EXPANDING HORIZONS
[ FIELD TRIPS ] LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2005 WEDNESDAY, JULY 13 THROUGH SATURDAY, JULY 16, 2005
PMP hosted its major annual professional development field trip in New York in July, this year attending several events within the Lincoln Center Festival 2005. Comprised of about twenty-five leaders of the Greater Philadelphia music community, the group enjoyed three days of performances, discussions, and networking opportunities. After traveling to the city on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 13, the group attended Robert Wilson’s I La Galigo, a lengthy and large-scale rendering of an Indonesian creation myth. The production incorporated indigenous music and was given a frame by a Bissu, a priest from the Bugis culture from whence the story comes. These native elements, including the immense timescale of the epic—the story, recorded only in fragments, reaches some 6,000 to 7,000 pages in total, and narrates several generations worth of the peopling of the world—were married with Wilson’s trademark spare yet grand architectural approach to theater. Proceeding with care from one beautiful image to another, the performers offered a delicate account of the early days of humanity. On Thursday morning, the trip participants went to the Asia Society for a portion of an all-day symposium on I La Galigo. The event began with a blessing chant by Puang Matoa Saidi, a Bissu priest, and continued with a more familiar welcome from Rachel Cooper, Director of Cultural Programming at the Asia Society. Drs. Sirtjo Koolhof, chief librarian at the KITLV, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, then gave a PowerPoint presentation elaborating on the cultural and historic context of the myth. After a break, Robert Wilson spoke about the production and more generally about his directorial vision. He closely linked the development of his approach with his guardianship of a deaf child and his insight regarding the independence of the senses. Wilson’s approach to theater—an art he claimed he “didn’t particularly like”—seeks to raise a certain elemental consciousness through controlled, formal gesture. As he put it, he was interested in “[learning] to walk by walking...I, as the director, don’t want to tell you what to think.” Ultimately, with the current production, he sought, “For one evening, to make a continuous line.” That evening, the group headed in a different direction for the Buster PMP 44
Williams Quartet at the Village Vanguard. A bassist who appears to have played with pretty much everyone, from Art Blakey to Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Count Basie, and Elvin Jones. Williams played two fiery sets, including a number of long, introspective solo pieces. His drummer, Lenny White, played wild and loud, challenging the band to speak up. Williams called White crazy and thanked us all for spending the evening with him. On Friday morning, PMP hosted two roundtable discussions. The first was with the Culture staff of The Pew Charitable Trusts: Civic Initiatives Director Marian Godfrey, Assistant Director of Culture Greg Rowe, and Culture Program Officer Bobbie Lippman. Godfrey, Rowe, and Lippman offered an overview of their Philadelphia Artistic Initiatives and answered some specific questions regarding various projects, including the development of the Pennsylvania Cultural Data Project, the opening of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, and the purpose and scope of the Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative and the Philadelphia Cultural Leadership Program. The second roundtable discussion featured curators from the New York music scene, with Kristin Lancino, Artistic Advisor for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Producer of the Lyrics and Lyricists series for 92nd Street Y; Brice Rosenbloom, Talent Buyer at the Knitting Factory; Limor Tomer, Music Curator for Symphony Space, BAM Cafe, and the Whitney Museum; and John Schaefer, Host of WNYC’s New Sounds and Soundcheck, who served as moderator. The panel addressed the central tasks and tensions of their work, from nurturing the careers of talented artists, to negotiating programmatic consensus within presenting organizations, to offering competitive and compelling programs within their niche in the city. The curators also discussed the evolving issue of artistic space. Tomer pointed out that artists are no longer working in spaces the way that they used to, and Schaefer noted how the interest
in outdoor summer concert series has mushroomed in recent years. Early Friday evening found PMP’s group in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse of Lincoln Center for an interview with Merce Cunningham conducted by WQXR’s Elliott Forrest. Cunningham, who was wearing a bowtie, spoke graciously about his life and work with and without John Cage. Very early in life he watched Fred Astaire and learned to dance in a kitchen, performing “in a ballroom dress suit that didn’t fit.” The dance teacher in the kitchen believed, he said, in “knowing something about all the arts if you’re going to work in one.” He met Cage at the age of eighteen, and they began their experiments, dance and music, “two things coming at separate times that supported each other.” The work was controversial, he remembered: “[We] used contemporary music, which disturbed the state department.” When they worked on Ocean (performed later that night in the Time Warner Center’s