Tag: Germantown Performing Arts Center

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Music Music Blog

Iris Collective Wraps Up Season with Michael Stern’s Return

Steven Banks (Credit: Chris Lee)
Young Concert Artist Steven Banks photographed at Steinway Hall, 1/9/2020. Photo by Chris Lee

Though many feared the final show of the 2021-22 concert season spelled the end of Iris Orchestra, with conductor Michael Stern preparing to step down, the ensemble was rescued by the sheer pluck of its players. Though most of them hail from other cities and only convene in Memphis for Iris concert weekends, their love of the Bluff City was such that they were loath to see Iris vanish. And thus was the Iris Collective born, as the group became a more cooperative enterprise helmed by the players.

As Stern said at the time, “The musicians themselves grouped together, committed to the idea that they simply would not let Iris go away. It was absolutely musician-driven. And Iris will continue on. It’s going to have a different feel. I will be less involved, and it will be an amalgam of ensembles, chamber music, orchestra concerts, and new ways of imagining community engagement.”

This season, then, has put those words into practice. With three imaginative concerts already under its belt, the Iris Collective has proven that it lost no momentum when it took on a new name and new organizational principles. With The Soldier’s Tale last November, Andrew Grams stepped in as guest conductor; February’s Intersections paired the collective with Randall Goosby on violin and Zhu Wang on piano; and just last month, Iris and the Dalí Quartet were joined by Cuban-born Memphis percussionist Nelson Rodriguez in a concert fusing classical and Latin music.

This weekend will mark the season finale with two separate shows. The first of two concerts featuring rising star and saxophone virtuoso Steven Banks takes place on Saturday, April 29 at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), and will feature Michael Stern’s only return to conduct this season. Titled The American Experience, the program includes that old chestnut, Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, along with Darius Milhaud’s jazz-influenced La Création du Monde, and Souvenirs by the great Samuel Barber.

That same evening, Iris will also be one of the few orchestras premiering jazz pianist Billy Childs’ newly commissioned saxophone concerto, written specifically for Banks and inspired by poets Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Amiri Baraka.

Then on Sunday, April 30, Iris musicians will join Banks for an intimate chamber concert entitled Fantasy & Reflections at the Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, inspired by Britten’s quirky Phantasy Quartet in F minor and Banks’ own work, Cries, Sighs, and Dreams.

Mary Javian, Iris Collective’s strategic advisor and a longtime performer with the group, notes that “Steven is a rapidly rising star who any Memphis music lover should get a chance to hear while they can. Steven also plays several horns with virtuosity: soprano, alto, tenor and baritone. Most saxophonists are just not able to do what he does on all four instruments, and in both classical and jazz genres.”

The American Experience concert takes place Saturday, April 29, 7:30 p.m. at GPAC; Tickets $45-$70
Program: Aaron Copland Appalachian Spring; Billy Childs saxophone concerto for Steven Banks; Darius Milhaud La création du monde; Samuel Barber Souvenirs. 

Fantasy & Reflections is on Sunday, April 30, 3 p.m. at the Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center. Tickets $30 in advance/$35 at door 
Program: Mozart Oboe Quartet in F Major; Britten Phantasy Quartet in F minor; Banks Cries, Sighs, and Dreams.

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Music Music Blog

Acoustic Music Project Brings Together Youth Who Love Traditional Sounds at GPAC

Acoustic Music Project students tour Sun Studio (Credit: Emily Hefley)

The Bluff City and the art of song go hand in hand, as the Memphis Flyer’s April 19 feature on a Grammy Week songwriting workshop revealed. Such fascination with songcraft isn’t limited to professionals only, however; there are budding troubadours honing their skills privately across the city, the country, and the world. Now some young American musicians and songwriters are gathering in a workshop of their own right here in Memphis, thanks to a new program launched by the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC).

The Acoustic Music Project (under the rather ironic acronym of AMP) brings talented young song-oriented musicians from around the country together to hone their skills with GPAC teaching artists and visiting headliners. Eleven students aged 16 to 22 were selected, having proven their proficiency in the realms of classical, bluegrass, folk, Americana, Celtic, or any other traditional music played largely on acoustic instruments.

The nine-day immersive experience, now approaching its end, has included study with AMP Artistic Director, Grammy-nominated guitarist Darrell Scott, Native American guitarist and flutist Bill Miller, and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Famer Beth Nielsen Chapman. And the students have also counted master-level acoustic musicians such as Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Shawn Colvin, and Marc Cohn among their teachers.

