Hold on to your Santa hat. John Waters is coming to town.

Like a St. Nic for the adult set, the filmmaker, author and raconteur arrives with a sleigh full of nostalgic, smutty fun. It’s all done up as “A John Waters Christmas,” a touring show presented on Sunday night at The Egg (12/2, Albany NY). (See full schedule below.)

“You could call it my obsession, having the right kind of Christmas,” says Waters. “But everyone should have whatever kind of Christmas they want. Even if you’re Jewish, you can have the right kind of Christmas.”

As a writer and director, Waters is best known for comedy spoofs like “Hairspray,” “Serial Mom” and “Pink Flamingos.” It’s been eight years, though, since his last effort, “A Dirty Shame,” received a commercially dooming NC-17 rating. Since then, he’s published a couple of books and has been getting lots of mileage out of the grandest and campiest of American holidays. Along with his annual one-man show, Waters has released an album of songs and carols and also made efforts to produce a Christmas movie — titled “Fruitcake.”

For Sunday night, bring him your questions — about your Christmas dilemmas or his legendary career — and expect some fun memories and sharp advice.

“Growing up in Baltimore, I was so confused by Christmas. I though the holy trinity was Jesus, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus,” he recalls. “Sitting on Santa’s lap was fun, but stay away from Easter Bunny. That costume is always filthy.”

Speaking of filth, Waters admits that his take on the holidays is probably not right for families. But nothing in our interview came off as mean spirited or even X-rated. Waters is just highly opinionated with a rapid-fire delivery on a vast array of topics.

“Books are the best gift, you really can’t go wrong. Clothes are the toughest because you never really know the person’s style,” he says. “The Salvation Army is a great place to shop, but only if you get for the most outrageous items and wear them all together at the same time. That is, if you’re brave. But if you’re old enough to remember the style, then you’re not allowed to wear it again. And no one over 25 should put on those skinny, skinny jeans. And never leather pants.”

“A more stylish Santa would be nice,” continues Waters, hardly taking a breath. “They should have a slimmed down Santa at Bloomingdale’s telling you which expensive things to buy. Santa’s always great but never ask the fattest person to play Santa. It’s discrimination.”

Speaking of distinctive styles, I told Waters that I pictured him in an ascot. Or did I imagine that?

“Oh, I maybe wore an ascot in grade school,” he says. “That would explain why I turned out the way I did.”

Here’s Waters’ full 2012 schedule: 

11/29…Philadelphia
11/30 – Providence
12/1 – Poughkeepsie
12/2 – Albany, NY
12/3 – Tarrytown, NY
12/4 – Solano Beach, CA
12/6 – Los Angeles
12/7 – Boise
12/8 – Phoenix
12/9 – Branchburgh, NJ
12/10 – Alexandria, VA
12/13 – Atlanta
12/14 – Minneapolis
12/15 – Detroit
12/16 – Rochester

I am forty-four years old, and I have lived through a startling transformation in the status of gay men and women in the United States. Around the time I was born, homosexual acts were illegal in every state but Illinois. Lesbians and gays were barred from serving in the federal government. There were no openly gay politicians. A few closeted homosexuals occupied positions of power, but they tended to make things more miserable for their kind…

Today, gay people of a certain age may feel as though they had stepped out of a lavender time machine.

Besides touching on the milestones of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush and, finally, Obama years with personal memories and moments, Alex also talks about the new book “How to Be Gay,” a massive tome by David Halperin (Harvard University Press).  The book is heavy with insight, ideas and physical weight – too long and heavy for me.  I’ll be doing well just keeping up with the New Yorker issues that will soon start arriving. Besides, I’ve never needed lessons in “how to be gay” (though further practice is always good).

Having plausibly defined gay culture, Halperin ponders its fate. Its demise has been prophesied many times, often with eagerness: already in 1944, Robert Duncan sounds fed up with the rites of camp. In the nineties, there was a vogue for the phrase “post-gay,” signifying life outside the ghetto, and in 2005 Andrew Sullivan announced the “end of gay culture.” Yet, like Sarah Bernhardt, camp always seems to be coming around for one more farewell tour. Chris Colfer, the fearlessly swishy young actor who has become the star of “Glee,” has revived the cult of Judy and Babs for the post-millennial generation. Curiously, Halperin doesn’t mention “Glee,” but he says that his gay students lap up all that antiquated lore, effortlessly unravelling its codes. He also notes that the gay audience tends to lose interest when coded messages give way to explicitly affirmative ones. Lady Gaga tried to write a new gay anthem with “Born This Way,” yet the song failed to ignite the clubs and bars as “Poker Face” had before it. Subtext is sexier.

