Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

4 X 4 / Fresh Voices VI Festival in San Francisco

The theatre is a place where illusions happen, and its subject matter, whether consciously or not, is always space and time. And then music enters the picture, and everything changes, though the really basic things don't change. How big is the performing space, and how is it used? San Francisco's Goat Hall Productions used to have its own theatre on Portrero Hill, with a non-proscenium stage. Its current place of operations is Thick House, a misnomer because it's really thin, with ramped seating divided by an aisle. This stage is a non-proscenium one too. And how it was used revealed how the intentions of the 4 works by 4 composers, on Program A ( there were 2 ), of Fresh Voices VI, were realized.

The opener, Lisa Scola Prosek's Leonardo's Notebooks, (in Italian) looked and felt cramped. Jim Cave's direction, with a large projection screen, sort of a home theatre does Thick House, parked stage right and a wall like panel next to the musicians, staged left, tended to work against the music and the play. This composer's work is steeped in the Mediterranean world of gestures writ both big and small, and while Cave's direction of Erling Wold's A Little Girl Dreams Of Taking The Veil, based on Max Ernst opera, succeeded in making it suitably surreal, Scola Prosek's piece, though imaginative, is remarkably straightforward in its depiction of Milan's Sforza court and its reigning genius Da Vinci, though Cave's direction made him, sung here by tenor Aurelio Viscarra, seem almost incidental to the goings on about him, and he certainly didn't come off as temperamental.

Cave never gave you a real sense of being in a room or of coming into a room as when his Baldassare Castigilione (bass baritone Micah Epps), and the D'Este sisters -- Isabella (soprano Diana Landau), and Beatrice (mezzo Hanna Ostroff), drop into the artist's studio unannounced, nor did you get a sense of the characters positioned in space which would have given a feeling of their characters' physical and psychological relationships. Thank God the vocal writing, which though conversational, also referenced bel canto and at times suggested the madrigal, and the instrumental writing, especially in the overture, with its shadowy inner voices, had character and point, and Scola Prosek composed some enchanting quiet, Satie and Philip Glass bare moments, as well as concerted stuff for herself on piano, Patrick Kroboth, viola, Beth Snellings, cello, and John Beeman, double bass. Cave's lighting gave a Renaissance opulence to the costumes -- from ACT's shop -- and all the performers, especially soprano Maria Mikheyenko, looking pert in a doublet as Da Vinci's servant, Salai, had their intricate and often highly expressive music well in hand, and Goat Hall music director Mark Alburger's tempos let the score breathe.

The use of space in John Beeman's shortie -- it was under 4 minutes -- Dear Composer was much stronger. Voice # 1 (Harriet March Page), Voice # 2 (Steven Clark), Voice # 3 (Mark Alburger) faced the audience from their lecterns. The simplicity of this approach -- bare stage bathed in an almost clinical off white -- was a perfect analog to their matter of fact recitations of form rejection letters which all working artists have received.

Physical as well as musical space and time seemed to be the driving force behind Steven Clark's Amok Time, which was based on the Star Trek episode of the same name. Costumes and movements both vocal and actual were stylized, almost ritualized, and the comic -- can anyone take Star Trek with a straight face? -- as well as the over the top tragic were in perfect harmony. The original "Amok Time " was projected live as the action unfolded onstage, with its 6 singers mirroring them, as Glass' vocalists did in his performance opera of Cocteau's La Belle et La Bete, which happened in real time with the film. This is a wonderful way to work: gestures amplify, reflect, or are opposed. The score, obsessive ala Reich's The Desert Music -- the Stravinsky and Wagner quotes were obvious -- as well as ceremonial and parodistic -- Alexander "Sandy" Courage's series theme was put through the ringer -- had lots of atmosphere and drive. The 30 minute TV format -- sans commercials -- may have helped Clark sharpen his ideas.

Would that Mark Alburger's The Pied Piper of Hamelin were really political and not just a clever gloss on the dismal state of current international affairs. Most of the writing -- Alburger set Robert Browning's poem in toto -- was like a manic steamroller flattening everything in sight. One didn't know whether to feel sorry for poor tenor Noah Miller as Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Mayor) singing solo center stage--was he exhausted from the vocal hoops he'd just jumped through, or was the moment meant to be poignant? The 7-member cast all in red on the open, mostly bright white stage, gave it their all as did Keisuke Nakagoshi who served as the show's one man band on the Yamaha upright which he played with his customary precision and verve. If only Alburger had chosen a better property to set. Maybe a heart connection that seemed to animate his Henry Miller in Brooklyn would have made for a better piece, though the emotional turmoil between Henry and June was probably what drew him to it. Irony goes only so far. Still this was a provocative and entertaining evening in the theatre, with strongly contrasted pieces and styles.

I'm sorry to say that I missed Fresh Voices Program B, though I did catch the 4 hour plus 12th Annual Now Music Festival at Thick House May 28th. The most striking pieces were Keith Dippre's 3 piano pieces California Low Brow which he amusingly dissed before they were given a cogent performance by Jane Weeks Gardiner, and Edward Shocker's Netori, which was played on 2 electric guitars by Natha Clevenge and Wayne Grim. This slowly elongated pitch -- 2 actually -- which grew to almost ear-splitting intensity was meant to evoke the tuning of a gagaku - (Japanese court music ensemble), and its loudness was as loud or louder than Glenn Branca's stuff which I caught once at, if memory serves, a performance space in Manhattan's West Village. It did so superbly, and the fact that a lot of the audience swore they hated it was evidence of its power. Music should shake things up. This piece certainly did.

posted by Michael McDonagh 5/30/2006