Weekend Music Watch: Jazz meets classical

Graham Reynolds and G0lden Arm Trio play Duke Ellington at March Music Moderne. Photo: Gene Newell

There’s one last chance to see Portland Opera’s engaging Galileo Galilei Saturday night at Portland’s Newmark Theater. Although it’s not the deepest take on one of history’s most powerful stories — one that still resonates today, when powerful political figures knowingly deny scientific reality that clashes with their political and financial interests — Portland Opera’s first 21st century opera definitely worth seeing, preferably from the balcony where you can best appreciate the set design. As I wrote (approximately) in Willamette Week:

Philip Glass’s 2002 chamber opera views Galileo through the wrong end of the telescope, rendering one of history’s most dramatic stories smaller than life. Unlike the composer’s earlier grand scale metaphorical evocations of famous historical figures like Gandhi, Einstein, Akhnaten and Columbus, PO’s 90-minute, relatively literal, intimately scaled production (15 instrumentalists, nine singers, single set) necessarily skims the surface, distancing us from Galileo’s relationship with his daughter, his world-changing experiments, and above all his dramatic, near fatal confrontation with the church/state’s view that the sun revolved around the earth. (Just substitute “climate change” or “evolution” for “heliocentrism” and they could have staged the inquisition scene at a 2012 Republican primary debate.)

But Anne Manson’s crisp conducting, designer Curt Enderle’s gorgeous set, Mary Zimmerman’s imagistic concept, Kevin Newbury’s clever, briskly circling stage direction, and generally strong performances in multiple roles by the company’s young studio artists (especially cardinals/oracles Matthew Hayward —outstanding in the show I caught — and John Holiday, Nicholas Nelson’s Pope and Andre Chiang’s Galileo) overcome occasional instrumental intonational lapses and Glass’s static stretches, plus some really tough vocal writing that taxes plucky leads Richard Troxell and Lindsay Ohse. After hitting cruise control about halfway through, the music and action burst back to life in a dazzling horn and percussion fueled final opera-within-an-opera that makes even this distant if colorful view of humanity’s greatest scientist well worth a gaze.

Also on Saturday at Portland’s Old Church, Portland’s 45th Parallel stages a tribute to Chamber Music Northwest founder Sergiu Luca, who died last year. One of his proteges, 45th Parallel and Oregon Symphony violinist Greg Ewer, will join veteran pianist Cary Lewis in music by Seattle native William Bolcom and Norwegian composer Christian Sinding, and then jazz violinist James Mason and colleagues from the delightful Portland band Swing Papillon will join them for a tribute to the jazz violin pioneer Joe Venuti.

Lindse Sullivan grabs it at Blue Monk. Photo: Gene Newell.

Categories Don’t Mean a Thing

Jazz and classical music were also trysting and shouting last weekend at one of the closing concerts of March Music Moderne. Illness and concert conflicts unfortunately kept me from a reportedly superb East Coast Chamber Orchestra concert sponsored by Chamber Music Northwest, the Oregon Symphony’s performance of Mozart, Haydn and Shostakovich, and what sounded like a fascinating happening at Northwest Portland’s Peculiarium and MMM’s closing event featuring 20th century music in films. But the last show I did catch, at the Blue Monk, a jazz venue, was one of the most diverse of the bunch. It opened with Dutch composer Jacob TV’s arresting 1999 Grab It!, in which tenor saxist Lindse Sullivan duetted with barking vocal samples from the documentary Scared Straight. Owing much to the influence of Steve Reich’s landmark 1967 tape classic Come Out and a bit to Laurie Anderson’s work, the aptly titled Grab It! certainly seizes listeners’ attention, making a terrific concert opener, even if it does stretch a bit long for the material. Sullivan’s bravura performance reminded me of trumpeter Brian McWhorter’s intense solo showcase in the previous evening’s MMM concert at BodyVox Studio.

Members of Classical Revolution PDX followed with a trio movement by Dvorak, a Piazzolla gem, and songs from veteran classical accompanist Naomi LaViolette’s new album, which crosses into singer-songwriter territory. Accompanied by cellist Erin Winemiller and violinist Lucia Conrad, the singer pianist was in good form on her winsome piano ballads. As often happens in CRPDX performances, the dizzying stylistic range of just this opening set felt like a live version of an iPod shuffle, and I didn’t mind a bit. Today’s listeners seem far more comfortable experiencing music based on its quality rather than its category.