It sounds like a late-night parlor game:  pick two artistic geniuses of the 20th century that you’d like to hear share a conversation in the great beyond.

Michael Century had no trouble coming up with a dynamic combination:  experimental composer John Cage and classical pianist Glenn Gould.  He’s paired them up in an unusual concert happening Saturday night at EMPAC and presented by the iEar series.

Actually “happening” is an operative word to describe the event.  The term dates from the 60s and is attributed to Cage, who infused music with theatricality and all manner of other media using elements of randomness or “chance.”

Century, who’s a professor in the arts department at RPI, has been working with Cage’s ideas of layering and chance in creating the first half of Saturday night’s event.  Some of the elements he’s combined include:  the recorded voices of Cage and Gould, a pianist performing portions of Gould’s final concert, musicians performing works by Cage, and video of an actor portraying Gould (taken from 1993’s “32 Short Films About Glenn Gould”).

The extravagant result of all of this might just be a Cage-Gould dialogue.

“There’s a multitude of concerts around the world right now for Cage’s centennial year,” says Century.  “We’re joining in the celebration but with our own original twist, giving the audience a chance to hear these two remarkable musical artists and thinkers converse with each other in a virtual dialogue.”

Century himself once talked with Cage and he recalls the experience as a pivotal moment in his development as an artist.

Michael Century

“It was 1983.  I was 25 and in awe of this figure,” recalls Century.  “He had a marvelous laugh and great smile.”

Century and some of his peers had been working for weeks preparing Cage’s “Song Books” in advance of a performance at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada.

“Cage said at the very end this is marvelous but it’s not my piece.  We were crestfallen and didn’t understand,” says Century.  “We had not really put it together with a true understanding of chance operations.  He sat us down and gave this little lesson.”

Century hasn’t made the same mistake this time around.  While much planning has gone into Saturday’s event, which includes 13 musicians plus lots of technology, the final outcome will be unique to the moment.  “There’s chance in the way we’re lining up certain elements and in the virtual dialogue,” says Century.

While a sense of whimsy and fun may come through, the concert will be preceded by a lecture on the intersecting philosophies and respective legacies of Cage and Gould.  The talk will be given by Elie During, who is a professor at the University of Paris and has written articles on both Cage and Gould.

For his part, Century thinks Gould was prophetic but also missed the mark in his views on the future of music.  “He was wrong about the concert experience being a dead art form,” says Century.  “But he was right about music becoming much more of an everyday activity that people play with.”

As an example of how music can be “played with,” Century points to the Goldberg App, something he recently created with multi-media artist Sean Lawson, who is also an RPI professor.   By using an iPhone or iPad, anyone can alter J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations in a variety of ways, simply by touching or tilting the device.  The Goldbergs, of course, was Glenn Gould’s signature work, but the newly released app is based on a performance by Century, not Gould.  The Goldberg App is available for downloading at the iTunes store.

Making music accessible and allowing anybody to alter, change and just mess around with it also speaks to Cage’s legacy.  But Century thinks the whole Cage legacy has gotten a little out of hand.

“There’s an irony in the grandness of his centenary,” says Century, referring to the numerous tributes at major venues like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, to name just two.  “To me there’s an over the top ideology, a hagiography.  He was a contradictory guy not a god.”

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

The work got the royal treatment from the Met, including a chic production by Robert Lepage. Unlike the director’s leaden, glitchy “Ring” machine, this staging effortlessly evoked magic, imagining Prospero’s island as a re-creation of Italy’s iconic La Scala opera house.

Shifting scrims and visible stage machinery suggested mysterious forces at work, climaxing in the last act when a lowered backdrop transformed a tangle of scaffolding into a towering wall of gilt opera boxes.

The cast, too, was A-list. British baritone Simon Keenlyside re-created his original role of the sorcerer Prospero, negotiating the wide-ranging and bombastic part expertly. As his spirit sidekick Ariel, soprano Audrey Luna chirped fearlessly in music flitting above high C.

