Though he’s gone on to triumph in television and film, it was a Broadway role — the emcee in “Cabaret” — that made Cumming famous.  He offered one selection from that show, “Mein Herr.”  Otherwise, the material was all quite recent and not apparently extracted from any musicals, except a medley from “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”

So much for my comments after Charles Busch’s recent show at the same venue, that cabaret always means nostalgia.  The themes of Cumming’s songs and stories were utterly now.  They included gay sexuality, body modification (plastic surgery and regrettable tattoos), and American consumerism, among other stuff of today’s world.

It’s too much to say that it all came out as lovely poetry, even if there were some darned funny rhymes along the way, such as those in “Taylor, the Latte Boy,” a song Cumming borrowed from Kristin Chenoweth.  But even when Cumming was telling elaborate and explicit stories of drunken nights, bad breakups, and rude awakenings to middle age, he wasn’t harsh and comically offensive, say like Chris Rock.  Maybe along with his Scottish brogue came his gentle and eloquent way with words.

It’s another matter entirely to find good songs that cover the same ground but Cumming certainly did so.  Several of the selections were by his fine accompanist, Lance Horne.  And among Cumming’s other talents, he can also write words and music.  A showstopper was his “Next to Me.”  A kind of ode of gratitude for his husband, it starts as a ballad and ends with a belt.

Cumming has an impressive vocal technique, with a hearty and masculine forte and a fine controlled pianissimo.  He handled long phrases and jumps of register with unexpected ease while his diction — for all those words about modern life — was always crystal clear.

Besides that opening from “Cabaret,” the most familiar material in his set came at the end. The first encore was a medley of songs by Katy Perry and Adele, with Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory” as a refrain. That was followed by Annie Lenox’s “Why?”

Bringing a star like Cumming to the intimate venue in Hudson will be tough to top.  It’s going to be fun to see what the producers of Helsinki on Broadway can come up with next.

Originally published in the Times Union.

Prevously on MyBigGayEars: 

Charles Busch at Club Helsinki

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.

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.

Saratoga Performing Arts Center

The promise is being fulfilled.  Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has got the goods and a new era is truly at hand for the Philadelphia Orchestra.

It was more than two years ago that the French Canadian conductor, now 37, was named music director of the orchestra, a post that he’ll finally and officially assume in October.  What a coup for SPAC to present him on the podium three consecutive nights this week.

The program was an appropriate and satisfying mix of substance and flash, the latter mostly due to piano soloist Lang Lang.  But there was certainly plenty of electricity coming from Nézet-Séguin, who began the program with four of the Hungarian Dances of Brahms/Dvorak.  His lively baton technique kept the tempos brisk and elastic, but when the big screen broadcasts allowed us to see him, it was obvious that it’s his expressive face that most clearly communicates energy.

And boy did this orchestra need new energy.  It’s had huge financial and audience deficits back home and things could use a bit of pumping up in Saratoga as well.  The surest way to bring lifeblood to all parts of the organizational body is a strong musical pulse.

In the Brahms Symphony No. 4, which ended the program, the orchestra played with genuine purpose and intention.  This was certainly a result of Nezet-Seguin.  It’s too much to say that he’s hyperactive, but he’s darned lively and attention grabbing, as well as serious and exacting.  Contrast this to Charles Dutoit, who sometimes came off as an overly business-like traffic cop (with an orchestra on auto pilot).  And last week under the casualness of Stephane Deneve, the lack of focus and exactitude was made all the more obvious by the spark and precision of Nezet-Seguin.

Add to the night the brilliant talent of Lang Lang, age 30, and the future does seem bright, not just for the Philly but for music in general.

The performance of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major was a winding and varied terrain of fascinating detail and color.  Lang Lang kept the physical histrionics in check, but he pushed the music to extremes, sometimes playing at a hushed dynamic more associated with a solo recital.  Maybe it’s just the voicing of Liszt’s writing, but his fortissimo chords lacked flesh and felt skeletal.

