a few. I thought the musicians (violin, cello, one wind player, and electric keyboard) were under-rehearsed. Some of Conrad Cummings’ music is rhythmically very complex, and it didn’t always come out cleanly. While researching this review, I came across a YouTube video of a 1996 performance of “Sitting Position” (a song that appears in Part 1 of the opera) which made me realize how much better this music can sound when played with precision. There was also the issue of amplification: all the singers and musicians were miked and run through a mixer with added effects. Of course the keyboard had to be, but it would have been interesting to hear the others unamplified. I’m just not sure it’s helpful in such a small space, and it’s disconcerting to be sitting six rows away from singers but hear their voices coming from speakers rather than their mouths. That would also have eliminated another problem: the occasional nasty static when the remote mics worn by the singers got caught in their costumes or in the sheets.

But overall, “Positions 1956” is a good work that deserves more performances in coming years. UrbanArias’ first commission is a success.

– Scott Pender

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Share the “Positions 1956″ with Conrad Cummings and Michael Korie

View excerpts of Conrad Cummings’ opera “The Golden Gate”

It was written in 1988 and first heard in concert by the Cummings Ensemble at the Knitting Factory and PS 122 in New York.  The world premiere staged version takes place this month in the Washington DC area thanks to Urban Arias, a two-year old company that’s also commissioned the piece.  Six performances run April 13-22.

The music is by Conrad Cummings, whose past operas include “Photo Op” (1989) and “The Golden Gate”  (2006), and lyrics by Michael Korie whose many libretto include “Harvey Milk” (one of several projects with Stewart Wallace) and “The Grapes of Wrath” (with Ricky Ian Gorden).  Korie’s work in musicals includes the Tony Award-nominated musical “Grey Gardens” and the forth-coming adaptation of the film “Far From Heaven,” which will be workshoped and performed this summer at the Williamstown Theater Festival.

Taking positions in the cast are baritone Jesse Blumberg, tenor Vale Rideout, and soprano Amedee Moore.

Following is the synopsis of “Positions 1956.”  Now take your places, everybody!

Part One, “Marriage Manual,” is set in a bedroom over the first few months of the Bride and Groom’s marriage as they explore positions and begin to learn about each other. Source material includes titles like “How to Please Your Husband,” and “You and Your Sex Life: an Illustrated Guide for Men.”

Part Two, “Physique,” is set in a gym where the Groom goes to a Trainer to receive a course in physical fitness based on exercises from 1950s men’s physique magazines. Think 98-pound weaklings, Charles Atlas, and titles like “Physique and Delinquency.”

Part Three, “Social Dancing,” is set in a dance studio where the Bride and Groom learn how to dance from an Instructor using methods from “How to Dance” manuals of the 1950s. Think Arthur Murray’s famous “footprints” – and imagine where those “steps” might lead if a third party were involved.

Get used to Ades’ name, if you don’t already know it.  Next fall, he’ll conduct eight performances of his opera “The Tempest” at The Metropolitan Opera, all part of a typically busy season for Ades.  Besides composing and conducting he’s also recognized as a formidable pianist.

Busy is a word that could also describe Ades’ music.  His writing is usually dense with activity.  So the relative restraint of “The Four Quarters” came as a surprise.  It’s a programmatic work cast in four movements that depict the flow of a day.

“Nightfalls,” the opening, consisted primarily of hushed layers of sustained notes.  Played with a straight, vibrato-free tone, it brought to mind images of a computer screen-saver.  “Morning Dew” was mostly pizzicato strings in rhythms both random and complex, just like rain on the rooftop.  The underlying sophistication of the writing appeared when the players switched to bowing and the same melodic and rhythmic patterns were still in place.

“Days” had an arched dynamic and climaxed in a kind of battle cry of intensity.  Finally came “The Twenty-Fifth Hour,” which according to the program notes was written in an unusually complicated meter (24/16 or 2/4 + 3/16 and 2/4 + 6/16).  Tribute goes to the Emerson for bringing out the grounded and spacious quality of the visceral movement.

Come to think of it, “Four Quarters” wasn’t so restrained after all.  But it was almost a trifle in comparison to the breadth and weight of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 that came after intermission.  Everything framed the central, prayerful movement, a lifesafer amidst much sustained dejectedness.

The Emerson handled the Beethoven with the requisite concentration and devotion. But Haydn’s Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2, which opened the afternoon, lacked thoughtful shaping as well as strict accuracy.

Before the music started series producer Daniel Berkenblit greeted the audience and introduced his successor, Derek Delaney.  Berkenblit is retiring from the volunteer position when the season ends later this month.  He began his association with the series in 1969 and took over as director 10 years later.  Local music lovers can rest easy.  Next season’s line-up of 14 events was just announced and it includes a return of the beloved Emerson String Quartet.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Thomas Ades’ collaboration with partner Tal Rosner performed by NY Philharmonic

Thomas Ades at Carnegie Hall 3/27

Ades with his partner, video artist Tal Rosner:

Alexander in 2009 (Luanne M. Ferris / Times Union)

Cris Alexander, a Broadway actor and portrait photographer, died on March 7 in Saratoga Springs, where he lived full-time since 1991.  His death at age 92 came just two weeks after that of Shaun O’Brien, the New York City Ballet character dancer and Alexander’s companion of 61 years.

