Music

Jasmin Arakawa – Chicago Cultural Center – February 14, 2018

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In case you haven’t noticed, each time I go to one of the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts I try to focus on something different, in addition to the music. This week, I’d like to report that Preston Bradley Hall was adorned with Mardi Gras decorations, but, alas, it was not.

I was sitting stage left. The piano is always set up so that the pianist is facing that direction, something I hadn’t thought about before (I must have been preoccupied with world peace or quantum theory), but which makes obvious sense (doh) given the construction of a grand piano (not really an issue with my digital keyboard).

With that weight lifted from my mind, I reflected on the advantages of sitting stage left. Sure, I couldn’t see Ms. Arakawa’s hands move rapidly and flawlessly across the keys, but, because so many others wanted that experience, I had a greater choice of seats on my side, was able to sit on an aisle, with no one next to me, and, in the middle of this horrible flu season, had fewer people around me coughing (I didn’t bring a flu mask, though I spotted someone else wearing one).

When Ms. Arakawa walked out at the beginning of the concert, she just sat down and started playing. Pianists, unlike musicians playing other instruments, don’t fiddle on stage with strings (that would be amusing – I wonder if Victor Borge ever did it) or wait for someone with an oboe in the audience to give them an A (I looked, but didn’t spot one).

She played some Liszt, Haydn and a couple other dead guys I never heard of before (Mompou and Francaix). Francaix was quoted in the program as having quoted French writer Nicolas Chamfort in saying: “When on the stage, if you are a little of a charlatan, the crowd will lapidate you.” I’m happy to report that Ms. Arakawa was not lapidated at any time during her performance.

Akropolis Reed Quintet – Chicago Cultural Center – Feb. 7, 2018

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I’m of the generation of men whose parents told them to tuck their shirts into their pants. A bass clarinet makes me think of someone who doesn’t. It seems to hang too long and not neatly tucked in like a soprano clarinet. In any event, both types of clarinets, an oboe, a bassoon, and a saxophone comprise the five instruments played by the members of the Akropolis Reed Quintet at this week’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert at the Chicago Cultural Center.

After the first selection, I watched as the musicians dried the insides of their instruments by pulling swabs through the bores. It reminded me of a magician apparently pulling streams of cloth out of his mouth, only these swabs were black and one-piece, not multicolored and knotted together. Also, the musicians didn’t say “tada” when they were done, though they may have been thinking it as they finished with a flourish. Fortunately for the audience, the musicians were deft not only at drying their instruments, but also at playing them. I played the trumpet briefly and badly as a preteen. I now wonder if the problem was that I just wasn’t good enough at emptying out the spit valve. Yes, that must have been it.

The musical highlight of the concert was the group’s rendition of An American in Paris. Although I loved the music, it reminded me of how much I didn’t like the play when I saw it last year. Also, I wondered whether a French composer had ever written about being in America? Well, it turns out that the French composer Darius Milhaud was commissioned by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra in the 1960s to write a companion piece for An American in Paris, and thus composed A Frenchman in New York. See, it wasn’t such a stupid question.

 

Vijay Venkatesh – Dame Myra Hess Concert – Chicago Cultural Center – January 17, 2018

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I started taking piano lessons a year ago. I have no illusions about my current or potential talent levels, but I enjoy the process and the sounds that I urge out of the keys that occasionally resemble music.  I also really enjoy listening to someone good.

The Chicago Cultural Center hosts Dame Myra Hess Concerts every Wednesday from 12:15-1:00. This week Vijay Venkatesh played Liszt and Beethoven on the piano, and brought forth tones that doesn’t exist on my digital keyboard. And, though his hands were occasionally moving at lightning speed, I’m pretty sure that he played all 88 keys at least once during Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12. So the hundreds of us in attendance would have gotten our money’s worth even if we had paid something to get in.

There was a woman in the front row who, at first glance, seemed to be taking notes, perhaps for a review, I mean a real one, not like what you read on my blog. But as I shifted in my seat, I realized I was wrong, she wasn’t writing, but rather sketching the pianist at work. I don’t take notes for my blog. I feel that it would distract from my enjoyment of the event and hinder my ability to observe all that is going on around me. And I can’t read my handwriting.

Vijay deservedly (I think) received a standing ovation at the conclusion of his work, but these days it seems that everyone gets one, and thus it has lost its significance. I wonder if performers know that sometimes we stand just because the people in front of us (who might be friends and family of the performers) stood up and we can’t see if we stay seated, or we just want to stretch our legs, or we just want to beat the crowd out the door.

