Stone Cold Pimpin'

It's the Year of the Cat
While the hippies danced in Alameda Park post Solstice on Saturday, the hipsters were lined up outside SOhO, two snaking threads starting upstairs that easily found their way down to street level. The lines were for ticket-holders and those seeking tickets, all wanting to see Chan Marshall, better known as the enigmatic singer-songwriter Cat Power.
Fragile of voice and temperamental of mind, the singer has a reputation: A concert can be filled with walk-offs, wordy digressions, freakouts or be canceled altogether. Or it can be brilliant and electrifying.

Fortunately, Cat Power’s most recent album "The Greatest," has broadened her scope beyond the introspection of piano and guitar. A sort of "Chan in Memphis," Marshall took on tour with her an expanded version of the Memphis Rhythm Band, former members of Al Green’s band and long experienced session musicians. Stripped of her instruments, she has just been all voice, more playful, less likely to disappear when a large band is counting on her (not that it didn’t happen once or twice).
But there was no band at Soho on Saturday, just Chan once again, a piano, and her trusty Danelectro guitar. Upon her request, the audience sat cross-legged on the floor for the whole show, turning Soho into something like an elementary school assembly, with Marshall as the greatest teacher in the world, the one who loves her students.
She let us know halfway through a song that she had "just gotten off a tour with a fabulous piano player" and apologized for what she probably saw as rudimentary playing. "We love you!" yelled someone in the audience, not for the first time.
Later she stopped again and harangued herself for the "self-hatred that just starts brewing after a while," and followed up with numerous requests for more reverb, "trying to create that Spacemen 3 vibe." Like John Lennon once he started dropping acid and becoming self-indulgent, she’s grown to dislike her voice and desires a burial deep inside an echo chamber.
Of course, this would all be codependent nonsense if Marshall didn’t have that voice and those songs. Smooth and sandy, slightly cracked, her voice comes from deep within, channeling decades of soul and blues without sounding like either of those genres.
She moves her head within the invisible sound globe of her omnidirectional mic, and finding the sweet reverb spot, scrunches her face up, sings out of the side of her mouth, and looks surprised and distraught in equal measure.
Starting at the piano, she made her way straight into tracks from "The Greatest," with the one-two punch of the title song and the elegant and stately "Living Proof," with its loping rhythm and tender, unsure lyrics.
On tour with the band, Cat Power had stuck to the track list, but by the third song, the solo Marshall was already in cover territory, with a version of Sandy Denny’s "Who Knows Where the Time Goes."
The Denny song hewed close to the original, but then Chan picked up a guitar for a riveting, harrowing song that gradually revealed itself to be "House of the Rising Sun." Reaching back past the Animals’ version to one closer to Nina Simone’s or Roy Acuff’s, where gambling is switched to prostitution and visitor turns into worker-tenant, Marshall found the fear and dread in the lyrics and brought them into a post-flood and hurricane world.
The moment was pin-drop transcendent, as was her tortured, I-can’t-go-on-I-must-go-on "Hit the Road Jack," which overhauled everything familiar and fun about the song, returning it to its original break-up trauma.
But then Marshall turned around and played "Could We," as sunny and as bright a first date song as she’s written, and all was right with the world.
Cat Power/Chan Marshall’s relationship with her art and with her audience could improve more, or it could spiral out of control (a line about being sober and drinking tea suggests what may be going on), and who knows how her fans might take it. The show was the first of two back-to-back performances.
She closed out with a warm embrace of sorts, a medley of the Everly Brothers’ "Dream," "Blue Moon," "Try a Little Tenderness" and "Tracks of My Tears." Her time with her Memphis mentors may have yet to reveal all its benefits.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday night’s performance at the Lobero, one of three sold-out nights and the opening of Summerdance’s 10th season, finds Mikhail Baryshnikov back in Santa Barbara for the fifth time in 13 years.
Now 58, Mr. Baryshnikov cuts an elegant figure on stage, with sad, yearning eyes, a face made of diagonals and angles, contrasting with a supple torso and arms that suggest massive strength even when they look light and as mutable as rising smoke. No doubt he is still fascinating to watch, but his Hell’s Kitchen Dance company proved to be equally exciting.

