Music

Chicago Cellar Boys – Winter’s Jazz Club – January 25, 2020

Posted on by admin

How could little Red Ridin’ Hood have been so very good and still keep the wolf from the door? It’s a question we’ve all pondered, but who knew there was a song about it written in 1926? Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs – maybe. The Chicago Cellar Boys – definitely.

This is my second time seeing the Boys.  I loved their whole set, but their revelation about that “modern child” “runnin’ wild” was one of my favorites, among a set list that included songs from the 1920s and 30s written by Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, George Gershwin, and others.

My other favorite was Waller’s Truckin’, covered in 1973 as Everybody’s Doin’ It by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Truckin’ by The Grateful Dead is a whole different song), though it made me wish I could have seen Ina Rae Hutton and Her Melodears perform it live, even though Ina’s dancing was more tap than truckin’ (about which I’m not complaining), which, of course, led me to a short clip of a jazz dance instructor demonstrating truckin’ steps along with some others.

Seeing the video of Ina and her all women band also made me thing of Some Like It Hot, but, returning to reality, I also thought about the Boys’ clarinetist/trumpeter giving the beat at the start of each song, which is all fine and good, except it seems like too much to ask of everyone to play the correct notes and contemporaneously maintain the same beat for more than about three measures. I think playing very short songs is the answer.

I also noticed that the piano player held his right shoulder slightly higher than his left, which led me to a website about posture and piano playing. With all these distractions, it’s amazing that I was able to enjoy the music, but I did.

Bugs Bunny at the Symphony (30th Anniversary Edition) – Symphony Center – January 18, 2020

Posted on by admin

In this, the 80th anniversary of Bugs Bunny’s debut in The Wild Hare, this program of classic cartoons being accompanied live by the Warner Bros. Symphony Orchestra listed Bugs, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Michigan J. Frog, and Giovanni Jones as starring. I was glad to see that there wasn’t an insert telling me that an understudy would be filling in for any of them. I would have been disappointed at seeing Donald, rather than Daffy, playing the role of the duck.

I also was glad to see that I wasn’t the only adult in the audience unaccompanied by a child. I wasn’t counting my inner child, as it didn’t need its own seat.

The program also told me that Max Steiner composed the Warner Bros. Fanfare. Steiner was a man of many firsts in regard to scoring movies, including the use of click tracks, which the musicians at the Symphony Center were listening to on headphones, which were not merely acting as earmuffs, as I originally contemplated given the cold temperatures outside.

Steiner was a major influence for John Williams, whom, I will gratuitously mention, was played by the son of a friend of mine on the Apple Podcast, Blockbuster, which tells the story of the early directing days of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and which led me to research further and come to believe that Lucas’s film editor and wife of the time, Marcia, who won the Oscar for Best Film Editing (one more Oscar than George has ever won) was probably the real force behind the success of the original Star Wars.

Speaking of directors, the great Chuck Jones, the animation director of about half the cartoons shown at Symphony Center, was represented by his grandson and great granddaughter, who, on behalf of the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, presented the Symphony Center with an original drawing by Jones of Bugs as conductor. There’s no Oscar for best animation director, but there should be given how difficult it must be to deal with temperamental cartoon characters, like Yosemite Sam.

What’s Opera, Doc?, an operatic performance even I can get behind, was greeted with cheers from the audience as conductor, and co-creator of these concerts, George Daugherty informed us that we would be hearing eight Wagner operas in the space of six minutes and four seconds, rather than 30-40 hours.

The audience also was treated to three new Road Runner shorts and the world concert premiere of Dynamite Dance, a new cartoon, based on The Dance of the Hours, created for Bugs’s 80th birthday.

Fittingly, at the end of the performance, Daugherty was presented with a bouquet of carrots.

That’s All Folks.

Timothy Hagen (Flute) and Ben Corbin (Piano) – Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert – Chicago Cultural Center – November 20, 2019

Posted on by admin

Midway through a day that included leading a class on cheating in baseball (more on that another time), a fountain-lighting ceremony with singing in Washington Square Park, and a musical comedy that’s Duck Soup meets Of Thee I Sing (see piece on Call Me Madam), I listened to a lovely concert by Hagen and Corbin, though I found myself slightly distracted from the music itself.

