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Access Contemporary Music – Thirsty Ears Festival – August 13, 2022

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Promoted as Chicago’s only classical music street festival, this annual two-day event, now in its seventh year, is not quite on the scale of Lollapalooza, but has two important things in common with that and every other outdoor music happening – you can buy a beer and a tee shirt.

I came for Crossing Borders Music, represented on this occasion by the talented duo of violinist Jennifer Leckie and pianist Marianne Parker. I wasn’t disappointed, as their engaging selections crossed numerous borders, including music by composers from Cuba, Uruguay, Armenia, Colombia, and Arkansas.

I also was pleased with the sound system, the ease of parking, and the availability of seating, though I chose to stand, which if I understand the research correctly, caused me to burn up an extra 75 calories.

It also enabled me to hang out in front of the Mathnasium, Math Learning Center, and try to respond to the half dozen, grades K-12 questions on their windows, while simultaneously listening to music and breathing. Since the answers were not shown, I’m going to assume I got them all right, except, okay, maybe one of them.

The Devil Wears Prada – The Nederlander Theatre – August 9, 2022

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The show started about 15 minutes late. Given the heretofore mixed reviews (which I still haven’t read), I assumed last-second changes were being made to the script for this pre-Broadway run.

The opening set showed a New York street with a crosswalk in the foreground that made me wonder whether the Beatles were about to walk across the stage, Paul barefooted. Alas, no. Maybe after rewrites.

But the set that will linger in my mind was the Eiffel Tower, which rose spectacularly from the ground right before my eyes.

The opening scene of the second act, with finely dressed members of high society walking around, some with parasols, made me think of the Ascot Gavotte from My Fair Lady.

If it seems like the script didn’t have my full attention, I’ll mention that I probably was the only one there, including the actors and the writers, who got the joke when Andy threw her phone away because she no longer wanted to sell (cell?) her soul.

And, besides, because it’s still a work in progress, there’s no list of scenes or musical numbers in the playbill to aid my memory (and, surprisingly, I didn’t receive a press kit). But I know there was a song and dance about being in your twenties I liked a lot, and could remember if I still were.

Though I enjoyed it, the show is mostly about the costumes, the budget for which is probably somewhere around the gross national product of the Netherlands.

So, I clearly am not the target audience. There were a lot of crowd-pleasing fashion references about which I was gratefully clueless.

The whole cast was, of course, first rate, but I wanted to see more of Javier Munoz, who plays Nigel, the juicy role that Stanley Tucci had for dinner in the movie.

Grant Park Music Festival – Millennium Park – August 5, 2022

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The guest soloist, Andreas Haefliger, deftly played Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. In case you were wondering, as I was, there are pieces for the right hand only, and, this one was really on my mind during the concert, a series of books with music that can be played with either hand alone.

I also wondered what Haefliger would be doing with his right hand during the performance. If he didn’t know the piece by heart he could have used it to turn the pages. If he had a page turner, would that person have to use only their left hand?

But he just let the right hand sit idle. Seemed like a waste. He could have used it to text. Isn’t that what everyone does when they have a free hand, especially while driving?

I wonder if next year the festival will include a clarinet concerto for the lower lip.

Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique closed the evening. Everything I could hear was good but there were some parts that were so soft that I only knew the orchestra was playing by watching the conductor wave his baton. He could have been faking it, but not during the fourth movement’s hallucinatory March to the Scaffold, which told a story supported by the percussion section that was both symbolic and cymballic.

Chicago Storytelling in Bughouse Square – Washington Square Park – July 30, 2022

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“Things aren’t what they used to be and probably never were.” – Will Rogers

The ACLU was handing out flyers, but there were no soap boxes in the park. No anarchists in sight. No spectators shouting down speakers.

There were people hanging around, perhaps waiting for an argument to break out, but, times being what they are, the Newberry staff had to be happy to have a docile event, where the biggest controversy was the position taken by Northwestern professor Bill Savage that it was okay to put ketchup on hot dogs. Even I booed at that.