There was plenty of heft, though, and most everything else packed into his encore, Chopin’s Waltz in E-Flat Major, Op. 18.  It was highly eccentric, in the best of ways.

Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Thursday, September 9, 2012

Show me a concert program with a list of arias and duets excerpted from sundry operas and I’ll gladly stay home for the night. Usually such events – “Sing Off” is term I just learned for them – are excuses to showcase lots of singers with varying levels of skill and a common penchant for over acting.

But the phenomenon that is Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music director designate of the Philadelphia Orchestra, drew me back to SPAC on Thursday night. This despite the title “Italian Opera Night” and a list of 15 selections from 10 different operas.

The singers were still relatively young, but there were only two – soprano Angela Meade and tenor Bryan Hymel – and each was stunning.  The pieces were mostly familiar but not over long nor over done.  The pacing was excellent and included two overtures and two intermezzos.  Early on, my companion for the night confessed to not being an opera fan but by the end she seemed barely able to contain her emotions.  What a world now awaits her!  As for me, my admiration for Nézet-Séguin only increases.

Too many highlights flew by name them all here, but Meade was amazing with “Violetta’s Waltz” from “La Traviata.”  One just wanted to gasp for air after she finished that big-breathed coloratura prelude.  She was also lovely in the more gentle and sustained “Pace, pace, mio dio!” from “La Forze del Destino,” accompanied by those endless harp arpeggios.

When Hymel started off the program with a selection from “Lucia,” the amplification – hardly needed inside the amphitheater – was ratcheted up and his voice was made piercing.  Thankfully, the audio mix settled into place soon enough.  Hymel showed a charming, flirtatious style in “Che gelida manina,” from “La Boheme,” and he earned cheers at the end of the night for a triumphant “Nessun dorma.”

The orchestra once again played with a new and fresh quality, especially in the supple intermezzo from “Manon” and the more charged passages from “Cavalleria rusticana.”

Nézet-Séguin’s plans for the Philly obviously include opera, a genre to which he’s well suited.  During that first long scene from “Lucia,” it wasn’t hard to see how his dancing figure and buoyant energy could fill a giant opera house.  But there’s little need for scenery and lights when he’s creating whole worlds just through sound.

Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Friday, August 10, 2012 

Yanet Nézet-Séguin knows how to work a crowd.  As the incoming music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, his most important constituents right now are the musicians with whom he shares the stage.  If he continues to build the right relationship with them, everything else will fall into place.

On Friday at SPAC he programmed works that showcase their talents as both soloist and an ensemble. He shared the copious applause with them and saluted the individual players repeatedly.  It was their last time to perform together before his long-awaited debut in October at the Kimmel Center.  When Nézet-Séguin finally left the stage, his now-familiar grin showed satisfaction.

The night began and ended with big boisterous works from the 19th and 21st centuries.

Despite the symphony’s subtitle, “Little Russian,” the evening’s finale, Tchaikovsky’s Second, practically snarled with power and force from the start. The second movement featured long skittering lines from flutist Jeffrey Khaner, as well as fine solo work from clarinetist Ricardo Morales and trumpeter Nitzan Haroz.  After a scherzo made from a rather surreal collage of styles, the fourth movement teased with several almost-climaxes, each giving more juice to the brass.

The concert started big with Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra, a five-movement work she composed for the Philly ten years ago.  I first heard it in 2003 in Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall and recall a lot of deft and colorful scoring that was often lost in the SPAC amphitheater.  But the bigger gestures certainly spoke, including the surging strings in the second movement, which earned a spontaneous round of applause.  The fourth movement is all percussion and segues into the charging finale highlighted by the slapping basses.  Even if some of the details seemed fuzzy, it was easy to see why this piece launched Higdon’s stellar career and has made Nézet-Séguin her newest advocate.

