Tag: Germantown Performing Arts Center

Categories
Music Music Blog

An Inspired Weekend of Beethoven With Iris & The Zukerman Trio

The Zukerman Trio

This past weekend’s performance by the Iris Orchestra, complemented by the Zukerman Trio, was highly anticipated all around. As noted in October, the entire current season is loaded with significance on the most personal, local, and global levels. As the orchestra’s conductor, Michael Stern, said then, “We have a rather happy confluence of anniversaries. It’s the 20th anniversary of Iris…And we’re celebrating 250 years of Beethoven…There’s also the anniversary of my father, Isaac Stern, who would have been 100.”

Last Saturday and Sunday’s offerings, the second weekend of Iris’ season, resonated with all of those milestones, perhaps most powerfully with the centenary of Isaac Stern. As Michael Stern noted to the audience at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC)  Saturday night, his father was at first skeptical of this somewhat unorthodox ensemble when it was launched, asking, as Michael put it, “What is my son doing in Tennessee?” 
Michael Allen

Michael Stern

With bittersweet emotion, he then recalled how his father warmed to the idea of Iris, an orchestra of world-class players who converge in Memphis on a regular basis, inviting notable guest performers as each season unfolds. The most telling moment was when the father asked the son, “When are you going to invite me?”

That was in 2001, and arrangements were made to feature Isaac Stern, backed by Iris, that December. Everything changed when the legendary violinist died in September. As his son described it, his memory was instead honored in Memphis when Iris backed Jaime Laredo, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax, who had recorded with the elder Stern as a quartet.

Michael Stern also noted the special connection between his father and the namesake of the trio hosted this week, Pinchas Zukerman. Hearing Zukerman play at the age of nine in Israel, the elder Stern promptly facilitated his enrollment at The Juilliard School, and the rest is history: Zukerman is now one of the most celebrated violinists of our time. 

However, Saturday’s concert began with the Iris Orchestra on its own. And from the first notes of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, it was made clear what a treasure to Memphis the orchestra really is. It was a fittingly grandiose opening salvo, but it was the next piece, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4, which really showed the orchestra’s full range. This symphony in particular, full of coordinated, rhythmic hits in sync with the timpani, can truly be said to “rock,” and can show off an orchestra’s power. But it was in the quieter moments that Iris displayed its sensitivity. The subtle moments revealed an organic lightness of touch that was all the more moving by way of contrast. Moments featuring pizzicato cello patterns felt like an unfolding flower.  Phillip Van Zandt

Iris Orchestra

These strengths were all the more apparent once the Zukerman Trio took the stage to perform the Concerto for Violin, Cello & Piano, Op.56 (Triple Concerto).  Amanda Forsyth, cello, and Angela Cheng, piano, looked resplendent, and Forsyth was an especially striking presence on the cellist’s pedestal. Zukerman was in more reserved attire, but his gravitas was commanding.

The orchestra’s lightness of touch provided a perfect setting for the more commanding tonalities of the trio, with Zukerman’s almost Klezmer-like sonority, Cheng’s rhythmic, rolling piano arpeggios, and Forsyth’s melodic passages in the cello’s higher registers being especially captivating.

On the next day, audiences were able to hear the trio, as Stern facetiously noted in his introductory remarks, “without the pesky orchestra” behind them. And that too was a revelation. The intimacy of the Brooks Museum of Art, where the featured artists of Iris’ season always perform on Sundays, was an ideal setting for appreciating the trio’s almost telepathic connection in even the most rubato passages of Beethoven’s Archduke Trio.

As a weekend exclusively devoted to the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, it was a revelation. This December 17th will mark the 249th year since his birth, and next year the world will celebrate his 250th anniversary. As Stern noted in October, “Nobody needs to rescue him from obscurity,” but his very omnipresence can numb us to the rare beauty and innovation of his works. Yet here in Memphis, where we can boast the unique collective project of the Iris Orchestra, it was all made new again, as the players leapt once more unto the breach, breathing life into some of the greatest music ever conceived.

The Iris Orchestra, conducted by Michael Stern, will next perform on January 25 (GPAC) and 26 (Brooks Museum), 2020, featuring a specially commissioned work by Conrad Tao, “Spoonfuls,” celebrating Memphis’ bicentennial, performed with the composer on piano.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Celebrating Iris Orchestra’s 20th Anniversary and Beethoven’s 250th

CREDIT: Michael Allen

Michael Allen

Michael Stern

In an era of shoestring budgets for municipal orchestras, too often at the mercy of the national economy’s roller coaster, seeing a local orchestra built on novel principles succeed for twenty years is remarkable. And that’s exactly what will be championed as the twentieth season of the Iris Orchestra begins tomorrow.

