Music

Grant Park Music Festival – July 7, 2021

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The Grant Park Music Festival reopened its figurative doors after over a year off, and though I chose not to attend the Fourth of July concert, which quixotically took place on July 2nd and 3rd, I declared my independence from Covid incarceration by wending my way to the park for the first “real” concert , which featured Joyce Yang entrancing the audience with her masterful rendition of Grieg’s popular Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, which even I attempted, fairly unsuccessfully, to play as a child, though, for years I would pound out the first three bars, and only that, whenever I had the opportunity, as a way of pretending, for anyone within earshot, that I might actually know what I was doing. (I take the preceding 123-word sentence as evidence that my brain has not completely atrophied during my forced layoff, though not necessarily evidence of any writing skills.)

The concert closed with a rousing version of Rossini’s Overture to William Tell, the conclusion of which was timed perfectly with the onset of the rain, such that the crowd’s standing ovation began with 20 seconds left in the piece, as the attendees, so unaccustomed to being in such a situation, flailed about, with no direction home, like a group of rolling stones, getting spit upon from on high.

As happy as I am that things are opening up, the timing is somewhat unfortunate, as I have just discovered Netflix’s apparently unlimited number of Turkish soap operas (dizi for the aficionados).

Rush Hour Concert – The Romantic Piano Trios – June 15, 2021

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Having survived last week’s brave new world experience of an indoor concert with masks and limited capacity, I went back to St. James Cathedral, where MingHuan Xu (violin), Alexander Hersh (cello), and Winston Choi (piano) serenaded us with lovely pieces from Robert Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel.

I’m told that the restrictions may be taken off for next week’s concert. I’ll be pleased to go without a mask, but have a fondness for the current attendance rules, as it means that I don’t have to mingle with too many people, especially those who have come out of hibernation with an apparent insatiable need to shake hands, which is so 2019, the last time I (or anyone else?) had a cold.

I wonder if the cicada that may, depending on the weather, soon be emerging from their own dormant state (the app Cicada Safari states that periodical cicadas emerge in large numbers when the soil temperature reaches 64º F and often after a soaking rain) also will want to shake hands (or legs in their case). I might prefer that.

Chen String Quartet – Rush Hour Concert – June 8, 2021

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This week, at the St. James Cathedral, for the first time since March 10, 2020, when a scientist walked into the bar I was at and started talking about thermodynamics, I attended an indoor event at a site that wasn’t a vaccinated friend’s residence.

Clearly, the Chen family had kept practicing during The Great Lull. Even world-class musicians might lose their edge spending 16 months just sitting around eating bonbons and catching up on old episodes of My Mother the Car.

Attendance was limited to 100, in a space that can accommodate, I am told, over 400. And masks were required, though a very few people decided that the rules didn’t apply to them, and pulled theirs down when no one, except me, was looking. Apparently these attendees were special, though they looked much like anyone you might encounter on the street, just as do the aliens among us who are posing as humans and small puppies.

I must admit that wearing a mask throughout the concert did cause me to grow somewhat sleepy as I breathed in my own fumes. Perhaps I should have brought a mask from home, rather than use one I found in the garbage receptacle on the corner.

You Know Things are Getting Bad When . . .

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You have to remove all your injury ice packs from your freezer to make room for food.

Your choices for television you haven’t seen yet are down to The Masked Singer and reruns of videos from your lobby showing the mail person delivering the mail.

The guy in line in front of you at the store pulls out a measuring tape, gives you a dirty look, and makes a chalk line on the floor six feet behind him.

You don’t bother to pick the lima beans out of the vegetable medley you bought because they were out of real food.

You’re training your dog to go to the store for you.

You’re making a collage out of all the CEO messages you’ve received regarding company responses to COVID-19.

You live in a multiunit building and are considering saying hello to your neighbors.

BUT, DON’T PANIC YET – here’s some good news from a couple subscribers.

The 92nd Street Y in New York will live stream Garrick Ohlsson’s piano performance tonight at 7:00 Central time. 

The Berlin Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall is offering a free month of high quality audio and video—including different angles and closeups of the solos. (And the instructions are in English.)

Finally, thanks to all of you from whom I’ve heard about my recent post-apocalyptic posts. If my brain doesn’t give in to cabin fever, I’ll try, with your help, to keep them coming.

The Theory of Nothing

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Just because the world has ground to a halt doesn’t mean that I should stop writing, or does it? Have I misinterpreted the signs? Anyway, to help us all pass the time, here are some notes about some of the things I’m not doing.