Classical Revolution members Erin Winemiller, Megan Moran
and Lucia Conrad. Photo: Gene Newell

The second set featured Austin-based pianist/composer Graham Reynolds, whose work I’ve admired since an Austin friend sent me some of his CDs last year, and I heard his music for Rude Mechs’ The Method Gun at last summer’s Time Based Arts Festival (and earlier, his score for the movie A Scanner Darkly). A stalwart of the city’s new classical scene who’s produced dozens of indie classical concerts, Reynolds comes to alt classical from the jazz side, and his rock rhythmed, barrelhouse piano-fueled reimaginings of Duke Ellington’s magnificent music at the Monk showed just durable those tunes can be — a point reinforced by Reed College music professor David Schiff’s new book, The Ellington Century, about which we’ll tell you more later. Famously “beyond category” himself, Ellington knew only two kinds of music: good music, and “the other kind.” He makes as persuasive a patron saint for MMM as John Cage.

Before his robust quintet (including Blue Cranes’ Joe Cunningham) unleashed rollicking versions of “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “Caravan,” “Old King Dooji” and more, Reynolds led his Golden Arm Trio and a pickup orchestra of string players in his own uncategorizable triple concerto, The Difference Engine, inspired by Charles Babbage’s famous Victorian proto-computing concept, which in turn inspired a pretty good speculative fiction novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Reynolds’ music swung from a long, sweet string intro to his own dramatic Lisztian piano solo to a percussive string section to delicate piano and violin duet. His soundtrack background showed in cinematic chase sequences and a penchant for abrupt transitions and endings. Reynolds is making some of the most appealing genre defying music around. I wasn’t able to stay for all of Blue Cranes’ closing set, but what I heard at the Monk and in their opening set for Tim Berne at Alberta Rose theater last month certainly reaffirmed the band’s status as one of the Northwest’s most enjoyable improvising ensembles.

dtq quartet performs at Multnomah County
Central Library. Photo: Gary Stallworth

That was end of MMM, whose impact we’ll assess in another post soon, for me, at least, but those irrepressible Classical Revolutionaries were at it again on Saturday afternoon at the Multnomah County Central library, playing for an audience that, judging by admittedly superficial cues such as dress, race, age, and the presence of young children, looked mostly unfamiliar with the stodgy standard classical music set up. Apparently no one told them that they were supposed to flee in fear and confusion from modern and local music, because the audience seemed as gripped by the dtq quartet’s renditions of music by Shostakovich, last year’s CRPDX composition competition winner Lawrence Tsao, and former Portlander Scott Ordway as by the Mozart and Brahms — maybe more so. Congrats to Classical Revolution and the Multnomah County library for bringing today’s sounds and classical music to places where everyone can hear it.

Alt.classical in PDX: Beyond the Wall Street Journal

Third Angle pianist Susan Smith at City Dance in 2008

Last week, the Wall Street Journal, for whom I’ve written for more than a decade, published my story about Portland’s alternative classical music scene, and as always, space limitations forced us to leave some important bits on the cutting room floor. The trend the story identified may be news to most of the millions of WSJ readers, but many Oregon arts watchers probably already know much of that tale. But they may not know what we had to leave out: What makes Portland such a hothouse for creative classical music, and what we can do to ensure that it continues to flourish. Here’s the director’s cut.

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Electric Opera, Cascadia Concert Opera, Classical Revolution: Alt Opera

When we hear the word “opera,” we generally think big: big orchestra, big stage, big tenors and sopranos, big ticket prices. A couple of Portland shows last week made useful reminders that the genre can work at smaller scales and with non-traditional forces.

Friday night’s Electric Opera Company (EOC) concert at Portland’s splendidly restored Alberta Rose Theatre, like every show the multi-guitar-keyboard-and-drums outfit stages, sets out to show that classical music — some of it, at least — can resonate with contemporary listeners who will open themselves to it, by presenting the same tunes, note for note, played on the kind of plugged-in instruments most of them grew up hearing. Perform Mozart on instruments a pop music lover is used to hearing rock bands play, EOC front man Bobby Ray’s theory goes, and they’ll be open to the music’s beauty, not put off by what may seem a stodgy means of delivery. It’s the converse of the Portland Cello Project approach: Instead of playing non-classical music on “classical” instruments, the classically trained musicians of EOC play classical music on non-classical instruments.