Amidst all these show-stopping moments, the Prokofiev First Violin Concerto with Arabella Steinbacher felt subdued and tender.  She played marvelously though, allowing the music to unfold in seamless beauty.  She held back nothing in her meaty encore, Fritz Kreisler’s Recitative and Scherzo.

The evening’s only disappointment?  An embarrassingly small audience, perhaps no more than 1,000 (inside and out combined).  But it was a loud and responsive crowd nonetheless, thanks especially to the shouting and chanting of the orchestra students, who were no longer tucked away in the back of the house.

Reviews originally appeared in the Times Union.
Photos:  Lori Van Buren/Times Union 

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Jennifer Higdon at SPAC’s pre-concert talk and onstage after the performance (photos by Gwen Deely):

Here’s a collection of my reviews.

Verdi:  Aida
Glimmerglass Festival, July 7, 2012

Probably never in its 25-year history has the Alice Busch Opera Theater been filled with such strong and sustained sound as it was Saturday night.  It was the Glimmerglass season opener, a new production of “Aida.”

But mounting the Verdi extravaganza seemed a risky and surprising programming decision by company boss Francesca Zambello, who was also stage director.  After all, the famous parade of elephants and armies certainly couldn’t fit on the mid-sized stage, let alone in the pint-sized budget. Zambello actually dispensed with that tuneful scene in short order.  More importantly, as for overall musical execution the company proved equal to the task in every way.  Nader Abbassi conducted and I can’t recall ever hearing such muscular and consistently assured orchestra playing in Cooperstown.

Adding to the anticipatory drama of it all, the promising young soprano Michelle Johnson was put on “vocal rest” until later in the month and Adina Aaron stepped into the title role.  She was exquisite with a voice that was as alluring and attractive in heated fortissimo as in prayerful pianissimo.  Most arresting were the long passages that took her from high to low range in one giant breath and one seamless line.

Also excellent was the virile young tenor Noah Stewart as Radames.  There’s no warm up time for him, with his “Celeste Aida” coming early in the proceedings.  His sound was always lean but determined, the image of a soldier conditioned for battle.

It took a bit more time for luster and beauty to arrive in the singing of mezzo Daveda Karanas, who played Amneris.  But she filled her copious stage time and demanding role more than ably.  And bass-baritone Eric Owens made easy work of the part of Amonasro.  Look for him to also appear in Glimmerglass’ “Lost in the Stars.”

Zambello’s staging walks a careful line of suggesting contemporary Middle East struggles without ever laying out a point of view.  The single set is an abandoned castle of some sort and the costumes are a now-familiar mix of ancient and modern.  Call it timeless or just a hodgepodge.  Only Amneris’ black sequined gown was a genuine distraction.

The props of war, though, are utterly contemporary.  Lap top computers guide the maneuvers and machine guns are held aloft like golden calves.  Aida’s underhanded love scene happens on the hood of a desert jeep. After an interrogation by water boarding, Radames dies by lethal injection.

 

Opera companies have been dipping into the pool of musical theater for decades now.  The repertory expansion is an essential part of last year’s transformation of Glimmerglass Opera into the Glimmerglass Festival, and if it helps the outfit survive then save your complaints, please.

What makes “The Music Man,” this year’s offering, such a pleasure is that the piece itself is such a pleasure.  This is in sharp contrast to the two previous musicals seen at Glimmerglass, “Annie Get Your Gun” last year and “Kiss Me Kate” in 2008, each overly fraught with the angry battle of the sexes (so operatic!).

“The Music Man” is about little more than community and music, which is really the shortest summary imaginable for the renewed mission of Glimmerglass.  In this same sense, the best thing about the production is the strength of the ensemble as a whole.

The townspeople may live in River City, Iowa, but the small town feeling is so familiar, the warm sentiments in the singing and dancing so genuine, that one kept expecting some reference to a certain lakeside town in upstate New York.  But maybe such deliberate insertions are best saved for the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

Director and choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge sticks to the text of the original, though it sometimes contradicts aspects of the staging.  And that leads to a warning for picky purists:  This is an updated production.  Yes, the directorial urge to modernize has even infiltrated musicals.  The original “Music Man” takes places in 1912, and this version makes the quantum, radical leap into the 1940s.  Oh, the gall.

