Sunday, November 25, 2007
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The Enso String Quartet Rocks the Menil with Ginastera’s String Quartet # 1.
On Tuesday November 13, the Enso String Quartet returned to Houston to perform a program at the Menil Collection presented by Da Camera of Houston. For an all too brief period for local music audiences, the Enso made Houston its home as the quartet in residence at the Shepherd School. They relocated to New York City last year.
The program opened with Ignace Pleyel’s String Quartet in B-flat major from 1784. After dispensing with the pleasantries, the Enso got down to the business of what life is like for those of us who live now with Ginastera’s String Quartet # 1. Composed in 1948, much is written about the folk music influences prevalent in this music, but the magic of the work for this listener is how it bursts forth into the room with a power that conjures the intensity of modern life. By 1948, World War II had changed the entire world forever and the edginess and disquiet brought upon us by the forces that ran the world would never settle. It would set Jack Kerouac to wandering the country (the "On the Road" journeys were 1947) and Martha Graham to create "Errand into the Maze," also 1947. The art that moved to the forefront was fearless and no subject was taboo. The sweetness of life as it co-exists with confusion and restlessness winds its way through this marvelous piece of music.
The Enso played the Ginastera Quartet superbly, with precise rhythmic accuracy and remarkable tonal quality from all the players. They dug in and told us something meaningful. The evening ended with Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, which the Enso also delivered beautifully. But the Ginastera and all its complexities floated out into the night air and followed us home.
The program opened with Ignace Pleyel’s String Quartet in B-flat major from 1784. After dispensing with the pleasantries, the Enso got down to the business of what life is like for those of us who live now with Ginastera’s String Quartet # 1. Composed in 1948, much is written about the folk music influences prevalent in this music, but the magic of the work for this listener is how it bursts forth into the room with a power that conjures the intensity of modern life. By 1948, World War II had changed the entire world forever and the edginess and disquiet brought upon us by the forces that ran the world would never settle. It would set Jack Kerouac to wandering the country (the "On the Road" journeys were 1947) and Martha Graham to create "Errand into the Maze," also 1947. The art that moved to the forefront was fearless and no subject was taboo. The sweetness of life as it co-exists with confusion and restlessness winds its way through this marvelous piece of music.
The Enso played the Ginastera Quartet superbly, with precise rhythmic accuracy and remarkable tonal quality from all the players. They dug in and told us something meaningful. The evening ended with Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, which the Enso also delivered beautifully. But the Ginastera and all its complexities floated out into the night air and followed us home.
Monday, November 19, 2007
comme en plein jour
An expert from Jean-Baptiste André's performance comme en plein jour - a slightly different rendition from that seen at DiverseWorks this weekend.
Read Nancy Wozny's review on Dance Source Houston.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Golden
Simon and Jessica in the pool, Avignon, 2001Gypsy
Gypsy Rose Lee c. 1937As any old Hollywood hack will tell you, “star quality” is a weird and wondrous thing. And as the same old Hollywood hack will tell you (and surely already has, in decades of bad novels and even worse movies), you can discover star quality, nurture it and develop it, promote it and exploit it, sometimes even kill it outright. The one thing you can’t do is invent it. Some people simply have it, and the world waits to find those people.
A couple of Masquerade Theatre seasons back, all Houston theater critics and most people in the audience found themselves remembering the movie title, “A Star Is Born.” That’s because we’d been lucky enough to see Rebekah Dahl in the title role of Annie Get Your Gun. That’s a fun show all by itself, full of Wild West hootin’ and hollerin’ that Texans presume is our own. Dahl was phenomenal as Annie – one of those singing-dancing-acting performers you can’t take your eyes off of. Yet for anyone who feared it was some kind of career high point, with the only question being how well she could maintain the excitement, the musical about Gypsy Rose Lee now on display at the Hobby Center’s Zilkha Hall provides exciting evidence of growth.
Interestingly, Gypsy is one of those shows in which the title character isn’t really the main character. Born Louise with a sister named June and a mother named Rose, the burlesque entertainer the world came to know as Gypsy Rose Lee was and is intriguing enough. As played and danced (and yes, even stripped – a little!) by Laura Gray, “Gypsy” was a portrait of childhood ignored. Always playing background to the sister their mother saw as the family’s ticket to vaudeville’s bigtime, Gypsy was a years coming to the basic conclusions that all humans hope to reach if they’re lucky enough – that they are smart, attractive and entirely worthy of love. Still, in the musical titled Gypsy, the real dominating (and domineering) force is girls’ mother, Rose.