The three works performed Wednesday night come to us as fruits of the Baryshnikov Arts Center’s inaugural year. Rising choreographer Aszure Barton has been artist-in-residence there and opened and closed the evening with two remarkable pieces. “Over/Come” serves as a refreshing opener, a blast of summer color, reminiscent of balmy evenings in outdoor cafes, watching young lovers come and go.
The music fluctuates between American and European artists, from Roger Miller to Kermit Goell, Domenico Titomanglio and Salvatore D’Esposito. The costumes offer an amalgam of ‘50s chic, sleeveless blouses and scarfs, Capri pants, checked shirts and short-shorts, both Roman Holiday and American Graffiti.
The 13-member company, minus Mr. Baryshnikov for this segment but with Ms. Barton dancing, celebrate young love while usurping and undermining its romanticism, gazing into the heart of the matter and finding irrationality and plenty of blood. One of Ms. Barton’s enigmatic gestures that circulates throughout the company is a pantomime of savagely biting a large chunk out of something. Forbidden fruit? Raw meat? Eat your heart out? Or eat someone else’s?
The company pairs up into six different couples throughout “Over/Come,” leaving a solitary dancer to either flirt, act out a jealous fit, or go off on their own to either ignore the other couples or to be judged by them, such as in Ariel Freedman’s impressive solo. Violence, usually occurring alongside amazing shows of endurance, bubbled to the surface of this lovers’ fantasy, humorous and dark in equal measure.
”Years Later,” choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, opened with a tantalizing glimpse of Mr. Baryshnikov, leading to waves of applause and then confused silence when he just as quickly walked off. A large-screen video then played, featuring Mr. Baryshnikov at a barren seaside, in time-lapse, or at a table, the top of which mirrored the horizon.
The flesh-and-blood version returned to dance to solo saxophone accompaniment (a meditative Philip Glass piece), then to shadow dance against video footage of his younger self from his years with the Kirov Ballet. At times his live shadow grew in stature, towering over his youthful figure. At others, he was tiny, kicked away by powerful 1969 legs. In another section, the screen bathed in red, Mr. Baryshnikov followed and complemented the movements of Alexandra Naudet on screen, until the figure was made flesh and appeared in the guise of Ms. Barton, who performed a bittersweet duet.
”Years Later” explores themes of mortality, of competing against the ghosts of youth, and suggests that trying to seduce others is really a form of seducing oneself. The work answers all the questions of viewers who wonder, hope or muse over what one of the world’s greatest dancers still has to offer. Modesty, realism and humor mark this revealing work, which could have just been gimmicky.
Yet mortality hangs its head even lower and broader over Ms. Barton’s closing piece,
“Come In.” Over an achingly sad composition for strings by Vladimir Martynov, we first see a young woman on screen with her head turned from the camera, and the full company, on stage, walk off in a funereal procession. Mr. Baryshnikov interacts with, but never completely joins, the group. Shared movements appear throughout, as if by coincidence or a shared experience that goes beyond the immediate connection.
Ms. Barton’s choreography, which combines grace with short, sharp shocks of incongruity, consistently surprises. More enigmatic gestures come forth--raised fingers, a disconsolate shake of the head, a hand clutched at the throat, omens of drowning and suffocation. The appearance of fold-out chairs and decreased mobility, with projected images of wintry countryside, further meditated on death.
Together with Mr. Martynov’s music, “Come In” produces an exquisite sadness and inevitability. Ms. Barton, Mr. Baryshnikov and the rest of Hell’s Kitchen Dance deserved the long standing ovation they received. If Mr. Baryshnikov is looking for his own “King Lear,” this may be it.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EIGHT VIRTUOUS HANDS
We open with black, all the lights in Abravanel Hall extinguished. We can hear shuffling on stage, and then some odd notes rise out of the darkness.
Then the see-sawing, off-key intro to Saint-Saëns "Danse Macabre" begins and with a sudden burst of light, the stage is revealed: four men, two pianos, a flurry of hands. This is Pianofest, Saturday night’s opening to Music Academy of the West’s Summer Festival.