Nostalgia still rules and is underscored by the costumes, which seem taken from a Norman Rockwell catalogue, as well as the colorful set.  The backdrop is, in fact, modeled on a Grant Wood painting of rolling Iowa hills.

Baritone Dwayne Croft, a Cooperstown native, plays Harold Hill with serviceable energy and pleasant singing, but not much spark.  He tends to talk out of the side of his mouth, and it’s not clear if that’s an affectation of the underhanded character or some unexpected result of Croft’s no longer being on the operatic stage.

Soprano Elizabeth Futral, as Marion the librarian, is also a refugee of opera.  The power – and beauty — of her voice is obvious in every song, yet she never seems shoehorned into the role.  Like every other citizen of this River City, from the verbose mayor to the lisping sprout, she’s easy to like.

Lully: Armide
Glimmerglass Festival, July 21, 2012

There’s about as much dancing as there is singing in Lully’s “Armide,” which opened on Saturday night at the Glimmerglass Festival.  And it’s real dancing, too – not those perfunctory turns and courtly bows that usually appear as necessary afterthoughts in opera.

The company of sixteen dancers first appear in the palace of Armide, the Muslim princess, with ladies wearing ball gowns in brilliant jewel tones, the gentlemen in dark velvet tights.  After that, the males show up frequently, embodying the emotional desires and spiritual forces at play in the story.  There are lots of balletic passages, some sword dances and pantomimes, and plenty of bare flesh.  Choreography was by Jeanette Lajeunesse Zingg.

It’s an opulent staging in most every way, a coproduction with Opera Atelier of Toronto, directed by Marshall Pynkoski and conducted by David Fallis.  The backdrops are modeled after Persian illuminated manuscripts in tones of gold and olive.  Adding to the sensory experience, the offstage chorus is placed in the upper gallery stage left.

The vocal terrain of Baroque opera is demanding and less overtly showy than the familiar romantic models.  So it took the accumulation of emotion through the course of the story for all the vocal luster of the leads to show through fully.

Soprano Peggy Kriha Dye in the lead was terrific from the start and goodness did she have a lot to do.  Yet it was her climactic rage and frustration near the end that seared the ears and stays in the memory.

Tenor Colin Ainsworth played her love interest, the Christian knight Renaud.  His voice was vibrant and attractive, just not sweet. Also, he seemed almost unable to sing without striking a pose, with one hip slightly extended.  Didn’t someone tell him that there was another blond male beauty already playing cupid?  He was the one with the wings.

Sopranos Mireille Asselin and Meghan Lindsay, of the Glimmerglass Young Artists Program, were excellent if somewhat anonymous as ladies in waiting.  But the secondary male cast was vocally weak, starting with the bass Joao Fernandes as Armide’s uncle Hidraot.  Baritone Curtis Sullivan as the spirit of hatred had more physical presence than vocal command. And the scene with two knights in the second act was overlong and unsatisfying from the perspectives of comedy or singing.

But these are weaknesses made apparent because of the over all high quality of the evening.  “Armide” may be the most reverent and well integrated of Baroque operas Glimmerglass has ever mounted – something not to be missed.

 

The vaunted acoustics of the EMPAC concert hall were even spiffed up for the occasion. A computer-aided loudspeaker system, designed by Jonas Braasch and a team of students, recreated the sound of a two million gallon cistern in Washington State where Oliveros made a landmark recording almost 25 years ago. The lush reverb, lasting about 45 seconds according to the program, makes an ideal compliment to Oliveros’ musical aesthetic.