I became focused on (read obsessed by) the flow of Corbin’s hands on the piano, something I have struggled with (along with avoiding dangling prepositions). My curiosity thus led me to a piano-technique website that discusses hand, finger and body motions in sufficient detail to keep me occupied through the winter.

It also reminded me of the well-known fact that a difficult part of acting is what to do with your hands. I found an acting coach’s website that says it best.

It seems that when we act, the hands are destined to flop around like a hyperactive T-Rex.
Or if they are not busy doing dinosaur impersonations, they are perhaps engaged in:
• Penguining (Flapping the arms at the sides.)
• Waitressing (Arms in a v-shape, like a waiter carrying plates.)
• The ForkLift (as above but straight out)

The other distractions were the guy behind me who spent five minutes fumbling around with batteries he was trying to insert into a camera, and a woman’s cell phone that rang loudly for an interminable amount of time (okay, maybe 15 seconds), as she fumbled to remove it from her purse and tried to remember how to turn it off. If not so rude, or maybe because of that, it might have made an amusing SNL skit, as the ring was musical and ended almost in synch with the performance. I couldn’t help but think, however, that it needed more cow bell.

 

Civitas Ensemble – Allen Recital Hall, Holtschneider Performance Center – October 11, 2019

Posted on by admin

Rob Gordon (from the movie High Fidelity): “Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. First of all you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.”

So, taking the leap from a tape designed to win over a woman, to a classical music concert with, presumably, no ulterior motive other than to entertain, how does a group, such as the Civitas Ensemble, decide what to play, and, more importantly for this discussion, in what order?

The Dummies website tells us that symphony orchestras almost always follow the format: an overture, a concerto, intermission, a symphony.  To apply this enunciation to Civitas, the core of which is a four-person troupe, it occurred to me that I had to apply a sort of reverse extrapolation, if that’s a thing.    

Well, it turns out that retrograde extrapolation is a thing.  It’s used by chemists and toxicologists to estimate what a person’s blood alcohol content was at a specific time based on test results obtained at a later period of time. 

As there was no alcohol being served at the concert; no overtures, concertos, or symphonies on display; and the first two pieces were of fairly equal length, the best application of the principle I could come up with was the varying size of the ensemble playing each piece.

The program of Hungarian Masters was to start with a duet, followed by a quartet, followed by intermission, and then a sextet that included two guest artists.  Quod erat demonstrandum. 

However, though its performance of Erno Dohnanyi’s Sextet in C Major, Op. 37 rousingly closed the excellent concert, Civitas changed the order of the first two pieces, explaining that it decided to present the melancholy selection first and then the more upbeat music as a cheerful note heading into intermission.  A sound decision I felt, but one that might represent the first sign of anarchy for dummies, if that’s a thing.  

Audra McDonald (with Seth Rudetsky) – Steppenwolf Theater – September 15, 2019

Posted on by admin

I got to experience the best part of a Seth Rudetsky Broadway Cruise without having to get on a boat, although even I have to admit that his June, 2020 Venice to Venice excursion sounds interesting. I know there are a lot of cruise bloggers, but I don’t know if any of them get free passage for their efforts. I need an agent. What’s 10 per cent of nothing?

McDonald also has a cruise next year. Perhaps that’s the one for me. After seeing the six-time Tony award winner in person for the first time, I just know we could be friends. The woman loves to laugh so much that she gets stomach cramps, and is down-to-earth enough to share that information as it happens.

McDonald also admitted to being a little loopy after driving to Chicago from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, following a concert the night before, because her flight had been cancelled due to storms. I wonder if she sings along with the radio in the car. Seth should have asked her that.

People came to hear McDonald sing, and she didn’t disappoint, hitting a note so high at the end of her audience sing-a-long of I Could Have Danced All Night that it caused the insides of a cat in the alley behind the theater to explode. However, her inner diva appeared briefly as she admitted her competitiveness over the fact that an audience member had matched the note.

