CMA's Design from the Collection -- a review by Jeffrey Day

As much as I like The Art of Seating, a show of 200 years of chairs at the Columbia Museum of Art, I was more excited to see what the museum would do with the companion design exhibition. For Design from the Collection, members of the museum affiliate group the Columbia Design League mined the museum collection for examples of good design. I feel a close connection to many of the objects in the exhibition, having had an opportunity to see many quite a few times and to remember when the museum acquired some.

When we think about museums, great paintings and sculptures first come to mind. The works in Design from the Collection are more prosaic – chairs, desks, teapots, dishes – but their functional origins and often humble material coupled with thoughtful and beautiful design provide a model for the possibilities of beauty in our daily life.

One piece I’m always happy to revisit is Danish designer Georg Jensen’s chocolate pot from 1930. The silver pot is seven-inches high with sleek lines and a low-set teak side handle and matching lid handle; the best way to describe it is charming. Another simple piece, a 1958 teapot by John Prip, is the made of stuff even more basic - pewter and plastic – which doesn’t prevent it from being a delight.

One piece I don’t recall seeing before is Gilbert Rohde’s dressing table from around 1940, but it has belonged to the museum for a decade and is certainly memorable. With its sleek, rounded lines this dressing table made of ebony veneer and quilted maple with a top of glass suspended by steel tubing looks like it could speed around one’s bedroom. It’s the perfect marriage of elegant modern design coupled with a high level of craftsmanship.

As companion to The Art of Seating, the exhibition appropriately has a lot of chairs; chairs that make you rethink chairs, really appreciate chairs, toss your stupid and ugly chairs. The earliest chair, and about the oldest work in the show, is a 1915 bent wood rocker by chair innovators Thonet. (The Austrian company’s chair No. 18 has been manufactured since 1876.) It has rockers and arms made of one continuous oval of bent wood. It is a marvelous melding of new technology, function and beauty – as are all the best pieces in the show.

Eero Saarinen is best known as the architect of the TWA terminal at JFK Airport in New York and the Dulles Airport main terminal, but he created furniture just as cool as those buildings. The exhibition contains two of his most iconic designs – the tulip chair and tulip table. (These were first manufactured in 1956, but like quite a few of the post-World War II furniture pieces these particular items were made a couple of decades later in response to a renewed appreciation of mid-century design.)

Among the other well-known designers represented in the show are Charles Eames and Ray Eames with a molded plywood chair from the 1940s, a cast aluminum and fabric chair from 1958 (along with the Rohde’s dressing table, it’s my favorite piece), a 1946 wooden slat bench by George Nelson, and a ‘40s carafe by Russell Wright. On the unknown end is Danish designer Poul Jeppesen’s modern, but warm and inviting wood and cane armchair from 1950.

Entering the exhibition through the Art of Seating, you’ll be greeted by pieces such as these. Near the end of the show you will wonder if you’ve wandered into another exhibition entirely. You’ll find works that fit firmly in the fine crafts category – glass, ceramics, basketry – as well as a few pieces that are simply sculpture. The exhibition text panels are also puzzling. Several are written with a personal point of view by committee members while others read like standard museum text although all are credited to committee member. These confusing turns may be the result of a committee-created exhibition – in this case it looks like the work of two committees that never met. Both these things badly undermine what is largely an excellent show.

On the plus side, the objects are creatively displayed – especially the chair perched atop platforms attached to the gallery walls. The exhibition is on display through July 29.

-- Jeffrey Day is a frequent contributor to Jasper and What Jasper Said, and the former senior arts writer for The State

Southeastern Piano Festival kicks off 10th anniversary with big concert at the Koger Center

 

If you love the piano, have we got a week for you.

The Southeastern Piano Festival kicks off its 10^th year with a Piano Extravaganza concert featuring 16 pianist, five pianos and the S.C. Philharmonic on June 10 at the Koger Center for the Arts. The festival runs through June 16 with concerts by well-known and up-and-coming musicians.

