Double Feature
November 13, 2010
It’s November and as usual, even on a Thursday evening, there are too many choices. The CTA helps in the decision making. John Adams at 6:00 p.m. at The Art Institute of Chicago followed by Fulcrum Point at the Harris at 7:30 pm.
As part of this year’s Chicago Humanities Festival: Laughter, John Adams gave the Third Annual President’s Lecture titled “The Vinteuil Sonata: Where Music and Literature Collide”. A nice big crowd – est 600 – (the Main Floor and Side Arm were about 90% full, but the Balcony was nearly empty) gathered in Rubloff Auditorium and the first thing I think is: “Why do these folk come to the lecture, but not to our concerts?” I don’t think there was one person there that I see at New Music Concerts.
His paper was clever, but they chained him to the lectern, turned out all the lights except for one spot light and turned on an odd sound system, which broadcast from way over there, while he was, here, right in front of me — a lot of forgiving required.
At the end, you want to run out and buy Proust and Mann … again. I’ve tried to to get through À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) and Doctor Faustus (Doktor Faustus) before… maybe I’m mature enough now?
I ran over to the Harris Theater for Fulcrim Point…
Half of this program was a second hearing / viewing: Randall Woolf’s “Holding Fast” and Jacob TV’s ” GRAB IT’ were part of Fulcrum Point’s program a couple of weeks ago at Evanston SPACE. These two worked better at SPACE than at the Harris — the musicians contributions were the focus there and the films seemed brighter. Too often at the Harris, I want someone to turn up the volume for the acoustic events. Same thing last night for the Muhly and Bartok.
One very nice discovery — Nico Muhly can write some lovely music (The Reader). The little that I have heard in the past has been on the unlovely side and appropriate for those compsitions. But you wonder what else is in this score – the selections were too much alike and finally, did not seem to belong to the film clips — surely not everything in this story is lovely.
What to pay attention to? Watching a film, the music is, usually, supposed to support the story and images. Watching a concert, shouldn’t the musician be the star? I struggled to pay attention to the music — distracted by the images. It would have helped if Jeremy Ruthrauff’s sax and Rika Seko’s violin had more punch – the sound tracks on those films dominated. (They had the punch at SPACE).
Teddy Dean Boys
