Music

Printers Row Lit Fest & Chicago Blues Festival- June 8-9, 2019

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In case you were wondering, the Lit in Printers Row Lit Fest refers to literature, not to the new Illinois law permitting recreational marijuana starting January 1, 2020. But maybe next year it will be both.

One of the attractions of the Lit Fest for me in the past has been the Flash Fiction writing contest held by the Mystery Writers of America. Again, in case you were wondering, the Flash in Flash Fiction refers to fiction written quickly, not fiction written about Barry Allen of DC Comics fame.

There was no contest this year. The Mystery Writers didn’t even have a tent. Or perhaps they did and it was flapping so quickly in the breeze that no one could see it.

And this year there was only one program each day that interested me. On Saturday, it was James Geary amusing the audience with a discussion of his book Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It.

As part of his presentation, he held a pun contest, with the winner receiving a copy of the book, and the losers presumably being sent to the witless protection program.

On Sunday I heard WTTW critic Hedy Weiss interview music director Jermaine Hill, and stars Monica West (Marian the librarian), and Geoff Packard (Professor Harold Hill) about the Goodman Theater’s upcoming production of The Music Man. I introduced myself to Hedy and spoke with her for about 15 minutes before the program, which I’m sure she also will mention in her next blog.

On the way to the Lit Fest Sunday, I stopped by the Chicago Blues Festival to listen to Erwin Helfer do his wonderful thing on the piano. Heller plays on Tuesday nights at the Hungry Brain, which seems like a good name for a place to go after a Lit Fest.

Chicago Philharmonic & Cirque de la Symphonie – Harris Theater for Music and Dance – May 26, 2019

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If you suffer from coulrophobia, this performance was not for you. But Vladimir Tsarkov Jr. is more than a clown. He’s also a juggler, able to keep numerous balls moving in numerous directions, which led me to discover that there is a system of notation for juggling called siteswap. I always thought it was called accounting.

Tsarkov also aided Alina Sergeeva perform her quick-change costume routine, which is a mildly entertaining trick, but a potentially very useful skill if you’re running late, or if you’re trying to avoid airline baggage fees by wearing all your clothes.

On the other hand, the strap aerialist and the members of the strength and balancing act wore very little clothing in order to show off their ridiculous abs, which were more like cases than six packs.

Watching the Cirque de la Symphonie perform, after having also seen the Cirque du Soleil recently, made me wonder whether Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey could have survived if it had renamed itself to sound more French. After all, the Cirque de la Symphonie is based in Georgia, the one in the United States, not the one that used to be part of the Russian empire, even though three of the six performers I saw are Russian.

All the routines are performed in front of the Philharmonic and synchronized to its music. If any of the acts aren’t your thing, you can always just close your eyes and listen to the music, which, if you are at all squeamish, you might want to do anyway during the aerial stunts, especially when Christine Van Loo is letting herself drop from near the ceiling, protected from hitting the floor only by the suspended silk she is clutching and her incredibly strong, sinewy (49 year-old!) muscles, unaided by ever having been bitten by a radioactive spider (as far as I know).

Chicago Humanities Festival – David Brooks, David Wooten, and Maude Maggart – May 4, 2019

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Commentator David Brooks was very funny for the first part of his appearance at the packed Harris Theater. Then he got to the topic of his new book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life and receded into preachiness reminiscent of a Sunday morning TV sermon, citing examples of others’, but not his own, humane behavior, discussing how his discovery of the moral life had led him out of a dark place, while failing to mention  that during that time period he got divorced from his wife of 27 years and married his former research assistant, 23 years his junior, and without making a case for there being anything in his book that hasn’t been said before in a basic psychology class in regard to character development.

Professor David Wooten, speaking on virtue at the SAIC Ballroom of the School of the Art Institute, was even more disappointing to his much more meager audience, because he wasn’t even funny, just droningly pompous, as evidenced by the sleep-inducing effect he had on several audience members. He basically gave a short shrift overview of philosophies of Aristotle, Hume, Hobbes, Machiavelli and a few others, all as background leading up to his criticism of a modern day philosopher, whose name, unfortunately, escapes me (as I’d like to create my own objective view of her thoughts), who wrote about the fragility of courage.

