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noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:51:00 +0000

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VoiceBox: March 26, 2010 -- The Vocal MuseKALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 22:18:00 +0000

Click here to hear the second program in the second series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, all about composing for voices in a classical music setting, originally aired on Friday March 26, 2010.

Audio Aesthetics a Bit Removed From the Standard Do-Re-MiNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:35:00 +0000

On a craggy outcrop in the Marina, the sounds of the sea become art. “The Wave Organ,” a sprawling waterfront sound-art installation created with materials from a demolished cemetery, has been quietly performing an oceanic symphony since 1986. Pausing to cup an ear to one of many protruding pipes amid the installation’s sun-blanched granite and marble terraces, you hear a strange liquid music. It alternately whispers like wind passing through conch shells, gurgles like an old man laughing and assaults the senses with cataclysmic thunderclaps.

Meanwhile, “Audium,” a sonic experience held in a specially built theater in the Lower Pacific Heights, engages differently with the melody of water. Waves, a stream and a dripping faucet are among the sounds heard by audience members as they listen to the hourlong performance. It takes place almost entirely in the dark, as 176 speakers embedded in the walls, ceilings and floors emit various acoustic and electronic noises controlled live by the composer and co-founder of “Audium,” Stanley Shaff.

With today’s culture placing a far stronger emphasis on sight than hearing (the oversize eyes and shrunken ears of the Na’vis in James Cameron’s “Avatar” emphasize the trend), we ought to pay closer attention to experiences that ask us to engage our auditory powers in unusual ways.

The Bay Area has been a hub for sound-art experiments since the 1960s. Composers like Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley carried out many sonic investigations under the auspices of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, an electronic studio that gained prominence in the ’60s.

Since then, sound art has flourished here, thanks partly to a lively experimental music scene, the presence of renowned audio companies like Meyer Sound and institutional support from universities and museums. Yet the medium frequently goes unnoticed. While these projects have to compete for audiences with myriad other less esoteric cultural happenings, the relative marginality of sound art may be inherent in the art form itself.

In these cases the issue partly stems from the way “Audium” and “The Wave Organ” are implemented and operated. Created in 1960 by Mr. Shaff and Doug McEachern, an equipment designer, “Audium” has been in its present location since 1975. Mr. Shaff and Mr. McEachern don’t advertise their work, having always relied on word of mouth. The theater’s understated storefront presence further keeps the project hidden from view. According to Mr. Shaff, the show, which plays each week on Friday and Saturday nights, typically attracts around 25 people.

The out-of-the-way setting of “The Wave Organ,” at the end of the breakwater forming the Marina Yacht Harbor, similarly contributes to its under-the-radar status. The Exploratorium, the science museum that commissioned the work in the early 1980s from the artists Peter Richards and George Gonzales, loosely estimates that about 300 people visit the installation each week. The day I attended, my friend and I were the only people around.

Certain aesthetic challenges can prevent many sound-art works from reaching bigger audiences. “Audium” and “The Wave Organ” point to two issues facing the medium.

Like “The Wave Organ,” many sound-art installations interact with existing environments. The Bay Area sound artist Bill Fontana is known for creating such works. His “Spiraling Echoes” sound sculpture, set in the rotunda of San Francisco City Hall last year, used ultrasonic beams to project sounds, like twittering birds and clanging bells, off the architectural elements. This November Mr. Fontana is creating an installation for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that will use sensors and speakers to explore corners of the building.

“Sculpture Garden Carillon,” a continuing sound-art installation by Joseph del Pesco and Helena Keeffe at the Oakland Museum of California, emits gonglike noises. The artists recorded their material by striking 12 of the museum’s outdoor sculptures, using a fleece-covered mallet. Passers-by on the street can hear the sounds on the hour while the galleries are closed for renovation. (The museum reopens on May 1.)

As inventive as some of these works are, they have to compete with many other distractions. It’s possible to walk right through a sound-art installation without even realizing it.

Projects created for tailor-made spaces, like “Audium,” come with different challenges. With a soundscape that harks back to the musique concrète tradition of the mid-20th century and its retro-looking domed auditorium, “Audium” feels like a throwback. The attempt to isolate hearing from the other senses creates an entirely personal experience that can be both transporting and meditative. But the insularity of this approach can make listening to sounds in the dark seem more like a 1960s-style psychedelic experiment than a cutting-edge art happening.

Despite the challenges of the form, the Bay Area’s role in nurturing sound-art projects shows its spirit of experimentation. “Audium” occupies one of the world’s very few purpose-built spaces for sound art, and “The Wave Organ” makes use of the Bay Area’s resplendent natural topography in an unparalleled way.

These works teach us to listen more closely to sounds that we often take for granted. “I think of liquid as an audio archetype of life,” Mr. Shaff said. “It is the most fundamental of all of life’s sounds.”

Taking a Children’s Tale to Dark New DepthsNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:08:00 +0000

In John Neumeier’s ballet adaptation of “The Little Mermaid,” the title character undergoes an extreme physical ordeal so that she might live on land. As the orchestra plays a stomping series of cataclysmic chords, a malevolent sea witch wrenches off the mermaid’s fluid blue costume and leaves her almost naked and shivering onstage. With one of her newly acquired human limbs grotesquely contorted over her shoulder, the former mermaid looks like an insect that’s been flayed alive.

For audiences weaned on the peppy 1989 Walt Disney animated film version of “The Little Mermaid,” Mr. Neumeier’s relentlessly bleak take on Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale — which opened Saturday night at the War Memorial Opera House in its United States premiere by the San Francisco Ballet — may come across as a bit of a shock. Mr. Neumeier, the director of the Hamburg Ballet in Germany, first had that company dance the piece, and cavorting crabs and singing sea urchins were nowhere to be found, as a viewing of the DVD of a November 2009 Hamburg performance shows.

Infused with stark blue and white light, angular movements, expressionistic visual imagery and an unsettling and often dissonant musical score by the Russian composer Lera Auerbach, Mr. Neumeier’s mature take on Andersen’s cautionary tale about a young woman who risks everything for love has about as much in common with the Disney version as Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” has with Lewis Carroll’s original text.

Perhaps to retaliate against the prettification of many classic children’s stories, prominent artists are drawn to recasting such works in more somber hues. Projects like those of Mr. Neumeier and Mr. Burton help to reconnect audiences with the darkness that lies at the heart of the originals.

But sometimes the adapters go too far in focusing on mature themes, and risk estranging not only children but adults too. This can undermine the well-intentioned efforts to bring a fresh perspective to parts of our collective folklore that have been bowdlerized in the pursuit of audience-pleasing palatability.

Since becoming the Hamburg’s director and chief choreographer in 1973, Mr. Neumeier, who was born in Milwaukee and studied literature and theater arts before training as a dancer, has created psychologically intense works that straddle the worlds of drama and dance. His ballets, including “Nijinsky” (2000) and “Death in Venice” (2003), contrast the lead characters’ stormy mental states with an austere visual aesthetic. Demanding wide emotional range and kaleidoscopic movement that veers between flowing liquidity and spiky brittleness, Mr. Neumeier’s approach to “The Little Mermaid” plummets to the pitiless depths of Andersen’s watery fairy tale.

Unlike Disney’s dainty Ariel — and, for that matter, the central character in the miniballet that Roland Petit created for the 1952 film “Hans Christian Andersen” — the heroine in Andersen’s original is in constant pain when she walks on human feet. Mr. Neumeier captures Andersen’s descriptions of physical torture by creating dance steps that make the principal ballerina in the role of the Mermaid (portrayed alternately in San Francisco by Yuan Yuan Tan and Sarah Van Patten) look, as Anderson wrote, as if she were “treading upon sharp knives.” Knock-kneed, slump-shouldered and in a wheelchair for several scenes, the disoriented ex-mermaid is literally a fish out of water.

The second half of the ballet begins with a nightmarish vision of the heroine, stuck in a small white room and wearing a girlish gray dress. In the orchestration, Ms. Auerbach’s use of a flute and a cello playing in very high register gives the scene an otherworldly quality. The mermaid desperately bashes what used to be her tailfin (represented by the ballerina bending one leg at the knee and flicking a point shoe behind her) against the wall. She appears almost suicidal.

The Neumeier ballet isn’t entirely gloomy. He injects wry physical humor on occasion. In one scene three nuns wearing huge wimples cross themselves frantically. And the ending, though not uplifting, carries a sense of release.

Yet darkness threatens even these lighter moments. During the scene with the nuns, descending figures in the woodwinds undercut the humor. And the eerie tranquility of the final tableau suggests death more than new life.

“The darker side of the fairy tale is an essential aspect of the fairy tale,” Mr. Neumeier said in an e-mail message. “Without darkness there is no light.” But so little luminosity penetrates this adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” that the Disney version’s bubbly warmth is sorely missed at times.

