Albany Symphony Orchestra Archives - Page 2 of 2

Rabid goats and rabid fans in June

The performances were good, but the storybook is still very thin.

There’s only three of us, but we calendar a LOT these days so that we don’t inadvertently book a couple items on the same day. These all happened in June.

ITEM: The Wife and I saw, at the local Steamer Number 10 theater, Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, an “unauthorized parody” written by Bert V. Royal. The “play imagines characters from the popular comic strip Peanuts as degenerate teenagers.”

It starts when “CB and CB’s sister have a funeral for their dog, who recently contracted rabies and was put down after killing ‘a little yellow bird’.” This is NOT children’s fare.

It was very good, but obviously very dark. I would like to believe that the homophobia displayed by Matt, a manifestation of Pig Pen, would not be as virulent in 2017 as it was when the play was first performed in 2004, but maybe it is.

Here’s the script.

ITEM: Friends of ours gave us tickets to the Albany Symphony Orchestra, which is a very fine symphony indeed. This program was held at the EMPAC, a fascinatingly cool structure.

The logistical issue was the birthday party to which the Daughter was invited late in the afternoon, but that ended up working out well. She stayed at the party long enough that she was home alone only about an hour. In large part, that was aided by the ASO decided NOT to perform the first piece on the program because ot wasn’t ready, the first time that’s happened when we’ve attended. But the other four pieces were quite enough.

ITEM: The three of us saw the last performance of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Mac-Hadyn Theater. All I know of this musical is the LP I owned, barely 30 minutes. This is expanded by at least three songs. The performances were good, but the storybook is still very thin.

ITEM: Another trip to Mac-Hadyn a couple weeks later to see Anything Goes. The first time I had seen it was a couple years ago at Catskill High School. I continue to marvel how well the choreographer coordinate people coming off and on this tiny stage.

ITEM: I’ve mentioned our church’s relationship with Giffen Elementary School, with with the Book and Author event the past five years, and tutoring for even longer. We went to the grand opening of Wizard’s Wardrobe, “a non-profit organization providing a free, after school tutoring program for elementary school students in the South End of Albany.”

So it was distressing I read that rabid goats had to be euthanized at Albany’s Radix Center. Three second-grade classes at Giffen Memorial Elementary School took field trips to the Radix Center during this time period. Yuck.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Bermel was “inspired by tempestuous letters written by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, [reflecting] on the struggles of living as an immigrant in an unfamiliar country,” the United States.

The family went to the Wednesday, November 23, 8 p.m. showing of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. It won the 2015 Tony Award for Best New Play, and is now on its first North American tour. Simon Stephens has adapted Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel.

Fifteen-year-old Christopher is extraordinarily intelligent but has difficulty with everyday life. “When he falls under suspicion for killing his neighbor’s dog, he sets out to identify the true culprit, which leads to an earth-shattering discovery and a journey that will change his life forever.”

Though the words autism or Asperger’s are never used, it’s evident that Christopher is on the spectrum. The point of the play is that WE, the audience likewise experience it, which is loud, occasionally confusing, compartmentalized, and, sometimes, oddly symmetrical.

We thought it was astonishing what could be conveyed with light and sound, and intentional misdirection worthy of a magician. The mostly black set was a three-dimensional grid with concepts and locations written up it. (And if that did not make sense, I understand.)

The two people behind us thought the play was terrible, and they left at intermission, and I doubt they were the only ones. But we thought it was worthwhile, as did a relative of mine and one of her daughters, who saw the matinee that day.

Interestingly, before the performance, we ran into a couple of people who would be performing signing for the later shows, one of whom was a friend of ours. The other person, who grew up with sign language, sometimes has trouble with similes, metaphors, and other figures of speech. Coincidentally, the character Christopher feels the same way.

But, I was told later, this made the assignment easier because one could just sign the words, devoid of contextual meaning, that being how the word salad would feel to a person like Christopher.

ASO

The Wife and I went to hear the Albany Symphony Orchestra at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall the weekend before. This was the fourth concert of David Alan Miller’s 25th Anniversary Season. He and the orchestra have been “nationally recognized for his adventurous programming and commitment to giving voice to new works by living American composers, [enticing] Capital Region audiences to explore new and diverse repertoire.”

After a half dozen selections from Handel’s Water Music, the Symphony played Christopher Theofanidis’s A Thousand Cranes for Harp and Orchestra, “inspired by the unique story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who was sickened by the atomic blast in Hiroshima, Japan; despite the intense and dark impulse of the event, Sadako’s story and A Thousand Cranes is a reflection of hope and faith in the future.” It was a very touching and lovely piece.