“The festival has been a success on so many levels and we’re thrilled to be celebrating our first decade,” said Marina Lomazov, Festival Artistic Director. “The festival continues to provide top-flight training for young musicians, but has also grown to be one of the most significant showcases of piano music.”

Dr. Lomazov will perform at the Piano Extravaganza along with fellow USC piano faculty Joseph Rackers and  Charles Fugo, guest pianist Phillip Bush, a dozen past winners of Arthur Fraser International Concerto Competition, and the S.C. Philharmonic conducted by Music Director Morihiko Nakahara.  The concert includes works by Mozart, Bach and Wagner and five pianists performing movements from “The Planets” by Gustav Holst on five Steinway concert grand pianos. The concert will close with Lomazov and Rackers playing the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in D minor by Francis Poulenc.

The festival blends a week of exciting concerts with a training program for 19 young pianists from around the country and one from Australia who take part in the Fraser Competition. Those who want to see some of tomorrow’s great pianists today can watch the competition from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. June 15. Competition winners will give the closing concert June 16.

Among the other highlights of the week are performances by Boris Slutsky, first prize winner of the Kapell International Piano Competition and chair of the piano department at the Peabody Institute, playing the music of Ravel, Chopin and Schuman on June 13 and Alessio Bax, recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, performing Rachmaninoff and Liszt pieces on June 14.

Students attending the festival will give an afternoon concert at the Columbia Museum of Art June 12. A number of young pianists will be in the spotlight including past winners of the Fraser Competition Leo Svirsky and Sean Yeh performing June 11 and George Li, the 15-year-old winner of the Gilmore Young Artist Award, playing June 12.

Admission to the Piano Extravaganza is $25 for VIP seating and $15 general admission, $10 for seniors, students, military, USC faculty and staff and free for those under 18. Tickets are available through capitoltickets.com or by calling (803) 251-2222.

The other concerts will be held at the USC School of Music Recital Hall. Admission is $20; $10 for seniors, USC faculty and staff, students and military and free to everyone under  18.  For tickets call (803) 576-5763 or email  frontoffice@mozart.sc.edu

The Svirsky and Yeh concert is $5.

The competition concert is free.

For a complete schedule and more information about tickets, concerts, guest artists and participants visit the Piano Festival website http://sepf.music.sc.edu/

Concert lineup for the Southeastern Piano Festival (unless otherwise noted concerts are at the USC School of Music Recital Hall, Assembly and College streets.)

Sunday, June 10, 4 p.m. Piano Extravaganza concert.

Monday, June 11, 7:30 p.m. Alumni Celebration Concert with Leo Svirsky and Sean Yeh.

Tuesday, June 12, 1:30 – 3 p.m. Southeastern Piano Festival on the Road. Columbia Museum of Art, 1515 Main St.

Tuesday, June 12, 7:30 p.m. George Li.

Wednesday, June 13, 7:30 p.m. Boris Slutsky.

Thursday, June 14, 7:30 p.m. Alessio Bax.

Friday, June 15, 10 a.m. – 9 p.m. Arthur Fraser International Concerto Competition.

Saturday, June 16, 7 p.m. Arthur Fraser International Piano Competition Winners' Concert and Closing Ceremony.

A night of new music -- Spoleto Review

For a long time if you wanted new music at the Spoleto Festival, you had to go to a small hall for the late afternoon Music in Time series. During the past few years, new music keeps getting bigger and bigger stages. Part of this is due to Music in Time founder John Kennedy’s more prominent role with the festival as resident conductor and some of it is the result of the rising tide of interest in contemporary music. Evidence could be found Sunday with the Orchestra Uncaged concert in Sottile Theater. The concert juxtaposed works by one of the pioneers of modern music – John Cage - with that of a relative newcomer – Jonny Greenwood (best known as guitarist for Radiohead.)

Cage isn’t someone who shows up at the festival often and Greenwood’s work has never been played at the festival.

The concert offered a grouping of three Cage works written the year before his death in 1992. The three pieces Twenty-six, Twenty-eight and Twenty Nine are named both for the duration of each and the number of instruments required for each. Unlike some of Cage’s works these do not call for extended instrumental techniques or alterations of instruments by doing things like jamming the strings with chopsticks.