I experienced a similar feeling while watching Mr. Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” The Red Queen’s unmitigated cruelty, the many eye gougings and the horror-movie-like sight of graying human heads bobbing in a moat prevented me from being fully immersed in the film’s gorgeous wizardry.

Some reworkings of the children’s canon — the musical “Wicked” (loosely based on “The Wizard of Oz”) and the 2005 film of C. S. Lewis’s novel “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” — have managed to straddle the worlds of youthful wonder and more adult preoccupations. Lately, though, the most engaging narratives aimed primarily at the young have frequently been original stories, like Pixar’s “Wall-E” and Daniel Handler’s Lemony Snicket books.

Often burdened by the baggage of the versions that have preceded them, those artists adapting long-established children’s works for stage and screen tend to swing too far in the opposite direction. Maintaining a better balance between dark and light is key to creating successful adaptations.

VoiceBox: March 19, 2010 -- Cover Me BeautifulKALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:45:00 +0000

Click here to hear the first program in the second series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, all about cover songs, originally aired on Friday March 19, 2010.

VoiceBox: March 19, 2010 -- Cover Me BeautifulKALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:00:00 +0000

Click here to hear the first program in the second series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, all about cover songs, originally aired on Friday March 19, 2010.

British TV Ads Flaunt Their Arty SideNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:56:00 +0000

In a recent British television commercial for the Barclaycard credit card, an office worker strips down to his briefs, saunters past his co-workers and enters a storage closet, where he jumps down a chute and sets off on a wild water-slide ride across an urban landscape, sailing down the sides of buildings, whizzing past shoppers and sloshing through a public library to the sound of the 1976 Bellamy Brothers hit “Let Your Love Flow.” When his joyously soggy ride comes to an end, he says, “Can you get me a towel?”

In contrast, in this country Bank of America — showing considerably less inspiration than Barclays — is advertising its bill-payment service with a tinny jingle and statically shot images of people spilling coffee on their paper bills.

British commercials have long been known for their creativity and innovation. But from an artistic standpoint, most American advertising, perhaps except for those made for the Super Bowl or the Web, pale in comparison with their British counterparts. And unsurprisingly, British ads have long attracted a huge following in America.

Next weekend the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will bring the latest batch of award-winning British commercials to the Bay Area for the first time. The program — featuring the 2009 winners of the British Television Advertising Awards — visits 10 United States cities annually. Recently, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis sold more than 20,000 tickets to its British ad viewings, which it has been presenting for more than two decades. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has shown these bite-size films for more than 30 years.

That the program has taken so long to reach the Bay Area is surprising considering the region’s strong advertising and independent film communities. Joel Shepard, film curator at the Yerba Buena Center, decided to import the program to fill the gap.

“It’s a bit of a mystery as to why these ads haven’t made it to San Francisco yet,” Mr. Shepard wrote in an e-mail message. “Part of the reason these screenings are so popular elsewhere is that they have been shown annually for a long time, and audiences know to expect a mix of artfulness, humor and commercial appeal.”

Many of the commercials in this year’s program are minute masterpieces. A sleek ad for the Audi RS6 features a corps of gymnasts undertaking amazing physical feats with machinelike precision. Shot in a muted palette and gorgeously lighted so that the athletes’ bodies shimmer as if they’re made of mercury, the commercial is as much a work of kinetic art as it is a sales tool.

In another ingenious ad, set in a city cafe, a young woman listens in disbelief as her friend gossips in hushed tones about a man named Don who commits a rape and a murder before trying to force himself on another unsuspecting woman on her wedding day. It’s not until the end of the commercial that we realize that the woman is recounting the plot of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” The close-range cinematography, sensitive execution and unexpected denouement make this advertisement for a Royal Opera House production memorable.

“In general, TV advertising has always been a high form of public art in the U.K.,” said Richard Silverstein, co-chairman and creative director of the San Francisco-based advertising firm Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. “People over there watch commercials as if they are entertainment.”

On occasion, the American advertising industry is equally capable of producing inspiring commercials. Google’s recent “Parisian Love” ad simply communicates the company’s services. The 52-second spot tells the story of a young man who travels to France, meets the woman of his dreams and settles down solely through displaying search terms on screen like “impress a French girl” and “how to assemble a crib.” The spot doesn’t feature any actors or dialogue, yet it manages to imbue something as sterile as a Web search with emotional force.

A spot for Frito-Lay Dips, conceived by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, imagines a Mexican culinary cornucopia through the use of lush, colorful animation, including an erupting tomato-shaped volcano spewing chunks of salsa.

Yet such creative efforts are not part of this country’s standard TV advertising lexicon. Television ads in the United States tend to be more sales-driven and less focused on aesthetics. Artistry exists, but it’s more likely to be found on the Web. In fact, the Google ad played on YouTube for three months before being broadcast at the Super Bowl, and the Frito-Lay spot was initially created for the video-centric social networking Web site Vimeo.

“Companies want everything buttoned-up in a 30-second ad,” Mr. Silverstein said. “This often leaves nothing to the imagination, so you get pretty pedantic advertising.”

There may be several factors behind the British advertising industry’s more innovative approach. With that country’s film industry a fraction of the size of Hollywood, many talented British film directors spend part of their career in advertising. (Ridley Scott, Hugh Hudson and Alan Parker have all made commercials.)

Also, it could be that black humor, oblique sales messages and deliberate provocation — common in many British ads — don’t go down as well in the United States. And in such a big country, commercials with direct and friendly sales messages are more likely to appeal to broader audiences than artful creations that risk causing offense or confusion.

A commercial is principally a sales tool. But it can also be art. Perhaps if the American advertising industry were allowed to create more imaginative, aesthetically engaging and thought-provoking commercials, viewers would be less inclined to fast-forward their way through commercial breaks.

Colleges and Schools Try to Do More With LessNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:14:00 +0000

When San Francisco State University’s theater arts department commissioned Mark Jackson to adapt and direct a production of “Romeo and Juliet,” he came up with the unusual idea of creating a version of the tragedy for 14 actors, all cast in the role of Juliet. But because of budget cuts at the university, less money is available for items that affect the look of a production, like sets, lights and costumes. So to save on wardrobe, Mr. Jackson has had to readjust his core creative concept: now he has just eight actors for his new show, “Juliet.”

San Francisco State University is among several Bay Area academic institutions whose resources have been vastly reduced amid California’s fiscal crisis and the recession. A recent rehearsal there was one stop on a survey of artistic endeavors at local schools and universities. Taken as a whole, these works reveal that budget cuts have hardly dampened creative output. Even though the disastrous belt-tightening measures have put tremendous strain on teachers and students, these institutions are continuing to produce remarkable work.

San Francisco State University’s College of Creative Arts is typical of a performing arts institution grappling with reduced finances. Its operating budget has been cut by 15 percent over the last 18 months, and its staff has been thinned because of widespread furloughs, a hiring freeze and the dismissal of most of its temporary teaching staff, said Kurt Daw, dean of the College of Creative Arts.

Even Mr. Jackson, who graduated from San Francisco State in 1993, lost his salaried adjunct professor position in 2008 after a year and half in the job, and is now freelancing as a guest artist — at lower pay.

But you wouldn’t know it based on the quality of his work. Mr. Jackson’s 2008 productions of “Don Juan” (which he adapted from Molière and Pushkin) and Sophie Treadwell’s “Machinal” remain among the highlights of my theatergoing career. They have eclipsed many professional productions I’ve seen, including those directed by Mr. Jackson at spaces like the Aurora Theater and the Ashby Stage.

The way the young cast handled the physically demanding and grotesquely witty sex scenes in “Don Juan” was particularly engaging: one hilarious moment involved the title character dueling with an enemy while enjoying a romantic tryst. And the student actors brought a canny 21st-century sensibility to Ms. Treadwell’s 1920s agitprop drama. The actors sent up the overblown mannerisms of expressionist theater through their physically extreme approach to mundane tasks like washing the dishes. The dehumanizing effect of their actions was at once chilling and comical.

Word has clearly been getting out about the high quality of performances at San Francisco State, where tickets range from free to about $15. So far, in the 2009-10 academic year, the College of Creative Arts has had a 46 percent increase in attendance at its performances over the previous year. Recent productions of “Twelfth Night,” directed by William Peters, and “High Fidelity the Musical,” directed by Stephen Brookins, had capacity audiences.

The Bay Area’s public schools show similar artistic excellence. The San Francisco School of the Arts produced a memorable Christmas concert last December in the face of falling budgets and run-down premises, where classrooms often lack basic supplies.

Parents are helping to keep the high school afloat by donating an average of $300 per year per student, said the principal, Carmelo Sgarlato, who added that some of that money helps to pay for guest artists.