Not everything on the program was actually written by Oliveros though. For that matter none of the pieces really functioned from a traditional score. But Oliveros’ system of “Deep Listening” was apparent throughout the night. All of the pieces were meditative and organic, which isn’t to say that they were always hushed or fragile. Rather they were thoughtful and collaborative, attuned in the space and the moment.

The opening, “Land of Snows,” did have a particularly reverent feel. Oliveros and Stuart Dempster launched it with a few finger cymbals, then blew various sized conch shells. Brian Perti played the dung chen, a brass horn at least 10 feet in length that’s common to Tibetan Buddhist ceremony. Three additional wind players sounded on didjeridus quietly in the back of the house.

In the next selection Oliveros, Dempster and Perti became an improvisational vocal trio. Their pacing was based in breath, their pitches seemingly random. It seemed to illustrate that all sense of dissonance fades away given enough time.

Amidst such soulfulness, the speeches paying honor to Oliveros felt rather intrusive and high minded. But Michael Century struck pay dirt in contrasting how a century of iconoclast composers – Ives, Cowell, Cage, and others (mostly men) – shattered traditions, while Oliveros’ work has been one of integration. He even went so far as to coin a term to describe her: “sona-accordionist.”

Besides being a composer, Oliveros is also an accordionist and she played an electrified version of the instrument at one point. More than a dozen percussionists from RPI, SUNY Albany and the Empire State Youth Orchestra took to the balconies around the hall for another piece. The evening ended with a trio of trombonists who moved about the hall before leading the way to the festive reception in the cafe.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Oliveros wins Columbia U’s Schuman Prize

Pauline Oliveros: Making Conscious Connections

Pauline Oliveros: A Musical adventurer begins by listening

Get used to Ades’ name, if you don’t already know it.  Next fall, he’ll conduct eight performances of his opera “The Tempest” at The Metropolitan Opera, all part of a typically busy season for Ades.  Besides composing and conducting he’s also recognized as a formidable pianist.

Busy is a word that could also describe Ades’ music.  His writing is usually dense with activity.  So the relative restraint of “The Four Quarters” came as a surprise.  It’s a programmatic work cast in four movements that depict the flow of a day.

“Nightfalls,” the opening, consisted primarily of hushed layers of sustained notes.  Played with a straight, vibrato-free tone, it brought to mind images of a computer screen-saver.  “Morning Dew” was mostly pizzicato strings in rhythms both random and complex, just like rain on the rooftop.  The underlying sophistication of the writing appeared when the players switched to bowing and the same melodic and rhythmic patterns were still in place.

“Days” had an arched dynamic and climaxed in a kind of battle cry of intensity.  Finally came “The Twenty-Fifth Hour,” which according to the program notes was written in an unusually complicated meter (24/16 or 2/4 + 3/16 and 2/4 + 6/16).  Tribute goes to the Emerson for bringing out the grounded and spacious quality of the visceral movement.

Come to think of it, “Four Quarters” wasn’t so restrained after all.  But it was almost a trifle in comparison to the breadth and weight of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 that came after intermission.  Everything framed the central, prayerful movement, a lifesafer amidst much sustained dejectedness.

The Emerson handled the Beethoven with the requisite concentration and devotion. But Haydn’s Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2, which opened the afternoon, lacked thoughtful shaping as well as strict accuracy.

Before the music started series producer Daniel Berkenblit greeted the audience and introduced his successor, Derek Delaney.  Berkenblit is retiring from the volunteer position when the season ends later this month.  He began his association with the series in 1969 and took over as director 10 years later.  Local music lovers can rest easy.  Next season’s line-up of 14 events was just announced and it includes a return of the beloved Emerson String Quartet.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Thomas Ades’ collaboration with partner Tal Rosner performed by NY Philharmonic

Thomas Ades at Carnegie Hall 3/27

Ades with his partner, video artist Tal Rosner:

Alexander in 2009 (Luanne M. Ferris / Times Union)

Cris Alexander, a Broadway actor and portrait photographer, died on March 7 in Saratoga Springs, where he lived full-time since 1991.  His death at age 92 came just two weeks after that of Shaun O’Brien, the New York City Ballet character dancer and Alexander’s companion of 61 years.