Iris features musicians who assemble for each concert from some of the country’s best orchestras, universities, and chamber groups, to perform as the resident orchestra of Germantown Performance Arts Center and, more recently, in chamber concerts at the Brooks Museum. Conductor Michael Stern, son of the legendary violinist Isaac Stern, is the music director of Iris, and also conducts the Grammy Award-winning Kansas City Symphony. I spoke to him recently about the significance of Iris turning 20, and what makes this orchestra special.

Memphis Flyer: Iris’ 20th season looks impressive, with programming that echoes the worldwide celebrations of Beethoven happening this year and next.

Michael Stern: We have a rather happy confluence of anniversaries. It’s the 20th anniversary of Iris, and that’s pretty amazing to me. And we’re celebrating 250 years of Beethoven. Nobody needs to rescue him from obscurity, but he is arguably one of the titanic figures in music. And the entire known musical universe is celebrating him in 2020. Aside from our anniversary, there’s also the anniversary of my father, Isaac Stern, who would have been 100.

courtesy Iris Orchestra

Iris Orchestra

And what we were trying to do is salute, in our twentieth year, the various ways we have been meaningful to the community. Remembering the great music — that is where Beethoven comes in. And we made him the theme of our chamber series at the Brooks. And we’re also celebrating Memphis. We’re remembering the elements of Iris that made forming this orchestra special to us right from the beginning, and that we’ve been able to continue to do all these seasons. The Beethoven thing is very appropriate, and we’ve decided to ask all of our soloists to curate a chamber concert that included at least one Beethoven work. Which is why you see him on the program every Sunday.

We asked the Trio with Pinchas Zukerman, Amanda Forsythe & Angela Cheng to play the Beethoven Triple. We also asked Garrick Ohlsson to play Beethoven in the first concert, and the layer of meaning with Garrick goes even further, because we were looking back to our very first season. And all three pieces on that program were played then. Garrick was the second soloist that we ever had. The piece that he played was Beathoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2. And we haven’t done it since. So we are looking back 20 years to recreate Garrick’s performance that launched our existence.

Given the struggle of traditional orchestras to survive recently, has this been an “against all odds” kind of project?

“Against all odds” sounds a little desperate and improbable. I think we worked hard. I think there were challenges. There were some years in the middle where the economy crashed and everybody had to retrench. But we survived, maintaining the level of excellence that we have always striven for. And keeping true to our mission, re-thinking how an orchestra could be and how we could re-engage with the community. Certainly over the years, with all the outreach engagement that we’ve done in the community, the number of master classes, the level of soloists that we brought, and now of course our Iris Artist Fellows program, we just wanted to make the case for music and the arts, especially for young people, in Germantown and the Mid South.

In a nutshell, how would you say Iris is unique in its mission?

Organizationally there’s really no orchestra like it. We started as the only municipally funded orchestra in the United States. That was already groundbreaking. And I give huge credit to the Board of Aldermen and GPAC and Patrick Lawton, for having taken a chance on starting such a thing and maintaining it. When we evolved into our own 501(c)(3), we continued that idea, by serving the community in a unique way.

We are tied to this place, but our membership is from all over the United States. And some people who have been playing with us for 15 or 20 years, and are now professionally living in Europe, will time their vacations so that they’ll be free to come back and play with us. That kind of loyalty and dedication is pretty impressive, and it shows.

Phillip Van Zandt

Iris Orchestra

Also, it’s a completely democratic experience. The person playing concertmaster in one concert might play in the back of the second violin in the next. The person playing second oboe on the first half will play first oboe on the second half, and so forth. So there’s no competitiveness. There’s just this feeling of coming together and making the best music possible — very quickly. We gather on Thursday and Saturday we give the first concert.

So there’s a camaraderie among the players that’s unusual. Yes, we fly them in from all over, but it’s not a pick up group. It’s a central family, a pool of players, from which we continually draw, all of whom have established ties to the community.

How specifically are Iris’ players tied to the community?

The idea that the musicians should not just stay at a hotel, but be embedded in the community with their host families, was part of Iris from the beginning. It was not done as a cost saving measure, but rather as a way of immediately embedding the orchestra into the daily fabric of the community. And what’s been amazing is that a lot of musicians have been “adopted” by their host families to the point where they’ll go to weddings and graduations and, sadly, funerals, and happy life events of all kinds, so they really have become part of the family. And that’s a really lovely thing. And one of the reasons we’re still here after twenty years.

Do you feel that Iris’ programming makes it unique?

Over the years we’ve played literally everything, from pre-Baroque music to pieces that we’ve commissioned. We’ve commissioned a lot of pieces, and we’ve recorded pieces. A lot of American composers have written for us really successfully. Adam Schoenberg and Jonathan Leshnoff, for example. We’ve played Ellen Zwilich and Phillip Glass. It’s really gratifying to look back and see how many contemporary composers we’ve either commissioned or programmed. And, I have to say, our list of soloists is surpassed by nobody. I would put the list of soloists that we’ve invited over the years over any performing arts organization anywhere.

