Romeo and Juliet can Dance too!
June 18th, 2007
We’re filling up our poor deprived LA souls with scads of culture while here in the Big City, and this evening we continued our Shakespeare theme by seeing the American Ballet Theatre's production of Romeo and Juliet.
What an absolute triumph! The curtain went up and we were in a lush world of Elizabethan gowns and operatic sets. The ballet was pure visual music, and I was instantly transported away like a child at his first movie. It was so dramatic and achingly tragic I actually forgot there were words to this play. The orchestra had such power and force with Prokofiev’s score, we knew we were in the hands of masters. And the pictures fit the music perfectly. Stripped of Shakespeare’s words the dancers soared freely, and from the choreography of huge crowds down to the nuanced movements of individual expressions, emotion became visual. The complexities and subtleties of the story played beautifully through each instrument in the orchestra and each gesture of the exquisite dancers.
I’ve never seen a dancer move like Diana Vishneva’s Juliet, she’s just remarkably fluid and languid with arms like water. There’s a scene near the end where Romeo dances with the yet-to-be-resurrected Juliet and it just breaks your heart. The moves echo their first meeting, but this time Juliet is a deathly limp rag doll. It’s beautiful and tragic and amazing that so much emotion is conveyed with music and movement.
When the curtain fell, she was showered with bouquets from the cheering audience.
A magical evening.
We’re filling up our poor deprived LA souls with scads of culture while here in the Big City, and this evening we continued our Shakespeare theme by seeing the American Ballet Theatre's production of Romeo and Juliet.What an absolute triumph! The curtain went up and we were in a lush world of Elizabethan gowns and operatic sets. The ballet was pure visual music, and I was instantly transported away like a child at his first movie. It was so dramatic and achingly tragic I actually forgot there were words to this play. The orchestra had such power and force with Prokofiev’s score, we knew we were in the hands of masters. And the pictures fit the music perfectly. Stripped of Shakespeare’s words the dancers soared freely, and from the choreography of huge crowds down to the nuanced movements of individual expressions, emotion became visual. The complexities and subtleties of the story played beautifully through each instrument in the orchestra and each gesture of the exquisite dancers.
I’ve never seen a dancer move like Diana Vishneva’s Juliet, she’s just remarkably fluid and languid with arms like water. There’s a scene near the end where Romeo dances with the yet-to-be-resurrected Juliet and it just breaks your heart. The moves echo their first meeting, but this time Juliet is a deathly limp rag doll. It’s beautiful and tragic and amazing that so much emotion is conveyed with music and movement. When the curtain fell, she was showered with bouquets from the cheering audience.
A magical evening.
We’re back in Central Park after waaay too long to see a New York staple – 
It was great fun. We’ve seen a couple other 
But seeing the young kids in the audience run at top speed to get the best seats in the make-shift front row was worth it all. The night grew deeper, the flashlights came out to illuminate the players, and fireflies danced under the trees. Venus peaked between Upper West Side apartments, and 100 people gathered to watch a Shakespeare play performed for free. This place is magical.
Here we are in a very lived-in apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was a bit funky getting in here - we had to hand over a massive wad of cash to a guy we'd just met in exchange for a key, but that's life in the big city if you want a place to stay.
Apparently she's on tour for the Summer, a musician who speaks German and Japanese, her place is wall to wall architecture and design books, with a smattering of art history, there’s an impressive classical music collection, and every nook and cranny is utilized in the way only New Yorkers know how. It's such a relief to be in the presence of an artist. Lately we've been surrounded by financial consultants, hedge fund managers, and endless talk of mergers and acquisitions. It's so dang tiring after a while. I want to hang out with people who don’t own ties, and actually go to museums to view art, rather than sip cocktails as part of some corporate meet-and-greet.
Now we’re in the New York we know and love – a cramped place stuffed to the gills with a rich life, Julliard and Lincoln Center within walking distance, bookstores near by, museums across the way, and an all-night French café on the corner. It’s comforting and energizing, and it feels like home.
June 12th, 2007
June 12th, 2007
Maybe it’s time to get a really great recording of Tchaikovsky’s 3rd and let the images flow in my mind - that's a show I'm looking forward to seeing.
I’m a late-comer to the whole PJ live experience (I was actually a bit of a late-comer to their early albums – an unfortunate situation that has since been remedied). But I have now seen the Original Kings of Grunge, the keepers of the flame of Authentic Rock, and I did it all at the infamous Gorge amphitheater in Washington state last Summer as Tiff and I drove back from Vancouver to LA.
What an incredible show in an incredible setting! Pearl Jam has loyal fans, and this venue brings ‘em out in force because it’s a trek to get to. The amphitheater is carved into the hillside overlooking the Columbia River Gorge, in the desolate landscape of Eastern WA, miles from anywhere. There’s overnight camping, so a concert at the Gorge is always a multi-day party. 
I missed the first night’s show where they played a more “radio friendly” set (according to the couple next to me). The second night, my night, and the last night of their US tour, dug into the deep tracks and the crowd ate it up – Rats, God’s Dice, In Hiding, Little Wing, Crazy Mary, Marker in the Sand (as the sun set), Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down, and of course, closed with Yellow Ledbetter with Mike McCready’s scorching guitar.
Sure, I've seen Baz's film a gazillion times, Shakespeare in Love many times, read (most of) the play, and seen tons of scenes preformed here and there, but after tonight there's now one less gaping hole in my education. 
The lines flowed off the tongues of the actors, the stage was magnificent - a rotating circle that brought action into the foreground or drew it back away from the audience - and to see the whole thing framed by the trees of Central Park, the turtle pond and the Belvedere castle beyond blew out any imagined walls of the theatre and gave the night even more scale. The balcony scene was a reflective blue shimmering off the water of the circular pool that made up the center of the stage. With the stars above and the orange glow of Manhattan reflecting off the clouds, the most famous of magical scenes was made all the more magical.
May 15th, 2007
Of course, amongst the cover tunes that ranged from achingly beautiful to wryly comical, there were plenty of originals that are just a treat to hear and see live. In a genre known for loose structures and breaking of rules, this is a band that redefines boundaries. There's no "state theme, deviate from stated theme, pause-for-yet-another-round-of-solos, reconvene and restate stated theme." These guys keep you on your toes as an audience. They're inventive, energetic, chaotic, mischievous and insanely good at what they do.
I'm listening to the end of the Frames recorded live in Dublin. (Frames lead singer Glen Hansard is the guy in the movie Once, and if you haven't seen Once yet, stop reading right now and get your butt to a cinema, it's that good!) Anyhoo, back to the album. The energy of that night in '02 is pouring out anew into my apartment in North Hollywood. It's a crowd of fans singing along with each song, and it may be all new to me but I'm right there with them.
Before Dublin I was listening to some Eldar. He's a jazz pianist prodigy who's quite brilliant. I heard the end on one song on the radio the other day driving home and was intrigued enough to run out and get the disc. This kid – and I do mean kid, I think he was 18 when this was recorded – sounds like he has an extra set of hands tickling the ivories. There's some blazingly fast fireworks of sound going off here, but also some true jazz improvization. Check out the song Moanin'.
Also just got Ash Wednesday by Elvis Perkins after seeing them on Letterman the other night. This is a great singer/songwriter album that's like a big box of words spilled out on the floor and collected beautifully in an idiosyncratic way.
First up is a new discovery – a band out of Manchester, England called Bone Box, and their amazing album Death of a Prizee Fighter.