Seems simple enough, but not so fast.

For this concert the three works were all performed at the same time, the shorter works nesting inside the larger ones and the various ensembles filling the stage with about 60 musicians. This doesn’t mean it sounded like three different works being played because the pieces are written in a way that they can be played one at a time, two at a time, or all at once.

Within a larger overall sound, various musicians engaged in “sound events” and they get to decide, within certain time constraints, when they are going to make said sounds. This technique, dubbed “time brackets,” doesn’t change much for the listener. What we still get is an ongoing wash of sound with little change tempo or volume interrupted just momentarily by the occasional “sound event.” These events are often just one quick note played at the same volume as the rest of the orchestra. It’s often difficult to ascertain exactly where the sound is coming from or what instrument is making it. It was fun to search the packed stage for tell-tale signs of movement. In one case the tip of a rapidly-moving violin bow – the only thing visible at the back of the stage  – was the giveaway.

At times the piece(s) reminded one of a gentle summer night sounds – the wind in the trees, crickets chirping, the a/c fan -  and the sudden arrival and departure of a bullfrog croak, a distant train whistle, an owl’s hoot and a motorcycle a couple of blocks over.

These are the only three of Cage’s large body of work that have not previously been performed in the United States. The festival deserves our thanks for finally premiering them and doing them so well.

The festival has never before performed works by Greenwood and the concert included his two biggest and most recent classical pieces.

48 Responses to Polymorphia is Greenwood’s string orchestra tribute to Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki’s 1961 composition Polymorphia. The Penderecki work ended on a C major chord and Greenwood picks that, and various distortions, as his building block.  48 Responses uses large tone clusters and between shivers and screeches, snippets of tunes disintegrate. Like the Cage, 48 Responses was largely one big sound. During the final section of the work, the string players set down their bows and picked up huge seedpods which they used both to bow and as percussion instruments. It seemed gimmicky, but sounded great.

Doghouse is a much more accessible and traditional work scored for string trio and large orchestra. Greenwood has said that the work was inspired by imagining what sort of musical scores he might find in the archives of the BBC studio orchestra, which premiered the piece in 2010, especially if some of those scores were moth eaten. The piece nods to various musical styles one might associate with the BBC and its many projects. It also isn’t surprising to learn that selections from it were used as a film score. Doghouse is a much more dynamic work than 48 with snatches of dissonance throughout, the musical falling apart and coming together again.

Although some people still erroneously think of the festival as a place of fairly conservative musical offerings, it has become anything but with concerts like this and new operas (two this year.)  Because of the way the festival is set up, many people attend events they might not go to at home, but not all of them are completely happy about this. The audience at the Uncaged concert was quite diverse and certainly skewed younger than at most of the larger concerts. The house was nearly full. As might be expected, quite a few drifted away after the Cage and a few more as the night went on, but in the end there was still a good solid crowd that very much appreciated what it had just heard.

-          Jeffrey Day

A musical trip through time and place with Spoleto & Jeffrey Day

 

My Spoleto weekend wrapped up with a tour of music spanning many centuries and the entire globe.  The trip went from ancient China to 1790s London, to 19^th century New England, and May 2012 Japan. And I was able to do it all in a 10 block area of downtown Charleston between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Sunday.

Let’s start in the oldest and last stop – which also has the benefit of being very new.

The opera Feng Yi Ting by Duo Wenjing had its first full production and American premiere in Charleston Sunday night. It’s based on a tale from the Han Dynasty (206 BC  - 220), but was written in 2004 and brings together musical and theatrical elements from both ends of that time frame. In the story, the despotic leader of the country has recently adopted a new godson. A young woman, Diao Chan, decides to seduce them both to set them against one another allowing for for more sensible leaders to take charge. The story is told with humor and beauty, but this is no epic – it has only two performers (the young woman and the godson) and lasts barely 45 minutes.

