Dave Read

Herbie Hancock The Imagine Project at Tanglewood

August 9, 2010 performance report by Dave Read.

Herbie Hancock brought his The Imagine Project tour to Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, and just about blew the roof off the joint. Mr. Hancock, more youthful and fit than any 70 year old man should expect to be, was accompanied by Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, James Genus on bass, Lionel Loueke on guitar, Greg Phillinganes on keyboards (and vocals), Kristina Train, vocals (and violin). They played one immense set that opened with Actual Proof (1974 “Thrust”) and closed with Chameleon (1973 “Head Hunters”), which we caught on video, while the usually staid Tanglewood audience got busy!

The day before this gig, while Mr. Hancock and the Imagine Project were headlining the Newport Jazz Festival, Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble were putting on a festival of their own in Tanglewood’s Koussevitsky Music Shed. That’s notable because the former has a mission to “utilize(s) the universal language of music to express its central themes of peace and global responsibility” and the latter seeks to “connect the world’s neighborhoods by bringing together artists and audiences around the globe.”

Clark Art schedules Cavani String Quartet

The Clark Art Institute schedule features the Cavani String Quartet on Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 8:00 pm, in the final concert in the summer Chamber Music Series at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. The Cavani Quartet has been described in the The New York Times as ‘…warmly lyrical,’ and in The Cleveland Plain Dealer as “one seamless, superb ensemble.” The evening’s program includes Beethoven String Quartet in G major, Opus 18, No. 2; Quartet No. 2 by Karol Szymanovsky; and Ravel String Quartet in F Major. Tickets are $21, $18 for Clark members and students with ID, and may be purchased at clarkart.edu, by phone 413-458-0524, or in person at the museum shop. Get directions to Clark Art Institute.

An irresistible presence on stage, the Quartet performs regularly in major series and festivals throughout North America and Europe. Appearances include Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the Ambassador Series in Los Angeles, Muziekcentrum De IJsbreker in Amsterdam, and Festival de L’Epau in France. Active proponents of contemporary music, the Quartet has commissioned and performed the works of an array of international living composers and is a recipient of the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. The Quartet has been featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today and St. Paul Sunday, and on NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS television. In 2005, the Quartet became the first recipient of the Guarneri String Quartet Residency Award from Chamber Music America. Cavani Quartet recordings of Bartók, Dvo?ák, Schumann, Brahms, Erb, Chausson, Brouwer and Primosch are available on the Azica, Gasparo, New World, Albany, and Pantheon labels.

A three-course fixed-price dinner is available at 6:00 pm for $25 and includes a choice of appetizer or soup, entrée, and dessert (meal cost does not include concert, beverage, tax, or gratuity). Reservations are required for the dinner, as seating is limited. Galleries and museum shop will remain open until 6:00 pm. This concert series is funded by the Alice Shaver Foundation; additional support is provided by Legacy Portfolio Management.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The galleries are open daily in July and August, 10 am to 5 pm. Admission June 1 through October 31 is $15 for adults, free for children 18 and younger, members, and students with valid ID. Admission is free November through May. For more information, call 413 458 2303 or visit clarkart.edu.

Hotels Williamstown, MA

Directions to Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA

[mappress]

Yo Yo Ma tops Tanglewood program

Report of August 1, 2010 perfromance by Dave Conlin Read.

The composition of a Tanglewood program itself sometimes enhances the enjoyment of the various compositions that comprise a program; a transcending element to go along with the enjoyment of the program as performed by the musicians. On paper, this program at Tanglewood was sure to attact a large audience because of the presence on the bill of cellist Yo Yo Ma and the inclusion of the broadly popular Pictures At An Exhibition (the Maurice Ravel orchestration of Mussogorsky’s composition), under the direction of conductor Charles Dutoit, who has been a frequest guest here and in Boston for nearly 30 years.

And, with the cooperation of the iffy Berkshires weather, the Koussevitsky Music Shed was full and a few thousand more patrons and picnicers populated the lawn. But it was the opening item on the program that we found most remarkable; Jean Sibelius’ “Karelia” Suite, Opus 11, which had never been performed at Tanglewood, and only once by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Not only would we like to hear it again here, but we wonder why it hasn’t made it onto the regular rotation (if there is such?); it felt like a paean to this place – particularly the immediate Tanglewood environs as well as the greater Berkshires.

Which comports with the composition’s origin as a commission on the history of Karelia, the densely wooded region in northern Europe. Besides a delightful variety of sounds from the percussion section, the piece has an overall deeply sonorous feel. Gazing outside the Shed, the surrounding trees seemed to be as attentive to the music as the paying audience was.

When Yo Yo Ma settles onto the soloists chair near the podium, as he did to perform the Cello Concerto in E Minor, Opus 85, by Edward Elgar, holding cello and bow, it’s as if a new entity comes into being. Well, a pedestrain witness does himself no favor trying to describe artistry at this level. Berkshires resident Ma, who by all accounts is a friendly and humble gentleman, makes music at a level that could inspire composers, as a profound event or dazzling landscape would.

On the other hand, having such a popular soloist, or widely familiar piece on the program, always attracts patrons who are unfamiliar with symphony audience protocal; they’re like new parents who applaud every movement.

