What better way to ease back into the daily grind after an overstuffed thanksgiving break than with a lovely afternoon seranade? If you want to prolong this mini break as much as I do, I suggest you bring in the holiday cheer this Sunday and check out the world renowned Vienna Boy’s Choir (a.k.a. Die Wiener Sängerknaben).
"Here We Come"
Formed during the late middle ages by Emperor Maximilian I of Austria, the Vienna Boy’s Choir is a long standing tradition, having worked with such big names as Mozart, Bruckner, Haydn, and Schubert (The names of their four respective touring choirs). The choir itself is composed of 100 choristers from all over the country known for their angelic voices and skill but by the looks of it, seem to be regular 14 year old boys. Check out this epic commercial they did last year for the European Football Championship, it won the best commercial at the ITB Berlin! (BTW: If I could have O’Fortuna play everywhere I walked, I would be one happy gal)
Kickflippin' it
Aside from touring the globe, working with world renowned composers, and being some of the most skilled choristers, I find it hard to believe these kids are all under the age of 14. Their lives will be featured in the upcoming documentary, Silk Road-Songs Along the Road and Time, which aims to explore the history of the choir and its influence and unity through a year spent with the choir boys on tour and at home.
Majestic Melodies
The choir originated exclusively for the Viennese Court and it wasn’t until 1918 that the choir disbanded and formed their own institution, allowing them to tour the globe. Now in 2009, the choir boys return again, since their first performance at Michigan in 1933, and bring Christmas in Vienna all the way to Ann Arbor. If you’re looking for a way to cure those coming winter blues, you should grab some hot cocoa and head over to Hill Auditorium at 3 tomorrow. where there will be carolers on the steps before the show at 4. You can still snag some tickets for as little as $12 but unfortunately you can only buy them online (Click here to buy).
Recap:
What: Vienna Boy’s Choir
Where: Hill Auditorium
When: Sunday at 4 p.m. (Carolers on the steps at 3)
Why: To be inspired and amazed? For Christmas cheer? Something new? Insert reason here?
The University of MIchigan Men’s Glee Club is the oldest student organization on the UM campus and has long been acclaimed to be one of the finest male choruses in the world. This year they are celebrating 150 years of tradition, camaraderie, and musical excellence. This was the first time I had the chance to see the MGC perform live, and I have to say it definitely lived up to everything I had hoped it would and beyond.
The first thing that stood out about their performance was how professional it seemed right from the beginning. They seemed to run-while-actually-walking onto the stage and turned so suddenly at such sharp angles, giving them a very intense quality. As soon as all the members and the director were on stage, they began to sing just as suddenly as they walked on, which had a very powerful effect.
The second couple of songs were very soothing, with a great combination of all ninety-nine voices (Is that right? I tried to count…). I especially loved when they began with just a whisper, and suddenly just boomed. You can probably tell that I don’t listen to choir music often, but at the same time even I was very touched. The music seemed to match the words so nicely, and the Paul Rardin, the director, emulated the emotions so strongly when he conducted. It actually helped a lot to hear his introductions to each piece; he did a great job of explaining the background of the music and poetry, and he was in general just a very good speaker, too.
The first song that stuck out to me was Lowlands, an American Sea Chanty arranged by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw. The repetition of the phrase “My dollar and a half a day” was intense every single time they came back to it, and the soloist was absolutely amazing. I recall my friend, an amazing singer herself, touching her heart several times during the solo. The next song wasn’t as good in my friend’s opinion, but I think it would be unfair to judge it right after Lowlands. I personally enjoyed the timpani in this piece, “A stopwatch and an ordnance map, Op. 15.” The volume control was great by the percussionist, but also by the MGC. I felt like it was perfectly easy to separate each individual voice, which is what made the solos stand out so well.
