Festival of New American Music

Every year for 37 years my alma mater Sac State hosts the Festival of New American Music.  I attended all or part of 3 concerts.

November 10

Michael Norsworthy, clarinet
David Gompper, piano

I attended performances of:

SchiZm (1993-94) in two movements for piano and clarinet by Derek Bermel
It goes without Saying for recording and clarinet by Nico Muhly
Traceur for piano and clarinet by David Gompper, the pianist here.

Nico Muhly is famous by now since his opera Two Boys played at the Metropolitan Opera last season.  The important thing about his piece is that the recorded sounds were all made in his kitchen.  I assume that means his synthesizer was in the kitchen.

It's nice to hear what's going on, but for me the loud, harsh sounds produced on the clarinet were just a bit too ugly for me.

November 12

Fidelio Trio
Darragh Morgan, violin
Deirdre Cooper, cello
Mary Dullea, piano

This is an Irish piano trio with their own web page who play a wide variety of repertoire.  I stayed for the entire concert.

Piano Trio (1985) by Charles Wuorinen
Trio II (2003) in four movements by John Harbison
Blackberries (2007) by Elena Ruehr
Typical Music (2000) by Evan Ziporyn

Harbison is the composer of the opera The Great Gatsby. Wuorinen composed the recently streamed Brokeback Mountain. 

The last two composers were at the concert.  I felt that only Elena Ruehr achieved the sonority associated with a piano trio.  Many of the composers didn't seem to understand that all three players should play at once most of the time.  Why call it a piano trio if it's just three people playing solos in turn?

Evan Ziporyn has composed for gamelan and only recently returned to western music.  The Asian influence was apparent.

November 16

Glass & Blood
Chase Spruill, violin
Michael Riesman, piano

Michael Riesman is a Philip Glass enthusiast who has arranged this music from movie sound tracks for violin and piano.

I stayed for

Suite from The Hours for violin and piano (2002/2014)
Suite from Candyman for violin and piano (1992/2014)

The Hours is not a horror movie, and the music was standard serene Glass noodle music.  You know what I mean--noodle noodle noodle noodle....

Candyman is serious horror, and the music expresses it.

I discussed briefly with a friend at intermission.  It is always surprising to me that the music of Glass expresses so much more than the actual notes would lead you to believe.  I remember that he studied with Nadia Boulanger and cannot at all imagine what the conversations would have consisted of.

I should have stayed for Suite from Dracula.

I sometimes ask myself what this music is for, and then I remember the requirement for sound tracks.  Glass does a great deal of this kind of work.

There was no singing in any of these concerts.

Brokeback Mountain

Titus Engel conductor
Ivo van Hove stage director
Jan Versweyveld set designer, lightings
Wojciech Dziedzic costumes
Tal Yarden video
Annie Proulx libretto
Jan Vandenhouwe dramaturgy
Andrés Máspero chorus master

Daniel Okulitch (Ennis del Mar)
Tom Randle (Jack Twist)
Heather Buck (Alma)
Hannah Esther Minutillo (Lureen)
Ethan Herschenfeld (Aguirre / Hog-Boy)
Celia Alcedo (Alma's Mother)
Ryan MacPherson (Jack's Father)
Jane Henschel (Jack's Mother)
Hilary Summers (Waitress)
Letitia Singleton (Seller)
Gaizka Gurruchaga (Cowboy)
Vasco Fracanzani (Bill Jones)

I'm watching the live stream on medici.tv from Madrid of Charles Wuorinen's Brokeback Mountain.  Daniel Okulitch is a lovely man, a man who dresses up as a cowboy quite nicely.  Gary Cooper had nothing on him.  He is apparently game for anything.  I'm not sure that's enough to save it.

The music is somewhere between secco and accompagnato recitative with percussion ensemble background.  It's ok, I guess.  The outfits are perfect.  The dialect appears also in the subtitles.  Everything is very American.  It was originally commissioned by the New York City Opera.

The scenes seem to change suddenly as if this wasn't really live.  Furniture disappears instantly from the stage.

The emotional extensions of aria are an essential feature of opera.  They extend and deepen the emotion.  The pace of constant recitative is fine for perhaps a movie, but in an opera it all has to take longer.  Okulitch is constantly on the stage which makes the whole idea of aria extensions seem impossible.

There is a certain theatrical rhythm that the best opera composers capture.  I don't mind Wuorinen's sound-scape which was criticized in other reviews I read.  But I didn't feel the right sense of timing in the scenes.  The story was well told, but the building of emotion through the scenes seemed to be missing.  Perhaps the right director could fix this.  I'm not sure.

Ennis's wife needs to have a real Princess Phone.  That would make all the difference.

News

This came in my inbox:

"Brokeback Mountain" To Become An Opera
via The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com by The Huffington Post News Editors on 6/9/08

NEW YORK — The New York City Opera commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for a 2005 movie that won three Academy Awards.

The opera is scheduled to premiere in spring 2013, City Opera said Sunday. It will be City Opera's second Wuorinen premiere, following "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," which was based on a Salman Rushdie novel and opened in October 2004.

"Ever since encountering Annie Proulx's extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives me great joy that Gerard Mortier and New York City Opera have given me the opportunity to do so," Wuorinen said in a statement.

"Brokeback Mountain" is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start a homosexual affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in 1963.

Dr.B. Based on my theories of what makes a good opera, this should work. It's sort of a gay chick flick.