Beyond workshopping songs and arrangements, the students have been immersed in Memphis-based music, visiting historic recording studios and meeting with award-winning producers, engineers, and recording artists.

On Saturday, April 22 GPAC will present a very special performance of the Acoustic Music Project participants as a culmination of their time here. The eleven young players will perform their original works, created and refined during their project experience.

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Music Music Blog

Delfaeyo Marsalis and the Art of the Jazz Riff

Delfaeyo Marsalis (Photo: Z. Smith)

All America knows of the Marsalis family of New Orleans, be it the popular progeny, Wynton and Branford, or their father, jazz pianist and educator Ellis Marsalis Jr. But the family talent isn’t limited to that trio. Delfaeyo Marsalis is a well-respected performer, band leader, and educator in his own right. And, as a trombonist, it should come as no surprise that his band evokes New Orleans perhaps more than anyone else from the family. As Jeff Simon of The Buffalo News notes, “Delfaeyo is, in many ways, the most fun of the Marsalises. He’s the family trombonist. And record producer. And he seems to be the family wise-guy too.“

He and his Uptown Jazz Orchestra will be bringing some classic New Orleans brass band, jazz, and funk jams to the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC) this Saturday, November 19. In this far ranging phone conversation, he shares his thoughts on the importance of danceable jazz, music education, and other subjects with the Memphis Flyer.

Memphis Flyer: The trombone is a unique horn in jazz, isn’t it? Like a bass, it has no fixed tones; the pitch is fluid. It forces you to zero in on your pitch and tone.

Delfeayo Marsalis: That’s a good way to say it. Fluid. And that’s one of the trademarks of the New Orleans sound. You can hear the guys playing on the brass bands, blowing loud, but you know, they’re right on top of that pitch.

When did you first pick up the trombone?

By the time I got to sixth grade, I decided to play it. In New Orleans, a lot of folks started really young. It was the thing we were doing back then, playing instruments. Much less so today. A lot of folks were in the band; we had a lot of great teachers. It’s very different today, but I guess it comes and goes.

Where did you study music in your youth?

We went to an arts school, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. And that was really a decided advantage. We were being taught on the college level. Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, Harry Connick Jr., Trombone Shorty, and of course myself and my brothers, all went to the same place. And that was kind of an incubator. It’s gotten tougher since my dad left. My dad was there until about 1985 or ’86. Then he went to Virginia for two or three years. Then he came back to teach at the University of New Orleans. The Center for Creative Arts is still there, but they changed it a lot. It became more of a money-making factory. The first thing they did was get rid of all the teachers, and bring new teachers in. So it’s thriving, it’s got a multi-million dollar building, the state took it over. But as far as the output of the students, it’s tough. It’s way tough.

What’s the focus of the workshop program you’re involved with, Swinging with the Cool School?

Swinging with the Cool School is designed for non-music majors. It’s a way to introduce all students to jazz. We do a workshop and talk about the music we play, give them an idea of some of the earlier styles. Play some more modern music, funk-based. So that’s the idea there. I am in discussions with folks about getting more of a school program going. But somebody’s got to do the work! That’s what it comes down to. But hopefully we can inspire some kids to really dedicate their lives to it.

You also champion the idea of ‘riff-based’ jazz.

Oh yeah, I love it. The older great musicians all grew up playing a riff-based form of music. Usually it was R&B, or jump blues. Something like “C Jam Blues” is a riff. It’s the greatest song ever composed; I don’t know of a greater song than that, in the history of music. There’s no other song that requires only two notes, and by learning that riff, that tells you everything you need to know. I mean, they’re swinging! And you’re going, “Oh my God, how’d he come up with that?”

So now students are learning how to read, they’re learning their scales, but for me, the music doesn’t have the same feeling, the same soul. The older musicians grew up playing songs that are similar to “C Jam Blues.” It’s really about the dance, the dance element. I was just playing with a drummer, and I asked him,”Man, when we play a tune that swings, are you thinking about getting folks to dance?” And he’s like, “No.” But he is a brass band drummer, so he knows what it means to make people feel good with the music. The issue with how many students learn jazz is that it’s totally separate from anything else in their lives. It’s almost like learning a foreign language. And we’re trying to bring it to a place where all this music is related. The dance element is the link that binds all American music together.

Except for ballads. I guess there’s always slow dancing.