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center schedules Douglas Trumbull talk

The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington has scheduled visionary filmmaker, innovator and entrepreneur, Douglas Trumbull to host a pre-screening talk and post-screening Q&A including never-before-seen photos of the making of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) on Monday, August 16. The movie’s soundtrack was composed by Berkshires favorite and Boston Pops Laureate Conductor John Williams.

Doug Trumbull has enjoyed a long and prestigious technological and creative career in filmmaking. Trumbull’s early career included pioneering work in 1968 as one of four effects supervisors in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He subsequently influenced movie goers around the world with stunning visual effects in films such as The Andromeda Strain, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Blade Runner. In addition, Trumbull directed the feature films Silent Running and Brainstorm. Trumbull has been the recipient of the American Society of Cinematographer’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and has recently been selected by his peers as an honorary member of the Visual Effects Society (only the fifth to receive this distinction).

Talk by Doug Trumbull at 7PM prior to 7:30PM film; post screening Q&A to follow. Tickets: $6.00 General Admission. For more information visit www.mahaiwe.org or phone the Mahaiwe Box Office: 413-528-0100.

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind: Written and Directed by Steven Spielberg. After an encounter with UFOs, a line worker feels undeniably drawn to an isolated area in the wilderness where something spectacular is about to happen. Starring Richard Dreyfuss; Francois Truffaut; and Teri Garr. Running Time:132 minutes. Suggested Rating: PG-13 for some frightening moments.

Movie audiences are encouraged to arrive a half-hour prior to the advertised start time for this General Admission seating event. The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is located at 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington MA.

Our Town at Williamstown Theatre Festival

July 29, 2010 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town shows us again, no matter how many times we have seen it, or even directed it, as I have, just why this play is important—especially when the play is presented in such a finely nuanced manner, faithful to the original, as with this Williamstown Theatre Festival production.

Wilder himself complained that critics had been led astray on his seeming innovations of a bare stage on which a chair could be a tombstone (an innovation only for American realist theatre; Yeats and French dramatists had been doing that for years).

For Wilder the importance was in the simple (but ever present references in the script to ther dimensions of time and space and the recurrent words “hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, pointing to the vastness in which the events of each life flowers, lives and dies. The universality and importance of each small event in which each life is lived.

It is that quality of the enormous vastness and the simple day to day life of ordinary people that is so honestly captured in the play Nicholas Martin, director, has led his talented cast through. An affirmation of life, presented faithfully, joyfully, and sadly—so gently but accurately presented that a line like ‘Where is my birthday girl?” can break the heart.

The cast is stellar on all counts. Campbell Scott as Stage Manager so audience friendly and confiding, strolling the stage casually, weaving it all into its daily patterns (with only a reminding concerning cell phones to jerks us mildly to recognition of an earlier time when that line was not in any life or script). Brie Larson, central in this “Emily’s Play.” Taking that lead only when her turn to do so and shining especially in her sudden outburst at the soda-fountain, and, of course in the final act when her awareness finally takes hold. Jessica Hecht and Dylan Baker as moving parents, but both too busy with their daily lives too much of the time to have time to really see the children they love fiercely but too seldom time for expressing to them.

And the whole Gibbs family into which Emily marries, too young, and is wrest from (again too young) Mrs. Gibbs (Becky Ann Baker) with her modest dream of Paris if she sells the antique never full-filled; Dr. Gibbs (John Rubinstein) opening the play with his delivery of the twin babies as life goes on. Will Rogers as the inarticulate baseball hero son in the Gibbs family who loves Emily so fervently. And Emma Rosenthal as daughter Rebecca who receives the letter with the address into infinity and has the short remarkable line “And it got here just the same!” .

Be assured the current Our Town at Williamstown Theatre Festival gets here all the same too. With more glories than can be praised in a short review. Wilder, who once long ago appeared as the stage manager at Williamstown, would be happy with his message ringing loud and clear, and grateful to all the others in this vast talented cast who made it possible. Go.

2010 Williamstown Theatre Festival schedule

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2010 A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

As completely satisfying as the weekly 2 hour broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion is, it can seem like a souvenir when compared to a live broadcast, such as we’ve witnessed at Tanglewood the first Saturday of summer since 2000. The radio audience gets 120 minutes of humor and music; those in attendance get all that, plus the chance that the strolling serenading Keillor will help himself to their picnic goodies before airtime, and the opportunity to sing along with him, the show’s musical guests, and the Guy’s All Star Show Band for another hour afterwards.

Garrison Keillor and Andrea Suchy sing America the Beautiful, 2010 Tanglewood encore

With BSO opening night two weeks away, the show was without the usual participation of BSO/TMC musicians. Rather, it featured 3 musical guests, all drawn from the distaff side: Andrea Suchy, Hilary Thavis, and The Wailin’ Jennys. Expanding upon that gynocentric theme were the Lives of the Cowboys skit and the introduction of Erica Rhodes as Keillor’s replacement as the show’s host (once certain issues are resolved, that is).

The localised scripts were funny; especially Guy Noir on the case of the imaginary grandson of Edith and Teddy Wharton showing up to claim the Mount and convert it into a dirt bike race track. Scripts and podcast of the show are available at PrairieHome.org.

Update: Your intrepid reporter is seen on the Prairie Home Youtube clip (above) capturing Flip video of the encore: