Martin Kennedy - Notes

Slowly unwrap a candy while reading this

Audience noise has to be one of my biggest pet peeves.  At a recent concert in New York, I had to literally stare down a pair of old ladies who wouldn't stop talking and rustling their programs.  Some 30 seconds passed and I received not a look of embarrassment from the two, but one of annoyance(!)

In today's self-obsessed culture, more and more concert-goers are embracing the belief that they are just as important as the performers on stage.  In St. Louis there is actually a frequent concert-goer who enjoys sitting in the front row and performing an interpretative dance with her hands while performers are on stage. And this is on top of the coughing, snorting, talking, candy-wrapper unopening...

And cell phones.  It's amazing how many people feel it necessary to keep their cell phones active during concerts.  I frequently tell my students (most of whom grew up during the technology boom) that there was a day when people actually waited until they got home to check their messages.  I've actually had students answer their phones during lessons to say that they couldn't talk at the moment.

Which brings me to a recent post by Patti Lupone on the New York Times Arts Beat Blog.  Lupone had recently berated an audience member for taking pictures at a performance of Gypsy in Las Vegas.  David Itzkoff inexplicably chided her for her behaviour and Lupone responded in kind:

Do we allow our rights to be violated (photgraphy, filming and audio taping of performances is illegal) or tolerate rudeness by members of the audience who feel they have the right to sit in a dark theater, texting or checking their e-mail while the light from their screens distract both performers and the audience alike? Or, should I stand up for my rights as a performer as well as the audiences I perform for? And do you think I’m alone in this? Ask any performer on Broadway right now about their level of frustration with this issue. Ask the actor in “Hair” who recently grabbed a camera out of an audience member’s hand and threw it across the stage. Or ask the two Queens in “Mary Stuart” (Harriet Walter and Janet McTeer) how they react to it.

Thank god someone is saying this. And if has to be anyone, I'm glad it's someone who doesn't hesitate to eject people like this from the theater:

More Monkey News To Come

This is fabulous news, especially for people like me who never get tired of listening to the podcasts.

HBO has struck a deal to keep another signature comedy talent, Ricky Gervais, on its roster, Variety reported. The cable channel is developing a new animated series adapted from Mr. Gervais’s popular podcast, “The Ricky Gervais Show,” which features Mr. Gervais (a creator and star of “Extras” and “The Office”); his writing partner, Stephen Merchant (who also appeared in “Extras”); and Karl Pilkington, an eccentric radio producer who has become a regular part of their act. (NY Times, May 18 2009)

Thomas Adès' Asyla at Powell Symphony Hall

I love the music of Thomas Adès, especially Asyla, which has to be one of the greatest pieces of the past 100 years.  The Saint Louis Symphony is performing it this weekend and I just returned from the final rehearsal.  I'm covering the celeste, four-hand grand piano, and an upright piano (tuned down a quarter-tone).  

A quickly-snapped picture gives a sense of the forces involved.

In case you haven't heard it before, here's a taste of the famed third movement, conducted by Simon Rattle.

Twitter Opera Plots

How does one describe an opera plot in 140 characters or less?  Tim Smith at the Baltimore Sun has the answer.  Some of the entries suggest that brevity may indeed be the soul of wit.  A sampling is below:

Bluebeard’s Castle

- Ur a psycho but I married you anyway. “Don’t ask me about my business.” Sorry, I gots to know. Ok, it’s Door #7 for you, bitch.

L’enfant et les sortilèges

- Toys, furniture, and animals give little brat his comeuppance when maman’s back is turned. Save the squirrel, save the world

La Boheme

- Seamstress pals around with bohemians in a December-May affair. Receives muff as parting gift.

La Sonambula

- She’s a slut? No! She’s a sleepwalker!

Pelleas et Mélisande

- Nothing happens; Mélisande dies.

Rigoletto

- Curses, schmurses. Kidnap my daughter? I’ll show you, you bastard! Oh, fuck, she’s dead

The Ring Cycle (or parts thereof)

- You ruined my life. Hey, let’s drink this. We’re in love. Ecstasy! Shit, we’re busted. Ok, let’s just die together.