Fortunately the day was saved by Maude Maggart, a wonderful cabaret singer from New York who presented material from the Great American Songbook, demonstrating a silvery voice with an engaging personality to a full house at Venue Six10. At the end of the hour, the crowd applauded on and on, hoping to encourage her to come back for an encore, but, alas, the Humanities Festival runs on a tight schedule and she did not reappear, the only disappointing part of her performance.

New Faces Sing Broadway Now – Arts Club of Chicago – April 30, 2019

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This was the fourth Porchlight Sings event I’ve gone to in the past year and they’ve all been great. Hosted by local favorite Lorenzo Rush, Jr., it featured an extremely talented group of ten young performers. Three of them, Chloe Nadon-Enriquez, Kaiman Neil, and Drew Tanabe, are in the current Porchlight production of A Chorus Line.

Nick Druzbanski was clearly a favorite of his fellow performers, bringing hoots and hollers from them even before he opened his mouth. I’m looking forward to seeing him in Drunk Shakespeare. And Cecelia Iole. in singing Phantom of the Opera, hit a note so high that it hasn’t been named yet.

But the highlight of the evening was the Broadway trivia game. Often the audience members selected to play have an impressive knowledge of Broadway. Not this time. The two contestants were right out of a Saturday Night Live skit. It would be kind to say they were pathetic.

They were presented with three questions dealing with Disney productions, none of which either of them came close to answering correctly, either standing there dumbfounded or making unimaginably ridiculous guesses, which I would have written down if I weren’t laughing so hard.

Though everyone else somehow restrained themselves from shouting out the answers, even as the level of ineptitude reached epic proportions, it was clear that the organizers had managed to draw the names of the two least knowledgable people in the room to participate in the game.

And keep in mind, this wasn’t Jay Leno picking people off the street. This was a room full of people who theoretically were big theater fans, even though that wasn’t really necessary. One question asked the name of the play based on a book by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Shouldn’t that be enough? The lead character was raised by apes. They still had no idea.

Boston Typewriter Orchestra – ONWORD – American Writers Museum Annual Benefit – Four Seasons Hotel – April 9, 2019

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The ONWORD event featured, on display, eight typewriters from the forthcoming Tools of the Trade exhibit, opening in June at the American Writers Museum. There were typewriters that had been used by Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, and Hugh Hefner, among others.

Working off the theme of the exhibit, the entertainment was the Boston Typewriter Orchestra. I’m not sure what makes the Boston Typewriter Orchestra an orchestra, which is normally thought of as consisting of instruments from different families, such as strings and woodwinds, as opposed to an ensemble of, in this case, only percussion instruments. My guess is that it’s because the name sounds more pretentious.

Nevertheless, the idea of a typewriter orchestra sounded interesting, as it turned out, more interesting than the orchestra sounded. Keep in mind, I’m not talking about someone playing Leroy Anderson’s famous Typewriter on a typewriter with The Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra. That’s two minutes of fun.

I think the all-typewriter Boston group should have combined their music with a literary theme. For example, with a nod to the earth’s monkey population, they could have read whatever they typed as a result of their “music” to see if their compositions resulted in Shakespeare.

Or, they could have taken a piece of written work and tunefully typed it out in a manner that reflected the substance of the work. Maybe, even make it a name that tune, or rather book, game. Listen to the typewriters and try to guess what book they’re typing. That would have kept everyone’s attention longer than the 15 seconds that the actual performance did.

I wonder what the museum will do next year.  Perhaps they’ll bring in the Chicago Metamorphosis Orchestra Project and its Paper Orchestra.  Or, what about a fountain pen orchestra, making different sounds with different colors of ink? Too subtle?