McDonald’s personality glowed in stories about a beeper in her coffin in Ragtime, her improvisation in Shuffle Along, and her daughter texting immediately after McDonald’s Climb Every Mountain solo in The Sound of Music live television production to ask her about laundry.

But I’m not kidding when I say that the hit of the evening may have been her rendition of The Facebook Song, which, be warned, or perhaps encouraged, contains language that may be considered offensive.

Teatro ZinZanni: Love, Chaos, and Dinner – Cambria Hotel – July 28, 2019

Posted on by admin

Described as The Kit Kat Club on acid or The Moulin Rouge meets Cirque de Soleil, Teatro ZinZanni is too long, but what a hoot. Even the lobby is fun.

If you see it, be aware that it makes a difference where you sit. You don’t need to worry about blue paint or flying watermelon parts, but some of the action in the middle of the spiegeltent flows over onto a table or two, and if you’re centrally located you’re more likely to become part of the show, interacting with The Caesar or Lady Rizo, who is part Janis Joplin, part Bette Midler.

If you’re follicly challenged, you may get your scalp rubbed by various cast members, and if you’re a woman of a certain age, you might find yourself being theatrically-wooed by The Caesar, whose wild patter is reminiscent of Robin Williams. If you’re a healthy-looking young male, The Caesar may pick you out to participate in a faux competition to be his successor.

Sitting in a back booth provides relief for the stage shy. And you might, as I did, wind up in a conversation with a sixth-generation circus-family contortionist watching her ninth-generation circus-family, body-juggling, crowd-wowing boyfriend from an area behind your table in preparation for joining the show herself in a couple months when the acts change, as they regularly do to encourage return customers.

Between aerial artists, rhythmic gymnasts, and dancing waitstaff, Joe De Paul sang a little like Frank Sinatra (backed by a band that never took a break), portrayed King Kong, and partnered with the multi-talented Mr. P.P. (if you consider juggling with your mouth a talent) to leave the audience in tears of laughter from their hijinks.

My only regret was that singer Kelly Britt, hitting a ridiculously high note, failed to break the wine glass in her hand. Had she succeeded, she might have brought me over to the dark side, or as it is more commonly known, opera.

Sunday Near Millennium Park Without Anyone Named George – July 21, 2019

Posted on by admin

Interestingly, both Doctors Without Borders and Borders book stores, which no one was able to save (thereby making the doctors’ organizational name prescient), were founded in 1971. On the other hand, Crossing Borders Music, which put on the concert by my piano teacher, Marianne Parker, that I attended at the Chicago Cultural Center, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park, originated in 2011.

The wonderful solo concert featured music from Marianne’s new album of Haitian music, entitled Pages intimes. As I told her afterward, she obviously has been holding out on me, not teaching me everything she knows, because, shockingly, I can’t play like she can. What other reason could there be?

I then rushed over to the Art Institute, across Monroe Street from Millennium Park, to attend its annual Block Party. On my way to the Impressionism room containing Van Gogh’s The Drinkers, for a program put on by the Brewseum, I passed by Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, thereby completing my park-adjacent trilogy.

Pub historian, and Brewseum founder and executive director, Liz Garibay presented a delightful lecture to the crowd on both the Van Gogh painting and the history and culture of drinking and drinking establishments in Chicago, including the 1855 Lager Beer Riot. After this educational tasting, I now thirst for more information, which I attend to drink in at the Brewseum’s exhibition currently on tap at the Field Museum.

I ended my near-the-park Sunday by watching Mucca Pazza (which translates as mad cow) end the party with one of their unique musical performances. P.T. Barnum would have been proud of the way they closed by marching through the Monroe Street exit, helping to clear the building by leading out hundreds of visitors, who then realized that the show was over.  This way to the egress.

Southport Arts Festival – July 13, 2019

Posted on by admin

The Southport Arts Festival is a modest gathering, where free street parking is not that far away, at least in the daytime, and one location offers free beer.

But my main reason for going was to see Bill Larkin and his Comic Songs at the Piano (and one with a ukulele) at the Venus Cabaret. Larkin acts, including some shouting, as much as sings his original songs. I see a sort of combination of Lewis Black and Tom Lehrer in him, as his dark humor highlights people’s foolishness and foibles (including his own). The size of the crowd was disappointing, but Larkin wasn’t.