The four-man concert was in honor of Jerome Lowenthal, master pianist, instructor and to many a great influence on their careers. Returning to play alongside their teacher were three of his recently successful students, now playing and recording with orchestras nationwide: Orion Weiss, Konstantin Soukhovetski and Alpin Hong.
The evening left no doubt as to the reasons behind the success of these men.
The Saint-Saëns offered a taste of the treats to come. Mr. Soukhovetski and Mr. Weiss managed the lower and higher keys respectively of one piano, and Mr. Lowenthal and Mr. Hong the other. In an arrangement for eight hands by Ernest Guiraud, the work leaves behind the dancing bones of the xylophone and the midnight fires of the violin and conjures up its own devilish mayhem with menacing bass rumblings and sparkling high trills.
Orion Weiss, a recent graduate of Julliard and currently playing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, sports a mass of curly hair and a dapper white suit. His two solo pieces showed his technical prowess.
For Mozart’s "Variations on ŒSalve tu, Domine’ from Paisiello’s I filosofi immaginarii, K.416e," variation is the key word, with the theme appearing only once. Mozart later rethought the simple melody from every angle, finding the beauty locked within by exploding the original. Mr. Weiss played not just with elegance, but with an understanding of Mozart’s character.
Moszkowski’s "Etincelles, op. 36, no. 6" is a similar exploration of a tiny cluster of melody, and, like the sparks of the title, the notes jumped off Mr. Weiss’ keyboard.
Konstantin Soukhovetski took the stage next, wearing a very light lime green suit, large plastic-rimmed glasses and long straight hair befitting a man about to undertake Liszt’s transcription of Wagner’s "Liebestod." If the Mozart piece was all about seduction, the Wagner/Liszt is all about loud lovemaking, probably with somebody emotionally unstable. But where would the Romantics be without a little instability?
Mr. Soukhovetski then added the "Toccata-Rag from Carnival Music" by George Rochberg, which mashes together ragtime and more "high-brow" concerns. The piece is bi-polar, like a man setting out to destroy what he secretly likes.
For a true fight, the first half closed with Mr. Hong and Mr. Weiss tackling Lutoslawski’s "Variation on a Theme by Paganini for Two Pianos." Both men fired shots at each other from the keyboard, faster, louder, more daring than the last, Mr. Hong bringing up a chugging bass line like a train gone out of control.
The second half of the program brought some calm to the proceedings with Mr. Soukhovetski teaming up with his mentor for Debussy’s "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun." This version for two pianos broadens an already spacious work, full of the composer’s dappled light and shimmering pools of sound.
Mr. Hong then went on to present Mendelssohn’s "On Wings of Song," a favorite of Mr. Lowenthal’s, the poppiest melody of the night. Yet, Mr. Hong was saving the fireworks from Ginastera’s Danzas Argentinas, op. 2." This young, tall pianist fascinates as he goes from hunched and inquisitive over the keyboard to bolt upright and regal.
Finally, Jerome Lowenthal spoke, offering thanks to all throughout the years, and offering an anecdote about meeting a 70-year-old Indian Buddhist in Iceland. She encouraged him to disassociate himself with the past and past emotion, but Mr. Lowenthal made the convincing case for thinking otherwise.
His "Prelude to Third Act of Lohengrin," including the Wedding March, was the second Wagner/Liszt work of the night and would have been nothing if not for the past emotion of other summers, other students and other loves the pianist brought to it.
The program ended with (former honorary director of the Academy) Darius Milhaud’s "Paris Suite," which brought all four pianists and four pianos back on stage. These six short impressionist portraits are long on interplay but a little short on melodic invention save for the "Montparnasse" section.
Fortunately, the four returned for an encore of Debussy’s "Clair de Lune," which capped off the evening with its effortless beauty, spread across several generations, from teacher to student.