Yeah! And the drummer, Baby Dodds, who played with King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, reportedly said that when they played dances with King Oliver’s band, they played so soft that you could hear the peoples’ feet on the dance floor. The music was initially about entertaining your audiences. And it’s turned into something else at this point. If the audience is entertained, that’s good, but that’s not the primary resolve for a lot of guys and gals playing music today. But that’s what the Uptown Jazz Orchestra is doing.

Listening to Jazz Party, your 2020 album, it seems like there’s plenty of room to combine danceable riffs with very musically interesting stuff.

It’s a very important aspect of the music. You know, we have so much access to music all around the world. And there’s great music. But just because someone plays music that has improvisation, you can’t just say, “This is jazz.” It’s not a bad thing that it’s not jazz, but don’t call it jazz just because there’s improvisation there. At the heart and soul of it, you’ve got to have that homage to Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. You don’t have to play what they played, but you have to know what they played. Because there’s improvisational music all over the world. What makes jazz different is the blues, the swing and the groove. And we’ve got plenty more of that coming. That’s what it’s about!

Do you have a new release on the horizon?

Yeah, in fact we’re releasing a CD in 2023 that’s going to have Mardi Gras tunes, and that’s the New Orleans sound. When people think of New Orleans music, the sound of New Orleans, it’s not really the brand of jazz that my family actually plays, in a generic sense. Because we’ve all made lots of different recordings, but the modern jazz sound, which is what my dad played and what we all kind of have at our core, that’s not really what you think of when you think of the New Orleans sound. So we like to utilize that, but also bring in that classic Fats Domino, Professor Longhair. That’s the core of New Orleans to me.

Can we expect some of that when you play GPAC?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. We like to play a wide range of styles. So we’ll have that Fats Domino sound, some Dirty Dozen Brass Band songs, and of course our own modern material, and what you might consider the classic swing tunes. Roger Lewis was one of the founding members of both the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra. He’s been a crucial member. And so we play some Dirty Dozen songs.

I love that line from an album by your brother Branford, usually attributed to you: “To obtain more wood sound from the bass, this album recorded without usage of the dreaded bass direct.” Is that part of keeping it old-school with you?

Well, we’ve got an electric bass on some of the tunes. So we’re changing it up. When I said that and did that back then, it was very important. If you’re recording acoustic bass, I think it’s important to have an acoustic sound. But now we have the electric bass on some of the songs, because some sounds, you just can’t get from the acoustic. It’s like life itself. It keeps going. It’s a continuum. We use the lessons that we learned. We’re trying to solve some new problems.

And we’ll be joined by two Memphis musicians: James Sexton on drums, and Alvie Givhan on piano. We’re playing in Memphis and then in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and they’ll be on both shows. Also, when we have rehearsal, there’s a youth jazz orchestra that’s going to come. And they’ll have an opportunity to sit in on the rehearsal and learn some of this riff music with us. We like kids to have an opportunity to learn what it’s like first hand. That’s a crucial part of it, and we were fortunate enough when we were coming up that folks gave us an opportunity, so we want to pay it forward.

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Music Music Features

Terrance Simien Brings Zydeco to GPAC with a Special Guest: His Daughter

Terrance Simien (Photo: Courtesy Terrance Simien)

The zydeco tradition is to evolve,” Terrance Simien tells me. It’s a refreshing idea in a genre that’s so identified with roots music that purists of all kinds gravitate toward it, and that unique reading of the tradition will take center stage when Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience appear at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC) this Saturday.

“You’ve got a lot of people that hear zydeco music from a certain period, and think, ‘Oh, if it doesn’t sound like that, it’s not zydeco.’ But when I listen to zydeco music as a whole, I’ve always heard an expansion. Every zydeco artist has their own interpretation of the music, in their own voice.”

It’s a lesson that Simien learned right out of the gate, when he was still a teenager, unexpectedly catapulted from his hometown of Mallet, Louisiana, into the world of rock royalty. “My career started out like this,” he explains. “I did two 45s that I produced myself, released in 1982 and 1983. I was still a kid. Around that time, Paul Simon was thinking, ‘I’ve got to have a zydeco song on my next record.’ It was before he was even calling it Graceland. So he had Dickie Landry find three bands to do a session with him, and my band was one of them. In the end, he decided that we weren’t gonna make the album, but he wanted to do something special for us. So I recorded this Clifton Chenier song, ‘You Used to Call Me,’ and Paul went back and put these five-part harmonies on it, making it sound like Simon & Garfunkel! To hear Paul take a zydeco song and bring it into that world, I couldn’t sleep for days with all the ideas I got from what he did. That was in 1985, and I’ve been on the road ever since.”