Like many school concerts, the Christmas program was rather long. But the school’s music ensembles gave a polished and spirited performance of a diverse range of work. I was especially moved by the chamber choral ensemble’s spectral approach to plainsong during the opening candlelit processional, and the vocal jazz ensemble’s take on the Sting song “Fragile,” complete with a silken-toned 14-year-old male soloist. The full house responded enthusiastically.

Dynamic performances and creatively inspiring rehearsals are equally evident in Bay Area institutions that don’t specialize in the arts. A recent dance show at Berkeley High School featured a variety of genres, including hip-hop and contemporary ballet. The dancers executed the steps with passion and an engaging sense of ensemble.

The state now provides less money per student, and the school is facing potential cuts in the next academic year that may adversely affect two art courses. But many students have met the arts education shortfall by taking private classes.

The challenging financial climate is certainly forcing educators in the Bay Area to be more resourceful about creating art in schools. What our educational institutions are able to achieve in a time of financial disarray makes me look forward to the dizzy heights of artistic excellence that will be possible in a more prosperous climate.

But I can’t help wishing that the money were around right now to enable artists like Mr. Jackson to channel their entire creative energy into making art. He — and discerning audiences — deserve to see his original vision of 14 Juliets, rather than making do with 8.

Music Festivals Are Siblings, Invisibly BondedNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:29:00 +0000

The British-born electronic composers Kieran Hebden, who performs as Four Tet, and Natasha Barrett are both in San Francisco for concerts. Although Mr. Hebden is closely identified with the indie-pop scene, and Ms. Barrett with the contemporary classical world, they could easily be on the same bill. These musicians, creators of spiraling musique concrète-infused compositions that veer between sound art and trance, allow us to pick out tiny textural details in their work while basking in the music’s overall ambience.

But instead of appearing on the same program, the composers’ music is reaching audiences in entirely different settings. Mr. Hebden’s scheduled appearance on Friday at the Independent was part of the Noise Pop Festival, an annual weeklong indie-rock music celebration, ending on Monday, that attracts around 20,000 people to more than 50 events.

Meanwhile, two of Ms. Barrett’s works will be performed this coming Friday at the Other Minds Festival of New Music, a yearly forum for contemporary classical composers. Its public performance series, held this year from Thursday through Saturday at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, features three concerts of nine composers’ works. Attendance is expected to total around 1,300.

Despite the obvious differences of size, scope and demographics (Noise Pop’s audience skews about 20 years younger on average than that of Other Minds), the festivals have much in common. The crossover potential of artists like Mr. Hebden and Ms. Barrett is just one similarity. Since being founded in the same year, 1993, the festivals have helped to shape the Bay Area music scene.

Each grew organically out of one person’s vision. Noise Pop began life as a one-night stand produced by a local promoter, Kevin Arnold. He was a booker for a small Emeryville agency when a San Francisco club (now the Independent) asked him to find bands to fill an empty January date.

“The original Noise Pop Festival was just a ‘five bands for five dollars’ show,” Mr. Arnold said in an e-mail interview. “But I called it a festival and silk-screened a poster to make it seem more exciting. It was way more successful than anyone expected.” The Other Minds Festival emerged from the composer Charles Amirkhanian’s experience producing a similar event in Telluride, Colo., from 1988 to 1991. When financing for that festival ceased, Mr. Amirkhanian recreated it with new backing in the Bay Area. Combining a private composers’ symposium (held under the auspices of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, of which Mr. Amirkhanian was executive director) alongside three days of public concerts and discussions, the inaugural Other Minds Festival featured Meredith Monk, Conlon Nancarrow and Philip Glass.

From the beginning the two festivals have shared a desire to bring together local, national and international artists at different stages of their careers. This year’s Other Minds Festival features work by young composers like Gyan Riley and Carla Kihlstedt of the Bay Area and Lisa Bielawa from New York, with more established names, like the American composer Tom Johnson, who is based in Paris, and Jürg Frey of Switzerland.

“By having different generations involved, we have a much livelier discussion and interchange of ideas,” Mr. Amirkhanian said in an e-mail message. “We also relish the opportunity to expose Bay Area composers to guests from outside California and vice versa.”

The current Noise Pop Festival lineup has featured international bands, like We Were Promised Jetpacks from Scotland; household names, including Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band; and Bay Area up-and-comers like Deerhoof, Thao Nguyen and Glaciers. It also included the innovative partnership of the Bay Area indie-pop band the Dodos and the Magik*Magik Orchestra, a San Francisco instrumental ensemble.

Both festivals pride themselves on spotting emerging talent. Julia Wolfe, a co-founder of the Bang on a Can ensemble, got a boost from meeting Mr. Glass at the first Other Minds Festival. The next year he invited her to put out her first solo CD on his Point Music label.

The Chinese composer Tan Dun, the Oscar-winning composer of the “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” score, appeared at the festival in 1995. And the Noise Pop Festival gave early exposure to well-known bands like the Flaming Lips, the White Stripes and Death Cab for Cutie.

Even the most balanced musical lineup isn’t enough to keep a festival bubbling for nearly two decades. Though serving different markets, the two festivals have devised remarkably similar strategies to enhance the standard concert fare. Each presents films and a visual arts component; broadcasts recorded music (Noise Pop offers podcasts, and Other Minds presents a weekly public radio show, “Music From Other Minds”); and runs live music events later in the year.

The Other Minds Festival presents fall concerts focusing on the music of past luminaries like Henry Cowell. Introduced in 2007, Noise Pop’s fall two-day Treasure Island Music Festival is fast becoming one of the most talked-about Bay Area music events, not least because of its rare location: an island in the middle of the bay.

Mr. Arnold and Mr. Amirkhanian have never met, but they really should; they could learn a great deal from each other. The Other Minds Festival could draw on the Noise Pop model to open up the insular world of contemporary classical music, while Noise Pop could look to Other Minds to build stronger bonds and unusual collaboration among artists. It may not be too long before the two festivals start seeing some audience and artistic overlap.

Feasting on Memories, Serving the FutureNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:20:00 +0000

Perhaps more than any other work on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, “The Brown Sisters” by Nicholas Nixon captures the essence of the institution’s 75th anniversary celebration. The work is a set of 35 photographic portraits, made annually since 1975, of the artist’s wife and her three siblings standing in the same order. The museum acquired the artwork in 2000, and, as of now, there is no official end date to this act of creation.

Just as the past and future fuse in Mr. Nixon’s photographs, so the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, founded in 1935 as the San Francisco Museum of Art, is taking a Janus-like approach to its milestone year.

Arts organizations often use anniversaries as an excuse for self-flattery and financial opportunism. The recent 30th anniversary celebration for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles — with its ritzy gala headlined by Lady Gaga and the Bolshoi Ballet and a no-holds-barred campaign to raise $60 million — threatened to eclipse the opening of the museum’s important anniversary show, one of the largest exhibitions in its history.

Closer to home, the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s 50th birthday last year focused more on its glorious past than its uncertain future. But SF MoMA has managed to keep in balance the elements necessary to celebrate a major milestone, including innovative programming, fund-raising and outreach.

With new multimedia tours, inventive collaborations with local and international artists and, most significantly, ambitious new expansion plans, the museum is intent on looking ahead. Two weeks ago, officials said they had raised $250 million in just six months, letting the museum double its endowment and put $150 million toward the building of a new wing and other development. These plans emphasize that this institution, unlike others that have been around for a while, is as proud of its present and future as it is of its innovative past.

To be sure, the yearlong celebration, a series of shows and events, offers plenty of backward looks. The freewheeling core exhibition, “The Anniversary Show,” which runs through Jan. 16, 2011, features more than 400 works from the museum’s permanent collection. And “Focus on Artists,” which runs through May 23, explores the museum’s past relationship with 18 influential artists, including Richard Serra, Diane Arbus and Andy Warhol.

Still, the historical “Anniversary Show” doesn’t come across as the typical self-aggrandizing archival survey. The museum may have been the first art institution to give a then-unknown Jackson Pollock his first solo museum show, in 1945, but the exhibition, which features his “Guardians of the Secret” (1943) among others, doesn’t play up such accolades.

At first glance, the second floor appears to resemble the schizophrenic found-object collages of local Mission School artists like Barry McGee (whose “Untitled,” an undulating montage of hundreds of framed drawings and photographs, is on display). Works by such well-known artists as Pollock, Alexander Calder, and Arshile Gorky share space with a selection of 1950s bright watercolors by teenage artists from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Galleries devoted to the museum’s collection of antique Olivetti typewriters and archival footage of its television programs from the early 1950s contrast glaringly with Jeff Koons’s glossy ceramic sculpture “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” and Penelope Umbrico’s “5,377,183 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 4/28/09,” which consists of snapshots of sunsets culled from the Flickr image-sharing Web site.

