FIELD TRIPS: AN INTRODUCTION
Anti-hero and Acrobats, Brass bands and Boardwalk:
Left to right: Coney Island Freak Show building facade Grendel with baritone Eric Owens and dancer Desmond Richardson, photo courtesy of Stephanie Berger; www.stephaniebergerphoto.com Goran Bregovic’s Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, photo courtesy of Stephanie Berger; www.stephaniebergerphoto.com
Page 50: Lincoln Center Festival Trip participants at Coney Island
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PMP’s annual large-scale professional development trip took about 20 leaders from the area’s music and arts community to New York from July 12 to 16, 2006 for a whirlwind trip including four performances, four related panel discussions, and a tour of public art on Coney Island. Three of the performances and two of the discussions were produced by this year’s Lincoln Center Festival. As ever, trip participants debated the merits of each event and found much to commend or contest. Members of the group, which this year included representatives from the dance and visual arts sectors, made several promising connections and took advantage of the opportunity to reflect on their fields on both local and national levels. The first event of the trip, on Wednesday, July 12th, was a roundtable discussion with the creative team behind the new opera Grendel. Moderated by Lincoln Center Festival director Nigel Redden, the panel included Grendel director Julie Taymor, composer Elliot Goldenthal, and co-librettist J.D. McClatchy. Though the opera was receiving its premiere performance in the summer festival, Taymor and Goldenthal had been working on the project for 30 years. Based on the 1971 novel by John Gardner that reinterprets the story of Beowulf from the perspective of the monster Grendel, the opera developed through decades of planning, revision, and fundraising. Redden commented that Lincoln Center had been interested in the opera from its inception. Goldenthal and Taymor remembered the various concepts they toyed with: a rock opera, opera on ice, whether Grendel’s part should be sung or spoken, and in what language. Taymor admitted that it had been a test to keep interest in the project for so long, though she found its content “more potent than 20 years.” She went on to suggest that the significance of the opera had changed; recently, she has seen its political implications in the myth of heroism and the creation of enemies. When asked by Redden about choosing to frame the project as an opera, rather than as the potentially less intensive musical theater, Goldenthal replied that the form stuck from the mid-1990s, when he brought some of the music he had composed to conductor Seiji Ozawa. “Ozawa was adamant,” he said, that it be kept an opera. From there, the conversation turned to the character of Grendel himself. In the opera’s final version, Grendel’s role is sung in modern English; the chorus performs in Old English. The team made this decision, Taymor said, because they wanted the audience to be able to identify with him. As in the novel, Grendel transforms from a brute monster into a sympathetic figure, more philosophical than vicious. “The monster is really man, of course,” said Taymor. Goldenthal said he composed music that was semi-traditional in order to bring the audience close to the human elements of the story. “Unfortunately for Grendel,” she added, “he was born with an intellect.” Goldenthal spoke about how he composed music for the climax of the opera. He wanted Grendel’s thoughts to approach the listener like telepathy, and so had them sung, rather than
PMP at the Lincoln Center Festival by the soloist, by the chorus. “Opera does two things at once,” he observed. “It encapsulates, and it stretches.” He slowed the quarter note to a beat per second, hoping to achieve the expansive effect of the seminal moments in one’s life. Beowulf, played by a dancer, moves triple time to this slow music. Grendel is in the “process of coming to understand what has been ordained by fate,” said the composer. The opera itself faced a bittersweet end — three decades in the making, their production was over in four performances. However, Goldenthal took an optimistic stance: “Humans wait 70 years for one decent kiss, so four performances is not bad.” The group rushed from the Grendel discussion to STREB vs. GRAVITY, a “POPACTION” performance choreographed by Elizabeth Streb. Streb developed POPACTION from dance, and chose the term to bring attention to her high energy, intensely athletic choreographic style. Sharing as much with gymnastics as dance, her performers leap, fall, collide, dive, and run through precisely timed routines that pit them against swinging cinder blocks, tightropes, and a human-sized hamster wheel. For STREB vs. GRAVITY, her performers wore tight, bold suits that accentuated their action-figure parallel. They lunged and caught each other