After the intermission, we heard Derek Bermel’s A Shout, A Whisper, and a Trace. It was a wonderfully energetic piece that featured three percussionists. Bermel was “inspired by tempestuous letters written by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, [reflecting] on the struggles of living as an immigrant in an unfamiliar country,” the United States; it was a timely reflection. The program ended with a fine rendition of Schumann’s 4th Symphony.

We would go to the symphony more often except that it generally involves getting a child sitter. Fortunately, we got the tickets from Lee at church, who could not use them.

Bring back the bad weather!

The Daughter has almost exactly the same symptoms.

Mother’s Day, May 10, was absolutely beautiful. Blue skies, decent temperatures, no rain, flowers in bloom. Had a nice dinner with an extended troupe of in-laws in Catskill, an hour south of Albany. Got home that evening, went to bed with a hacking cough, which led to a sore throat, in lieu of sleeping. This was not a cold or the flu; this was an allergy, to trees, and grass, and pollen. There are conflicting theories as to whether a long and harsh winter could lead to an equally irritating spring allergy season because it postpones the budding.

All I know is that I was miserable, despite getting injections every four weeks for several months. Now I’m on Fluticasone (nose spray), Advair (an inhaler), and am taking Zyrtec tablet (actually the OTC equivalent); the latter makes me tired, so I take it only at night. I’ve been sleeping sitting up for most of last week and a half. Oh, yeah, The Daughter has almost exactly the same symptoms.

Saturday night, The Wife and I went to the concert of the Albany Symphony Orchestra at The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in nearby Troy. EMPAC is a technological marvel, but more than that, it is really cool. Inside the glass enclosure, it reminds one of a ship, in a good way.

I was so looking forward to the concert. ASO highlights living composers. But shortly after the beginning of the first piece, by John Harbison, I felt a coughing jag coming on. Since I was smack dab in the middle, I had to quickly climb past several people, and leave the theater. Couldn’t stop coughing for about ten minutes. Finally, the hacking subsided, and I caught, outside the doors, most of the second piece, also by Harbison.

But I was happy to sit in the back while catching Scattered, a “Concerto for Scat Singing, Piano & Orchestra,” written and performed by Clarice Assad. Here’s the second movement, performed a couple of years back; that section is much slower than the first or third movements.

After intermission, composer Joan Tower, who is quite funny, introduced her piece that featured famed percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie in her return to the Albany Symphony; she played on the ASO’s Grammy-winning recording, awarded this year. Glennie, not incidentally, has been deaf since the age of twelve.

The concert was not a total bust, as I did to hear more than half of it. Still, I want this lousy feeling to GO AWAY.

Not the Bob Dylan You Know

“Just as Schumann or Brahms or Wolf had re-interpreted in their own musical styles the same Goethe text, I intended to treat the Dylan lyrics as the poems I found them to be.”

On March 12, 2011, my wife and I got to see the great percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie perform, with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, a work by Pulitzer, Grammy, and Academy Award winner, composer John Corigliano, performing a piece commissioned by her, Conjurer. It was great.

During the intermission, there were several recordings by Glennie and Corilglano for sale. I thought to buy something by Glennie, but I was intrigued by something called Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (for soprano and orchestra), and I bought that instead. In the program notes for the evening, he echoed what he wrote here:

When Sylvia McNair asked me to write her a major song cycle for Carnegie Hall, she had only one request; to choose an American text… I had no ideas. Except that I had always heard, by reputation, of the high regard accorded the folk-ballad singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. But I was so engaged in developing my orchestral technique during the years when Dylan was heard by the rest of the world that I had never heard his songs.

One reviewer of the recording found it highly suspect that the composer could never have heard “Blowin’ in the Wind”, but having spoken to him briefly after the concert, when he signed my copy, I find it totally plausible.

So I bought a collection of his texts and found many of them to be every bit as beautiful and as immediate as I had heard-and surprisingly well-suited to my own musical language. I then contacted Jeff Rosen, his manager, who approached Bob Dylan with the idea of re-setting his poetry to my music. I do not know of an instance in which this has been done before (which was part of what appealed to me), so I needed to explain that these would be in no way arrangements, or variations, or in any way derivations of the music of the original songs, which I decided to not hear before the cycle was complete. Just as Schumann or Brahms or Wolf had re-interpreted in their own musical styles the same Goethe text, I intended to treat the Dylan lyrics as the poems I found them to be. Nor would their settings make any attempt at pop or rock writing. I wanted to take poetry I knew to be strongly associated with popular art and readdress it in terms of concert art-crossover in the opposite direction, one might say. Dylan granted his permission, and I set to work.

And, musically, it’s not the Dylan you’ve heard before. On first listen, it is mighty jarring, but subsequent hearing, it begins to make its own sense. If you don’t like operatic sopranos, you won’t like this, but there is something about it that eventually appealed to me.