What makes it unique is the blending of Eastern and Western music and opera styles. In the pit of the Dock Street Theatre along with the violins and oboes are several musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments. On stage the performers sing and act in the highly mannered style of Chinese opera, while surrounded by state-of-the-art video projections as well as live video feed of the actors in giant black and white close ups. It sounds like it could be a mess of too much, but it isn’t.

The highly-praised composer’s music is always engaging and the quality of this production shouldn’t be a surprise considering the rest of the team working that created it. The director is Atom Egoyan (best known for his many movies including The Sweet Hereafter) and Derek McLane, a Tony-winning Broadway designer.

For some audience members an hour of the Chinese opera style singing is probably plenty. But we did 15 hours of the 18-hour Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion at the festival a few years ago. Another hour of something as imaginative and excellent as Feng Yi Ting would have been fine with us.

Additional performances take place May 29, June 1, 4 and 7.

A few hours before the trip to ancient China we were in Japan in 2011 – when the earthquake and tsunami struck. The first concert in the Music in Time series, which focuses on contemporary classical, brought to the hall three works by prominent Japanese composers many of us have never heard of. All the works were written for traditional Western instrumentation and one would be hard pressed to find anything particularly “Japanese” about the music.

The program had a very last minute change when composer Toshio Hosokawa called series director John Kennedy a few weeks ago and offered a brand new piece instead of the one scheduled – and it turned out to be a work about the disaster in Japan, as was the piece by Toshi Ichiyanagi that was the linchpin of the concert. The new work, Meditation, had its world premiere in Korea just a few weeks ago; the festival didn’t even receive the music until five days before the concert.

The lateness of the addition showed in no way. This is an intense and dramatic work that musically reflects the power of the earth to shift, move and heave land and water at will. It calls for 30 players which made for a very packed stage at the College of Charleston recital hall and a roar of sound always. The first movement is called Beat of the Earth and that beat, aided by ample percussion is the thing that marches forward through Meditation.

Ichiyanagi, the most distinguished senior composer in Japan, wrote his Symphony No. 8 – Revelation 2011 less than a year after the earthquake, tsunami and resulting death and damage to a nuclear power plant and the Sunday concert was the American premiere.  Like Hosokawa’s piece, this one is very much about the power of the earth - how it can kill and how it can heal. Although the ensemble was slightly smaller at about 20 it is still a loud and dramatic piece, but had the benefit of many passages where several young players from the festival orchestra shone as soloists.

The final piece, Listening to Fragrances of the Dusk by Somei Satoh, was also getting its American premiere at the concert. Although written in 1997 long before the disaster, it seemed to be speaking to the tragedy as well. Unlike the two other pieces this is a very quiet, slow and meditative work – and served as a perfect elegy for the victims and coda for the concert.

The second offering of the chamber music series served up what series organizer and host Geoff Nuttall described as a “Haydn sandwich” – the Haydn Symphony 101 between works by late 19^th and early 20^th century American composers Arthur Foote and Amy Beach. Both of the Americans were from New England and their music, especially that of Foote, felt like a stroll through the New England countryside on a summer day with Beach’s Piano Quintet in F sharp minor being the more dramatic of the strolls. “This is some of the most amazingly exquisite music you’ve never heard before,” Nuttall said, and he was right.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t Haydn.

The Symphony 101 was one of the composer’s famous London Symphonies which were amazingly popular and heaped with praise for very good reason. Wanting to spread the music further than a full orchestra could take it, and there being no MP3 players at the time, the symphonies were arranged for smaller ensembles. In this case the work was played by the St. Lawrence String Quartet with the addition of flute, piano and double bass. I’ve heard dozens of these chamber concerts over the past 20 years and the performance of the Symphony 101 Sunday was in the top 10. The players took this work, which is full of sections in which the musicians appear to be searching for the right music, to new heights.  Haydn loved to create these quirky pieces that played with, but eventually delighted and astounded audience members.  This symphony did so in the 1790s and it did the same on a May Sunday in 2012.

At the end of the work, the musicians appeared ever happier than the audience. I don’t think I’ve even seen a group of players who appeared more thrilled with what they had just done. I thought they were about to levitate, but believe they already had.