Yet for all its eclecticism, the exhibition proffers an interesting, if slightly obscure, curatorial logic, inspired by the museum’s founding director, Grace McCann Morley. By highlighting Morley’s curatorial interests and borrowing her aesthetic, the show provides fascinating insight into the life of this formidable but little-remembered West Coast art trailblazer.

Morley, who died in 1985 at the age of 85, was the sort of curator who responded to the horrors of war by presenting works that engaged directly with the theme of conflict, like Picasso’s “Guernica,” as well as by shows that served as a lighthearted distraction, like the museum’s 1942 exhibition, “Sawdust and Spangles: Arts of the Circus.” With her broad-minded legacy in mind, the seemingly wacky curatorial approach behind “The Anniversary Show” makes more sense.

That eclecticism extends to the museum’s overall engagement with the here and now. It places a welcome emphasis on local culture by commissioning Bay Area artists from a wide variety of fields to engage with works in its collection. For example, a new audio tour features the San Francisco electronica duo, Loop!Station, responding to James Rosenquist’s “Leaky Ride for Dr. Leakey” (1983) with a song that is as bold and angular as Mr. Rosenquist’s Pop Art painting. Similarly, the museum’s “Muse” advertising campaign pairs local cultural luminaries like the couturier Colleen Quen and the author Robert Mailer Anderson with well-known works from the museum’s collection.

As the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s current efforts show, anniversaries can have a galvanizing effect on an institution and its community. But they must be approached with caution. These celebrations should do more than dwell on the past; they should take stock of the present. And to have something to celebrate 25, 50 or 75 years from now, they should always keep an eye on the future.

VoiceBox: February 19, 2010 -- Beatbox BadassesKALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 07:28:00 +0000

Click here to hear the eighth program in the first official series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, all about vocal percussion in general and beatboxing in particular, originally aired on Friday February 19, 2010.

VoiceBox: February 12, 2010 -- Songs of SeductionKALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 07:04:00 +0000

Click here to hear the seventh program in the first official series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, all about the art of singing and writing a great love song, originally aired on Friday February 12, 2010.

VoiceBox: February 5, 2010 -- So You Want To Be An Opera Star?KALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:20:00 +0000

Click here to hear the sixth program in the first official series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, which explored the training of opera singers, originally aired on Friday February 5, 2010.

Two Cities, One Lasting Cultural ExchangeNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:08:00 +0000

To many people who have never been to China, myself among them, San Francisco’s Chinatown — the oldest and one of the largest districts of its kind in North America — still largely represents Chinese culture, despite the popularity of films like Zhang Yimou’s “Hero”; international tours by the country’s top ballet, opera and circus companies; and the fame of Chinese composers like Tan Dun. Most Bay Area residents see beyond the usual representations of Chinese New Year parades, dragon dances and Ming Dynasty vases gathering dust behind glass in museums. But even so, when lipstick-colored pagodas, soggy dim sum and mass-produced, paw-waving porcelain cats come to represent an entire civilization, it’s time to take a step back and look beyond the Disneyland view.

For years organizations like the Chinese Culture Center and Chinese Historical Society of America have been working hard to change this image by demonstrating a sophisticated view of Chinese culture that challenges clichés and pushes us to think differently about the relationship between our two nations. And the conventional notions of Chinese culture will continue to be challenged as San Francisco begins Shanghai Celebration, a yearlong arts festival honoring the longstanding cultural connection between the two cities through concerts, films, exhibitions, discussions and other special events.

Inspired by the 30th anniversary of San Francisco’s sister-city relationship with Shanghai, as well as by the 2010 World Expo there, an event of this scope is a significant step forward.

Leading the effort is the exhibition “Shanghai: Art of the City,” opening on Friday at the Asian Art Museum. In contrast to that institution’s last major exhibition of Shanghai art in 1983, which focused strongly on traditional representations of Chinese heritage, the new show surveys the tension between the forces of outside influences and the push to stay loyal to Shanghai’s own visual culture. The work on display extends from 1850 (when Shanghai emerged as an international city as a result of clashes over trade between China and Britain) to the present day, and it reflects an artistic perspective that is at once intrinsically Chinese and more international in scope.

For instance, a bedroom suite from the 1920s demonstrates a strong European influence, with its Art Deco-inspired asymmetrical contours and use of bold geometric shapes. But the furniture reveals Chinese interests too: it is built out of a locally grown rosewood and inlaid with a typically Chinese bamboo design.

Works by the 20th-century Shanghai painter Liu Haisu suggest the tension between newer, more Western-influenced styles and time-honored Asian approaches. Mr. Liu’s ethereal “Blue-and-Green Landscape” (1978) depicts a traditional Chinese scene with craggy mountains rising out of the mist, and delicate trees in the foreground. It was created using the standard scroll and ink, but he eschewed longstanding ideas about Chinese composition by painting the trees in bright reds and greens rather than muted hues and by arranging the foliage in horizontal clusters instead of opting for the more typical zigzag pattern.

Other local arts organizations involved in Shanghai Celebration are taking similar approaches. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music will be cementing its ties with its Shanghai counterpart on Monday night with a concert featuring the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao, who is based in San Francisco, as well as faculty members, students and alumni from both schools.

A graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Ms. Cao will perform new works composed by members of each institution. Instrumental pieces on the program include the United States premiere of “San,” a chamber music piece written for Western orchestral instruments that features Chinese elements like pitch-bending.

Later this month the Bay Area Chapter of the American Jewish Committee is mounting a photography exhibition, “The Jews in Modern China,” that will explore a little-known area of Shanghai’s heritage. It chronicles the lives of Jewish immigrants who came to Shanghai in the 1840s from countries as diverse as Russia and Iraq to avoid persecution.

In May the Chinese Culture Foundation is presenting a music festival in Chinatown that will combine traditional Shanghai opera with Asian-American jazz and, for an extra twist, Latin music.

Representations of Chinese culture in the Bay Area have come a long way since Chinese immigrants arrived in the middle of the 19th century to work the railroads and gold mines. The evolution in the understanding of Chinese culture in the Bay Area can be seen in, among other things, the changes that have taken place in the programming of art exhibitions and the developing relationships between arts organizations.

In previous decades the Chinese Culture Center imported works from China for display, like a 1979 exhibition of Chinese woodcuts; these days the organization is offering innovative exhibitions like last year’s “Present Tense” show, aimed at creating dialogue among the work of native Chinese, Chinese-American and non-Chinese artists.

“In the past, we were borrowing from museums in China for our exhibitions,” said Mabel Teng, executive director of the Chinese Culture Center. “Now the two cultures have merged, and the art reflects the old and new.”

VoiceBox: January 29, 2010 -- Mavens of CabaretKALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:51:00 +0000

Click here to hear the fifth program in the first official series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, which explored the current cabaret scene and its development, originally aired on Friday January 29, 2010.

Conservatory Theater Still Seeks Its OvationNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:38:00 +0000

Like the thrill of settling into a plush seat as the curtain rises on a highly anticipated production, there’s the excitement over the announcement every March of the American Conservatory Theater’s coming season, with its promises of innovatively staged classic plays, bold new works by powerful writers and acclaimed productions imported from beyond the Bay Area.

Yet every year my expectations are dashed. More often than not, I feel emotionally disconnected from what’s on the American Conservatory Theater’s stage. (Engrossing productions brought in from the outside, like John Doyle’s Broadway staging of “Sweeney Todd,” are an exception.) This is troubling. A bustling cultural hub like San Francisco deserves a jewel of a flagship theater company, one that, like the San Francisco Ballet, attracts the attention of the broader arts world.

The company’s current production of “Phèdre,” Racine’s tragedy about a Grecian queen’s illicit passions, underscores the problem. On paper, the play looks promising: it’s the world premiere adaptation by the British playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker featuring actors from the acclaimed Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada.

But Ms. Wertenbaker’s text, which retains all of the stiffness of Racine’s original but little of its lyricism, manages to excise much of the story’s poetic intensity and savage emotion. With a declamatory acting style and ponderous blocking, the work comes across as an intellectual exercise rather than a theatrical experience that engages both the heart and mind.

The same criticism could be leveled at many of the company’s recent productions, like “After the War” and “Happy End.” It took risks in staging these works, which all involved large casts and, in the case of “After the War,” significant development time. Although the productions featured impressive sets and lighting, the efforts did not pay off because of cumbersome mise-en-scènes and emotional flatness.

Founded in 1965 by the director William Ball in Pittsburgh before relocating to San Francisco a year later, the American Conservatory Theater became widely known for its expansive core acting company and dedication to training. During its first San Francisco season, the company staged 27 productions in two theaters to critical acclaim. Actors were sometimes cast in two productions at once and could occasionally be seen running from building to building between scenes.