Alexander starred in the 1944 premiere of “On the Town,” creating the role of Chip, one of the three iconic sailors on shore leave in Manhattan. He can be heard in the original cast album singing “Come Up to My Place,” a duet with Nancy Walker, who played the determinedly amorous cab driver.

When the creative team behind “On the Town” – including composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green – reunited for “Wonderful Town” in 1953, Alexander was again cast. The show starred Rosalind Russell, who became a lifelong friend. Three years later he again shared the Broadway stage with her in “Auntie Mame.” And when Russell reprised her role in the 1958 film version, Alexander was given a walk-on as an imperious department store manager. Alexander also appeared in the 1946 Broadway debut of Noel Coward‘s comedy “Present Laughter” as the young playwright Roland Maule.

Even growing up in Tulsa, Okla., Alexander seemed destined to live among the fashionable set. His best friend in high school there was Tony Randall.

Alexander arrived in New York in 1938 and though his intention was to pursue acting, he immediately set up his own photography studio. His first subject was Gordon MacRae. The stream of actors, dancers and other celebrities that he shot over the years included film star Vivien Leigh, choreographer Martha Graham and even an adolescent Anderson Cooper.

With Patrick Dennis, author of “Auntie Mame,” he collaborated on two satirical memoirs of imaginary female subjects, “Little Me” (1961) and “First Lady” (1964). He was official photographer for the New York City Ballet for a time, and worked on the staff of Andy Warhol’s “Interview” from 1980 to 1986. Among his last subjects for the magazine, before closing his studio, was Mother Teresa.

He and O’Brien bought a large Victorian home off North Broadway in Saratoga Springs in 1973. In recent decades historians sought out the pair to discuss the illustrious circles in which they traveled.

“I must say, I have been very close to some of the most wonderful people who ever have lived in our time,” Alexander said in 1995 interview for “Show Music” magazine. He continued, “Our life is just the greatest life imaginable.”

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

With Nancy Walker in "On the Town"

Rosalind Russell, Jacquelyn McKeever, Sydney Chaplin, Alexander (Don Hunstein)

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

City Ballet’s Shaun O’Brien (1925-2012)

March 15: DDT and Courtenay Budd will perform two song cycles: Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter and Miz Inez Sez (Symphony Space)

March 23: Four Hand Piano recital DDT and Marc Peloquin. DDT will premiere the big new solo Ray’s Birthday Suit. (The Barge under the Brooklyn Bridge)

March 25-26: American Opera Projects presents Haddock’s Eyes. (Galapagos Arts Space, Brooklyn)

March 29: Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony perform Syzygy with soprano soloist Kiera Duffy (Zankel Hall)

April 12: Felix Variations (world premiere), String Quartet No. 2 (NY Premiere), A Field Manual, performed by Felix Del Tredici, the Orion Quartet and the Fireworks ensemble with soloists Courtenay Budd and Michael Kelly. (Le Poisson Rouge)

Earlier this month the Detroit Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin performed “Final Alice” with soprano Hila Plitman.  Here are some choice excerpts from a review by Mark Stryker for the Detroit Free Press:

It’s not just that such an opulently tonal score — with its sing-songy Big Tune based on what critic Andrew Porter called a “Tea for Two” rhythm — was so contrarian in an era when high-modernist severity and purity ruled the roost. Or that the orchestration might have made Richard Strauss blush, with its gazillion strings, quadruple woodwinds, six horns, four trumpets, nine percussionists and a “folk group” of two soprano saxophones, accordion, mandolin and banjo.

Or that Del Tredici also employs a bullhorn and a theremin, whose campy electronic whine quavered whenever Alice grew or shrank. Or that the acrobatic demands placed on the narrator-singer-actor required superhuman agility, stamina and diction from amplified soprano Hila Plitmann, who delivered brilliantly. She sang Del Tredici’s luscious arias with soaring affection and shuffled personas like a demon to play Alice, the King and Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit and the Gryphon.

No, in the end what was so striking was the crazy combustion. The sheer barrage of noise, crescendos, glissandos, multiple tempos and looking-glass distortions created a hubbub so self-indulgent that I kept saying: I can’t believe Del Tredici wrote that.

But as the King of Hearts intoned, we should start at the beginning. Del Tredici spent 20-plus years obsessing over Carroll’s “Alice” stories. “Final Alice” is his most grandiose vision, with texts drawn from the trial scene of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” other Carroll stories and poems, as well as the Victorian verses that Carroll and others parodied. Don’t worry too much about the specifics. It’s messy. Deal. Dive in and sort it out later.

Paula Kimper’

As a composer Kimper didn’t have a deep catalog when she undertook to write the evening-length “Patience.”  But the opera was widely hailed when it debuted in the 1998 Lincoln Center Festival and it’s had five subsequent revivals in the U.S. and overseas.

Since “Patience,”  there’s  been an almost unabated flow of new Kimper operas, mostly based in American history and literature.  In 2004 came “The Captivation of Eunice Williams,” and last month in Northampton, Mass. saw the premiere of her fourth opera, “Truth,” based on the life of the abolitionist Sojourner Truth.  In the title role was Evelyn Harris, a long-time member of Sweet Honey and in the Rock.

Yet another musical-theater collaboration is coming from Kimper this weekend in New York with “Restless Yearning Towards My Self.” Along with Kimper’s original music, there will be words by poet Perry Brass and choreography by Sasha Spielvogel of Labyrinth Dance Theater.  It will be part of a program of Mimi Stern-Wolfe’s Downtown Chamber and Opera Players at St. Marks in the Bowery.