-          ­Jeffrey Day

From Spoleto: Kepler opera -- great music with a murky narrative -- A Review

  For those who are fans of Phillip Glass, his newest opera Kepler provides two-hours packed with quite recognizable Glass music: swirling arpeggios, cyclically-repeated motifs, tuned percussion, passages deep in the bass, unexpected contrasts bursting though like an exploding star bursting through the dark and twinkling blanket of a night sky.

The Spoleto production of Kepler marks the American premiere of a full production of the opera, which was mounted in Europe several years ago and had a concert staging in New York. The orchestra, under the director of resident conductor John Kennedy, sounded solid in the Sottile Theatre, as did the seven soloists, and especially the 30 members of the Westminster Choir.

The subject is Johannes Kepler, a great scientist who lived from 1571 to 1630 and explored new ways of thinking about the universe and especially our place in it. He was often wrong, but opened the doors to those who came after him. His theories often bolster the idea of a geometry of God in which science and religion could peacefully co-exist. (We all know how that turned out.) He came up with ideas of how the various planets fit in relation to one another and theorized that the planets had elliptical orbits.

The opera isn’t so much about his life as his ideas, not unlike some of Glass's early “portrait operas” such as Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha. This may not sound like great material for opera from which we often expect love and love gone wrong, with a little murder thrown in. The life and work of Kepler may actually have made for a great and compelling opera, even without a lot of hot blood, but this version is so abstract, so lacking in action, and any sort of narrative it is both baffling and boring.

The libretto is based on Kepler’s own writings as well as those of a poet who was his contemporary. Maybe in the original German there was some grace to the words, but they mostly fall heavily to earth.

The “story,” such as it is, is nearly impossible to follow unless one has a decent knowledge of Kepler’s life and work. (The festival program book provides no program or director’s notes for the opera which would greatly help the audience and the opera.) It is a series of disjointed snippets, supposedly a look into Kepler’s mind. It is certainly the artist’s right to take this approach, but is better when it actually works.

Director Sam Helfrich does what he can moving around 40 people  who don’t have that much to do, often using the choir as a university classroom full of eager 16th century students. He and set designer Andrew Lieberman have devised some beautiful and compelling scenes. The set itself is a simple one of wood and some tables and chairs with most of the changes taking place through lighting effects on a huge screen. One of the high points is what we guess is a representation of the supernova of 1604 which was viewed with awe throughout Europe, including by Kepler. The orchestra builds as the exploding star rises on screen and then suddenly drops away washing through the hall like the light. Unfortunately later in the opera most of the choir starts bleeding through their white shirts which feels like a desperate grasp at adding some excitement.

Like the one-character opera Emilie staged at the festival last year, Kepler would really be more effective staged as a concert where its ideas and music would be unencumbered by attempts at dramatic flair.

Additional performances of Kepler take place May 28, 31 and June 2.

From Spoleto: First chamber concert fun and moving -- A Review

The Haydn string quartets "are the greatest music ever composed," announced Geoff Nuttall at the start of the first of the Spoleto Chamber series concert. And the string quartet the St. Lawrence String Quartet of which Nuttall is first violinist then proceeded to play (Op. 76, No. 2) is very good indeed. And the second piece, a tour de force - or farce - for solo flute, "Great Train Race" by Ian Clark is indeed fun. But the closer - Concerto for violin, piano and string quartet by Ernest Chausson was the star of the concert. Chausson was a late 19th century French Romantic composer  who was quite popular, but died young and didn't write all that much.

The piece is not really a concerto - it's more of a duet for violin and piano with the quartet serving a supporting role. One thing for certain is is an amazing work - lush  and lovely but never sweet and sticky, powerful but not just for the sake of flexing muscles, and complex but never showy.

Pianist Inon Barnatan and violinist Livia Sohn were perfectly matched with the work and with one another.

Lucky for me, I was sitting in the second row of the Dock Street Theatre on their side of the stage so I got to see every stroke of her bow and every movement of his fingers on the keyboard.