Spring Forward – International Music Foundation (IMF) – Union League Club – March 27, 2019

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As Master of Ceremonies Robbie Ellis informed us, the IMF event we were attending was to raise money for the International Music Foundation, which puts on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, the Rush Hour Concerts, the Do-It-Yourself Messiah, Make Music Chicago, Live Music Now!, and coming this summer, concerts with Gallagher Way Chicago; not for the International Monetary Fund (also IMF), which apparently is doing okay without the need for a fundraising event, as its website says it currently has one trillion dollars available to lend to its member countries.

Perhaps the International Music Foundation should give up its 503(c) status and resurrect itself as a country to qualify for a loan. Unless, and maybe even if, the Music Foundation attempted this by ceding its physical space (i.e. offices) in order not to impinge on U.S. territory (though I wonder if the offices could be turned into a consulate – query, can you have a consulate without a physical home country?), the Music Foundation might not be able to declare independence without United Nations approval. I’ll let the lawyers work that out.

Becoming a country could add a second fundraising technique to the Music Foundation’s arsenal, however, as displayed in the book and movie The Mouse That Roared, wherein the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, on the verge of bankruptcy, declares war on the United States, with the expectation of a rapid defeat that would lead to the inevitable post-war aid from the U.S. to help the Duchy rebuild.

Until the Music Foundation can implement my suggestions, however, it will have to rely on fundraisers. This one included performances by Marguerite Lynn Williams (harp), Richard Lin (violin) with Chin-Yi-Chen (piano) Diana Newman (soprano) with Brian Locke (piano), and Ellis, with Locke on piano, performing his own Symphony No. 1 in Eb, a comedic performance that I cannot do justice in trying to describe, but highly recommend you listen to as providing a perfect ending for this recap.

Diderot String Quartet with Harry Bicket, Harpsichord – Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts – Chicago Cultural Center – March 13, 2019

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Lovely concert. Shouldn’t that be enough? No, because I was sitting in the front row, only a few feet from the performers. So I couldn’t help but notice that the members of the quartet weren’t using chin rests or shoulder pads and that something seemed different about their bows. Can of worms!

Going in, the only thing I knew about violins was what Emily Litella taught me about them on Weekend Update.

Now, having researched the issues, I understand that a baroque bow has a slightly different curvature than a modern bow.  So when it’s bent, it’s baroque, not broke.

Shoulder pads, while useful, can be problematic, because of several issues related to proper fitting. I don’t mean the kind of shoulder pads that Joan Crawford made famous. I mean the kind that attach to the stringed instrument to keep it stable.

Chin rests, which protect the instrument’s varnish and provide a secure and comfortable place for the jaw, also must be properly fitted.  A proper chin piece can help the musician play with a proud sternum, which is apparently a thing among violinists.

So why weren’t these musicians using chin rests? As Pee Wee Herman so famously said in his Big Adventure, “everyone I know has a big but. . . . let’s talk about your big but.”

The big but for chin rests is in regard to baroque violins, which are different in several ways from their more modern counterparts, in particular in regard to the tailpiece, which I knew was a part of a car, but had no idea was also a part of a violin.

Coincidentally, I found a video that discussed baroque violins and chin rests in terms of downshifts and upshifts, which I also knew related to cars, but not violins.

Next thing you know, I’ll discover an organization of mothers against drunk violin playing.

 

 

Music Under Glass: Alonso Brothers – Garfield Park Conservatory – March 10, 2019

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I lived the first six months of my life within a half mile of the Garfield Park Conservatory, and yet didn’t remember anything about it when I returned for the Alonso brothers concert.

A conservatory, according to Merriam-Webster, can be a greenhouse or a music school, which made it appropriate to place these two powerful pianists among pots and plants to present their pleasurable program.

Fortunately, the room was comfortably climate-controlled, cooler than other parts of the conservatory, corresponding to the captivatingly cool Caribbean music of the concert, which bore no relation to that which was elicited from students by that famous alleged ought 5 graduate of the Gary, Indiana Conservatory, Harold Hill.