Speaking of signs, and the stealing thereof, I’m not watching baseball games. I wouldn’t anyway, but my class on the Literature of Baseball at Northwestern’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute will be held online, instead of in person, which means I don’t get to indulge in the delicious home-made brownies that a member of the class, who is a baker, brings each week.

I’m not watching March Madness or running my pool, which is a shame because I concocted some bizarre rules this year in the hope that no one else would understand them. In that vein, in the absence of games, I have declared myself the winner of the pool.

Despite having been the Wizard of Oz in Wicked on Broadway, Joel Grey apparently does not have the power to make everything right and so is not going to the 25th Anniversary Porchlight Music Theatre Icons Gala honoring him and neither is anyone else, including me, at least until it gets rescheduled.

I’m not going to the postponed Newberry Library Associates Night, where I was hoping to cop some free wine and cheese and then sneak out before the staff droned on about research that would have bored me to tears.

I’m not going to the American Writers Museum to listen to Gene Luen Yang talk about his new graphic novel Dragon Hoops, as he cancelled his in-person book tour, and instead, according to his website, is touring as a cartoon.

I’m not going to the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s 100th Anniversary Concert, which was to feature Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, which also was performed at the orchestra’s first-ever concert on March 29, 1920. I missed that one too.

Erwin Helfer (piano) – The Hideout – March 5, 2020

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Erwin Helfer is my favorite boogie boogie and blues piano player (and a really nice guy, whom I’ve met a couple times). The last time I saw him was at the 2019 Chicago Blues Festival. Quite by accident, I discovered that he’d be playing at The Hideout, a place I’d never been to before.

The Hideout calls itself “a regular guy bar for irregular folks who just don’t fit in, or just don’t want to fit in.” As such, it’s got my name written all over it. After only one visit, I’d say that it’s my new favorite bar, except I didn’t have an old favorite bar, and I really don’t drink very much. That said, the bar’s Shiner S’more Chocolate & Marshmallow Ale on tap also had my name written all over it, and my name isn’t even Shiner.

Helfer’s trio was to include Rick Sherry on the washboard, which was an added enticement. I don’t know Sherry, but, c’mon, it’s the washboard. I heard my first one in New Orleans thirty years ago, played by a guy who also played the log that night. But Sherry, Helfer told us, had the flu, and was replaced by a drummer who atmospherically wielded a couple drum brushes as if he were Picasso.

Despite the lack of a log or washboard, the ambience I was seeking was maintained by The Hideout’s piano, which, in the true spirit of Helfer’s style and repertoire, is a very old-looking upright, without a top, with the hammers thus revealed.

My next trip to The Hideout will be for A Scientist Walks into a Bar : Thermodynamics – The Hottest Science. (Is this place eclectic or what?) The bar’s monthly interviews are promoted as “Chicago’s premier science-comedy talk show”. Are there others?

New Faces Sing Broadway Now – Arts Club of Chicago – February 25, 2020

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As usual, Porchlight Music Theatre’s New Faces event showcased a host of talent, and a host with talent, Cory Goodrich, five-time Jeff Award nominee, and two-time winner, who is soon to star in Porchlight’s production of Freaky Friday, opening April 10th.

There were songs from recent arrivals and entrenched hits, including four of the five longest-running shows in Broadway history – The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, The Lion King, and Wicked – but none from non-musicals.

One song was from a show that just opened on Broadway, but is familiar to Chicago audiences – Six. Six’s Porchlight connection is strong, as four of the six stars of the show have been featured in the past in the New Faces series.

What’s more, four of the six women in the cast have first names that start with the letter A, and the two who don’t replaced two from the original West End cast who did. Coincidence, or enemy action?

New Faces makes me think of people who literally have a new face, say for example the characters played by John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in the movie Face/Off. I wonder if they would have titled the 1997 movie Trading Faces if not for the 1983 movie Trading Places.

Speaking of John Travolta, he appeared on Broadway in 1974’s Over Here, in the role of Misfit, singing a two-song medley with the Andrews Sisters. Over Here, which I never heard of before despite it having been nominated for best musical, also included the song Don’t Shoot the Hooey to Me, Louie (gotta love the title), sung by Samuel E. Wright, who sang Under the Sea in the animated film The Little Mermaid. With that kind of trivia, Over Here sounds like a candidate for a Porchlight Revisits production.

For Lying Out Loud (Presented by The Chicago Bar Association) – Oakton Community College – February 23, 2020

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A musical suite is defined as a group of self-contained instrumental movements of varying character. A medley is a piece composed from parts of existing pieces. Instrumental medleys in overtures are fine, but calling a vocal medley a suite in a show’s printed program doesn’t make it so.