Nuttall is in his third year hosting the series, (a role he inherited from  series founder Charles Wadsworth), and he's settled into it well. He reminds one of a favorite professor sharing his knowledge and his enthusiasm, (he'd also rank as the coolest professor and best dresser.)  This year he even gave out his email address from stage.

Last year, for the first time, the program for the chamber series was announced in advance. Nuttall's concern with doing this was that people would see names of composers and works they didn't know and stay away.

"Tomorrow you see we're doing Foote and Beach - who the hell are they? You may thinks 'Oh it's probably modern and noisy.' If you have any fear or questions about things we're doing email me," he said. And then he gave out his email. Some of the audience members may have thought he was joking, but he really did give them his real email address. (That said, he didn't repeat it several times.) That's a pretty bold and admirable thing to do.

While Nuttall's demeanor is a breath of fresh air, the more educational aspects of this first concert went on a bit long. His explanation of what Haydn had done with the most simple building blocks ("He's thumbing his nose at everyone else who was making music," he pointed out regarding Op. 76, No. 2) was terrific but then he went on for several more minutes.

After Tara Helen O'Connor had played the "Great Train Race," which you might have guessed involved making a lot of train sounds with the flute, he had her come out and demonstrate several of the techniques. Several too many.

Making classical music more accessible and understandable is to be commended. More and more musicians are  speaking from the stage about the music and some even integrate a narration into concerts. They aren't often very good at it and even through Nuttall is one of the best at this, even he can go on a bit.

Sometimes its best just to play the tune.

- Jeffrey Day

More than a dorm for Main Street: how about a residential center for the arts? -- A guest editorial by Jeffrey Day

When I heard that there was a plan afoot to turn the empty and enormous SCANA building at Main and Hampton streets into a dorm for 800 University of South Carolina students, I was worried. The street has just started emerging as a new center of the arts in Columbia and it didn’t seem to me like putting hundreds of random students in the middle of it would help that along. Would the dominating numbers of students completely shape the tone of the street? It seems to me that with that many students, the businesses on the street will cater to them – and who can blame them? Will we end up with a bunch of cheap eating and drinking spots instead of art galleries and boutiques and imaginative restaurants?

My concerns do not appear to be shared by others in the city, including those who run the art spots on Main Street, and the city has approved the plan. So Main Street is going to get 800 students.

How about we get the right 800 students? And by that I mean students who will benefit from being on Main Street and be beneficial to it. My suggestion is that the building not simply be a dorm, but a residential center for the Arts and Humanities. Along with serving as a home for art, music, theater, dance, writing, film-making students (and maybe even faculty members) the meeting rooms and a huge lobby can be transformed into alternative performance, rehearsal and gallery space and badly needed student and faculty studios. The center could be a gathering place where students and faculty in the various arts areas could interact - something that too rarely takes place at the university. It would also be a one-stop shop where the public could learn about all the great artists and arts programs at the university. More conversations among the art students and faculty with the larger arts community and the general public would be an eye-opening – and yes, educational – experience for all involved.

For art, dance, theater, film, music and writing students the location is perfect.

Just across the intersection is the Columbia Museum of Art where they can see art from the past 2,000 years as well as hear some significant classical music concerts along with more rockin’ sorts of things like Arts and Draughts.

They could wander up and down the street to see what’s happening in the emerging art venues such as Frame of Mind, Anastasia & Friends Gallery, S & S Art Supply, the Studios at the Arcade, and the Tapp’s Art Center.

They can duck into the Nickelodeon Theater to take in an independent film, stick around for an audience discussion and maybe show some of their own movies.

The Richland County library is only a block away and just beyond that the art galleries of the Congaree Vista.

They can pick up art supplies right on Main Street or over on Lincoln.

They can walk to the river and think.

They can head down to the State House and think about running for office –  some artists in office would be nice.

Rather than being a place for students to store their stuff and get some sleep, this project has the potential to be something transformative for the university and the city.

-- Jeffrey Day

Jeffrey Day is s a local arts writer and critic who was the arts editor at The State for two decades. You can reach Day by writing to carolinaculture@hotmail.com.