Rose Theater), Cunningham decided to choreograph the piece in the round, which he claimed was “difficult to do, but absolutely fascinating; it was nice realizing the world was round.” Cunningham explained how he would design postures for dancers and then use software to connect these postures in the simplest way possible. Cage sought to make time flexible for his 112 musicians by, for example, indicating that a note should come somewhere between the first and third minute of a section. The performance that night was, visually, extremely controlled and highly athletic, an exact ninety minutes of arcs and lines. The battery of surrounding musicians—the Anarchic Philharmonic—unfortunately, were difficult to hear clearly when combined with the accompanying electronic deep water sounds and whale whistling. On Saturday morning, PMP hosted its final roundtable discussions with a number of esteemed music directors within New York: Lisa Bielawa, Artistic Director of the MATA Festival; Sue Mingus, Founder and President of the Charles Mingus Institute and Director of the Mingus Big Band, Mingus Orchestra, and Mingus Dynasty; Arturo O’Farrill, Music Director of the Chico O’Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz Big Band and Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra; and Alan Pierson, Conductor and Artistic Director of Alarm Will Sound. This discussion was also moderated by John Schaefer. The panelists began by introducing themselves and their ensembles and organizations. Bielawa spoke about MATA’s mission to offer a forum of “professional dignity for new, emerging artists;” Pierson described the evolution of Alarm Will Sounds from a presenting group at the Eastman School of Music to a performance ensemble in the style of Ensemble Modern and the London Sinfonietta; O’Farrill commented on his efforts to canonize AfroCuban jazz, including the music of his father, Chico, and Mingus holds on to a similar mission maintaining the legacy of Charles’ composition—the largest oeuvre in 20th century American music, next to Duke Ellington, she noted. The panelists offered further perspectives on their work. Regarding innovative programming, Pierson explained that Alarm Will Sound often thinks about the range of music that they like to listen to, a method that led them to perform a concert of Aphex Twin songs arranged for the ensemble. Part of Mingus’ efforts to preserve the work of her husband has included founding Revenge Records, a label she started to undersell pirated recordings of Charles’ music she found in stores. “I love performing for people who have no idea who I am. That’s my favorite thing,” said O’Farrill, who is energized by the thought of untapped audiences. And Bielawa talked about “getting booed and feeling redeemed” because then she’s “making a concert that feels like a real event.” The final event of PMP’s 2005 professional development field trip was Basil Twist’s La bella dormente nel bosco, a puppet production of Ottorino Respighi’s operatic Sleeping Beauty. Conducted by Neal Goren and performed by the Gotham Chamber Opera, Fuma Sacra Chamber Choir, as well as a talented array of vocal soloists and puppeteers, the show charmed all ages. Life-size puppets danced with singers; roses turned cartwheels in the air, and the troublesome spindle beckoned coyly to the princess. In previous years, participants in PMP’s field trips have attended performances by the American Composers Orchestra, a jazz organ summit at the Iridium, “Fiesta Mexicana” presented by the World Music Institute, Sweeney Todd at the New York City Opera, the Kitchen House Blend, the Geri Allen Trio, A View From the Bridge at the Metropolitan Opera, a memorial concert for Iannis Xenakis at the Miller Theatre, and a birthday celebration for Jimmy Heath.
Page 44: I La Galigo. Courtesy ©Stephanie Berger. www.stephaniebergerphoto.com Page 45, left: Roundtable panelists (l-r) John Schaefer, Kristin Lancino, Brice Rosenbloom, Limor Tomer Page 45, right: Sue Mingus.
I simply can’t hear music. In order to hear music, I close my eyes and hear much better. If I really want to see something, I close my ears and I see much better. In Western theater we have yet to adequately develop a visual language for theater. We see a decoration, an illustration for what we’re hearing. Theater should be architectural. If we look at world theater (of Asia, Africa, etc.), how rich it is in terms of visual language...In I La Galigo, there is time for contemplation, to reflect, to dream, an artificial time that is constructed. Time to listen the way John Cage taught me to listen to silence. Sometimes when we’re very quite, we hear more, and sometimes when we’re very still, we become more aware of movement than when we move throughout. Robert Wilson When Charles died, his music was considered inaccessible, difficult. This is what you have when you have a real original. It takes our ears quite a while to grow up to new sounds. Sue Mingus In the cultural conversation of contemporary America, music, by and large, has fallen off that table. People can converse knowingly and with reasonable enthusiasm about literature, about visual arts, architecture. But music? If you know anything more than the top pops, you’re like ‘look at Mr. Fancy-Pants over there.’ It’s tied into the twisting of the word ‘elitism’ and the pejorative connotations that have devolved to that word in our country recently. It has kind of stained especially classical music and jazz. John Schaefer PMP 45