Possibly more immediately accessible is the other piece on the CD, Three Hallucinations (based on the film score to “Altered States”), a movie I saw in theaters three decades ago. The use of religious themes, specifically a variation on Rock of Ages, made this more gratifying on the initial listen.

March Ramblin’

For my birthday this year, I had come across this Facebook thing whereby people could contribute $10 in my name to the American Red Cross. I picked them specifically, not only because they do good things, but because they helped me possibly save a life. Back in May of 1995, I successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver on an older woman in my church at the time who was choking on some meat, without breaking her ribs. I learned that at a Red Cross training that I took in high school.

Anyway, some people did this, some people were confused by how to do it electronically and instead gave me checks. Hey, it’s all good.

And that was before the Japan earthquake, and aid organizations such as the Red Cross in whatever country you are in can use your help even more.

Still, I got a couple of gift cards, one from Amazon, one from Borders. So I got my fix of new music for a while. From Borders, I got the greatest hits albums of the Guess Who (my previous copy had disappeared), and Peter, Paul, and Mary (I saw Peter and Paul at Proctors in the fall of 2010). And I was really pleased with myself with my Amazon purchase. I looked at my wish list and noted that a Sheryl Crow album had gone down from whatever to under $5. A Madeleine Peyroux album was down at least $3 to around $10. And Judy Collins’ cover album of Leonard Cohen songs, used to be $16+ but was down to under $11. The grand total was $25.15, plus 84 cents tax, for a total of $25.99, minus the GC for a massive charge of 99 cents to the credit card. ($25 was the minimum to get free shipping.) Oh, I may have purchased newish albums by Robert Plant, Mavis Staples, and R.E.M. as well.

Carol and I got to see an amazing percussionist, Dame Evelyn Glennie, with the Albany Symphony Orchestra at the Troy Music Hall, performing a piece written by Academy Award-winning composer, John Corigliano (“The Red Violin”). Thanks to our friends Philip and Marilyn who couldn’t use the tickets. In the same week, we also saw The Lion King at Proctors in Schenectady, which was great.

My wife was confounded as to what to get me for my birthday. She thought about getting a bicycle. But, using the $100 from the CSN stores I got from Lily Hydrangea, I bought a Mongoose myself for $59 additional. She thought to buy me a TV, to replace the one we have with only two volumes, inaudible and LOUD; but then my friend Uthaclena and his wife offered their spare set when they showed up with their daughter as a surprise on my birthday weekend; the following weekend, he brought up the set.

And the wife did buy me a book, the autobiography of Ed Dague, the local newsman I admire, but a friend from work had already given it to me.

So she let me have a card party, specifically a HEARTS party, on March 19. There was a period in the 1980s where a group of us would play hearts once, twice, even thrice a week, always at the home of our charismatic and maddening friend Broome and his “this woman is a saint” wife, Penny.

At the card party, I got to see my old friends such as Orchid, who I goaded by e-mail – “You HAVE an A game?”; Jeff and Sandy, Jendy, and of course Broome. As they say, a splendid time was had by all.

So it’s been a pretty good birthday month, thanks to many of you. Well, except for some major computer problems at work, but that’s finally fixed.

Second place in this crossword contest, by my boss, is not bad, especially when the winner was a ringer.

The Cheap Flights song, complete with dancing. And subtitles?

Lots of Elizabeth (“I hate being called Liz”) Taylor tributes out there; here’s the one from Arthur.

In answering my questions, Jaquandor says something shocking about Richard Nixon. Worse, I’m inclined to agree with him.
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My buddy Steve Bissette writes about D.W. Griffith’s two Biograph caveman movies, Man’s Genesis (1912) and Brute Force (1914), with a link to the latter.
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Diagram For Delinquents Kickstarter project:

“This is a documentary film about the most hated man in comics history: psychiatrist Fredric Wertham.

“Beginning in the late 1940s, Wertham began publishing articles linking comic books to juvenile delinquency. This work culminated in his now-infamous 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent. Burnings of comics were reported across the United States, and Congress held hearings into the matter, which helped spur the creation of the self-censoring body the Comics Code Authority…”
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Google Alert finds – other people named Roger Green:

Roger Green Pt 1/5 ‘Feng Shui & Building Biology’ ‘Conversations with Robyn’
Roger has a background in Chinese Medicine and was a pioneer in introducing the ancient knowledge of Feng Shui to the western world.
This clip also shares some info on the harmful effects of wireless broadband on our health and sleeping patterns.

Custom Knives Created By Roger Green

Patients who walk through the doors of Dr. Roger Green’s clinic are eagerly greeted by Izzy, Green’s 5-year-old Basset hound.

One of those passengers at Narita Airport in Tokyo, on flight No. 276, next in line on the runway when the earthquake hit, was the Rev. Roger Green, longtime pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Middletown.