Simien kept evolving, and so did his brand of zydeco. Many of his mentors were not zydeco artists at all. “I was mentored by some of the best. In addition to John Delafose and Clifton Chenier, Dr. John, Art Neville, Allen Toussaint, Dickie Landry, and Taj Mahal all mentored me,” he says. “Every last one of them did their best to help me any way they could. My mission now is to pay it forward and do the same with younger artists. I’m nowhere near the level those guys were and will never be, but I see it as a mission. My wife and I have a nonprofit called Music Matters, and we try to mentor people in the business.”

He also pays special attention to bringing his history and music to much younger folks, and he’ll be hosting a kid-friendly matinee show on Friday, October 21st, at 10 a.m., where children are encouraged to dance and sing along. He’ll also bring a strong family vibe to his Saturday show, where his daughter, local singer/songwriter Marcella Simien, will make a cameo. Seeing her thrive here is one reason Simien is especially fond of Memphis.

“I can’t thank Memphis enough for embracing my daughter like they did,” he says. “Marcella has seen what a roller coaster the music business is, but she’s embraced it. That’s what she wanted to do. She went to the Memphis College of Art, and what an awesome school. That’s where she learned to have confidence in being creative, knowing what it takes, that it’s a process.”

But Marcella won’t be his only guest: Drummer George Receli will also make an appearance. “At 17, George left Hammond, Louisiana, to tour with Edgar and Johnny Winter,” says Simien. “Since then, he’s played with Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, James Brown, Keith Richards, and many others. I’m even going to do a little interview — he has these amazing stories. And we’re going to play together. He played on and produced our last record that won a Grammy, Dockside Sessions.”

Ultimately, reflecting on his daughter’s cameo, Simien is encouraged by zydeco’s continued appeal to young people. “Because the music evolves,” he says, “it connects with the youth of today. We’re not just doing this to keep it alive; we’re doing it because it is alive.”

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Music Music Features

Chuck Leavell: Bringing Music and Tales from a Rock-and-Roll Life to GPAC, Mempho

Chuck Leavell (Photo: Courtesy Chuck Leavell)

Flailing musicians take heart at this tale: Chuck Leavell, a keyboardist of no small accomplishment, hit a rough patch at the turn of the 1980s. As he neared the age of 30, the best option in his life seemed to be … farming? Granted, he loved the tree farm near Macon, Georgia, that he’d settled on. But, as his wife Rose Lane notes in The Tree Man, a documentary on Leavell’s life, “Chuck comes in; he’s kind of downtrodden a little bit because his life isn’t going the way he wanted it to. He said, ‘I’m just gonna not do my piano. I’m just gonna have a farm; We’re gonna live out here on the farm, everything’s gonna be great.’ And I’m going, ‘No, it’s not going to be like that.’” Rose Lane knew something Leavell didn’t: She’d received a phone call earlier, arranging to have Leavell audition for the Rolling Stones.

Now Leavell has been with the band 40 years, and his penchant for organization has paid off. “I began taking copious amounts of notes,” he says in the film of his early days with the Stones. “Eventually they gave me the moniker of musical director. I kinda scoff at that because Mick and Keith are the musical directors.”

And yet, as the Stones’ Ronnie Wood himself admits on camera, “He’s indispensable — an indispensable part of our setup.”

Nevertheless, the Rolling Stones are but one chapter in the storied life’s journey that Leavell has pursued. Most listeners know his work, if not his name, via recordings by the Allman Brothers Band at their peak, namely the piano-laden instrumental, “Jessica.” But there has been so much more. That’s the point of a special event at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC) on Thursday, September 29th: to explore every angle of a very multifaceted life.

Reached by phone at his tree farm, Leavell describes the unique experience in store that night. “I have a recent documentary out called The Tree Man, and we’re going to show about a 30-minute version of it, to get people warmed up to who I am, what I do, and see some of the comments that some of my fellow artists have been kind enough to make about me,” Leavell says. “After that, I’ll come onstage with a moderator, Matt Ross-Spang, and Matt will cue me with some questions. We’ll discuss some specific parts of the career and the fact that I’ve worked with the Stones for 40 years and had the pleasure of working with Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and other artists. So, we’ll tell some stories along the way, and that segment will probably be an hour. The audience is welcome to ask any questions. Then we’ll wrap it up with a song. I think it’s going to make for a really fun night.”