Breaking from a scheduled playlist that was to include Brahms and Debussy, the Alonso brothers concentrated on pieces related to their Cuban heritage, some of which were familiar to the audience, such as Malaguena and Oye Como Va, the composer of which, Tito Puenta, actually was Puerto Rican, but was inspired to write the piece by Cuban composer Cachao, originator of the mambo. In any event, the Santana version of it helped get me through my senior year of college.

In addition to changing their playlist, the brothers informed the audience, during their enthusiastic, informative, and humorous song introductions, that they originally had been scheduled to play their duets upon a single piano, but asked for a second, while hoping that this added expense wouldn’t be taken out of their paychecks.

Both brothers read their music off tablets, a practice that I’ve written about before, but about which I’ve found additional information, in particular about page-turning, using a foot pedal, when using a tablet, a trend that explains why page-turner is not listed among the fastest growing occupations by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Blood, Sweat & Tears -The Villages – March 1, 2019

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The lead singer did a decent David Clayton-Thomas impression and the musicians were excellent, especially the drummer, whose featured solo was a showpiece for his lightening-fast hands. But I wondered how the front man for the band calling itself Blood, Sweat & Tears (pursuant, I assume, to an array of legal agreements) could keep a straight face talking about “we” when referring to the band’s hits and accomplishments, including winning the 1970 Grammys Album of the Year over Abbey Road.

What made this braggadocio cringe-worthy for me is that only one of the current members of the band joined it before 2010, and even he joined 10 years after the last of the original members left. Did they really think the elderly audience was so senile that they would believe that these clones were the real thing?

Or perhaps the band was counting on an audience that had indulged in one too many of the omnipresent happy hours in The Villages. The local paper is filled with notices about them, right before the pages filled with notices about AA and Al-Anon meetings.

In The Villages’ three town squares, happy hours are accompanied by local bands playing golden oldies for free for the resident golden oldies, which begs the question as to why the residents pay to see a faux Blood, Sweat & Tears. Maybe it’s for the uncomfortable folding chairs in the Savannah Center.

Or maybe it’s for the chance to see surprise guest performers, like sports commentator and interviewer Roy Firestone, who was there plugging his book and forthcoming show, telling anecdotes, and doing speaking and singing impressions. I have to admit he wasn’t bad, but his act seemed so out of place that a lot of people sat and squirmed until the band appeared to do its impressions.  At least that was my impression.

Chopin in the City Festival – Svetlana Belsky – Consulate General of the Republic of Poland – February 22, 2019

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I saw Svetlana Belsky play the piano as part of the EStrella Piano Duo at a Fourth Presbyterian Church lunch hour concert last year and was very impressed with her skills and wit. So, upon finding out that she would be performing the opening concert of the 3rd Chopin in the City Festival at the Consulate General of Poland, I casually mentioned to anyone who would listen (invoking Rule #1 – “It can’t hurt to ask” and Rule #2 – “It only takes one.”) that it sure would be great to get an invitation to the private event.

And so, having been successful in my quest, I found myself at the concert and reception, having a lovely conversation with a member of the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China, who informed me, my free drink in hand, that he and members of the other consulates in town regularly make the rounds of each other’s events.

It was shortly thereafter that I learned that, despite the attraction of the party-hopping, I was not cut out for the diplomatic service, as the gentleman seemed to lose interest in our discussion after I informed him I knew where his Chicago headquarters were located because I had seen picketers marching outside of it.

The concert itself was wonderful, once it got started after seemingly interminable opening remarks by a woman who seemed to be practicing an Oscar speech as she thanked everyone she had ever met, or hoped to meet, for helping to make the evening possible.

Belsky played beautifully, with energy, grace and skill; a twinkle in her eyes, and the occasional impish grin that she made a part of the music. And her commentary between pieces once again exhibited her wonderful sense of humor. I hope to crash another of her performances in the near future.