EOC’s opening act, Classical Revolution PDX, shares the goal of bringing new audiences to classical music by removing superficial, non-musical barriers. In CRPDX’s case, it’s not the old instruments but rather antiquated venues and stuffy performance rituals. When CRPDX’s musicians perform in a theater instead of club, though, it’s hard to avoid applying the standards used for professional musicians who stand onstage and demand full attention, and the performers’ enthusiasm and informality can’t always make up the difference. Stage performances also make me want to know things seldom provided this night, like the names of the performers and the pieces being played.

Opening a concert like this with a long, unidentified virtuoso showpiece (Tartini’s famous “Devil’s Trill” sonata) can be rough sledding for any audience with 21^st century attention spans, no matter how well played. More contemporary fare fared better. Flutist Celine Thackston’s breathless version of Ian Clarke’s exercise in extended techniques, “Zoom Tube,” would have impressed Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson. PCP/Vagabond Opera/ solo artist Ashia Grzesik’s set profited from her stage charisma and vocal/cellistic chops — she’s a Portland star on the rise. Grzesik’s version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” almost cleansed Whitney Houston from my memory. I wish trumpeter David Binnig had been identified so I’d have known who to thank for the hypnotic foot pedal looping enhanced original, “Dies Irae.”  Classical Revolution PDX is always welcome, but so far it tends to work better in less formal settings.

Electric Opera’s set certainly established the lanky Ray as a star — if he wants to be. He’s got the vocal and guitar chops, stage presence to burn, a real musicality, and an earnest, visible affection for the music he’s covering, from Mozart to Tchaikovsky to Chopin. His sly humor and strict preparation kept the show moving and fun, without getting caught up in instrument tuning and set changes. But he’s also got too much of a sense of humor and irony to wallow in rock star cliches, instead parodying the guitar god moves in an understated Spinal Tap fashion. Even the spectacular drum solo worked as both impressive showcase and dig at rock star cliches. Like David Byrne, Ray is able to wink at the excesses of the music he loves without smirking, so EOC shows effectively strike that difficult postmod balance between laughing at and loving its subjects.

Although it was billed as a “devil music” show (which was more appropriate when they did it at Halloween), the concert packed only a few demonic references and, except for some Bizet and Gounod, not even that much opera. Keyboards and drums — all played adeptly — were as prominent as guitars. When Classical Revolution’s players crowded the stage with EOC, rare treats like the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” became possible and delightful. The affectionate/satirical attitude culminated in a clever Lynyrd Skynyrd-meets-Led Zep mashup of those two most cliched and overplayed of  ’70s perennial rock encores that long ago became jokes, which Ray dubbed “Stairway to Freebird.” EOC probably appeals more to rock fans than to many hard-core classical types, but it’s hard to imagine any music lover coming away from any of their shows without a grin and a deeper appreciation for the music, or the musicians.

On Wednesday, Cascadia Concert Opera returned for its third Portland appearance in as many summers in a minimalist, hour-long brown bag lunch performance of Mozart’s sly opera Cosi Fan Tutti (All Women Are Like That). The group, comprising professional Oregon classical players from Eugene, Corvallis and beyond, also performs in alternative venues such as nursing homes, community centers etc. in Eugene, the Oregon Coast and elsewhere.

How do you cram a whole opera on the little stage at downtown Portland’s The Old Church (the site of this show) or Sherman Clay/Moe’s Pianos store (where they’ll play September 18)? Strip it down to a few singers playing major roles, and a single, very busy pianist, that’s how.

When the composer is history’s greatest melodist, Mozart, whose sublime music depends far more than most on the pure power of the tunes rather than orchestration, spectacle or even plot, it can work just fine — if the singers are up to it. These were, and their theatrical skills — particularly hilarious hammy tenor Nick Larson — matched their vocal prowess. Even their non-verbal reactions were compelling. Of course this was a different world from Portland Opera’s excellent full scale staging of the piece last year. But with only a few props — a sword, a mustache, an apron, various headgear — and a piano, some strong singers, and of course some of the most achingly beautiful music ever written, Cascadia Concert Opera, like Classical Revolution, Electric Opera and other Oregon alt classical stalwarts demonstrate that in the right hands, there’s no reason to confine classical music to its traditional venues — or audiences. And that opera doesn’t have to be grand to be good.

Cascadia Concert Opera’s Cosi Fan Tutti continues next month.