The next couple of pieces were by the men of the Southfield-Lathrup High School Madrigal Singers. It’s easy to say that they didn’t compare to the MGC, but that’s understandable–there were only 13 of them, so the overall sound was a bit soft. Most of their voices were quite nice, though, except maybe some of the higher pitches ones. The best part for me was the a capella, when the conductor, Jeffrey Martin, joined three of them in “Coney Island Baby” by Les Appleton, a lighthearted song that brought a lot of laughs from the audience. Overall, I was very impressed by their performance, except perhaps an overpowering piano at times. But after the initial couple of pieces, both choirs joined together to sing three more songs, in which I thought the piano was actually quite excellent, and the songs were overall empowered by having more members in the choir.
Following next was the world premiere of “Searchlight Soul,” a composition by Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winning composer William Bolcom, a distinguished faculty member of the School of Music here for thirty-five years. It was split into five poems, all written by University of Michigan students and alumni. I personally enjoyed the third piece, Searchlight, the most, though it was slightly ruined by a cough during the silence right before it began. Interestingly enough it was my friend that coughed. To add to the irony, we had just been reading a warning in the program where it informed us that, “During a recent test in the hall, a note played mezzo forte on the horn measured approximately 65 decibels of sound. A single ‘uncovered’ cough gave the same reading.”
Other pieces from Searchlight Soul which stood out were the last two, “Mosquito” and “Dude, Where’s My Car?” Both were pretty funny, particularly the end of Dude, Where’s My Car when they actually said that line. It was a good that the lyrics were in the program, though, because without it I don’t think I would have understood them fully. It was pretty difficult for me in general to pick up all the words, which is why I enjoyed the conductor’s introductions, as I mentioned previously.
Next up were the Friars. I have to be honest, I was looking forward to this the most out of any part. The Friars, if you don’t know, are an a capella group of eight men from the MGC who choose and prepare their own music and choreography. I have to agree completely with the description in the program where it refers to the “spirit of light-hearted spontaneity which is the trademark of every Friars performance.” I love all of the small jokes they toss out, as well as the goofy choreography. I was particularly happy with their song “Buckeyed Girl,” which was duly welcome after the game on Saturday.
I don’t want to say that the next few songs weren’t good, but they went by quite fast and so I didn’t have many opinions on them. I remember Jonah’s Song having a very strong opening–loud but soft sounding at the same time. Bright Morning Star had a very touching duet, and the choir coming in after it had a powerful effect. Beyond that, I remember Wonderful Is Your Name being “fun,” but that’s all.
The concert ended with Paul Rardin inviting to the stage all MGC alumni that came for the night in singing the Yellow and Blue. It was very, very cool to see alumni of all ages come to stage and perform. I tried to put myself into their shoes, which gave me an odd sense of pride in the UMMGC. Overall the concert was excellent and I suggest that everyone that can go see their concert next semester on April 10th.
Look out for the Friars in Rackham Auditorium on December 5th!
They play quickly. They play intensely. Then, they stop mid-song to pose for a second row audience member to take a picture on his iPhone. This is the type of evening it was for Frank Vignola and his band (he borrowed his accordionist from The Hot Club of Detroit). The men were very apparently great musicians but they seemed too intent on putting on an act, like it was a Broadway show. The music, which had the energy and story to stand alone, was distracted by the showmen. In the middle of one of bassist Gary Mazzaroppi’s many solos on the night, rhythm guitarist Vinny Raniolo prompted the audience to applaud the bassman’s skills. Then, as part of the funny man act the band had conjured up, Mazzaroppi stopped his solo and told the audience to wait until he was done. Well, they received the response they expected from the audience and they kept up the act. In what is now a bit of a weird occurrence Thursday evening, Vignola told the crowd that it was Vinny Raniolo’s birthday and asked us to sing a quick happy birthday to him. However, in looking up Raniolo’s last name after the show, I found that Raniolo had already celebrated his birthday at a September 25 show in Baltimore (link to review). Peculiar. Nonetheless, Vignola and the band seemed like nice guys – just a bit too eager to please with their mouths rather than their instruments, leaving a slightly shtick-y feeling in my mouth.
