Category: Seattle

My Ring journey: The Rhinegold

Ring Pit

My first encounter with this year’s Ring happened in the middle of July. For reasons that are irrelevant, I was sitting across a table from Bob Spano. Spano first conducted the Seattle Ring in 2005 and made such a positive impression that Speight Jenkins invited him back for the 2009 Ring. Here we were, with a vodka tonic in my hand and a martini in his hand, having a conversation – about The Ring.

I met Spano, and a few other people at a local watering hole. It was 11:30 pm and the conductor had finished a rehearsal of Twilight of the Gods – the nearly five hour conclusion of The Ring. A few minutes earlier Spano had pulled out the mammoth score to the opera he just rehearsed, and placed it with a thud on a nearby chair. The rest of the group, all musicians, marveled at the phone book-sized tome. Soon the musicians – with Spano’s approval – picked up the score and began going through its pages. “There’s a man who has studied Wagner’s music.” Remarked one of the musicians after reading through Spano’s post-it annotations to the score.

“Be careful. Don’t mess with those post-its!” Spano shot back.

Continue reading My Ring journey: The Rhinegold

An Experience which reached the Sublime: Cappella Romana and Arvo Part

If you were frazzled or upset, worried, angry or just tired, Holy Rosary Church in West Seattle was the place to be Saturday night.

It took less than the first minute of singing by Cappella Romana to set an atmosphere of being wrapped in peace for the entire concert.

It was a perfect marriage, the pure and very well trained voices of Cappella Romana, this time with women as well as men, singing unaccompanied and without intermission or interruption the “Odes of Repentance” of Arvo Part, in a church which lets the sound linger in the air.

Continue reading An Experience which reached the Sublime: Cappella Romana and Arvo Part

Der Ring des Nibelungen

The Ring starts tomorrow and the The Gathering Note will be there. For the rest of the month, we will be covering this once-ever-four-year operatic event. Come by The Gathering Note regularly for:

  • RM Campbell’s reviews of the first cycle
  • My own thoughts on the event and performances as a first time Ring goer
  • Special audio and video interviews with key people and performers
  • Feature stories by Philippa Kiraly on the technical aspects of this Ring
  • James Bash will report from the second cycle.
  • You can also follow The Gathering Note on Twitter where I will be providing updates from McCaw Hall

If you are going to the Ring, and don’t mind being interviewed for a few minutes after each performance or during intermission, send me an e-mail at zach@gatheringnote.org. I hope to include audience reactions on this site for each cycle.

Happy Ringing!

Das Barbecu opens at Thursday night at ACT

I attended the premiere of Scott Warrender and Jim Luigs’ original take on Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, “Das Barbecu,” in 1991. I don’t remember a single detail except that it was rollicking and a hit with audiences. The piece was reworked from a succinct one-act version to its current two acts over several years at places like Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn., and Center Stage in Baltimore, making its way to New York and Off-Broadway in 1994. Now, this remarkable coupling of “grand opera and Grand Ole Opry,” to use stage director Stephen Terrell’s telling phrase, has returned to Seattle. It opened a 30-day run Thursday night at ACT.

Continue reading Das Barbecu opens at Thursday night at ACT

Ephemera

This past weekend, I had the chance to hear The Esoterics perform at Holy Rosary Church in West Seattle. This particular concert was titled Ephemera and was built around the fleeting joys of nature. The Esoterics are known for the committed performances of contemporary choral music. This recent concert was no exception. Every piece on the program was written by a composer born after 1920.  Four of the six pieces were written by composers born after 1969.  The youngest being Scott Perkins who is not yet 30 years old.

Eric Banks – Esoterics founder, conductor and composer – programmed his own piece “12 Flowers” leading the group in the Seattle premiere of the piece. I was taken by the piece. Banks sets 12 haikus by Yosa Buson to music.  Banks translated twelve of Buson’s flower haikus for the piece. Interestingly, Banks didn’t employ breaks between the pieces, instead each flower flowed into the next creating a continuum of sound.  Or, as Banks says in the program notes — a bouquet.  Also, Banks utilized the morphology of each flower represented in the poems to guide the music. For instance, flowers that were smaller, and had more petals were sung faster and felt more scattered – like snow as Banks would say later. Imagine walking under a blossoming cherry tree and being surrounded by petals falling from the tree. Now try to imagine, like Banks did, this same experience in music.  The chorus sings swiftly.  The moment feels free and easy as singers flutter through the music.

Continue reading Ephemera

Jennifer Larmore plumbs the depths of royal tragedies in brilliant recording

Jennifer Larmore has a gorgeous voice that she displays to wonderful effect in “Royal Mezzo,” an album released last year by Cedille Records. Containing secular cantatas by Barber, Berlioz, Ravel, and Britten, this recording is a treasure trove for Larmore, who soars to highest peaks and dives to the uttermost depths in each piece. In this musical journey, Larmore gives us insightful performances of privileged women who find themselves (with one exception) in tragic circumstances. In other words, there are no light-weight, frilly pieces in “Royal Mezzo.” This album is the stuff of grief and resonance. And Larmore, singing with the Grant Park Orchestra under the direction of Carlos Kalmar, combines rich timbre and urgency to get to the heart of each work. Continue reading Jennifer Larmore plumbs the depths of royal tragedies in brilliant recording

Your favorite opera of “Der Ring Des Nibelungen”

Brunnhilde's ledge
This is no man! Brunnhilde's ledge for Seattle Opera's production of The Ring.

The first Ring Cycle is less than a week away.  In honor of this once-every-four-year event, take a moment to vote for your favorite opera in the cycle.  The poll closes on August 14th at the end of the first cycle.

The role of the critic: part II

Virgil Thomson: composer and critic should have opinions.
Virgil Thomson: dead composer and critic should have opinions. But no one else.

My thoughts on the role of critics and arts journalism have struck a chord with AC Douglas the proprietor of the blog Sounds & Fury. Douglas takes issues with my belief that critics should do more than tap out a few hundred words in a concert review and that the way forward for maintaining a critical dialogue about art and specifically classical music is to engage the audience. Douglas makes a number of startling pronouncements.

Douglas says:

“For arts organizations to look to and take in earnest the opinions of the arts world equivalent of pop culture’s Joe Sixpack to assess how well they’re doing artistically is a perfect prescription for artistic suicide. Joe Sixpack may be entitled to an opinion, but it’s entirely worthless to anyone but himself and his kind. To say the thing less generously, Joe Sixpack is not entitled to an opinion beyond expressing that he liked or disliked whatever it is he heard and/or saw, and, given the source, we all know just how worthless that sort of judgment is except to the one declaring it.”

Continue reading The role of the critic: part II