Alexander starred in the 1944 premiere of “On the Town,” creating the role of Chip, one of the three iconic sailors on shore leave in Manhattan. He can be heard in the original cast album singing “Come Up to My Place,” a duet with Nancy Walker, who played the determinedly amorous cab driver.

When the creative team behind “On the Town” – including composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green – reunited for “Wonderful Town” in 1953, Alexander was again cast. The show starred Rosalind Russell, who became a lifelong friend. Three years later he again shared the Broadway stage with her in “Auntie Mame.” And when Russell reprised her role in the 1958 film version, Alexander was given a walk-on as an imperious department store manager. Alexander also appeared in the 1946 Broadway debut of Noel Coward‘s comedy “Present Laughter” as the young playwright Roland Maule.

Even growing up in Tulsa, Okla., Alexander seemed destined to live among the fashionable set. His best friend in high school there was Tony Randall.

Alexander arrived in New York in 1938 and though his intention was to pursue acting, he immediately set up his own photography studio. His first subject was Gordon MacRae. The stream of actors, dancers and other celebrities that he shot over the years included film star Vivien Leigh, choreographer Martha Graham and even an adolescent Anderson Cooper.

With Patrick Dennis, author of “Auntie Mame,” he collaborated on two satirical memoirs of imaginary female subjects, “Little Me” (1961) and “First Lady” (1964). He was official photographer for the New York City Ballet for a time, and worked on the staff of Andy Warhol’s “Interview” from 1980 to 1986. Among his last subjects for the magazine, before closing his studio, was Mother Teresa.

He and O’Brien bought a large Victorian home off North Broadway in Saratoga Springs in 1973. In recent decades historians sought out the pair to discuss the illustrious circles in which they traveled.

“I must say, I have been very close to some of the most wonderful people who ever have lived in our time,” Alexander said in 1995 interview for “Show Music” magazine. He continued, “Our life is just the greatest life imaginable.”

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

With Nancy Walker in "On the Town"

Rosalind Russell, Jacquelyn McKeever, Sydney Chaplin, Alexander (Don Hunstein)

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

City Ballet’s Shaun O’Brien (1925-2012)

Fred Hersch

“If you think too far ahead you drop the ball. This is why tennis and jazz are very similar,” he says, in the documentary “The Lives of Fred Hersch.”  He continues, “you have to play what is in front of you and what appears, and react to it.”

On Friday night he’ll be performing a solo piano concert at Chapin Hall in Williamstown, Mass.  “People should come expecting original music, and definitely some things by Thelonious Monk and some reworked standards,” he says.

Like the notes that arrive at his finger tips, the final order of the program will be spontaneous. “I’ll be deciding as I go,” says Hersch.

Hailed as one of today’s finest jazz pianists, Hersch is up for two Grammy Awards for his latest disc, “Alone at the Vanguard.”    Apart from his skills as both improviser and composer, Hersch’s health condition over the last 25 years has provided plenty of opportunity to stay present, both literally and figuratively.

In 1986, Hersch was diagnosed with HIV.  Soon after, he went public about his condition. More importantly, he survived the darkest era of the AIDS epidemic, when seemingly an entire generation of artists died in their prime.  Advancements in treatment, though, haven’t meant the end of problems.

In late 2009, Hersch suffered a precipitous decline, as a persistent cough led to a major infection. Late that year he was rushed by his partner to an emergency room, where doctors put him under a medically induced coma that lasted for two months.

“After I came out of it, it was a good 8 months til I could eat, talk or walk.  It was a near death thing and was going down hill fast,” says Hersch. “If I’d not gotten to the hospital when I did, I might not be talking to you.”

It seems an understatement to say that Hersch had a determination to continue with life and music.

