Surviving: Women's Words and a play with few survivors

New CD cover: photo by Michael Halberstadt

...from Berkeley

Today's post starts with a flat-out plug for E4TT's new CD, released on Centaur Records
on April 8, "Surviving: Women's Words."

The CD features pianist Dale Tsang, cellist Adaiha MacAdam-Somer, and--as Miss Piggy would say--moi, performing four song cycles written by composer David Garner for the group, to poetry by four different Jewish women poets. The  culmination of an ambitious five year commissioning project, the CD gives a musical voice to these women's viewpoint and experiences of wartime, the Holocaust, exile, and displacement.

Stephen Smoliar in Examiner.com  describes "Surviving: Women's Words" as "a fascinating project within a project"--alluding to the fact that the project is itself a project of E4TT's Jewish Music & Poetry Project--and goes on to say that "...this album offers four passionate meditations on the Holocaust experience, delivered through a unique and highly compelling pair of voices, those of both composer and singer."

(For the curious, the CD's title, "Surviving," comes from the fourth song in the final cycle on the CD ("Song Is a Monument"), which sets words by Polish-American Holocaust survivor, Yala Korwin. We were honored to be able to use poems written by Korwin, who passed away in May, 2014, only two months after E4TT premiered the cycle. The other poets  whose texts are set muscially on the CD are Mascha Kaleko, Rose Auslaender, and Else Lasker-Schueler.)

"Surviving: Women's Words" is available from Amazon, HBDirect, Arkivmusic, and E4TT. Check it out now or starting May 13, when streaming and downloading will be available for purchase!

And the play with few survivors? Shakespeare's Hamlet, which I saw this evening in a fabulous production by the England's National Theater Live with the inimitable and multiply talented Benedict Cumberbatch (of "Sherlock Holmes" and "The Imitation Game" fame).

Watch the trailer.  Watch Prince Charles deliver Shakespeare's arguably most famous line.

Partly a ghost stoy with a great fight scene, Hamlet is a "greatest hits" play, and deservedly so: much as the opera "Porgy & Bess" is filled with hit after Gershwin musical hit, so too is Hamlet filled with quote after famous Shakespeare quote.  The NTL's stunning production--albeit often very loud--brings out an important sequence in "Hamlet" about the army led by the character Fortinbras--well nigh the only principal character left standing by the final curtain, other than Horatio, whom Hamlet has begged to stay alive to bear witness to his story.

That sequence?  To set the scene, Hamlet has happened upon the Norwegian army on its way to attack Poland and asks the Captain what they're up to. The interchange:
"Hamlet: Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?
Captain: Truly to speak, and with no addition/ We go to gain a little patch of ground/ That hath in it no profit but the name./To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;/Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole/A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
Hamlet:Why, then the Polack never will defend it.
Captain: Yes, it is already garrison'd..."

Thus does Shakespeare four centuries ago emphasize the insanity of war--so often waged for "a little patch of ground"--and the suffering that results, and that, you see, is the connection with the CD, as well.

What I'm reading: More Louise Penny Inspector Gamache mysteries

What I'm listening to: Mp3 after mp3 for making the final vocal decisions for E4TT's call for scores :).  Plus the wonderful artist known as Prince, may he rest in purple peace.

What I'm working on: new music by Judith Shatin and Emma Logan, plus Hans Winterberg and songs by Vitezslava Kapralova

Grand Budapest Hotel, Miklos Rozsa, and World Premieres by Garner and Ruehr

Photo by Michael Halberstadt

Here in very occasional blog-land, I'm trying out a new way of going about this, using my trusty old 'droid mini Nexus tab (yes,  I was  a VERY early adopter on that particular trend) and a brand new Logitech keyboard that my kid got me for my birthday present.  (What a great kid!) Although it's for iOS, it seems to play very nicely with the Android OS, with only a few differences from what I'm used to, at least thus far.  Time will tell: perhaps the ease and beauty of use will persuade me to make this blog a regular thing (gasp!), instead of a random and very occasional one.

Speaking of which, everyone's subscriptions for the blog have gotten somewhat...messed up: for example, if you were subscribed here before Google killed off Google Reader a while back, you no longer are--and some subscriptions somehow went with that as well.  So if readers could pretty please resubscribe (it's now much easier, though), that would be a wonderful thing and greatly appreciated.  It took me a looong time to notice (actually I never did: an attentive reader told me she was having trouble with the subscribe feature), and even longer to fix it. Mea maxima culpa.  

Coming up this very weekend (on Saturday, March 29 at 8 p.m. in Berkeley...subtle hint, no?)  is the JMPP's next program of premieres at Trinity Chamber Concerts (2320 Dana St.... yet another even more subtle hint, yes?).  It's a great lineup: David Garner's newest song cycle for the group, to texts by Yala Korwin, Garner's new additions to his cycle Phoenix, Elena Ruehr's new song cycle Winter Solstice Songs, to texts by Berkeley poet Marcia Falk, plus Ruth Lomon's arrangement of her song "The Butterfly" for soprano, cello, and piano, and works by Czech and Hungarian composers Sandor Vandor, Miklos Rozsa, and Vitezslava Kapralova.  All this plus a composer/ poet Q&A at the start wth Garner and Falk.  Elena Ruehr had hoped to come, but in the end wasn't able to do so. Performers are cellist Adaiha MacAdam-Somer, Dale Tsang, and yours truly.