with speed, confidence, and also humor. Streb spliced the routines with video segments that explicitly tied her work to considerations of space and time, and she paired her choreography with pulsing dance music that shook the theater. The kids loved it. Thursday, July 13th began with introductions and discussion among the participants in the trip. Attendees mentioned the current central concerns of their organizations, which ranged from audience expansion to re-articulating their mission, and from site-specific practice to listener education. The morning continued with a panel discussion featuring three prominent music curators in New York: Ara Guzelimian, former Senior Director at Carnegie Hall, Ethel Raim, Artistic Director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, and Bill Bragin, Director of Joe’s Pub. John Schaefer, host of WNYC’s “New Sounds” and “Soundcheck,” moderated the discussion. The curators spoke about their work as forming differing links in the vast musical web in the city and beyond. Raim emphasized how embedded her work is in community, and excitedly described the validation that her Center’s programming offered to immigrant artists. Bragin spoke about his work in terms of making intimate concerts with established artists available, as well as offering opportunities to emerging artists. He sees Joe’s Pub as a place for “hyphenated,” or cross-genre music. Guzelimian began by pointing out the healthy contradiction of Carnegie Hall: it represents the high classical tradition, but it is also a very democratic institution. He offered by way of example a 1912 “Concert of Negro Music.” Together, they discussed the pleasure of, in Guzelimian’s words, “the risk well-taken,” such as when a complicated artist
brings together different audiences for a very live concert. The concert Thursday evening was indeed live. Goran Bregovic’s Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, an enormous ensemble with a brass band, a male chorus, a string section, and two female soloists, all driven by a singing percussionist with a bass drum and Bregovic himself outfitted like a rock star with a white suit and cobalt blue electric guitar, were welcomed with Beatles-esque cheers by their audience. Bregovic is a household name in the Balkans; he has composed for the likes of Cesaria Evora and Iggy Pop. This was his group’s first appearance in New York. Indeed, the concert felt like a sort of comfortable rock show, with young women shouting, getting up to dance, and leading a parade of revelers around the concert hall as the band toured through their two albums. Most of the force of the music flowed from the indefatigable drummer and the burly brass band. They blasted away while Bregovic sang or shimmied his shoulders. He played a gracious encore and roped the audience into yelling “Charge!” infantry-style, on his count. Friday morning, PMP’s group piled into a bus and headed to Coney Island. On the boardwalk, Maureen Sullivan, Director of External Affairs at Creative Time, gave a personal tour of “The Dreamland Artist Club.” Creative Time is a non-profit organization that supports public art. Their Dreamland Artist Club brought together a wealth of PMP 49
FIELD TRIPS: AN INTRODUCTION
emerging painters, mostly from New York, to paint new handmade signs for the carnival games and vendors. The hand-painted signs, she told the group, are a long-standing tradition at Coney Island. In addition to the signs, Creative Time commissioned an enormous mural from Os Gemeos, twin brothers from Brazil, who executed a whimsical dreamscape in finely detailed spray paint. After such edification, the tour headed for a walk down the beach and a trip to both Coney Island Museum and the famed freak show. The evening continued at The Stone, a bare-bones concert venue founded by John Zorn where 100% of ticket revenue goes to the musicians. The concert featured bassist Devin Hoff and guests, a young group of experimental musicians including Ches Smith on drums, Andrea Parkins on accordion, piano, and electronics, and Jessica Pavone on viola. Dissonant and cerebral, the music made quite a counterpoint to the afternoon. The musicians played well together, bringing an air of explorative focus to the room. Saturday, July 15th, the final full day of the trip, was packed with speakers and concluded with the dramatic Grendel. In the morning, representatives of the French and Dutch consulates’ gave informative presentations on what kinds of artistic activities and collaborations they support, and how. Cees de Bever, Director for Performing Arts for the Consulate General of the Netherlands, and Emmanuel Morlet, who serves as both Director of Music at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and Program Officer at the French-American Fund for Contemporary Music, described their work in supporting programming that highlights their nations’ artists. Following their