Thursday evening presented the half-full Ark crowd with a double bill of Django Reinhardt-inspired gypsy jazz music that concluded with local favorites, The Hot Club of Detroit. This young group of musicians, led by brilliant guitarist Evan Perri, is much more about business. Donning sharp suits and choosing to sit rather than dance around like Vignola and co., The Hot Club of Detroit, although adding a contemporary edge to Django Reinhardt’s original, Quintette du Hot Club du France (below). The group’s clarinetist and saxophonist, Carl Cafagna, also added some drawing-power that Vignola’s group missed.
Django Reinhardt & the Quintette du Hot Club du France
In any case, The Ark crowd on Thursday evening loved every second. The majority of the crowd, couples on a romantic night on the town, were very encouraged by the emanations of a candle-light dinner on the Champs-Elysses. While the rest, generally graying single men, seemed to dig the musicianship and play of the instruments.
The Hot Club of Detroit, in case one is looking for more gypsy jazz music this month, will play again this Friday evening at the Detroit Institute of Art’s Friday Night Live!. Free with museum admission, the Hot Club will be playing sets at 7 and 8:30 while the museum will be open with other events until 10pm.
Patti LuPone’s “Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda” at the Hill Auditorium on Nov 20, 09
The one and only Patti LuPone
You gotta love a woman who starts a show with “Go Blue” and “Buckeyes suck”. To those of you who don’t know Patti Lupone (come on now, really? 😉 ), she’s one of the divas of Broadway whom you just gotta see. If you love musicals, then you would have definitely come across her.
The list of her awards- including Tonys, Best Actress in a Musical, etc. – is almost as long as her list of stage credits. She is one of the most illustrious stars of Broadway. Her critically acclaimed roles include Evita (she was the original Evita!), Sweeney Todd, “Fantine” in Les Miserables, Rose in Gypsy, just to name a wee few.
Patti LuPone was in town yesterday for her one-woman show “Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda”. This show is about the roles and songs that she could have, should have and would have done “had she been asked or had she been around or had she been a guy” (I faithfully quote her). She also delighted us with the roles she did play (oh yeah, she has had a great run).
Now, in concerts, the relationship between an audience and the artist is so different. Some artists are so god-like (and hence so cool and aloof) that the listeners, with a mingled feeling of respect and awe, sit up straight in their chairs, afraid to shift their bulk around. You can compare this to watching Zeus in heaven use his thunderbolts or the Berliner Philharmoniker perform, for instance.
Some other artists are so down-to-earth and warm that you feel as if you have been invited to a party in the artist’s very own living room and you kick off your shoes and swing your legs up on the chair in front of you. This would be like going to a party that playful musically-gifted Hermes throws or watching Patti (see, she made us feel so at home that I feel like I have known her for a really long time and I want to call her by her first name instead of the socially appropriate Ms. LuPone) perform.
Now about the show.
There was only Ms. Lupone’s magnificent brassy (and unique) voice and Mr. i-never-miss-a-beat-or-tune Joseph Thalken’ s piano sounds on stage.
Mr. Thalken
Ms. Lupone, started off with a lovely opening melody followed by “An English Teacher” from “Bye, Bye, Birdie”. She then regaled us with tales about her own career in between the songs. She was just so hilarious that you gotta see it. There was never a dull moment to the show. Her choice of songs was great and that is very important for any artist. Had Patti played those roles, she would have definitely owned these too. Throughout her show that night, you could see the stamina, the mannerisms and the unmatchable multi-tasking ability of a true Broadway actress. Only an actress from Broadway can sing, act, pose, mimic, dance and look fabulous while doing it all.
Here’s a list of songs that she performed and my comments about them. I wish they had posted the list in the program notes. But then again, it would have ruined the surprise. I am giving this list as I want people to go check these out. They are the perfect songs for a gloomy winter day (sigh, we will be having so many of those soon).