To all those wonderful readers and fans who correctly answered the JMPP's newsletter quiz (about which of this program's composers won 3 Oscars), congratulations!  If you'd like to find out the answer--and incidentally hear about the JMPP's future concerts--you can sign up at info at jewishmusicandpoetryproject.org.  Here's a visual hint, as well;).

Before I end this endlessly shameless (or shameful?) plug, in more exciting news, the JMPP is honored and thrilled to have received a grant from the Zellerbach Family Foundation Community Arts Program, in support of our March 29 concert.

Moving on to other topics: The Grand Budapest Hotel.  Yes, a movie!  Without giving away the plot or committing other acts of heinous spoilers, this wonderful Wes Anderson film is a comic, quirky, sweet and sometimes bittersweet paean to a time that has long passed, lost in the chaos of the events of the 20th century.  Highly recommended.

What I'm reading: Jasper Fforde's fabulous "Thursday Next" series. If you like Terry Pratchett and serious lit, too, you'll get a kick out of this smarmily tongue-in-cheek alternate universe series. And, on a far more serious note: Who Shall Live: the Wilhelm Bachner Story by Samuel Oliner and Kathleen Lee.  A chilling look at Eastern Europe in the 1940s under the Nazis, and one brave Jewish soul who saved many.

What I'm listening to: Andrea Chenier (the opera), Lorde, Bach (can one ever get enough of this intellectual master?), Mahler (ditto!), Prokofiev, Gershwin, and Crumb.

Music I'm working on: the pieces for Saturday's concert, natch, plus music for the Vinaccesi Ensemble's program at the Legion of Honor on April 5.  More on this last coming next week, should this occasional blogger manage to blog again soon. 

Book Review Repost and Das Rheingold (nochmal...)

Wow: two posts in two weeks? I must be losing my occasional touch...or at least am at risk of being a frequent blogger instead of an occasional one.

Shameless plug moment: Verismo Opera's Das Rheingold opens at the Mira Theater in Vallejo, where it will show for the next two weekends (Oct. 15/16, 22/23), after a first performance at the Mildred Owens Concert Hall in Pacifica on Oct. 8.

In Vallejo, I'm singing Freia on Oct. 16 only (due to my tricky singing/travel schedule--starting Oct. 17 I'll be in northern Italy and then briefly Bavaria). But I'll be back in town in time to be Freia again with Verismo at the Hillside in Berkeley on Nov. 6 at 2 p.m....more perhaps on a later post for that.

We have a wonderful group of singers:
Wotan: John Minagro
Donner: Anders Froehlich, Steve Zimmermann
Loge: Tom Clark
Froh: Mark Narins
Alberich: Joe Kinyon
Mime: Rick Bogart
Fasolt: Anders Froehlich, Roger Smith
Fafner: Tristan Robben
Fricka: Leslie Keenan, Vismaya Lhi
Freia: Nanette McGuinness, Jennifer Rogers
Erda: Marsha Sims, MaryAnne Stanislaw
Woglinde: Marissa Lenhardt, Jill Wagoner
Wellgunde: Carol Otsuki Hoover
Flosshilde: Kat Cornelius, Ellen Yeung
Nibelungen: Rick Bogart, Judy Bogart, Rick Hyde, John Rhoads Jr., Robert McIvor

Stage Director, Frederick Winthrop, Assist. Director, Eliza O'Malley
Conductor, Michael Shahani, leading a 12-piece chamber orchestra with brass and winds, plus Skye Atman at the keyboard.

We are (obviously) double cast...

On another note--or perhaps better, page--I occasionally write book reviews (note that adverb, folks), and it's been pointed out to me that I should repost them here. Here's my latest, which I wrote for Lynn Goodwin's Writer Advice , with her permission.



HOLD ME CLOSER, NECROMANCER

Written by Lish McBride and reviewed by YT (yours truly)


Ever since the Twiilight Saga (by Stephanie Meyer, for those few readers who've had a Rip-van-Winkle kind of decade), creatures of the night have been the latest craze. First it was vampires, next werewolves. Then werewolves became passé, and so now we've moved on to zombies. Had enough? Thinking it's past the time to return to reading about plain Jane human beings who somehow survive without any extraordinary occult powers or transformative skills?

Don't abandon the world of the undead quite yet, at least not until you've read Lish McBride's entry into the YA paranormal scene, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer. As the title implies, it's clever, funny-punny, fast-paced, and witty. Yet, despite its horror, blood 'n guts, and the occasional moment of true gruesomeness, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer is, at its heart, a wonderful coming of age tale--something that I'm a total sucker for. The story is a great read, with characters, plot, voice, innovation, and pacing that make it very hard to put down. Personally, I zoomed through it in one quick slurp.

The story begins with hapless, dropout Sam who works at a dead-end job at a burger joint. One fateful day, when Sam's enjoying a regular game of potato hockey, his life takes an abrupt turn...for the better? For the worse? You decide...

If you don't know what a necromancer is, I'm going to let you look it up. Or even better, you might go ahead and read the book. Just beware of the gore.



What I'm reading: The Penderwicks at Point Moulette, the third in Jeanne Birdsall's award-winning MG Penderwicks series; To Tell the Story: Poems of the Holocaust (by Yala Korwin); and After Every War: Twentieth Century Women Poets, Eavan Boland trans. and ed.

What I'm listening to/ studying: Handel's Giulio Cesare and Verdi's Otello. That's going to go on for a while. Revisiting some Puccini (Liu and Mimi), and my beloved Rusalka's Song to the Moon.