Savage had some interesting, less hot-button things to say about Edward Brennan and his years-long effort to successfully rename many streets and renumber addresses throughout the city, accomplishing things that many mistakenly credit as being part of Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago.

The only other speaker I heard any of was Katie Prout, a freelance-writer, who, amazingly, had a lot to say about pigeons, a fairly safe topic.

I then headed over to the Documents Bureau table where Society of Smallness clerks listened to a random complaint I came up with for the moment and issued me a certificate granting me the authority to do something about it. I was going to snap a photo to attach to this piece, but when I got home I discovered that they, ironically, had given me somebody else’s document. Next year’s complaint.

Back to the main stage for Sheryl Youngblood and her blues band, who did a sweet half hour before more talking heads appeared and I disappeared.

It Came From Outer Space – Chicago Shakespeare Theater – July 24, 2022

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This world premiere musical, based on the 1953 movie of the same name, which, in turn, was based on a film treatment by Ray Bradbury (and not on a William Shakespeare play), will probably never play Broadway, but I would not at all be surprised if it turned into a long-running Off-Broadway sensation, where audience members come dressed as aliens.

Of course, the musical Little Shop of Horrors, also based on a low budget science fiction movie, started off Off-Off-Broadway, then went Off-Broadway for five years, before eventually making it to Broadway and becoming a staple of theaters everywhere.

This show was written by the same two people, Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair, who won the 2011 Jeff Award for writing the musical Murder for Two, which I loved. As is necessary to fully exploit the delightful silliness of the show, the cast played it straight, although I imagine that there were numerous breakdowns in rehearsals.

In particular I would like to mention Jaye Ladymore, whom I never had seen on stage before (unlike the other players), but who caught my attention last year on the ill-fated tv series 4400. Today I often found myself looking to see her movements and facial reactions, even when the focus of the action was elsewhere, like in outer space.


Jonathan Zeng – Music by the Fountain – Fourth Presbyterian Church – July 22, 2022

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The concert was promoted as Jonathan Zeng, voice and piano. Zeng sang, but someone else, who was introduced, but not promoted, and didn’t speak, but did wave to the audience, played the piano.

Zeng’s voice was fine, but I found him boring. I would rather just have listened to the piano and heard in my head the voices of the performers who made famous the mostly Broadway show tunes he led us through. I was not surprised to learn, afterwards, that his resume includes a lot of work with opera companies, and not one musical theater credit I could find. Note to self, next time look at the resume before going.

Zeng’s patter, so important in cabaret type acts, was lackluster, and less than spontaneous, as evidenced by him being guilty of misreading his notes to say that a song had been indicted into some hall of fame, before correcting himself to say inducted.

He also admitted to not knowing, prior to including a song from it in his act, that Kiss Me Kate was based on Taming of the Shrew, or why Judy Garland had such a large fan following, until a friend of his took him to see A Star is Born (there wasn’t one today).

Piece of advice, Don’t admit these kinds of things when trying to work a room (or courtyard), unless you know how to make them funny. He didn’t.

Bastille Day French Night Market – Summer Thursdays at Lincoln Common – July 14 2022

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As I circled around the bandstand, from which there was a notable absence of music emanating, I saw a woman on stilts, a man juggling while riding a unicycle, and an artist doing caricatures, a scene just as I have always imagined it when that angry mob attacked the French prison in 1789.

Also, I could not help but notice that a mime was following me, imitating my every movement.

But I ignored him. Sure there was the temptation to do something embarrassing, to see if he would follow suit, but there were numerous small children in attendance, so I grudgingly restrained myself.

Then I started to feel sorry for him. He had committed to making me his target, but I was disinterested and no one else was paying any attention to him either. And he couldn’t just give up. That would be antithetical to the unspoken mime code of conduct.

So I engaged. I started making revolutions around him, causing him to spin to maintain his relative position to me. I spoke. He didn’t. I told him I had gained the upper hand, as I was now following him.

He bowed and conceded, non verbally, smiling and silently applauding, before walking away, while the band continued not to play on.