Lest readers think he will be speaking more than playing, note that Leavell will have a piano nearby for the proceedings. “For instance,” he says, “when we talk about Eric Clapton, I’ll do a song from when I worked with him. When we talk about the Stones, I’ll do a song or two I did with them. I’ll even play some Allman Brothers and Sea Level. I’ll play at least one song for every period of my life represented, and tell some stories along the way.”

While Leavell first cut his teeth in the Muscle Shoals area as a teenager, he says Memphis has always had a special place in his heart. “I just love being in Memphis,” he says. “The history speaks for itself. The music is all over the place. During the inaugural Mempho Festival five years ago, we did a presentation called Stone’s Throw, which is some of the side men from the Rolling Stones — Bernard Fowler, Lisa Fischer, myself, and Tim Ries on sax. We did an all-Stones set at the first Mempho. I’ve had a lot of great experiences in Memphis.”

Speaking of the Mempho Music Festival (running from September 30th through October 2nd), Leavell lets it be known that he won’t be leaving Memphis right away after his GPAC appearance. “I’ll be hanging out the next couple of days because Mempho is going on,” he says. “And I’ll be making some surprise appearances on Friday and Saturday with some bands. I’ll be looking forward to that as well.”

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Music Music Features

Iris Blooms and Keeps Blooming

Awadagin Pratt (Photo: Courtesy of Iris Orchestra)

The Iris Orchestra’s closing concert of the 2021-2022 season, on April 23rd and 24th, was nearly its swan song. For a moment, it appeared that the much-loved collection of virtuosos from around the world, who gather in Memphis for a few select concerts every year, was unsustainable. The notion was deeply troubling for founder and conductor Michael Stern, but he wanted to do the moment justice. “We expressly chose Beethoven’s 5th Symphony because we thought for a moment that we’d be suspending operations, and that this would have been our last concert ever,” says Stern. “I wanted to bring full closure. Beethoven’s 5th Symphony closed our very first concert ever, in 2000. So I thought, if this is going to be our last concert, let it also feature the piece that closed our first concert. But with joy I can say that Iris is not going away!”

As it turns out, Iris will stick around, albeit in new form. After the upcoming concerts, Iris Orchestra will be known as the Iris Collective. “The musicians themselves grouped together, committed to the idea that they simply would not let Iris go away. It was absolutely musician driven. And Iris will continue on. It’s going to have a different feel. I will be less involved, and it will be an amalgam of ensembles, chamber music, orchestra concerts, and new ways of imagining community engagement,” Stern says.

The fortuitous change will be foreshadowed by Iris’ chamber music concert on April 24th. “It’s entirely Iris musicians playing Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat Major, and it’s a fantastic group. It gives a little taste of what the Iris Collective is going to be about.”

Reinvention is par for the course for an organization that’s been dedicated to reimagining music from the beginning, founded to be “an ensemble for the 21st century — flexible, non-hierarchical, and passionate about the highest standards of performance.” And, as Stern sees it, this season’s last program embodies all of Iris’ ideals at once. “We have a wonderful piece from the 20th century, not one but two new pieces by essential American composers, and then an iconic work from the canon. That, in a nutshell, is what Iris is about.”

Stern is especially enthusiastic about the new works. “When we started Iris 22 years ago,” says Stern, “the express intention was, in part, to nurture and promote the music of our time, especially American composers. So this is quite a lovely thing, to have a co-commissioning relationship with two pieces in the program.

“Jonathan Leshnoff has been a great partner and friend to us since we commissioned him to write his first symphony, which was a companion piece to Beethoven’s 9th. This new piece was written to commemorate our 20th anniversary in 2020, which is why he called the piece Score. It’s not only a reference to sheet music, it also means 20 years. Since the premiere got delayed by two years because of Covid, this is a long overdue and very welcome performance.

“And Jessie Montgomery is one of the most compelling voices of the last two or three years, for good reason,” Stern continues. “I’ve done quite a few of Jessie’s works now. This piece especially, Rounds for Piano and String Orchestra, is playful and dancing and really lovely. Awadagin Pratt is making his solo piano debut with us on Jessie’s piece, which she wrote specifically for him. He is a force. A wonderful pianist, a wonderful musician.”