The company’s fortunes have vacillated since. Initially, its work was well received; in 1979 the theater won a Tony Award for theatrical achievement and excellence in repertory performance. But eventually the resources dried up, the acting company faded out, and the theater’s reputation waned.

When the current artistic director, Carey Perloff, took over in 1992, she reinstated a small core acting company, expanded the educational offerings and earned praise, in particular, for her productions of Tom Stoppard plays. But other shows, like Mark Lamos’s deliberately shocking take on Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II,” turned many people off. These days the smaller Berkeley Repertory Theater is doing more innovative work and gaining national attention.

Box office figures suggest the audience’s growing discontent with the American Conservatory Theater’s output. According to company officials, in the past five years subscriptions have fallen to 14,939, from 17,574.

But the organization is working hard to attract audiences. As part of the recent centennial celebration of the theater’s historic auditorium, it instituted a two-day $19.10 ticket sale.

One former subscriber I talked to said she canceled her subscription after seven years partly because she found many of the productions too avant-garde. No one could accuse Ms. Perloff of pandering to the masses. Despite bringing in stars like Olympia Dukakis (who is starring in “Vigil,” starting in late March), Ms. Perloff’s programming choices are often inspiringly risky — especially in the company’s grand home theater, which is ill suited to difficult, small-scale works.

This season features a formidable three world premieres: a dance-theater collaboration with the San Francisco Ballet titled “The Tosca Project”; a new translation of Bertolt Brecht’s play “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” directed by Mr. Doyle; and “Phèdre.” The theater has eight playwrights under commission, including a local rising star, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb.

Meanwhile, the organization continues to grow its core acting company — a remarkable investment in Bay Area talent — and remains committed to importing foreign productions.

Balancing a quest for innovation with the realities of producing theater today is undeniably tough. But the American Conservatory Theater is making moves in the right direction. The company is searching for a more convivial second space to nurture new work. (Its current alternate site, Zeum, feels like a sterile lecture hall.) The theater is also sending its students out to perform in the community.

The future success of the American Conservatory Theater may also depend on the leadership’s ability to understand its patrons better. “Our audience over time has grown to hunger for challenging material,” Ms. Perloff said in an interview. “If you expose people to great storytelling told beautifully, they will respond to it even if they spend all day on Facebook.”

What Ms. Perloff perhaps fails to recognize is that as much as theatergoers like to be intellectually stimulated, first and foremost they want to be moved, whether to tears or laughter. Finding an additional space and reaching out to the community are both laudable steps. But the effort is wasted if the company fails to connect with the audience at the visceral level when the curtain rises each night.

Nonfiction Filmmakers Still Tell Rich StoriesNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:41:00 +0000

The Bay Area has long been known as a center for documentary filmmaking. Many local documentarians have won or been nominated for Academy Awards, including Sam Green (“The Weather Underground”) and Robert Epstein (“The Times of Harvey Milk”). The area is home to the Independent Television Service, a major financer of documentary films, as well as some of the most respected film schools in the country.

But the success of local documentaries can’t be attributed to education and financing alone. The region itself seems especially tight-knit and supportive.

“The Bay Area is a very good place to be a documentarian because of the cooperative nature of the community,” said Janis Plotkin, a programmer for the Mill Valley Film Festival. “For a small city, San Francisco has amazingly supportive resources for independent filmmakers.”

But fundamentally, the success has to do with storytelling. Some local filmmakers, like Christian Bruno, are pushing the limits of narrative. Mr. Bruno’s jewel-like film “Strand: A Natural History of Cinema” mines the history of the region’s once-opulent movie palaces in a lyrical manner that makes it feel like an archaeological dig. He burrows through time with the aid of diverse interviews, archival footage and contemporary scenes shot on 16-millimeter film to convey the idea of cinemas as sites of social interaction and imaginative exploration.

But as three compelling new homegrown documentaries show, local filmmakers are also using more traditional storytelling techniques, like character-driven narratives with a strong three-act structure, in powerful ways. The Talbot Players’ “Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders” series; Katherine Bruens’s “Corner Store”; and David Silberberg’s “Oh My God! It’s Harrod Blank!” tell engrossing tales by focusing on key characters.

The tried-and-true storytelling formulas clearly work. The slow-burning “Corner Store” follows the journey of Yousef Elhaj, owner of a Mission district corner deli, as he travels from San Francisco to his native Palestinian territories to be reunited with his family, which he hasn’t seen in 10 years. The film provides a moving insight into one man’s struggle to reconcile the kinship he feels for his adopted Bay Area home with his Middle Eastern roots.

“Corner Store,” which will be screened at next month’s San Francisco Independent Film Festival, trundles along languorously, with atmospheric shots of bustling Palestinian marketplaces and San Francisco streets.

Despite its meandering pace, the film is engaging because of Ms. Bruens’s deep, meditative portrait of the protagonist and the straightforward narrative arc. Moving from San Francisco to the Palestinian territories and back to San Francisco, the three-part structure makes viewers feel as if they were traveling alongside Mr. Elhaj.

The layout of “Sound Tracks” is equally pronounced. The documentary, which begins on Monday night on most PBS stations, comprises three distinct and fascinating narratives about the intersection of music, travel and politics. The segments provide fresh angles on relatively well-known subjects by offering miniature character studies.

The first story explores the genesis of the hit Russian pop song “A Man Like Putin,” a peppy piece of musical propaganda that has grown to be something of a calling card for Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. The segment focuses on the song’s composer, Alexander Yelin, a rock music dissident turned promoter.

The next section delves into the legacy of the Nigerian music pioneer and political activist Fela Kuti. It centers on Mr. Kuti’s youngest son, Seun, who stepped forward as a teenager to lead his father’s band after Mr. Kuti’s death in 1997.

The third segment follows the Kazakhstani virtuoso violinist Marat Bisengaliev as he tries to recoup the battered reputation of his country in the wake of “Borat,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s blockbuster 2006 mockumentary that didn’t do much for Kazakhstan’s global reputation.

“Sound Tracks” makes a virtue of its three-part structure; the individual narratives come together cumulatively to make its resounding overall point: music is a powerful agent of community building and social change.

Meanwhile, Mr. Silberberg’s engrossing documentary “Oh My God! It’s Harrod Blank!” explores the life and work of Mr. Blank, a Bay Area artist and filmmaker best known for building art cars (vehicles festooned with different objects) and documenting that scene. The film, also showing at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, not only creates a vivid, fond portrait of the eccentric Mr. Blank (a man who seems to love chickens more than people), but also provides a profound meditation on the pros and cons of rugged individualism. Although the film moves back and forth through time, it basically unfolds in three stages: Mr. Blank’s youth, his growing interest in art cars and his more recent activities.

All three films palpably demonstrate the power of traditional storytelling. But there seems to be a push on the local documentary scene for a more innovative approach, like Mr. Bruno’s, as well.

“There are many types of documentaries, and the form is not limited exclusively to stories driven by characters,” Michele Turnure-Salleo, the San Francisco Film Society’s director of filmmaker services, said in an e-mail message. “A compelling subject or inquiry can form the backbone of a nonfiction film, and funders are supporting work that extends beyond traditional character-driven storytelling.”

As long as the rich filmmaking community and resources continue in the Bay Area — and as long as the documentarians put their narratives front and center — the combination of experimental and trusted approaches should further the success.

VoiceBox: January 22, 2010 -- Men Up HighKALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:22:00 +0000

Click here to hear the fourth program in the first official series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, which explored male singers who sing high across many different vocal genres, originally aired on Friday January 22, 2010.

Broad Minds Encourage Broad LaughterNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:32:00 +0000

It’s often been said that stand-up comedy is the most subjective art form. What’s side-splitting to one person is seditious to the next. Yet while the evolving dynamics of the Bay Area entertainment scene have broadened traditional definitions of what constitutes comedy, some of the audience still takes a narrow view of what’s funny and what isn’t.

With its kaleidoscopic lineup, the SF Sketchfest comedy festival, which opened on Thursday, should help audiences understand that there are many paths to humor beyond the traditional setup-and-punch-line-centric patter. As in previous years, the program, which features some 200 artists of local, national and international prominence, stretches standard notions to their limits.

The festival includes the embattled talk show host Conan O’Brien (Sunday); impressionists, among them James Adomian (next Sunday); improv and sketch comedy troupes, like the San Francisco-based Kasper Hauser (Tuesday and Jan. 30); absurdist comedians like Animosity Pierre (Tuesday and Thursday); sitcom actors like Scott Adsit of “30 Rock” (Jan. 30); solo theater artists, including Sara Benincasa (Saturday); and even a comedic jazz outfit, the Be-Bop Heroin Hour (Jan. 29 and 30). The festival perhaps went a step too far by inviting the singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, a musician whose plaintive ballads aren’t generally known for their laughter-inducing qualities.