presentations, culture staff from The Pew Charitable Trusts gave a brief news update on their projects, especially those of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage. New forms of support are on offer through small Interdisciplinary Professional Development Grants, and both a marketing initiative and software-training program through the Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative. John Schaefer then moderated another panel, this time with soprano Harolyn Blackwell, saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, and guitarist Bryce Dessner. Each musician, to some degree, blurs the boundaries of his or her primary genre. Blackwell, who has sung with the Metropolitan Opera, noted that she started in musical theater and conceives of herself under a more general heading. “I’m a performer,” she said. Mahanthappa, who is usually branded a jazz performer, feels that the genre connotes a lot of things that don’t fit with his musical interests. More significant to his identity as a musician, he said, is as a first-generation American. Dessner plays guitar in both the indie rock band The National and in a classically-trained group called Clogs. The National, he said, can fill a thousand seats. This is not the case with Clogs, but in the concert halls where that ensemble performs, they’re able to explore more conceptually. The musicians considered an array of examples of crossover artists, shows, and projects. Dessner mentioned Sufjan Stevens, a friend and indie musician who’s being appreciated as a composer. Likewise, Mahanthappa’s best friend Vijay Iyer is known as a boundary-blurring jazz pianist and multimedia aficionado. Harolyn recalled her experience learning the musical Sweeney Todd and her surprise at the real difficulty of the music. Schaefer pointed out that a rock musician plays the leading role in the current production. Mahanthappa described PMP 50
his recent collaboration with an Indian classical saxophonist named Kadri Gopalnath in an expanded ensemble with drumset, electric guitar, and mrigindgam. Each musician shared excerpts of her or his work: Mahanthappa played from a live recording of the Gopalnath collaboration; Blackwell played a gorgeous excerpt of her singing Summertime, and Dessner played tracks of both of his bands. In the afternoon, the group attended a panel discussion on STREB vs. GRAVITY with Streb; choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer; Jennifer Tipton, lighting designer and Professor at the Yale University School of Drama, and a friend of Streb’s named Gordon. Streb made several observations about working with and against traditions in the performing arts. “I pretend that I have more control over you in a darkened space,” she said. She said she deliberately turns up the volume on the music because she wants young people in the house. “More is more,” she affirmed. “Here in New York, I figured, what the hell. I wouldn’t be that careful with the audience.” Throughout the discussion, Streb displayed a simultaneously irreverent and dedicated attitude, tossing off lines like, “I do anything I want for as long as it interests me,” while meaning it in earnest, and going on to add, “My job as an artist is to stay on the subject that most fascinates me.” For one, she is interested in physics and “inherent timing that tells the truth.” These classics of movement, including velocity, momentum, and acceleration, form the foundation of her creative process. At the same time, she hopes to make a certain homage to the factory worker in the danger and precision of her style of choreography. The final event of the PMP professional development trip was a visit to the opera. Grendel featured a masterful performance by Eric Owens in the title role, a cameo appearance by Denyce Graves as a nonplussed dragon, an equally brief but stunning appearance by the dancer Desmond Richardson as Beowulf, and fine performances by tenors Richard Croft and Jay Hunter Morris, as well as soprano Laura Claycomb. The opera begins late in Grendel’s life, though it flashes back to traumas of childhood and the rampages of his earlier adult life. Grendel’s fellow creatures, whom he abandons, including his mother, were particularly moving, sad yet elegant hybrids of, perhaps, trees and gazelles. The existential villain blustered, railed, and moped his way through his rivalry with society and offered the audience a striking and sophisticated journey to his inevitable end. PMP hosts an annual large-scale professional development trip to New York on an annual basis. Last year included Robert Wilson’s I La Galigo, Sunny Murray at the Village Vanguard, Merce Cunningham’s Ocean, and Basil Twist’s La bella dormente nel bosco. In 2004, participants saw the American Composers Orchestra with eighth blackbird, a jazz organ summit at the Iridium, a concert of traditional Mexican music at Town Hall, and Sweeney Todd at the New York City Opera.