That forward-thinking spirit is also apparent in the classics Iris will present on April 23rd, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, Op. 25, the “Classical.” Stern describes the latter piece as “turning a Haydn symphony on its ear. Through the prism of the early 20th century, Prokofiev writes this really tongue-in-cheek and wonderfully energetic music, doing something new. Beethoven, in his time, was also doing something new. He often said he was writing music for the future. Prokofiev was writing at the dawn of the 20th century, and Beethoven was writing at the dawn of the 19th century. And both were trying to find a new way of speaking in the world.”

Iris Orchestra, featuring Awadagin Pratt, piano, presents Where Past & Future Gather, Saturday, April 23rd, 7:30 p.m. at GPAC; and Iris at the Brooks: Beethoven, Sunday, April 24th, 3 p.m. at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

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Film Features Film/TV

Alex Greene’s New Live Score for Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman Debuts at GPAC

In January 2020, Alex Greene, joined by his jazz band The Rolling Head Orchestra and members of the Blueshift Ensemble, did something extraordinary: They performed original live scores to the silent films A Trip to the Moon and Aelita: Queen of Mars. Back in the first decades of the 20th century, people did it all the time, mostly organists in movie palaces, but occasionally with full ensembles. In the days before sound recording, some more elaborate film productions even came with their own sheet music for the score. 

These days, it’s pretty rare, except for groups like the Alloy Orchestra, who have made a career out of performing live scores for films like Metropolis and Phantom of the Opera at film festivals. Just before the pandemic started, Crosstown Arts had commissioned a series of live scores in their new Crosstown Theater, where Greene was artist in residence at the time. “It was kind of the culmination of my residency at Crosstown Arts, and it was great, because they made everything very easy.” 

“Very easy” is relative when you’re talking about writing original music for a 12-piece ensemble, including a theremin, that’s designed to sync up perfectly with a moving image. “It’s very different from recording a soundtrack,” says Greene. “You have the whole process of editing to make sure it all syncs up, but in this case, you’re just ‘Once more unto the breach!’ You’re launched into it and by the seat of your pants, hoping you can keep up with the movie, because there’s no pausing … I really wanted it to sync up with the emotional cues of the movie in a very precise way, as if you were watching a film with a pre-recorded soundtrack. That ambition made for a lot more work for all of us.” 

Greene and the orchestra’s performance drew raves from the Crosstown audience, and the musician-turned-composer really wanted to jump into the breach again when COVID shut down the theater. He saw a new opportunity at Germantown Performing Arts Center’s new outdoor venue, The Grove, which features a massive video screen behind the stage. “I pitched to them back in January, and we went back and forth a lot about the best time to do it. At the time it seemed like summer was the best bet in terms of COVID, partly because the virus supposedly recedes in the heat somewhat, but also just we assumed once a vaccine became available everyone would be vaccinated by now. In any case, it is an outdoor venue, so even as early as January, we felt pretty safe in moving forward with a big concert like this.” 

Greene says when it came time to choose a film, he wanted to “find something dark.” But GPAC director Paul Chandler disagreed. “People are emerging from a very dark year and a half, so let’s do something lighthearted,” Greene says. “I’ve always loved Buster Keaton, so I immediately saw what Buster Keaton films were being distributed by GPAC’s distributor, and the only one was The Cameraman, which I had never seen,” says Greene. “I looked it over and I loved it. I was like ‘Wow, why don’t more people know about this one?’ People know about The General, or Our Hospitality, or Steamboat Bill Jr., but this one is lesser-known, and in a way, that’s better for this kind of project. You’re seeing the film and the music in a very fresh way.” 

The Cameraman is considered to be the last film of Keaton’s golden age, where he made incredible strides in big screen comedy and action in the mid-1920s. Keaton, who was used to total creative control, had just gotten a lucrative contract with MGM when he directed and starred in the comedy about a newsreel cameraman trying to impress a female co-worker — and failing spectacularly. It would be the last film Keaton fully controlled. Afterwards, MGM executives clamped down on the auteur’s perceived excesses; later, Keaton would say signing with MGM was the biggest mistake he ever made.