An English Teacher- Bye Bye Birdie (hilarious!)
A Wonderful Guy- South Pacific
Don’t rain on my parade- Barbra Streisand (Oh, this was so power-packed and she rocked this song)
Easy to be hard- Hair (the high notes she hit in these were just mind-blowing)
Everything’s coming up Roses- Gypsy
She won a Tony award for her performance in this musical. You will know why when you listen to her.
You mustn’t be discouraged- Fade out Fade in (my second favorite)
This was her audition song for Juilliard. This song is set in one of those make-you-feel-good tunes…until you hear the lyrics.
“When you think you’ve hit the bottom
And you’re feeling mighty low,
You mustn’t feel discouraged –
There’s always one step further down you can go.”
The song only gets better and everybody was cracking up and I was laughing so hard that I almost fell off my seat (the guy sitting next to me didn’t notice as he was busy guffawing too).
Meadowlark- The Baker’s Wife
A boy Like that/ I have a love- West side story
Oh, this was so good- like eating fresh Creme Brulee at La Dolce Vita (hey, i just LOVE their desserts and am not advertising for them, ok).
A quiet thing- Flora the Red Menace (Originally sung by Liza Minelli)
Never Never Land- Peter Pan
This song is from the 1960 production of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, with Mary Martin as Peter. Aww…this was so good. I would love to be in a place where time is never planned. Wouldn’t we all?
Don’t Cry for me Argentina- Evita
My first favorite. This was so awesome. This is “her” song and she owns it. It doesn’t get better than this. You could see her transform into Evita (or Evita as we know her from musicals) almost instantly. The humor was gone and was replaced with the pleading in her voice that also conveyed power and charisma. I had to see it to believe it. This alone was worth going to the show.
Oh what a beautiful morning- Frank Sinatra (It was definitely a very beautiful evening for me.)
You just gotta listen to this song. Patti never missed a beat and it just suited her voice so well. She just fired all her guns and sang it at a faster pace than Robert Preston. I love Patti’s version better now. Wish she would release a recording of that. Sigh! Patti, are you listening?
How to handle a woman- King Arthur’s lament from Camelot
This “duet” was awesome. Mr.Thalken did the background vocals while flipping the pages of the sheet music while continuing his smooth playing of course. I just love it when a person multi-tasks. 🙂
As long as he needs me- Oliver!
She then did a Sondheim Set. What a great composer Stephen Sondheim is!
I never do anything twice (the Madam’s song)– from the film The Seven-per-cent solution
Anyone can whistle-Anyone can whistle
As per the lyrics: “What’s hard is simple. What’s natural comes hard. ” What ??? I think will have to see the original musical to understand.
Send in the clowns– A Little Night Music
My Way- Frank Sinatra (loved this). With this perfectly apt song, Patti ended the absolutely beautiful evening.
Did you think that we let her go so easily? We begged for more. She sang Sondheim’s “Ladies who lunch” from the musical “Company”, Kurt Wiell’s “September Song” and a classic Sinatra “The way you look tonight” (she sang this without the mike and it was just so beautiful).
We were greedy and still wouldn’t let her go. The evening ended with the entire audience standing and Patti singing Sinatra’s “A 100 years from today” sans the piano and sans the microphone. The air was electrifying and there was complete silence except for Patti’s golden voice. The scene is still etched in my mind and that I feel is what every artist strives for- the undying adoration of a devout audience.
Still enchanted, Krithika, for [art]seen
Krithika is learning to whistle and if you hear sounds like the squeak of a trapped mouse or a horribly out-of-tune piccolo on campus, just ignore.