Cultivating broad-mindedness toward these many forms of comedy is important. If audiences were open to a wider range of humorous performance, the demand for live comedy might grow. This would in turn lead to the rejuvenation of the once-lauded but sadly long-dormant San Francisco comedy scene, an arena that helped forge the careers of Phyllis Diller, Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams.

If audiences were willing to expand their definitions of comedy, they might relax and enjoy themselves rather than fret about how what they’re seeing onstage doesn’t conform to their expectations. Their heightened pleasure would doubtless have an overall positive effect on the community. In these dark times we can use all the opportunities for laughter we can get.

Personal taste notwithstanding, the negative reaction to a recent show I attended suggests that some Bay Area audience members may not have caught up with the changes that have taken place on the local comedy scene over the past decade or so. Or perhaps they chose to ignore the words “unconventional” and “groundbreaking” on the flier advertising the “Not Your Normal New Year’s Eve” comedy night at the Herbst Theater.

“The worst comedy lineup ever, full of nonsensical stream-of-consciousness musings and pathetic revelations,” wrote one reviewer on the ticketing site Goldstar.com. Another wrote, “We only stayed because our car was not ready to pick us up.” Contrastingly, I was thoroughly entertained.

The comedy scene has transformed partly because of the shuttering of several Bay Area comedy clubs in the 1990s and early 2000s, which forced artists to develop their work in other settings, like theaters and the Internet. While many local stand-up acts once focused on observational or autobiographical material, these days the scene is much more fragmented.

But there are still plenty of observational comics around. Of those who performed on New Year’s Eve, many of whom are also on the SF Sketchfest roster, Brent Weinbach most closely reflects that tradition.

But the other acts demonstrated radically different approaches. Will Franken, named “Best Alternative to Psychedelic Drugs” by The San Francisco Bay Guardian, offers an erudite brand of stream-of-consciousness comedy that encompasses bits like a poetry slam match between George Milton reciting the opening of “Paradise Lost” and a poetically challenged modern teenager doing some rap.

Mary Van Note’s humor hinges on misplaced sexual advances; this comedian is best known for her 10-part online video series about trying to woo Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Meanwhile, the surreal theatrics of We Are Nudes balance the over-the-top physicality of a former Cirque du Soleil performer, John Gilkey, against the awkward introversion of his comedic sidekicks, Donny Divanian and Alec Jones-Trujillo. The group’s act reaches its zenith with a protracted tirade from a supposed audience member about the performers’ lack of comedic skill.

Of course, the many people in the Herbst audience who responded unfavorably to the entertainment may simply not share my sense of humor. It may be that people need to get out and see a diverse range of live comedy. But the incentive to do so lies partly elsewhere.

While the SF Sketchfest helps to expand an understanding of the art of comedy, local promoters and clubs need to play a role year-round too. Bay Area audiences are by and large enlightened. If they shy away from the stranger side of comedy, it may also be because of the local industry’s narrow approach to programming and reluctance to book any act that steps beyond conventional realms. The Bay Area’s eclectic landscape should operate along the same lines as many an effective comic act: with a good punch line set up to defy expectations.

VoiceBox: January 15, 2010 -- Community ChorusesKALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:47:00 +0000

Click here to hear the third program in the first official series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, about the extremely rich and diverse Bay Area community choral landscape, originally aired on Friday January 15, 2010.

When a Word’s Look Counted as Much as Its MeaningNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:01:00 +0000

Typography is ubiquitous. A world without letters, numerals and symbols designed by skillful font makers would consist of boring billboards, pages and street signs. Yet unlike other forms of applied design, typography remains an obscure and little-understood field. When buildings are constructed, they make news. A new font barely registers in the public consciousness.

In the 1980s and ’90s, however, the Bay Area was at the forefront of a movement to change this reality. The work of the graphic design company Emigre, based in Berkeley, is the focus of an exhibition of artwork and artifacts at Gallery 16 in San Francisco. An accompanying book, “Emigre No. 70: The Look Back Issue — Celebrating 25 Years in Graphic Design,” further stresses the efforts of a group of graphic designers (mainly locals) to elevate design in general — and typography in particular — to an art form.

But over the years, frictions between the forces of art and commerce have hindered Emigre’s cause. In today’s environment, where fonts can be created and replicated by anyone with a personal computer (United States copyright law does not extend protection to typeface design), the idea that a font can be an objet d’art in its own right seems like a utopian reverie.

“Emigre was born out of a ‘digital dream,’ ” the graphic designer Erik Adigard, based in Sausalito, wrote in an e-mail message. “But it was short-lived. Emigre is history, even if still somewhat of a cult.”

Yet the marriage between a font’s beauty of form and the context in which it is employed is what makes the written word jump off the page. In striving to demonstrate this truth, Emigre deserves our attention.

Founded in 1984 by the husband-and-wife team of Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, Emigre was influential on the graphic design scene in the ’80s and ’90s. This was partly because of the company’s magazine, also called Emigre. First a quarterly and later a seminannual, it featured innovative typefaces and posters; eye-catching photography; offbeat profiles of writers and artists; and wide-ranging critical essays on subjects like the Bauhaus movement and the legibility of fonts. Although the magazine no longer exists, Emigre still operates as a font foundry; its library houses more than 300 typefaces.

From 1984 to 2005, Emigre magazine achieved cult status. With their unconventional and striking use of fonts, publications like Wired and McSweeney’s, both based in San Francisco, owe it a debt. In 2006 the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired the entire Emigre magazine canon for its permanent design collection, and put the magazines on display for a year.

“For me, like many others galvanized by graphic design during Emigre’s heyday, the magazine was the most consistently interesting design publication produced anywhere by anyone,” the design journalist Rick Poynor wrote in 2005.

Emigre chronicled a revolution in typography that went hand in hand with the birth of the personal computer, which brought new methods for creating type. (It’s perhaps no accident that Emigre and the Macintosh computer made their debuts in the same year.) The transformation also ran in tandem with the rise of postmodern theories then popular in art schools concerning the aesthetics of utilitarian design.

Such ideas helped to free font design from the constraints of functionality. Possibly for the first time since the elaborate but often illegible opening capital letters of medieval illuminated manuscripts, font designers didn’t have to worry about readability and reproducibility.

Going beyond the no-nonsense look of archetypal typeface families like Times and Helvetica, designers in Emigre’s orbit, like John Hersey, Joachim Müller-Lancé and Ms. Licko, saw font design as a form of creative expression. With its thick-contoured, cartoonish forms, Mr. Hersey’s Blockhead typeface won’t be used for street signs anytime soon, but the fonts are eye-catching. The same could be said of Ms. Licko’s aggressive and angular Oblong typeface.

For all the theoretical debate and creative output inspired by Emigre, the font-as-art movement seems to be over. The commercial interests in the fast-paced digital age have reduced typeface design to cookie-cutter templates and formulas. Unbridled innovation has largely been supplanted by nostalgic exhibitions and commemorative books.

Emigre magazine’s demise may be symptomatic of the fact that it was primarily a showcase for the company’s fonts. Its journalistic endeavors often supported the founders’ business goals, as is evidenced by its numerous articles denouncing designer-unfriendly typeface copyright laws. But Griff Williams, owner and director of Gallery 16, wrote in an e-mail message: “For me, the lesson learned from Emigre is that business and art can coexist. The typeface business was a guise to deliver content in profoundly interesting ways. Not the other way around.”

Mr. VanderLans was grappling with the tension between art and commerce while publishing his magazine. “The entrepreneurial element, which is crucial to the existence of any subculture, avant-garde or underground work, is largely overlooked when assessing the work, because to most people, whenever the commercial aspects become prominent, it somehow taints the work and renders it less pure or authentic,” he wrote in Emigre in 1995. “Yet it’s difficult to imagine how any movement can operate without a concentrated effort to make money.”

VoiceBox: January 8, 2010 -- Ella FitzgeraldKALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:25:00 +0000

Click here to hear the second program in the first official series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, about the golden voice of Ella Fitzgerald, originally aired on Friday January 8, 2010.

Asking Stars Not Just to Play, but Also to StayNEW YORK TIMES

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:50:00 +0000

The relationship between the rock stars of classical music and the orchestras and audiences that interact with them can generally be characterized as a series of memorable one-night stands. When the Lang Langs, Joshua Bells and Renée Flemings of the world arrive in town for an evening or two, tickets fly, and standing ovations shake concert halls. But no sooner has the applause died down than the artists are on a plane to the next city.