Lights on Broadway – Millennium Park – July 7, 2022

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Rehearsal. Almost any seat I want. Close enough so that I could see that the guest conductor, Kimberly Grigsby, wasn’t wearing shoes, but not close enough that I could tell whether her feet smelled.

It made me wonder what she would have on for the actual performance. Heels would change the angle of appearance of her baton from the musicians’ vantage point. Would they be confused? They were when she accidentally dropped her baton. She and the rest of us were amused.

Vocals were performed by Capathia Jenkins and Sam Simahk. Wait. I just saw him last weekend, playing Freddy in My Fair Lady. I hope he told someone he’s going to skip a couple shows.

Phew. They must know. Sitting a couple rows in front of me at the rehearsal were Colonel Pickering and the housekeeper Mrs. Pearce. But no sign of Professor Higgins or Eliza Dooliitle. Perhaps they’re at the races.

As listed in the program, the second half of the concert, except for one song, didn’t particularly interest me, so I left early, the operative rhyming couplet being “If I’d paid, I’d have stayed.”

Epilogue

The Grant Park Music Festival now informs me that Jonathan Groff (aka George III on Broadway) will be appearing to sing that one song, You’ll Be Back, my favorite song from Hamilton and one of only two from that show that I actually remember.

So, he was right, I’ll be back.

Cirque Goes to Hollywood – Millennium Park – July 6, 2022

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Hoorah for Hollywood, whose music the Grant Park Orchestra played as the backdrop for Troupe Vertigo, a dizzying group that creates an atmosphere, its website says, “where reality bends, expectations twist and the body embraces the imagination.”

I’ve given up on reality, as I hear it’s not so great, and try not to have any expectations, so as to avoid being disappointed, but I assure you that the manner in which the cirque performers’ bodies were bent and twisted into dangerous and sometimes painful looking positions, while hanging above the stage dangling from ropes or doing handstands on gymnastic equipment, transcended anything I routinely imagine.

The feats executed during the theme from Mission Impossible fit that bill. but, when three performers came out wearing horse heads while performing to the theme from The Magnificent Seven, I thought they should have done so for the prior number, the theme from The Godfather. I wonder if they were asked to do so but found the courage to refuse.

A little over three years ago I wrote about the Chicago Philharmonic playing classical music to accompany the Cirque de la Symphonie. How many more combinations like this do I need to see to complete a full cirque[it]?

Jeopardy Zoom Test – July 6, 2022

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Thirty-four years ago I took an in-person test for Jeopardy at their studio in Burbank. The process was simpler then. All you had to do was ask to take the test and then show up – I’m good at showing up. There was less to know, and less competition (just nerds waiting in line cramming with index cards and excitedly reminiscing about past episodes). But I still wasn’t good enough to get on the show, though I did get invited to a party in Malibu by one of the other hopefuls who didn’t make it.

Nevertheless, for the last 16 years, with no expectations and for no good reason, other than challenging my diminishing memory, slow typing skills, and ignorance of current events, I have taken the annual online screening test.

Then, newsflash, I got an email last week saying that I had qualified for the second round of testing, on Zoom (so they can watch to see if you have 12 people in the room helping you cheat).

This figured to be ugly. I have no knowledge about the last 30 plus years on almost any topic they might ask about, and it’s too late to start studying the almanac again, like I used to do in class, when I went, on my way to participating in an intercollegiate trivia bowl.

But, I figured, what the heck, grist for the mill, something to write about in my blog. So, in preparation for the big day, just as Bobby Fischer famously played tennis on off days during his World Championship match with Boris Spassky, I watched Wimbledon on tv.

As it turned out, out of the 50 questions, there were only two or three where I knew the answer but couldn’t remember it until too late (one of them embarrassingly). There were a couple other questions I should have known, but they were geography related, and who knows anything about that these days without their GPS in hand. The other likely misses just weren’t in what remains of my wheelhouse.

Still, who knows. Maybe a couple of my random guesses will turn out to be correct, or my deer in the headlights look will appeal to them. I’ll hear back from them within a year, or not, or maybe I’ll get invited to another party. That would be a win.