Later in the day, Neal Tobin, Necromancer, took the same stage. Necromancy is a practice of magic involving communication with the dead. After only 15 minutes of his act, Tobin made me wish I were dead, so I got up and left, thinking that his act was not worth the free price of admission, and not worrying whether he could read my mind in that regard.

As with most street fairs, there were a variety of artists and artisans displaying their work. Three attracted my attention. Time After Time, it turned out, was not selling Cyndi Lauper CDs or DVDs of H.G. Wells chasing Jack the Ripper, but rather Historic American Rephotography, where Mark Hersch merges 100-year-old photographs with photographs he takes from the same vantage point to create a single image.

Robots in Rowboats also misled me, as most of the robots were not, in fact, in rowboats, but I guess you just can’t pass on a good alliteration.

Finally, By The Yard sells outdoor furniture recycled from plastic milk jugs. Really. Afterward, it occurred to me that I should have asked whether there was a quality difference between pieces constructed from skim, 2%, and whole milk containers.

Six – Chicago Shakespeare Theater – June 29, 2019

Posted on by admin

“I’m Henry the eighth I am, Henry the eighth I am I am, I got married to the widow next door, She’s been married seven times before, And everyone was a Henry.” Turns out that’s not the real story about England’s King Henry VIII.

I’ve never seen the musical Nine, which won the 1982 Tony for best musical, but I bet it isn’t 50% better than Six, the part herstory lesson, part rock concert, part dance party, part comedic musical retelling of the stories of the six wives of Henry VIII, which I’m guessing will make its way to Broadway, with awards in its future.

All but one of the very talented performers were new to me, the exception being Abby Mueller, who was Carole King in Beautiful last time I saw her. Now she’s Jane Seymour, not the English actress (who has been married four times in her own right), but rather Henry’s third wife in the chain of “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived, but just for you tonight, we’re divorced, beheaded, live.”

Don’t worry about the list’s suggestion of violent deaths. No one actually loses their head on stage, though a majority of the audience lost their minds, whooping and hollering in reaction to the creative, illuminating, high-energy songs, which, as I learned from reading the playbill, were “queenspired” by a dozen pop stars, ranging from Adele to Beyonce to Rihanna (but, thankfully, not Herman’s Hermits).

My only regret upon leaving the theater was that Henry didn’t have more wives to entertain and educate the audience. I don’t know what the authors have in mind for their next project, but Elizabeth Taylor had seven husbands (eight marriages counting Richard Burton twice).

Tank and the Beez – Washington Square Park – June 21, 2019

Posted on by admin

Husband and wife, Brian “Tank” (bass/harmonica) and Beth “Beez” (guitar) Blankenship, added Jeff Teppema (fiddle) and someone named Charlie (guitar) for the performance.

Tank and the Beez describe themselves as an old-time roots string band, which made me wonder whether their instruments are made out of onions, potatoes, carrots, or radishes.

They specialize in traditional blues, folk, and jazz tunes and, by their own account, read their lyrics off an old-timey iPad.

The group’s other concession to modern technology was Jeff tuning his fiddle off an app on his cell phone. His fiddle looked suspiciously like a violin, which led me to a nice article in Strings Magazine, which has nothing to do with theoretical physics.

Jeff pulled a shaker out for one song, but unfortunately, one of the band’s other frequent members, Amy Malouf, was not there to play her washboard.

Beez and Tank nicely took the lead on most of the songs, but Charlie had his moment in the shade on one tune. Even before that it struck me that he appeared to speak like a would-be ventriloquist, with slight movements of the lips, while his teeth remained glued together.

Charlie noted that the song he sang was written in B Flat, and suggested that it was a common key when it was written about a hundred years ago, as it made it compatible with the hum of the electric lights in use in the United States.

Though Charlie’s singing was not on par with Tank’s, or especially Beez’s, he acquitted himself quite well on the guitar, which he suggested was Middle English for out of tune, a possible homage, given the group’s brand of music, to Pete Seeger’s line that “when you play the 12-string guitar, you spend half your life tuning the instrument and the other half playing it out of tune.”