Lately, however, orchestras across the country have been looking for ways to deepen their relationships with top-tier musicians. Artist residencies, ranging from one week to two years, are now de rigueur. The baritone Thomas Hampson and the composer Magnus Lindberg have lengthy residencies with the New York Philharmonic; the Chicago Symphony recently announced the appointment of the Bay Area composer Mason Bates as a composer in residence; and last year the Los Angeles Philharmonic created the position of creative chair for another Bay Area composer, John Adams.

In a similar vein, the Berkeley Symphony recently hired the composer Gabriela Lena Frank as its creative adviser. She will help shape programming and guide outreach projects.

Now the San Francisco Symphony’s new Project San Francisco aims to enhance the audience’s appreciation of classical music through a pair of residency programs with the composer George Benjamin (Thursday through Jan. 16) and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma (Jan. 20 to 26). The program will include performances, educational activities and community events.

But whether the orchestra succeeds in enriching the experience of San Francisco’s rather conservative classical music audiences will depend on how much it can realistically hope to derive from the artists’ intensive yet still truncated sojourns. One thing is sure: the Symphony intends to make the most of its visiting artists’ time and energy.

In addition to conducting the San Francisco Symphony, Mr. Benjamin will play the piano in a chamber music concert alongside Symphony musicians; give a series of pre- and post-concert talks; take part in a colloquium with San Francisco Youth Symphony players; and mentor students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Mr. Ma (also recently named creative consultant to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) will give orchestral and chamber music concerts, as well as a recital with the pianist Emanuel Ax. He will coach two student chamber music ensembles as well.

Building on the success of similar pilot residencies with the Chinese pianist Lang Lang and the respected though not widely known Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, the orchestra is taking an approach to Project San Francisco that is artistically and fiscally canny. Ms. Gubaidulina’s two-week residency last February helped to familiarize Bay Area concertgoers with her work; the performance I heard, featuring the North American premiere of her “Violin Concerto No. 2,” was well attended. Meanwhile, Mr. Lang’s high profile most likely helped to offset the financial risk of devoting so many concerts to a relatively unknown composer.

The Symphony seems to be repeating this formula with the combination of Mr. Ma, a household name, and Mr. Benjamin, who is not well known to American audiences despite having a more than 20-year relationship with the San Francisco Symphony. Mr. Benjamin’s local recognition is likely to grow this June when he serves as music director of the Ojai Music Festival.

It is worth noting that tickets for Mr. Benjamin’s concerts are not being bought as swiftly as those for bigger-name artists; the same was true for Ms. Gubaidulina.

“Yo-Yo Ma’s performances are selling strongly, with very limited availability at the present moment, and George’s residency continues to sell, and we expect more last-minute sales as people learn about the concerts,” said Louisa Spier, a Symphony spokeswoman.

(In March the Symphony will announce next season’s residencies, the first of which will take place before the end of the year.)

Orchestral artist residencies are a relatively new phenomenon. The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra broke ground in this area, starting in 2004, with its appointment of diverse artists like the soprano Dawn Upshaw, the conductor Roberto Abbado and Nicholas McGegan, music director of the Bay Area’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

The San Francisco Symphony also played a role through its partnership with Mr. Adams, who served as resident composer from 1982 to 1985. “More typically, these composers in residence amounted to an ephemeral phenomenon,” said Joseph Horowitz, a classical music historian. “But Adams really became integral to the orchestra.”

While residencies seem to be fashionable, and are a positive step for orchestras, maximizing their productivity is hard. The amount of time an artist works with an orchestra and the depth of the engagement are probably the two biggest factors in determining the success of these residencies. The San Francisco Symphony is certainly capitalizing on the time it has with Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Ma. But packing so much activity into three weeks may end up exhausting both artists and audiences.

It takes time for concertgoers to familiarize themselves with an artist’s work. Ten days may not be enough to persuade ticket buyers to take a chance on Mr. Benjamin. Although logistically challenging, a slow-burning residency lasting several months or longer, like the one now under way between Mr. Hampson and the New York Philharmonic, may ultimately be more fruitful than the fast-paced model favored by the San Francisco Symphony.

VoiceBox: January 1, 2010 -- "Why We Sing"KALW 91.7 FM

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:15:00 +0000

Click here to hear the inaugural program of the official series of VoiceBox, a new public radio show on KALW 91.7 FM dedicated to the art of singing. The show, entitled "Why We Sing," originally aired on Friday January 1, 2010.

Voice Check: 10 Tips for Healthy SingingAMERICAN THEATRE MAGAZINE

noreply@blogger.com (Chloe Veltman) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:52:00 +0000

Voice therapists, trainers and performers give expert advice on how to protect and maintain your singing voice

Theatre lore is packed with horror stories about performers cracking or missing notes on stage or—even worse—losing their voices completely. Luciano Pavarotti had, near the start of his career, a disastrous concert in the Italian city of Ferrara around the time that a nodule first developed on his vocal chords; as a result, he gave up singing for a while. In 1997, Julie Andrews's voice was seriously damaged after she underwent surgery for polyps that developed on her vocal chords while she was performing in Victor/Victoria on Broadway. And Nathan Lane frequently missed performances of the Broadway production of The Producers owing to a polyp on his left vocal chord.

Without a doubt, the care of the voice is as essential to the business of being a professional actor or singer as remembering one's lines. But hectic schedules, smoky bars, flu season and countless other challenges constantly conspire to derail attempts to sing in public with confidence, comfort and ease. Here, a wide range of singing experts—voice therapists Joan Lader, Joanna Cazden and John Haskell; voice trainers Judith Farris, Kate DeVore, Joan Melton, Janet Rodgers and Scott Kaiser; performers Susan Graham and Kristin Chenoweth, as well as choral director Ian Robertson—impart their top tips for maintaining a healthy and successful singing career.

1. Technique is King

Maintaining great technique is without question the basis for a healthy voice. Good technique prevents injury and enables performers to sing at the top of their game every time. "With proper training, the singer/actor learns to release excess tensions in the body and throat muscles," says Rodgers. "This means that the vocal mechanism is sitting in a muscular environment that will allow it to function at its best. Proper vocal technique means that the singer/actor has learned to use 'diaphragmatic breath support' in singing. This moves the effort of support to the abdominal muscles and away from the muscles that are closest to the throat. Proper vocal technique means that the singer/actor has trained the vocal folds to respond to pitch changes and that the singer/actor can maximize the gifts that nature has provided."

"Improper technique can lead to vocal injuries, which can be annoying and limiting at best and career-ending at worst," says DeVore. "Most common vocal injuries (nodules, polyps, bruising, swelling) are caused at least in part by the vocal cords slamming together too hard when we speak, sing, shout, scream, wail, keen, sob and so forth. There are ways to do all of those things healthily, which ensures that a performer will have a flexible voice to last through his or her career."

Like many experts, Farris believes that proper technique begins with the breath. "The only physical part of singing should be breathing," she says. "That should be naturally obtained and constantly maintained. It is much like a violinist practicing bowing. I know a good violinist is always attentive to balancing the bow on the strings. In singing, if one's breath is balanced, it is nearly impossible to have any kind of strain on the vocal apparatus, and the easiest and most beautiful sound is achieved. Thus obtaining a correct vocal technique is the key to the prevention of vocal problems. The vocal cords themselves are muscles. Athletes and dancers know that any muscle that is used correctly gets stronger with use, not weaker or injured."

However, good technique cannot be gained through a "one-size-fits-all" approach, says
Cazden, who explains that "many vocal techniques work but for a different reason than the teacher proclaims. The field of voice is still emerging from centuries of speculation, guesswork and secretive folklore. A singer needs to trust his or her own experience, use what works and not get distracted by flowery explanations."

Adds Melton: "Each performer is unique, so the to-do list that answers all the issues does not exist. However, to quote Mary Hammond, head of musical theatre at the Royal Academy of Music in London, 'Technique frees the imagination.' The better, more solid and more unconscious the technique, the freer the performer is to grow, explore and mature."

2. It's All about Prevention

Prescription medications might get a singer under duress through a performance, but they are not the way to solve vocal issues in the long-term. "Many singers resort to doctors who fill them with cortisone shots to get through a performance or audition," says Farris. "But if the cause of the problem is not corrected, the issues continue and these so-called 'remedies' can cause additional problems of their own. At that point, the singer should have vocal rest and then seek out a good teacher to help correct the issue. Prevention, however, is key."

Cazden concurs: "The absolute biggest problem that singers have is not visiting a doctor soon enough. Financial pressures and a mistrust of mainstream medicine lead people to 'muscle through' or 'get by' for months longer than they should. This adds layers of bad technique onto the original injury, and delays recovery. Unless you have terrific insurance, set up a medical savings account and stash whatever you can every month so that when you need a voice doctor you can afford a good one. Plan ahead, and before you need help, locate a laryngologist with videostrobe exam equipment and experience working with singers. Exams without videostrobe are only accurate about one-third of the time. You might need to travel to get to a good clinic, but in the long run, the right diagnosis will save you time, money and anguish."

