Even though we complain about being too busy, my wife and I had three events in three evenings.
Thursday, June 5: Eclipsed is the third program this season from the Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate NY, after Berta, Berta, and Once On This Island.
The description: “‘Eclipsed’ tells the story of five Liberian women and their tale of survival near the end of the Second Liberian Civil War.
“Their lives set on a nightmarish detour by civil war, the captive wives of a Liberian rebel officer form a hardscrabble sisterhood. With the arrival of a new girl who can read—and the return of an old one who can kill—their possibilities are quickly transformed.” It was excellent, but very intense, and occasionally quite funny. Here is a review from the Berkshire Edge.
I was unfamiliar with the Danai Gurira play, which played on Broadway about a decade ago. Here’s a New York Times review from a 2016 production featuring Lupita Nyong’o.
From here: “Danai got the idea for Eclipsed from a 2003 magazine article featuring a female rebel solider named Black Diamond. The influence from that article, Danai’s own African upbringing, and her research in Liberia helped her to shed a light on enormities that are still issues today.”
I’m looking forward to next season from BTTUNY at the Cap Rep building.
Art
Friday, June 6: The Albany Public Library and Opalka Gallery celebrate the latest Art at APL exhibition, “Sight Specific.” The opening that night at the Pine Hills branch of the APL featured The Pine Hills Band.
“The artists in ‘Sight Specific’ are not directly mapping a place, but employing memory, direct observation, documentation, comparison, or abstraction, to tell stories of familiar places like gas stations, rest areas, basketball courts, backyards, living rooms, landscapes, industrial sites, or neighborhood streets…
“The exhibition features Michael Bach, Seth Butler, Matt Chinian, Sean Hemmerle, Susan Hoffer, Maeve McCool, Rob O’Neil, Andrew Pellettieri, and Laura Von Rosk.” It’ll be in place through November 8.
I went by myself because my wife had a work thing.
Symphony
Saturday, June 6: Last year, my wife and I attended almost the entire American Music Festival of the Albany Symphony Orchestra at EMPAC. Indeed, on Thursday night, we were invited to attend the open rehearsal, but we chose to attend the play instead.
This year, we only attended the American Music Festival, which had the theme of Water Music. It started with What do flowers do at night? by Sophia Jani. A cactus species called the Selenicereus grandiflorus blooms only once a year for one night.
Then Play: A Concerto For Percussion Quartet, Vocalist & Orchestra by Clarice Assad, which was just wack. The percussionists played glockenspiel, marimba, xylophone, toy drums, bells, rubber chickens, and many other instruments. It was excellent, lots of fun, and semi-autobiographical.
From here: “Indigo Heaven is a clarinet concerto in all but name, laid out in three movements running 27 minutes. The work is inspired by the open Western vistas described in Mark Warren’s novel of the same title.” It premiered with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, composed by Christopher Theofanidis, commissioned for the CSO’s principal clarinet, Stephen Williamson, who also played it at the ASO.
Bobby Ge’s Beyond Anthropocene was commissioned, premiered, and recorded by David Alan Miller and the ASO. The final movement is solastalgia, which is defined as “the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.” It was a workout, especially for the horns.
Reading the book 60 Songs That Explain The ’90s by Rob Harvilla reminded me of a concert by the group No Doubt on 10 July 1997 at the arena in downtown Albany. It used to be the Knickerbocker Arena, and now it’s the MVP Arena, but I believe that it was the Pepsi Arena at the time.
The pop hits of 1955 were pretty conventional compared to what the following years would show. Yes, it was the year of Rock Around The Clock hitting the top of the charts, but it wouldn’t be until the following year when Elvis and others took over that you see the real change. Incidentally, there are 73 weeks of hits because of the conflicting charts.
A few weeks ago, my wife parked the car in our neighborhood. She ended up behind an old, dark SUV with what appeared to be a New York license plate. The plate “number” was the B-word.