speaking in forked tongues? August 29, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, bloggers, contemporary, music, portland, seattle, summer festivals, add a commentMy OSO colleague Ron Blessinger is also the artistic director of the acclaimed new music ensemble Third Angle, and this September his group and the t:b:a festival (Festival of Time-based Art) are presenting a huge multimedia project devoted to the work of landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and his choreographer wife, Anna within some of his groundbreaking public spaces in downtown Portland, Oregon.
The project has had some incredible energy and collaboration poured into it (as well as a ton of money), and looks to be the major event of the t:b:a festival this year.
Well, the Seattle P-I’s arts critic, Regina Hackett, picked up on a press release and wrote the following in her blog on the P-I’s website:
One of the things I love about Portland, Oregon: You can be anything. If I lived there, my business card would say, “Regina Hackett. Speaker in tongues.”
The subject came up while reading a release from Portland’s “The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin” with “The Third Angle New Music Ensemble.” At the bottom of the list of choreographers, Randy Gragg gets a credit.
Randy Gragg? He’s an art and urban spaces critic, formerly of The Oregonian and now editor of a fancy lifestyle magazine. It’s way beneath his talents but not his pay grade. (Newspapers are floundering; lifestyle magazines are in the pink.)
Working there makes Gragg a sell-out. The term was an insult during the heyday of the counterculture but became a compliment during the Reagan administration. I’m sure I’d sell out if there were anyone to sell out to.
Is it just me, or is this completely snarky and unprofessional “journalism”? Why so vitriolic and transparently jealous and spiteful? I can’t believe that the online editor (if there even is one) allowed this to make it to the web unchallenged. It’s no wonder that print journalism is going the way of the dinosaur, with such low standards.
If you compare such a screed to what the Oregonian’s David Stabler writes on a regular basis in his blog on classical music, you’d see no relation whatsoever. David writes professionally at all times - it doesn’t matter that his words are appearing “only” on a computer screen and not on newsprint, he writes as if everyone in the state will be reading his words, not just some on-line cognoscenti looking to see who will be skewered next in some oh-so-clever way.
Well, Ron took out his electronic pen and wrote back - you can see the exchange here.
teaching/performing June 30, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : chamber music, music, seattle, summer festivals, add a commentThis week I’m up in Kenmore, Washington teaching and performing at the Max Aronoff Viola Institute, which I helped to found 18 years ago. The facility that we use is Bastyr University, which has all the classrooms and the lovely Chapel which is acoustically renowned (and used for a lot of movie scoring work during the year) - and not air-conditioned.
Yep, we’ve been sweatin’ to the oldies up here in the normally temperate city by the shores of Lake Washington. Our dorm rooms are on the top floor, and it takes some time, despite exhaustion, to get to sleep most nights. The chapel, however, is a giant masonry sweat-box, which makes performing a true test of mind over matter. The brain cells grow listless and despondent, and the fingerboard grows either sticky or slippery depending upon the propensity of one’s fingers to sweating, and one’s well-chosen concert outfit begins to look like an outdoor shower has been taken.
But, it’s a fun time for all of us on the faculty to play chamber music together, catch up on what’s happened since last year’s camp, and hear some new repertoire that we don’t know. It also provides a great opportunity for us to share our experience and artistry with a collection of violists, cellists, and violinists from several generations, and that feels awfully good after a long season in the orchestra.
field trip June 24, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, cello, music, seattle, soloists & recitals, the orchestra world, 2commentsLast Friday, a group of us from the OSO went up to Seattle to hear a matinee performance of the Seattle Symphony. It was a group of management, staff, and musicians who made the trek. It was quite the interesting experience. Primarily, I’d like to provide my basic impressions of the experience as someone who’s only been to Benaroya Hall once before (to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra on tour last year). (more…)
Seattle loses long-time music critic - is Portland next? May 12, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, music, portland, seattle, add a commentMelinda Bargreen, classical music critic in Seattle for the past 30 years, has accepted a buy-out from the Seattle Times as part of a restructuring of the paper’s staff. You can read her last column here.