As the “Mama” who tosses her kids onstage from the time they can walk and who focuses so obsessively on them that several husbands wander off, Dahl is many fascinating things at the same time – funny, admirable, courageous, hard-working, scary, a little insane, and more than a little pathetic. She serves up a full-blooded woman many of us have known at least in small doses, but now set squarely before us, front and center, all evening long. The fact that the road Mama walks leads to personal sadness and bitter disappointment verging on nervous collapse should come as no surprise. In the end, few children appreciate such over-the-top efforts. What’s important to Dahl’s eye-catching (and dazzling singing and dancing) performance is that she makes us love, admire, hate and fear Mama Rose (and all those who are like her) in absolutely equal amounts.
Masquerade artistic director Phillip Duggins directed the show with sensitivity and a deep appreciation of its comic majority to spotlight more fully its near-tragic minority, letting the book by Arthur Laurents and the terrific songs by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim light up the night. Gypsy seemed to drag a bit on opening night, but many shows do and then pick up speed with additional confidence. The large cast of adults (and a neat sprinkle of children from Masquerade’s Tribble School) was dead-on 99 percent of the evening, standouts among those supporting Dahl and Gray being John Gremillion as the long suffering agent-almost-husband Herbie, Beth Hempen as June, Braden Hunt as Tulsa – and Kristina Sullivan, Libby Evans and Allison Sumrall as a laugh-packing trio of gimmick-happy strippers.
– John DeMers
A couple of Masquerade Theatre seasons back, all Houston theater critics and most people in the audience found themselves remembering the movie title, “A Star Is Born.” That’s because we’d been lucky enough to see Rebekah Dahl in the title role of Annie Get Your Gun. That’s a fun show all by itself, full of Wild West hootin’ and hollerin’ that Texans presume is our own. Dahl was phenomenal as Annie – one of those singing-dancing-acting performers you can’t take your eyes off of. Yet for anyone who feared it was some kind of career high point, with the only question being how well she could maintain the excitement, the musical about Gypsy Rose Lee now on display at the Hobby Center’s Zilkha Hall provides exciting evidence of growth.
Interestingly, Gypsy is one of those shows in which the title character isn’t really the main character. Born Louise with a sister named June and a mother named Rose, the burlesque entertainer the world came to know as Gypsy Rose Lee was and is intriguing enough. As played and danced (and yes, even stripped – a little!) by Laura Gray, “Gypsy” was a portrait of childhood ignored. Always playing background to the sister their mother saw as the family’s ticket to vaudeville’s bigtime, Gypsy was a years coming to the basic conclusions that all humans hope to reach if they’re lucky enough – that they are smart, attractive and entirely worthy of love. Still, in the musical titled Gypsy, the real dominating (and domineering) force is girls’ mother, Rose.
As the “Mama” who tosses her kids onstage from the time they can walk and who focuses so obsessively on them that several husbands wander off, Dahl is many fascinating things at the same time – funny, admirable, courageous, hard-working, scary, a little insane, and more than a little pathetic. She serves up a full-blooded woman many of us have known at least in small doses, but now set squarely before us, front and center, all evening long. The fact that the road Mama walks leads to personal sadness and bitter disappointment verging on nervous collapse should come as no surprise. In the end, few children appreciate such over-the-top efforts. What’s important to Dahl’s eye-catching (and dazzling singing and dancing) performance is that she makes us love, admire, hate and fear Mama Rose (and all those who are like her) in absolutely equal amounts.
Masquerade artistic director Phillip Duggins directed the show with sensitivity and a deep appreciation of its comic majority to spotlight more fully its near-tragic minority, letting the book by Arthur Laurents and the terrific songs by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim light up the night. Gypsy seemed to drag a bit on opening night, but many shows do and then pick up speed with additional confidence. The large cast of adults (and a neat sprinkle of children from Masquerade’s Tribble School) was dead-on 99 percent of the evening, standouts among those supporting Dahl and Gray being John Gremillion as the long suffering agent-almost-husband Herbie, Beth Hempen as June, Braden Hunt as Tulsa – and Kristina Sullivan, Libby Evans and Allison Sumrall as a laugh-packing trio of gimmick-happy strippers.
– John DeMers
Friday, November 16, 2007
Saturday
Come out to DiverseWorks on Saturday for Jean-Baptiste André's new work comme en plein jour (as in full day). We will also be hosting a reception immediately following the performance with drinks and free appetizers from Brasserie Max and Julie. Buy your tickets in advance by calling 713.335.3445 anytime and get $5 off general admission tickets for the Saturday performance when you mention ArtsHouston! Read the cover story about Jean-Baptiste online!
Photo by Chuy BenitezBeforehand, make it out to the Art Crawl, getting started at 2.
And, before that the Glassell School of Art is hosting the State of the Art Magazine Symposium from 10-12. Speakers are: Domenick Ammirati from Modern Painters, Liz Kotz from Art Journal, Thomas Lawson from Afterall, Lane Relyea (a critic), and Elizabeth Schambelan from Artforum.
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