The problem with vocal medleys is that . . . . Just when the audience is starting to . . . . The performer isn’t given’t the chance to . . . . And the composer’s work . . . . It’s as if a writer started a series of sentences that . . . .

There were two so-called “suites” in this year’s Chicago Bar Association annual satire, For Lying Out Loud, that were somewhat, and only somewhat, saved by the fact that the piano accompanist for the show was excellent.

The opening and closing narrator for the show was dressed as Pinocchio, as befitting the theme. He first appeared on stage, however, already having a long nose, and it didn’t grow as a result of anything he said, unlike in the clever Geico commercials. So, was it Pinocchio or Cyrano de Bergerac?

The highlight of the show, for me, was seeing my name in the program as the purveyor of additional material, the reference being to two jokes I gave the writers many months ago. I was heartened to hear, not only the jokes, but also the audience laughing at them. Okay, the one predicting the imminent end of civilization may have elicited more of a groan, but I was back in show business.

Speaking of imminent ends, I was told that the Bar’s home venue will once again be changing, probably moving to the Studebaker Theater in The Fine Arts Building, with the hope, I suppose, that the show can somehow survive dwindling audiences and last four more years to reach an even 100, if civilization doesn’t end before then.

The Mystick Krewe of Laff 28th Annual Mardi Gras Bash – Speakeasy in the Big Easy Feat – City Winery – February 22, 2020

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How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?

The Mystic Krewe of Laff’s bash is promoted as being the biggest Mardi Gras event in Chicago. I don’t know if that claim is accurate, but even if it is, I’ve seen Paree, or rather I’ve seen the Krewe du Vieux Carré in New Orleans. It was 2012 and the theme was Crimes Against Nature, and they meant it.

In New Orleans, the party was outside, where Mardi Gras parties should be, and where you don’t mind standing, unlike in the City Winery, where they oversold the event and didn’t have enough seats, though seating for all had been promised.

In New Orleans the music was better, sounded more like New Orleans, and wasn’t as hard on the ears as the piercing din at the City Winery, though fortunately I was prescient enough to bring earplugs.

In New Orleans the food was better, as City Winery was apparently promoting a bland-food diet. How do you make jambalaya tasteless?

In New Orleans the costumes were more interesting, though a lot of people, not me, tried their best at the City Winery. They just didn’t understand the difference between flapper attire and the decadence and debauchery associated with a real carnival.

In New Orleans there were mule-drawn carts with kegs of beer and other libations on them, which, I admit, might have been somewhat challenging at the City Winery and probably in violation of several laws.

At the City Winery, people were handed beads at the door. In New Orleans, you had to earn them the old-fashioned way.

Other than all that Mrs. Lincoln, I enjoyed my first visit to City Winery.

Happy Together: Songs You Know By Heart – Michael and Angela Ingersoll – North Shore Center for the Performing Arts – February 15, 2020

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The New York Times obituary of Mary Martin mentioned how it was her suggestion that her character Nellie Forbush in the Broadway production of South Pacific should literally wash that man right out of her hair (okay, the man wasn’t literally in her hair), as a result of which Martin shampooed her hair on stage for 1000 performances.

I never got to see that, except on a very grainy video of a West End production, but I did get to see Angela Ingersoll do it on stage, without the aid of a shower like Martin had, instead dunking her head into a bucket of water after donning a robe to protect her dress from any splatter. Nothing says show business like good, clean(ing) fun.

Angela’s husband Michael has some substantial credentials (including over 1300 performances in the Broadway touring company of Jersey Boys) and talent of his own, but Angela was the draw for me, having been captivated by her at a couple Porchlight Music Theater productions, including her Jeff Award-winning tour-de-force as Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow.

Among the other women in Angela’s repertoire is Cher, which reminded me of Stephanie J. Block’s story about finding Cher’s speaking voice for her Tony award-winning performance in The Cher Show. “I happened to be reading lines . . . while I was wearing Crest Whitestrips, and all of a sudden, I was beginning to sound more and more like Cher . . . . So I had to figure out how my mouth was projecting the sound and all the energy once I took the product off. Really, that was the key into how I found her exact sound. Thank you, Oral B!”

The singing aside, one highlight for me was the Ingersolls bringing their Greyhound, Dolly, on stage for a number (the dog didn’t sing) and then announcing that it was time for intermission because it was time for the dog, and perhaps some of the audience members, to pee.

But the most memorable moment of the evening may have been the recreation of the Jennifer Grey leap into Patrick Swayze’s arms while the Ingersolls sang I Had the Time of My Life as their closer. I was ready to be extremely impressed, and was, when the couple wound up doing a jumping chest bump that sent Angela flying backwards onto her butt. Cabaret meets The Three Stooges.