Green wrote the new score for the same band who played in January 2020: Carl Caspersen on bass, Mark Franklin on trumpet, Tom Lonardo on drums, Jim Spake on reed instruments, John Whittemore on pedal steel, and Jenny Davis and Delara Hashemi of the Blueshift Ensemble on flute, Jonathan Kirkscey on cello, Jessica Munson on violin, and Susanna Whitney on bassoon. “Once again, I have this wonderful theremin player from Florence, Alabama, Kate Tayler Hunt, who used to be the concertmaster at the Shoals Symphony. An injury prevented her from continuing as a violinist, so she pivoted and put all her conservatory training into the theremin. She has a very precise ear, and unlike a lot of people who play theremin for texture or sound effects, she can play melodies very accurately, and that just takes it to a whole other level.”

But before the players can bring the magic to The Grove, Greene has to write it down. “I’m scoring as we speak!” he says. “It’s really incredible, it’s a new thing to me. I started doing it in earnest with last year’s live score. Sure, I would write chord changes and lead sheets for my jazz group, but to actually score every note that everyone plays in a 12-piece group, and then to hear them execute it almost perfectly in the first rehearsal … it’s breathtaking!” 

The audience will get to see Alex Greene and the Rolling Head Orchestra with the Blueshift Ensemble and Kate Tayler Hunt’s live score of Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman at The Grove at GPAC on Saturday, July 10 at 7:30 p.m. Greene says he hopes there are many other opportunities in the future to breathe new life into silent classics. 

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We Saw You

We Saw You: Partying in The Grove

The Grove at Germantown Performing Arts Center Photos by Michael Donahue

It’s nice to see people picnicking on blankets on the grass again.

That was the scene on my first visit to The Grove, the outdoor venue at Germantown Performing Arts Center. I stopped by to take a photo and try some food at the Pok Cha food truck, which provided eats for the guests. I loved the food, but I also loved The Grove.

The Memphis Symphony Orchestra, directed by Robert Moody, was performing. I got to hear part of the Elgar cello concerto performed by Gabriel Martins. The weather was great. About 300 people were there. The facility is wonderful.

Gabriel Martins and Robert Moody at The Grove. (Photo by Michael Donahue)

And they’ve already had 105 events there since May 2020, says GPAC executive director Paul Chandler. “We started with events with 25 people. Incredible. We’re exhausted.”

The Opera Memphis production of Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg will be featured at 7 p.m. on June 12th. “It’s inspired by Ruth Bader Ginsburg-Antonin Scalia.”

They hit the ground running after The Grove was completed. “The construction was completed in May of 2020,” Chandler says. It was added as “an audience builder for the overall complex. A 1,200 capacity outdoor venue. Patrons gather on the TrueGreen outdoor lawn. There’s a VIP seating area, tables. Paid patrons bring their own folding chairs and blankets.”

Jorge Maldonado and Caroline King take in The Grove at GPAC. (Photo by Michael Donahue)

The Grove’s “big video wall” is something Chandler is particularly proud of. “That thing is really cool. It moves downstage and upstage. You can broadcast the performance that’s inside GPAC live outside.  It also allows us to present films and movies. We’ve been doing films and movies with performing art-related movies since June 4th, of 2020.

“We have a new summer movie series.The next one is Friday, June 18th [at 7 p.m.]. Funny Girl. Made possible by Bellano Dental Health.”

The film series will run through August.

We Saw You

GPAC’s free event in The Grove is the Bluebird Happy Hour, which takes place between 5 and 8:30 p.m. every Thursday during June. “Live  local performers for free. Cash bar and food trucks.”

And on June 26th, GPAC will present “Summer Soiree  in the Grove,” Chandler says. “We hope to make it an annual event. It’s table seating for the first time inThe Grove.”

The Memphis Hepcats will perform. “We’re celebrating the great American songbook.”

For information on tickets and events, call the GPAC box office at 901-751-7500.

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Opera Memphis Presents Scalia/Ginsburg at the Grove at GPAC

Scalia and Ginsburg (Photos: Public Domain)

Leo Tolstoy, the 19th century Russian author who wrote War and Peace, said, “All art has this characteristic — it unites people.”

And so it does.

U. S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia were polar opposites politically. They might never have shared an opinion but they did share a love for the art of opera. Music united them in a very special way. Composer-librettist Derrick Wang has captured their friendship in an operatic comedy that will be performed this Saturday by Opera Memphis in The Grove at Germantown Performing Arts Center.

The piece was written in 2015, and Ginsburg and Scalia saw the performance together. Upon seeing the piece for the first time, Ginsburg remarked, “Scalia/Ginsburg is for me a dream come true.”