Disclaimer: If I have left out any song from the night’s performance or cited the wrong song, do lemme know. Folks, I am striving to be politically correct here, ok. 😉
It’s the Berlin Philharmonic. They tell me that Berlin is one the greatest orchestras in the world today – maybe the greatest. So, how does this kid prepare for a taste of high culture? Roll out the tie and iron the slacks. Unfortunately, it is officially No Shave November so the scruffier-by-the-day beard effectively brought down the class level a few points. Nonetheless, roomie Evan and I looked relatively ready to face off against the suits that dominate the culture of classical music (a few pulls of the whiskey later, we felt ready as well). Again, in another affront to our front of respectability, running late, we rolled up our right pant legs and took the quick ride to Hill Auditorium, locking up the bicycles next to the heavily Cadillac’d valet service (at least they’re American, right?).
Now inside Hill, we raced to beat the bells telling us how many minutes until showtime (count the lobby bells – one bell a minute until takeoff at the typical Broadway show) – we quickly learned that, in Germany, there are only 25 seconds in a minute or the orchestra was really in a hurry to start. Finally, relaxed and seated in the velvety, red chairs of the Mezzanine, the show began.
Even for this inexperienced symphony-goer, it truly was a magical evening. I expected a very disciplined, accurate, and direct expression of the Brahms and Schoenberg on the program as this is a fairly common stereotype of German art and culture. Instead, we witnessed extreme emotional expositions from the 128 world-class musicians and their conductor and artistic director, Sir Simon Rattle. Rattle seemed to prompt the emotional outpouring with his long, white, curly, unkempt locks. Throughout the evening, Rattle flailed his entire body to all parts of the conductor platform engaging every member of the orchestra (and audience) in every movement of the orchestral pieces.
Simon Rattle Going Nutso (not at Hill, unfortunately)
In cooperation with Rattle, each musician moved with the flow of the music. At all other symphony performances I have attended, the musicians seemed intent on showing little personal emotion, letting the music have full control of the auditorium. The musicians would move nothing outside of the requisite for creating the note on the page in front of them. The musicians of the Berliner Philharmoniker, instead, more intimately evoked the headbanging performances of The Ramones (“The Berliner Philharmoniker Live @ CBGB! One Night Only!”). Each musician, on the edge of his or her (almost entirely his, unfortunately) chair, rolled back and forth with each note, expressing anguish in face and movement.
Oh, right, and the music. Hill Auditorium -the Ann Arbor stop in the middle of the New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles tour – was filled to capacity with the full sounds of the Brahms’ 3 and 4, and slightly challenged with the quieter, more internal study of Schoenberg’s ‘Music For A Cinema Scene’ (Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspiel Szene). The symphony is a musical phenomenon, in itself, in its ability to so intensively align so many musicians in a common musical goal. The Berliner Philarmoniker fully accentuates this characteristic, totally engrossed in their communal need to be one.
And so, after 15 minutes of loud clapping and attempted whistles, we left amazed and emotionally drained. Although very much out of the comfortable habitat of $5 cover and over-power amps, we fit into our ties on Tuesday evening, forgot the cultural implications of classical music, and fixed ourselves in the orchestral experience.
Berlin Philharmonic @ Hill Auditorium (photo by AnnArbor.com)
Date: Sunday, Nov 22nd, 2009
Location: Michigan Theater
Time: 7pm
Tickets: $5 students and $8 adults
Buy them from the Pops Orchestra members or at the Michigan Theater right before the concert.
Watch this exciting performance by the only student-run and student-directed orchestra at Michigan! The Michigan Pops Orchestra, comprised of about 100 students, performs popular music from movies, shows, and classical works. In addition to the captivating music, there’s often a fun PowerPoint presentation full of fun pictures.
The Pops Orchestra was founded in 1995 by Warren Hsu to provide non-music major undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to continue playing their instruments. From within the orchestra, chamber ensembles and a smaller string orchestra is formed, giving students even more chances to play their instruments in a relaxed atmosphere.
The theme this semester is aPOPScalyse. The program has not been posted yet, but based on the name, there will be a lot of music related to fighting, the end of the world, and whatever other themes the name conjures up.