Please fight the urge to give this blog a standing ovation, as I’ve already left the room.

Random Acts of Fun in the Parks – 2017

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Every year the Newberry Library, in conjunction with its annual book fair, puts on a celebration of free speech in Washington Square Park (Bughouse Square), which for years had been a popular spot for soapbox orators. I went on July 29, not so much to hear the speeches, which are mercifully limited in length by the organizers, but once again to enjoy the performance by the Environmental Encroachment brass band, a ragtag group that for some reason amuses me.

I also spent the morning of April 27, Earth Day, in Washington Square Park helping prepare the park for the summer. Okay, so this wasn’t actually fun in and of itself, but by reminding me that the other 364 days of the year I don’t have to do any yard work because I live in a condo, it nevertheless brought a smile to my face.

I spent many other days in various Chicago parks during the year, in particular Millennium Park for the concerts and a taping of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, featuring ex-Cub Ryan Dempster as the special guest (when I heard that he was the guest I figured they must have gotten to the bottom of a long list of possibilities, but he turned out to be quite entertaining); Lincoln Park for the zoo and the golf course (where one day I got put in a foursome with three guys associated with Second City, which made for an unusual day where the banter was funnier than my golf game); Polk Brothers Park at Navy Pier for the outdoor water-related movies (I saw Jaws and Splash, but missed Sharknado – what a shame); and the park adjoining Adler Planetarium, where I joined several thousand of my closest friends to observe the solar eclipse on August 21. As we used to say in college – any excuse for a party.

Paper Machete – Green Mill – January 13, 2018

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Somehow, until now, I’ve been unaware of Paper Machete, the live magazine comedy and music review that moved to the Green Mill in December 2012. We arrived there about twenty minutes before the advertised 3:00 start of the show. But the Green Mill is at heart a jazz venue, so they didn’t start until about 3:15, early by jazz standards. Nevertheless, it was SRO to the max when we arrived, and I have no idea how early you have to get there to get a seat.

Though most of the crowd was a lot younger than us, there was a table of four that was a notable exception. They looked like they originally had come to see Billie Holiday in the 30s or 40s and wisely decided not to give up their seats. In the interesting seating configuration that is the Green Mill, their backs were to the main stage, but I was still jealous.

We wound up standing near the side door, constantly dodging waitstaff, but with a decent view of the primary stage and the area behind the bar used as a secondary stage. This put us next to a tall gentlemen who also was older than most of the crowd and who turned out to be the father of one of the performers. Even with that, he had to stand.

The emcee introduced acts, sang, and commented on the news. His opening wild, arm-flagellating, lip-synching routine tired me out just watching him.

In addition to him and that day’s band, we saw two comics, one of whom reported on important new devices displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show, such as smart toilets that create profiles of use by each person in your house.

When the show broke for intermission, we broke for the door, not out of dissatisfaction, as the comedy was spot on (though I’m hesitant to tell you what one comic said about cucumbers), but in response to a cry for help from my lower back ,which was tightening like a screw from standing in one place for an hour and a half. We need a new plan next time.

Big Red & the Boys – Theater Wit – December 11, 2017

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Meghan Murphy is Big Red. Her website says “If Lucille Ball, Bette Midler, Bonnie Raitt, Rita Hayworth and Etta James had a baby, her name would be Big Red. Now who doesn’t want to see THAT?!” I wanted to.

My friend Karen accompanied me to the Theater Wit to see Big Red and the Boys with the expectation that we would be the only two straight people in the audience. We weren’t. Maybe not even the two oldest. We’re usually either the oldest or the youngest in the crowd. It was, to say the least, an eclectic audience. I turned to Karen when I saw a family enter, one that included a preteen girl, and said “How can they bring a kid to this show?”

The show, Get Your Holiday On, was, as expected, rollicking, bawdy, good fun. Near the end of the show Meghan noticed the young girl in the audience, and, in a moment that seemed to be real, not part of the act, rhetorically said “There were children in the audience?”, before shrugging it off to the delight of the crowd, including the parents.

We both loved the show and may make it yet another holiday tradition (see comment on the Q Brothers), but what really impressed Karen was Meghan’s ability to navigate the show, with all its dance steps, while wearing three-and-a half-inch spiked heels. How is it that women can measure heels from a distance? It’s for insights like this that a partner in crime is invaluable on forays into unchartered territory.

So now we have tickets to see Meghan, along with Danni Smith and Cassie Slater in “We Three: Loud Her. Fast Her. Funny Her.” at Steppenwolf Theater of all places. The title is promising. Stay tuned.