— James Jordan, New York Post

At its London premiere I thought “The Tempest” one of the most inspired, audacious and personal operas to have come along in years. I feel this even more strongly after the Met’s fantastical production, which offers a superb cast…

Now 41, Mr. Adès was only 32 when he conducted the premiere of the opera in London. He had been writing wildly diverse works, including his brash chamber opera “Powder Her Face,” about the scandalous sexual exploits of Margaret, duchess of Argyll. For “The Tempest” he fashioned a language that on its surface may seem seductively tonal. But at every moment all sorts of complex, subtle things are going on in this music…

During a final scene of reconciliation Prospero relinquishes his magical powers, blesses his daughter’s marriage and starts the uneasy process of forgiving his brother. The music is a passacaglia, an old dance in variation form, here rendered with lacy lyrical writing and ethereal harmonies by the multiskilled Mr. Adès, who, by the way, drew a textured, glittering and suspenseful account of his opera from the great Met orchestra.

— Anthony Tommasini, New York Times

Thomas Adès’s The Tempest is not a multimedia pageant, a musical with pretense, or some brave new hybrid. It is fresh proof of the sinew still left in an aged genre. You know it from the first minutes, in which a high, crystalline chord is shattered by a sonic gale, and Miranda appears onstage, fretting over the damage in agitated melodic leaps, while gusts of orchestral music whip around her voice. For all the spectacle with which Robert Lepage beribbons the Metropolitan Opera’s production, this remains a drama powered by a marvel of a score.

 — Justin Davidson, New York Magazine

]]> http://www.mybiggayears.com/archives/ades-the-tempest-storms-theaters/feed/ 0 http://www.mybiggayears.com/archives/glaser/ http://www.mybiggayears.com/archives/glaser/#comments Fri, 02 Nov 2012 02:00:05 +0000 jody http://www.mybiggayears.com/?p=4189 It’s time again to ♥ NY.  That wasn’t the case a week or so ago when I interviewed Milton Glaser.  It was just because two shows of his works were coming to Albany….

Designer Milton Glaser is the man who made the heart symbol into a verb, with the I ♥ NY logo. But over the course of his 50 years as a designer, he’s created many other images that have permeated our culture. Simultaneous exhibits of his works will be on display at Sage College’s Opalka Gallery and Rathbone Hall starting Friday and running through Dec. 14.

Since 1977, when I ♥ NY was created for a New York state tourism campaign, it has become one of the most ubiquitous and widely imitated images in modern history.

“The thing outshadows everything else I’ve done. There’s nothing I can ever do that will get the publicity or circulation,” says Glaser, 83, from his Manhattan studio. “It just seemed inevitable, but it may also be the most banal thing I’ve ever done.”

Glaser’s ability to infuse good taste and creativity, simplicity and imagination into the realm of advertising has made him perhaps the most celebrated of America designers. Whether you realize it or not, you probably know plenty of his other works. To cite

just one example, there’s the Bob Dylan poster that shows the singer in profile with a rainbow of hair.

In 2009 Glaser was honored with the National Medal of the Arts, which was bestowed by President Obama in a White House ceremony. Retrospectives of his work have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Pompidou Center in Paris.

“In Search of the Miraculous: Or, One Thing Leads to Another” is the name of the traveling exhibit coming to the Opalka (as well as of Glaser’s latest book). Contained within that title are two key components of Glaser’s work: the magic of art and the leading nature of advertising.

“One of the problems of being a graphic artist is that at its core it’s based on the service of capitalism,” says Glaser. “It’s purposeful, and therefore you share the client’s objective. But art is not purposeful. It’s about commonality, making people have something in common. Those things can’t be reconciled.

“But the best people have managed to reconcile those differences,” continues Glaser. “I’ve always been interested in how you make that happen.”

Having his posters appear in museums and galleries seems confirmation enough that Glaser is at least as much of an artist as a graphic designer. But he still wrestles with the distinction.

“Art exists as a conveyor of beauty, and then what is beauty?” he says. “It is really a historical agreement. You find things that are not art in a museum, and you find things on the street that are.”

For Glaser, seeing his work in the everyday world can evoke mixed feelings.