Spotlight: Painted Bride Art Center From the moment one sets eyes on the Painted Bride’s exterior, a kaleidoscopic mosaic designed by Philadelphia artist Isaiah Zagar, one senses that this is a place where creativity lives. Dedicated to the potential art has to inspire, heal, and affect social change, the Painted Bride is an intimate, artist-focused performance space and gallery in the heart of Philadelphia’s Old City. In the current climate where idealism is too often set aside in the interest of commercial viability, the Bride provides a home base for artists developing new ideas and challenging art that explores vital questions raised by gender, religion, sexual orientation, economic class, race, and other relevant issues. Founded in 1969 by Gerry Givnish and a group of visual artists who had recently graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, the Bride began as a coop gallery in a former bridal shop, an oasis on what was then a desolate South Street. Not long after the gallery was founded, it became host to impromptu jazz concerts, improvisational dance performances, poetry readings, and other performing arts. The Bride has evolved organically into an internationally recognized artist-centered, multi-disciplinary space, located in its permanent home on Vine Street since 1981. For 37 seasons, the Bride has infused Philadelphia’s cultural landscape with compelling programs of world and jazz music, poetry/spoken word, theater, and dance. It also presents a vibrant series of art exhibits and installations in the bi-level Independence Foundation Gallery for the Visual Arts. The Bride’s “Jazz on Vine” series, initiated in 1975, is the longest continuously running jazz series in Philadelphia. Lenny Seidman, music curator at the Painted Bride since 1986, shared with PMP his thoughts on how music fits into the Bride’s broader artistic vision: “My world outlook has a lot to do with my musical vision, and my wish to bring cultures together not only onstage, but in the audience.” Acknowledging that his work at the Bride is inseparable from his own journey as a musician, Seidman pointed out that it always made sense to him to focus on both jazz and world music. “Jazz is a deep motivator for me. I’m a Philly guy, and some years ago you could be on one street corner and be able to hear the John Coltrane Quintet, and then after that set was over just go about 200 yards to another spot and hear Mingus or the Chicago Art Ensemble or Thelonius Monk. So this is the music I got exposed to and that really had a tremendous impact. When I think about
the jazz musicians that have influenced me, there’s Coltrane, who was going really deep into Indian music, and Miles Davis, who included sitar and tabla players on the 1970 CD, On the Corner. So I started out doing these parallel things: world music and jazz as two separate series. Then I wanted to hear how the branches of jazz keep forming new sprouts from other influences around the world. I think this is a distinctive characteristic of the Bride, and I’m starting to see it in other places, too. Traditions grow—they move, and they’re not stagnant. That’s an understanding I have all the time. I’m not a purist in that way.” When asked about some of the artistic ideals he strives to preserve in his musical programming at the Bride, Seidman said, “I want to have an emotional experience with the music. I feel it’s really important that it’s passionate— that it moves me deeply, because that’s what got me into music. So if it’s just super-intelligent and not emotional, then it leaves me wanting. I bring that sensibility into the music series, and that’s just personal. But I always felt like the series was personal anyway.” This fall the Bride introduces a number of new programs and projects that continue to incubate artistic exploration while connecting artists to the larger Philadelphia community. These programs include “XL,” a new two-year music series featuring large ensembles funded by the Philadelphia Music Project, “Under Construction,” a dance residency for Philadelphia choreographers, and “Telling Tales,” a digital storytelling opportunity for teens affected by gun violence. The Bride also continues to present “4-Sites,” which features two-floor, solo installations by Philadelphia artists.
Papo Vasquez performs at the Painted Bride
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