Vanessa

- V waits for old lover, his son shows up, turns out to be a TOTAL DICK. Erika ends up alone instead. See what happened there? - V waits for old lover, his son shows up, turns out to be a TOTAL DICK. Erika ends up alone instead. See what happened there?

Wozzeck

- Poor guy - he’s a human guinea pig, boss hates him, his girlfriend’s a hooker. Finally loses it, leaves kid behind. Hopp, hopp!

a poem, finally found

I've had a poem hiding in the back of my mind for nearly ten years now.  I first encountered it in a bargain bin copy of the Indiana Review, copied it down, and then lost it.  It was only this last weekend that, prompted by a discussion with a local poet, I searched for it again...

_____________

Good Morning

Fifty-some years after the war, a kamikaze lands in my yard,
gently, like a sheet of newsprint.

“Ohayo gozaimasu,” I say, though it is evening, light grown ochre
and pink, day disappearing across the Zero’s wings.

He shinnies from the cockpit, the thinnest man I’ve seen.
He has evaded the radar. He’s fallen

for decades, believing he’ll attack
the coast of America, setting all the pines in Oregon blazing.

I take him inside, where he drinks a glass of water.
It is clear. It tastes nothing like the ocean.

- Aaron Anstett

Kafka International

I've been traveling quite a bit in the past few weeks and I'm beginning to think that today's airports are not that dissimilar from the one in the video below.

A drum machine at your fingertips

I can't imagine a better use for the internet than this. 

Wonderful Sestina by David Lehman

Operation Memory by David Lehman We were smoking some of this knockout weed when Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs And apartments and wives. Nobody told me the gun was loaded. We'd been drinking since early afternoon. I was loaded. The doctor made me recite my name, rank, and serial number when I woke up, sweating, in my civvies. All my friends had jobs As professional liars, and most had partners who were good in bed. What did I have? Just this feeling of always being in the middle Of things, and the luck of looking younger than fifty. At dawn I returned to draft headquarters. I was eighteen And counting backwards. The interviewer asked one loaded Question after another, such as why I often read the middle Of novels, ignoring their beginnings and their ends. when Had I decided to volunteer for intelligence work? "In bed With a broad," I answered, with locker-room bravado. The truth was, jobs Were scarce, and working on Operation Memory was better than no job At all. Unamused, the judge looked at his watch. It was 1970 By the time he spoke. Recommending clemency, he ordered me to go to bed At noon and practice my disappearing act. Someone must have loaded The harmless gun on the wall in Act I when I was asleep. And there I was, without an alibi, in the middle Of a journey down nameless, snow-covered streets, in the middle Of a mystery--or a muddle. These were the jobs That saved men's souls, or so I was told, but when The orphans assembled for their annual reunion, ten Years later, on the playing fields of Eton, each unloaded A kit bag full of troubles, and smiled bravely, and went to bed. Thanks to Operation Memory, each of us woke up in a different bed Or coffin, with a different partner beside him, in the middle Of a war that had never been declared. No one had time to load His weapon or see to any of the dozen essential jobs Preceding combat duty. And there I was, dodging bullets, merely one In a million whose lucky number had come up. When It happened, I was asleep in bed, and when I woke up, It was over: I was 38, on the brink of middle age, A succession of stupid jobs behind me, a loaded gun on my lap. - David Lehman, Operation Memory (1990)

a wonderful passage to read before falling asleep

     In the chill night before dawn they briefly woke.  Not fully, not with the clarity of waking that brings the new day sharply to life and leaves the dream of sleep forgotten in the haze of the past.  They woke with the recognition of what they had dreamed, each feeling they had lived the dream as fully as if they had experienced it in waking life.  They had experienced it, and it was now etched forever in their living tissue, though perhaps not forever in their living memory.

     For a moment they looked at each other in the full wonder of what they had just dreamed - had lived - and with the drowsy indulgence of those who would wake and continue living, they returned to sleep, the memory of their dream fading with each breath.

- from Tintin in the New World, Frederic Tuten 

Richter playing Chopin Op. 10/4