Posted by Ted Mills at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Blue and the Green

Roots music -- traditional country music without the gloss, whatever one might call it -- finds itself always returning to its origins the further out it goes. An Australian-English bluegrass combo that formed in Austin, Texas, and records in Nashville, Tenn., the Greencards push the genre into the future while reminding audiences of its long past. White Australians don’t have to go back too many generations to return to England. And bluegrass is only a fiddle or two away from Eire.
And so at the Lobero on Saturday night, and as part of Sings Like Hell, audiences were not so much hearing a outsider’s take on tradition, but a fun-house mirror of styles and influences that sounded bracingly fresh. Surely The Greencards’ marriage of Americana can earn them citizenship.

The group consists of Adelaide-born Kym Warner on mandolin, fellow Australian Carol Young on electric bass and vocals, and Brit-with-Irish-heritage Eamon McLoughlin on fiddle and violin. For the tour they have been joined by guest guitarist Rod McCormick, who at first seemed content to add color and rhythm.
Both Warner and McLoughlin are powerhouse soloists (I swear the former has six fingers to make those lightning runs up and down the frets) but McCormick soon showed he was no slouch, often dueling with both violin and mandolin, mimicking, extrapolating and commenting on each of their solos.
The fiery graphic logo of Sings Like Hell projected on the screen behind the group perfectly visualized the musical flames jumping off the instruments. Young refrains from any such soloing, and for good reason -- she provides a solid foundation from which the group launches its pyrotechnics, rocking and swaying to the simple rhythms and bass lines.
Young’s gift is her voice, which can be smooth and ethereal. Or it can take on the needed twang that adds such satisfying flavor to her harmonizing with the men, such on the opening number “Life’s a Freeway” (with the lyrical aside “but it ain’t free”).
The band played its hit “Time” -- it received crazy rotation in their adopted hometown of Austin -- and Young’s voiced soared and soothed on its chorus (“Time is a river, rollin’ out to sea/I close my eyes and then go back again”). The song already feels like it’s been around for years, comfortable like an old, warm sweater, remarkable for a group that is finishing off its third album.
McLoughlin got to shine on his Irish murder ballad, “Tommy Tom-Tom,” which featured an introduction as funny as the song itself was dark. One of the sweetest moments of the night was their version of Patty Griffin’s “What You Are,” rescued from an album that the songwriter fully recorded but her record company shelved. The tic-tock backing vocals emphasized the moonlight tone of the lyrics and music, with a lead by Young that raised goose bumps.
The Greencards brought their love to the Lobero stage, and the good-natured humor between the performers won as many people over as their music did. (When an audience member yelled out during Young’s introduction, “Are you single?” Warner stepped in: “Thanks, mate, but I’m taken.”)
They praised Austin for its incredible music culture (“Where else could you play five nights a week and make money?” asked Young) but also praised Santa Barbara for showing the group a good time -- certainly the audience yelped and hollered after every solo, and gave two standing ovations.
Or should I say some of Santa Barbara, as 20 minutes near the end saw a third of the audience bailing, for what we can only guess. Is there a curfew on? No matter the reason, it was rather disheartening and ultimately rude to a group that was absolutely on fire. Hey, Greencards? When you guys return we promise to stay for the whole thing. Really. Y’all deserve it.
Opening for The Greencards was Mississippi-born and Atlanta-based folk singer Caroline Herring, who offered 10 or so earnest ballads. Herring focuses on stories of strong women from various eras, whether documenting the fading bloom of youth of a modern teenager or the tragic tale of a slave who married her master and faces the wrath of greater society.
Highlights from the set were the wry “Colorado Woman” and the sweet “Mississippi Snow,” as well as Herring’s down-to-earth introductions to her work. Ross Martin backed Herring’s acoustic guitar rhythms, filling in the empty spaces with sweet and sharp fretwork.

Posted by Ted Mills at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)