Warning signs can help performers identify and take care of potential problems early: "Missing warning signs of a vocal injury can be a problem," says DeVore. "Common warning signs include hoarseness in the absence of an illness (or hoarseness that hangs around after cold symptoms have cleared up); decrease in speaking or singing range; change in voice quality (breathiness, gruffness, a veiled sound); increased physical effort to speak or sing; physical discomfort or pain when voicing; something just not feeling right with the voice."

3. Calisthenics Count

Warming up the voice is absolutely essential to a singer's ability to prevent injuries. Just like going for a run without first stretching, the voice can easily strain if pushed too hard and without first being primed. "Develop a warm-up routine that slowly 'wakes' the voice and brings it into alignment with breath control and natural support," says Robertson.

4. Happy Talk

"A common mistake performers make is forgetting to have good technique not only when singing but when speaking," says Chenoweth. "That is a tough one for me, because the speaking voice I am most comfortable in isn't the best for my voice in general."

Haskell adds: "Most singers are talkers by nature. Their biggest mistake is talking too much before and after a performance. Talking in noisy environments can be a particular problem when a singer is on the road as producers often expect artists to meet patrons to talk about their work after they've performed. This is often part of a performer's contract, so it's hard to hold back."

5. Enlist the A-Team

Singers need to find the right teachers throughout their careers. Chenoweth, for instance, still takes voice lessons with teachers in New York as well as with Florence Birdwell, the performer's mentor and professor at Oklahoma City University, where she went to school. Haskell says that vocalists should "follow their instincts about what feels right and what doesn't with regards to voice training. Some voice teachers push students too much to point of discomfort or even pain. The muscles and coordination of the vocal mechanism can be achieved in a gradual way." According to Lader, the best teachers have a good grasp of how the body works from a mechanical standpoint: "A singer needs to find a teacher who is knowledgeable in anatomy and physiology, who has good eyes and ears and can direct the student in a healthy manner to achieve whatever it is the student has set out to accomplish."

Cazden adds: "Singers often make the mistake of staying too long with a teacher who is not taking their voice in a good direction. If the process or relationship doesn't feel right, you shouldn't feel obligated to continue with that person. Take sample lessons with a few other teachers for perspective. If you think something is medically wrong with your voice, but your teacher claims to be able to fix it, get a second opinion."

Singers, however, often need more than one expert to help guide their careers. Haskell believes that performers should surround themselves with a group of trusted professionals across a range of disciplines in order to develop performance skills, prevent injury and troubleshoot problems as they arise. "In addition to the voice teacher who concentrates on helping a performer to develop great technique," Haskell says, "a singer might also benefit from the services of a vocal coach, an acting coach, a voice therapist, a physical therapist, as well as an ear, nose and throat physician. There has to be communication between the different parties so that everyone is on the same page regarding the singer's issues and progress."

6. The Power of Cross-training

Performers, who are often asked to sing in many different styles, frequently have to be as adept at singing numbers from the musical theatre repertoire as they are at performing opera arias, folk songs and jazz standards. Training to sing healthfully across multiple styles is even important to singers who specialize in just one genre.

"Cross-training across all styles is the key to being able to perform them in artistically coherent and safe way," says Lader. "If you sing opera you should also practice singing pop songs. This is important, because it prevents injury and strengthens, balances and coordinates the many parts of the laryngeal musculature. Plus, singing in a different style from what one is accustomed to can help to raise a red flag if there is something wrong with the vocal chords that needs special attention."

7. Salvation through Hydration

Drinking water is crucial to maintaining a healthy voice, because it prevents the delicate vocal chords from drying out. "Drinking about two liters of water a day is helpful for most people, but they need to compensate with extra water for things that dry them out (like caffeine, alcohol, smoke and certain medications)," says DeVore.

Proper hydration also means finding creative ways to counterbalance arid environments (caused by air-conditioning and hot climates) that can dry out the vocal chords. Steam inhalation, for example, moistens the vocal cords and thins out mucus. Graham proposes additional techniques for performers who travel regularly: "When I'm flying, I put a damp cloth on my face, because airplane air is so dry. I also keep a humidifier in my room."

Kaiser adds: "Drinking water to keep the folds of the vocal chords lubricated is important, but there are other things that performers should reduce such as the consumption of dairy products and cold and allergy medications, because they coat the vocal chords and dry out the voice."

8. Food Glorious Food

Acid reflux and other problems of the digestive system can cause serious issues for singers. "The acid that comes up through the stomach can literally eat away at the delicate tissue at the back of the larynx and affect the posterior part of the vocal chords," says Haskell. "If a singer gets a reflux diagnosis from an ear, nose and throat specialist, he or she has to start observing a reflux regimen. This may mean eliminating caffeine, carbonated drinks, citrus fruits, spicy foods and chocolate. Also, the evening meal should not be eaten too late or too close to bedtime, which can present a problem for performers who don't want to eat much before they go on stage."

9. Rest Up

The voice is a fragile instrument. Singers should be in touch with how they're feeling on any given day enough to know when to pull back or even take some time off. "If you're tired, ill or hungover, sing less," says Cazden. "If you feel great, don't be stupid and sing so much that you wreck your instrument."

Rodgers believes that rest is important even while an actor or singer is working. "During rehearsal breaks, avoid chitchat," she says. "Really rest the voice for those 10-minute breaks."

DeVore says that performing full-throttle with an illness rather than resting is one of the worst things a performer can do for his or her voice: "Succumbing to pressure (either internal or external) to 'push through' an illness is, unfortunately, a common mistake performers make. 'The show must go on' is so ingrained in a performer's psyche—and this belief is reinforced by the entire production team—that they forget that 'the show' doesn't have to include performing at every rehearsal at full tilt. Pushing through an illness is a textbook cause of vocal injuries, and many problems can be avoided if people take the time to rest and heal."

Getting good amounts of sleep is absolutely crucial to vocal health. "The most important thing for me—which I struggle with—is getting enough sleep: I need at least eight hours, but nine is best," says Chenoweth. "My friends and family understand that sometimes I can only converse via e-mail or watch a movie with them, because the voice is a muscle that must be rested!"

10. One for the Road?

The pressures of a life on the stage can lead to some unhealthy choices for performers. "The most common mistake you see in actors, particularly young ones, is that they don't know how to pace themselves," says Kaiser. "They'll rehearse till midnight, drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and expect voices to respond. It doesn't take much to strain a voice—even talking over loud music in a dance club can cause damage."

That's why many performers avoid drinking, smoking and noisy environments. "I don't drink very much alcohol when singing, because it dries out the voice," confesses Chenoweth. "I do not smoke or use drugs. I sort of live like a nun."
Journalist and singer Chloe Veltman is the Bay Area culture correspondent for the New York Times and the host/producer of "VoiceBox", a new public radio series about the art of singing.

Biographies of the Experts:

John Haskell has maintained a private practice in speech-language pathology in New York City for more than 25 years. He has held faculty positions at Pace University, Rutgers University and William Paterson College of New Jersey and is co-founder and co-director of the New York City Voice Study Group.

Kate DeVore is a theatre voice, speech and dialect trainer, speech pathologist and personal development coach based in Chicago. She is the co-author of The Voice Book: Caring for, Protecting and Improving Your Voice with Starr Cookman.

Scott Kaiser is director of company devel-opment and head of voice and text at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he has spent 20 years as an actor, director and voice coach.

Judith Farris is a soloist, contralto and voice trainer who maintains a studio in New York. She is presently artist-in-residence in the theatre and music departments at Southeast Missouri State University.

Janet Rodgers, the editor of The Complete Voice and Speech Workout, is a past president of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association and an associate professor of theatre at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Joan Lader is a voice teacher and therapist. Her patients and students include some of the world's leading performers, such as Patti LuPone, Madonna and Roberta Flack.

Joanna Cazden, the author of How to Take Care of Your Voice, is a speech pathologist, singer, voice coach and teacher.

Joan Melton is a voice teacher based in New York City. She is the author of Singing in Musical Theatre: The Training of Singers and Actors andfounded the voice/movement program for the Department of Theatre and Dance at California State University—Fullerton.

Susan Graham is a Grammy Award—winning mezzo-soprano who performs leading roles in some of the world's greatest opera houses, including the Metropolitan opera, the Royal Opera House and La Scala.

Kristin Chenoweth is a Tony and Emmy Award—winning singer and musical theatre, film and television actress. Some of her best-known Broadway roles include Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Glinda in Wicked.

Ian Robertson is the chorus director of San Francisco Opera and the artistic director of the San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Festival Chorale.