Now read this blog entry by our lone full-time classical music critic here in Portland, David Stabler of the Oregonian. I’d be tempted to say that it sounds like we might lose our classical music critic sooner rather than later, too. The question to be asked might be, is the paper cutting staff or has Stabler just burned out on covering a growing music scene? Every critic has his/her own supporters and detractors, and that’s certainly the case with Stabler, but he has, until lately, done an excellent job of writing articles that keep the arts front and center in the consciousness of the city, and which have provoked a lot of lively discussion.
I hope that it’s just a moment of end-of-season ennui on his part, because Portland’s arts organizations are struggling enough as it is without having to worry about losing coverage in the state’s largest daily newspaper.
seattle symphony 08-09 season announced February 22, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, seattle, soloists & recitals, the orchestra world, add a commentThere’s not a lot that I’m finding compelling in the Seattle Symphony’s 2008-2009 season, but there some events worth noting if you’re ever in the habit of taking in a couple concerts in the Emerald City. (more…)
seattle violinist’s lawsuit dismissed January 26, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : labor issues, music, seattle, the orchestra world, add a commentThanks to James Bash who spotted this first.
A personal injury suit brought by violinist Peter Kaman against the Seattle Symphony was dismissed Friday in King County Superior Court. Kaman is a member of the Symphony’s first violin section.
Immediately after Judge Catherine Shaffer granted the symphony’s motion for summary judgment, Kaman’s lawyer, Brenda Little, said that she would appeal the decision. “We still believe in all of our discrimination claims. We are in this for the long haul.”
A violinist with the symphony for more than 25 years, Kaman also lost in court last month when Shaffer granted the orchestra’s request for summary judgment on another issue in the suit.
Read the whole story from the Seattle P-I here.
Also read James Bash’s review of the Ian Bostridge recital at Kaul Auditorium in Portland Thursday night.
more seattle news January 17, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : labor issues, music, seattle, the orchestra world, 1 comment so farThe Seattle Weekly has printed an article centering around the “one-woman law firm” of Brenda Little and her lawsuit against Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony on behalf of violinist Peter Kaman. Read the entire article here.
Here’s a tidbit: (more…)
more raves on seattle opera 08-09 season January 5, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, opera, seattle, add a comment
Gavin Borchert shares my enthusiasm about the Seattle Opera’s 2008-2009 season, especially the Bartók/Schoenberg duo of one-act operas:
Most exciting—unbelievable, in fact—is their presentation of Robert Lepage’s production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s monodrama Erwartung (Feb. 21-March 7), which I saw in Vancouver in 1998 and never dreamed would be done here. I did, however, hang on to the review I wrote:
“Bartok’s 45-minute opera is a duologue between Bluebeard and his bride Judith. In his great hall stand seven doors; one by one she demands to open them, revealing the horrors and wonders within. But behind the last are the apparitions of Bluebeard’s three previous wives, and Judith joins them to be sealed up forever as the curtain falls. In Michael Levine’s black-box set, the floor, ceiling, and walls slope up, down, and in from the proscenium to converge on a portcullised entrance at the rear of the stage—a space which both conveys the somber vastness of a castle hall and becomes increasingly claustrophobic as the psychological screws tighten. Robert Thomson’s lighting was an equal partner in the drama, from the row of illuminated keyholes in the darkness that marked the doors to the dazzling bursts of light as each one opened. Most magical was the moat at the lip of the stage, silvery waters from which the three wives rose, a stunningly beautiful effect.
“Lepage’s Schoenberg staging used the same set. In the original stage directions, a woman wanders through the woods and discovers the body of her lover, who, it is implied, she killed in an insane fit of jealousy. Lepage presented this as a flashback from the woman’s asylum cell, a hallucination decked with Dadaist details: a psychoanalyst in a chair on the wall, a floating bed, a scarlet moon.”
As long as I live, I’ll never forget the moat. “Stunningly beautiful” doesn’t even begin to cover it. This is the must-see of the season, if not the decade.