In the year after rehabilitation was complete, he recorded two new albums.  He also began remembering the dream world of his coma, which included dancing a tango aboard a luxury airplane and hanging out with Thelonious Monk.  At first, he just typed out the fantasies into a computer file and got on with things.  But eventually he shared them with a friend, the writer and director Herschel Garfein, who fashioned them into a dramatic scenario that mixes the surreal dream world with the cold reality of the hospital.

The resulting show, “My Coma Dreams,” with original music by Hersch, was developed at Montclair State University last spring and subsequently had a short run in San Francisco.   Hersch describes the event as “jazz theater” and says that future productions are in the works.

“The people who’ve seen it have been moved and inspired by it and that’s what we want as artist,” he says. “So we achieved what we set out to do.”

Accomplishing what he sets out to do is typical of Hersch, who lists a large number of current projects, including a new set of songs for jazz vocalist Kurt Elling, and supervising a spring performance of his 2005 song cycle “Leaves of Grass” at the New England Conservatory, where he’s been a faculty member since 1980.  Touring, recording and teaching are ever on-going.

“I don’t sit around. I’m always doing stuff and I’m clinically and energetically better than I’ve been in years. The drugs are working,” says Hersch. “In November I had a full month of touring with my trio to eight countries. I came back in fine shape. Five years ago, I would have been whipped. It’s remarkable.”

“As an artist, we never know what’s going to come along and strike our fancy. I try to be open but also instigate things,” he says. “You have to roll with life and have patience and also know when to push yourself.”

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

Previously on My Big Gay Ears:

“Jazz and the Queer Aesthetic” in JazzTimes

Fred Hersch profile in the New York Times

Fred Hersch’s Whitman tunes

Close Encounters with Music,

Cellist Yehuda Hanani, founder and director of Close Encounters, is the featured artist on a recent disc from Albany Records of music by Vermont composer Jorge Martin.  Though the disc isn’t billed as a Close Encounters project, four out of the five recorded works were premiered by Hanani or his group since 2003.  Taken together, the collection illustrates that a beautiful composer-performer collaboration has been happening in our region for some time now.

In his liner notes, Martin explains that almost all of the music is based on melodic material from songs, mostly of his own writing.   That goes along way to explaining the accessible nature and emotional depth of the compositions.

The largest piece was written specifically for the CD. It’s a 30-minute long sonata for cello and piano, titled “Four Noble Truths.” Martin’s title refers to Buddhist teaching, and the music is haunted and soulful in that way that only great cello music can be.

More austere, even fraught, is the cello solo, “Recuerda.” The piece was requested by an arts patron and mutual friend of Martin and Hanani after he was given a terminal diagnosis.  He wanted something to be performed at his funeral.  It’s full of drones but also references Schumann.

Quotes from a different time a place appear in “Hollywood Variations,” also for cello and piano.  The melodic source material is Leonard Rosenman’s pastoral theme from his score to “East of Eden.”  There’s enough schmaltz to evoke the film, but plenty of invention and playfulness as well.

Martin’s Cuban heritage shows up in the Latin strains of “Ropa Vieja,” for cello, accordion and percussion.  And coming from an earlier time in Martin’s career is Three Nocturnes.  It’s the most abstract of the offerings, though Hanani infuses it with the same style and feeling that’s present throughout the disc.  Pianist Walter Ponce likewise brings out fine color and articulation in all of the works.

By the way, Albany Records has also released a recording of Martin’s opera “Before Night Falls,” which was premiered by the Fort Worth Opera in 2010. Based on the memoir of the late Cuban writer and dissident Reinaldo Arenas, it’s a powerful two-act piece that evokes the culturally stifling reign of Castro as well as how in New York the AIDS epidemic mowed down a generation of gay artists. Orchestra Miami recently announced a semi-staged revival of the opera for this coming October. It’s a good choice for an orchestra, since Martin’s instrumental writing is a driving force in the fast moving drama.