“It serves a social purpose, and when it basically does no harm, it’s great,” says Glaser. “When I’m part of a conspiracy to sell things to people, it feels terrible.”

Even with his extraordinary acclaim, Glaser is not immune to the latest trends of marketing.  ”The economic difficulty makes commerce much more aggressive,” he observes. “People really want to exercise their most financially driven objectives. There’s no time to fool around and be arty.”

Nevertheless, Glaser has been taking time for a more personal project — preparing material for a new retrospective to be published by Taschen. It will be his sixth book. Among his previous publications are “Graphic Design,” “Art is Work” and “Drawing is Thinking.”

“This is going to be a book that’s not a repetition of things people have already seen,” explains Glaser. “I asked myself what if I took the works I’ve already done and recomposed them and change the context. I characterize it as a series of collisions, and the result is most peculiar.”

These latest efforts are accomplished at a computer, a tool that has played an ever-increasing role in Glaser’s work over the decades.

“I’ve been working less on painting and drawing than I used to, and more on assembling,” he says. “And I always have a bright attractive person sitting at my right hand to do the controls.”

Looking through the history of his own creativity has been revelatory.

“I’m not only surprised but shocked at the archive of work,” he says. “It’s a little like archeology.”

Originally published in the Times Union.

— from the Guarian’s obituary by Guy Rickards

His music expressed passionate but mixed feelings about his German heritage. His Nazi-era childhood alone would have produced, at the least, ambivalence about that heritage, but his homosexuality only further estranged him, particularly from the bourgeois West German society of the immediate postwar years.

— from Paul Griffith’s obituary in the New York Times.

Conte lives in the Bay Area and has been on the faculty of San Francisco Conservatory of Music since 1985.  He’s written extensively for mens choruses and two of his operas will receive performances this fall, “American Tropical” (November 3 at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles) and “The Gift of the Magi” (December 14-15 at Fort Collins Opera, Colorado).

In the following interview, Conte touches on his arrival in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS crisis, on composing as being a spiritual channel, and on the upcoming “Stonewall.”  Much of that opera, he says, happens in the spirit realm where central characters are Michael Jackson and Judy Garland.

The project needs backing and is raising funds through Kickstarter.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Take a look at Gerald Busby

Queeries for composer Gerald Busby

Anyway, I’m super proud of the guys for appearing this week in the New York Times. Yet I’ve been checking the site daily for years now, justsoyouknow.

I mostly just pay attention to their the posts on men, especially the series known as Guy on the Street. Thanks to their critical eye, I’ve become hyper conscious of the hem of my pants.  No puddles of fabric on the shoes, I promise!  And I now refer to our First Lady as Shelly O, just like my guys do.

Here’s a couple of my all-time favorite posts:

Ewan McGregor riding his bike with his dog

It’s like Ewan McGregor got up yesterday and said to himself, “Self? What is the absolute cutest possible thing I can do today? Shall I hold a naked baby to my chest? Swim with the otters at the zoo? Sing a solo backed by a choir of blind children? I know! I’ll dress up all adorable-like and ride my bike with some sort of poodle-mix puppy in the basket! Yeah!”

Lest you think we only have eyes for the testosterone-dripping types like Jon Hamm and Chris Meloni, let us assure you that little Ewan here has always been at the top of our fantasy list. It helps that he’s hung, sure, but he’s always been so freaking adorable without looking like he’s trying to be adorable. Look at him here. He’s riding his bike in a newsboy cap with a poodle in a basket and he STILL doesn’t look like he’s trying too hard. That’s a talent. He could probably dress up in a squirrel costume and still look hot and dignified.

Daniel Craig out and about in London

Ah, the perils of the ribbed waist band. Many a sweater has gone back on the shelf once we’ve tried it on and realized it gave us a bicycle tire around our waist (and yes, sometimes there already is a bicycle tire present, thank you very much). Daniel more than likely doesn’t have any significant paunch under his clothes; that’s all sweater, making him look like he’s retaining water. And if he actually does have a paunch under there, all the more reason not to wear a sweater that makes it look … paunchier…

However, Daniel Craig, you are still hot to death with a slammin bod, and this outfit is super-cute and Oh-Emm-Eff-Gee, we want those brown wingtips so bad.