Handorf Company Artists Dane Suarez and Stephanie Doche perform the roles of Scalia and Ginsburg. They are joined for this production by Opera Memphis favorite Darren K. Stokes as the Commentator. Opera Memphis director of musical activities Cris Frisco will conduct the performance accompanied by a musical score performed by members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra.

The piece has a central message of unity, highlighting the friendship between the title characters. A message to all of us that unlikely friendships can be formed with our adversaries. If that common denominator is an art form, so be it. More likely we’ll unite over food and cocktails. Grazing boxes from Feast & Graze, food truck fare, and cocktails will be available for purchase. You can also bring a picnic, beverages, chairs, and blankets to share with an adversary — or not. You be the judge.

Scalia/Ginsburg, presented by Opera Memphis in The Grove at Germantown Performing Arts Center, 1801 Exeter, Germantown, TN, Saturday, June 12, 7 p.m., $35.

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Music Music Features

Iris at GPAC: A Virtual/Hybrid Concert Debut

CREDIT: Iris Orchestra

The Iris Orchestra is a unique creation in the world of classical music. Anchored firmly at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), it is actually comprised of players from out of town, for the most part. Traveling from schools and orchestras around the country, or in some cases the world, the members of Iris stay with host families in the Bluff City whenever they are playing. Even the conductor, Michael Stern, son of the legendary Isaac Stern, lives in Connecticut and works primarily with the Kansas City Symphony.

That makes it doubly impressive that the organization is soldiering on through the COVID-19 era with a new 2020-21 season, set to begin Sunday, October 11th. That doesn’t mean subscribers can hear a live concert, but neither does it mean that the players didn’t come here to perform. Instead, Iris hit upon a hybrid approach: The musicians convened for a special performance at GPAC on Saturday, October 3rd, which was captured on video for a streaming event this weekend.

Iris Orchestra

Iris Orchestra rises to meet pandemic challenges.

Even better, the recorded performance will premiere at an outdoor event at The Grove (GPAC’s new outdoor venue) at 2 p.m. Sunday. Those who would like a taste of the conviviality of a live concert can enjoy a bit of that in the open air, seeing the show on the large screen of The Grove’s stage. And, having witnessed the group’s concert as it was filmed last week, I can attest to the passion and beauty evoked with every note played. Beyond that, the intermission will feature content that live concerts never include: interviews with the musicians involved, in a short video created beforehand.

Those musicians are skewed to Iris’ nearby members, due to the vicissitudes of the pandemic. As executive director Marcia Kaufmann puts it, “We made an effort to get as many people from within driving distance as possible. We had three people fly in, and everybody else drove, from mostly either St. Louis or Nashville. Michael Stern had planned to come, but he lives in Connecticut, which has a 14-day quarantine for people coming from Tennessee.” The conductor, therefore, had to bow out of this performance.

That the players were able to realize a world-class performance without him is a testament to the high level of musicianship embodied in Iris. Watching them assemble on the large stage, fully masked and mostly standing, separated by several feet, I was stunned at the coordination of their playing. Perhaps because some of them have played together in Iris for many years, there was an almost telepathic connection between the players.

But the pandemic didn’t affect only how the players gathered on stage; it directly impacted the instrumentation selected. As Kaufmann notes, “The format for today is all string players. We thought, ‘Let’s wait and see what they find out about aerosols and wind players before we schedule winds.’ So we started with all strings players. And the first piece, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, is all strings. The personnel for that helped Michael Stern think through the rest of the program. After the Bach is William Grant Still’s Danzas de Panamá. It was originally a string quartet, but has been enlarged to a chamber ensemble.

Iris Orchestra

“After that, we’ll have a George Walker piece, Lyric for Strings. It’s a lovely one-movement piece, a little melancholy, and very thoughtful. Both Walker and Stills are African-American composers from the early 20th century, and it shows you the different ways composers looked at music at that time. And then they finish with Max Bruch’s Octet for Strings. Bruch, of course, knows the violin very well, and this piece is a massive showcase for the first violin player. And it’s also quite a workout for everybody in the ensemble. It’s pure fireworks, a big celebratory piece.”

Kaufmann encourages music aficionados to sign up for a season’s subscription to watch the concert, at irisorchestra.org. After the next Iris virtual concert, on December 5th, consisting of archived performances of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, there may be live performances with social distancing next year.