Conrad Tao is one of the hottest names on the scene right now. He’s writing a piece for us, ‘cos he’s got great composing chops, and he’s playing the Brahms First Piano Concerto. Nancy Zhou is a nod to my father’s centenary. There’s an international violin competition in Shanghai, China, and she is the latest winner. She’s coming to play with us. Anne-Akiko Meyers is playing a fairly new work by Adam Schoenberg and we’ve had a fifteen year relationship with Adam. So it’s really very nice to have a season which looks forward and looks back, celebrating the milestones of the last two decades and looking forward to the next two decades.

Isaac Stern

How does your father’s legacy inform Iris?

I think he was one of the most important musical figures of his time. He was among the greatest violinists of the 20th Century. And he was a towering figure in American musical and cultural life. I like the idea of being a good son and honoring my dad, but it’s not about that. It goes beyond that. I think especially in this day and age, more and more we need to be advocates for those things that we believe we are important, and for arts and music there has never been a more urgent time when advocacy and activism on all levels is important. Certainly for education.

And he, with his bully pulpit, really put his money where his mouth was, and stood up for music and for the arts in a very effective way. Aside from saving Carnegie Hall, which he’s very well known for, he sat in the Oval Office and helped convince the powers that be, or that were, to form the National Endowment for the Arts. He advocated for music in public school systems all the time. He tirelessly worked for higher music education across the board, not just specialized professional education. He mentored some of the greatest young players of his time. And he was always advocating the idea of the primacy of art and music in our lives as Americans. I think that legacy is real and important and deserves to be remembered.

So, Iris carries on that tradition of advocacy. We celebrate the other arts institutions in town. So we’re not competitive with others. On the contrary, I think, more and more, Memphis is exhibiting a really robust and vibrant cultural and musical scene, and that we’ve had the privilege to be a part of it for 20 years is pretty special.

Iris Season Launch: “Jupiter & Ohlsson” at the Germantown Performing Arts Center, Saturday, Oct. 12. Garrick Ohlsson, piano, performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2; the orchestra will also perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony and Giacomo Puccini’s “Chrysanthemums.”

IRIS at the Brooks: Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Sunday, Oct. 13. Garrick Ohlsson, piano, joins IRIS Orchestra musicians for an afternoon of intimate chamber music featuring music by Beethoven.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Robert Earl Keen’s Countdown to Christmas Comes to GPAC in December

As August appears and the kids brace themselves for the return to school, one thing looms large in their minds: Christmas vacation. Yes, they’ll have many hours of homework, homeroom, and home games in store before then, but we know that it’s the dream of a holiday break that keeps them going. And what applies to kids applies to parents and single folks too. In Amurica, it’s never too early to dust off those Christmas decorations and start dreaming tinsel dreams.

The Germantown Performing Arts Center realizes this too, so today they’ve announced the holiday concert that keeps things real: Robert Earl Keen’s Countdown to Christmas. Keen, of course, is the artist behind the all-too-real Christmas song of the not-quite dysfunctional American family, “Merry Christmas from the Family.” It’s worth a listen even if your stockings are yet hung with care, simply as a chronicle of what it means to be a modern extended family with, uh, issues.

With its good-natured evocation of everyday alcoholism, bland racial bias, and running out of tampons, it achieves, in the end, a kind of unsentimental sentimentality to which anyone who’s had to listen to brother Ken’s new wife Kay, who “talks all about AA,” can relate. In fact, the song has resonated with audiences to such a degree since its release in 1994 that it’s even spawned a sequel song and a book of the same name. It’s in such demand that Keen has had to draw the line on when he’ll perform it. “We get requests for it all year round,” he’s told NPR. “So, I had to create this rule, I call it the ‘Linen Rule’, where we don’t play the song as long as you can wear linen. So it saves it and makes it fresh for the holiday season. So we start playing it around Labor Day and we play it on through the holidays. It’s the big number particularly in December that we close with.”

Robert Earl Keen’s Countdown to Christmas Comes to GPAC in December

Of course, there’s much more to Keen than this song. Having cut his teeth in the late-70s scene around Austin, Texas, he now has 18 albums worth of songs chronicling the foibles of everyday lives, much in the vein of Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, and other masters of Americana. While they may not all be kid-friendly, they do resonate with the struggles and joys of everyday adults going through life with open eyes. It’s a refreshing way to digest the holidays at GPAC, a couple days after the gifts are all unwrapped, but before we must face the onset of New Year’s Day and the inevitable return to jobs and school that follows.

Countdown to Christmas, with Robert Earl Keen and opening act Shinyribs, Saturday, December 28, 8:00 PM, Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC)

Tickets on sale to general public at 10 AM on Friday, August 9. See website for information on artist pre-sales and GPAC subscriber pre-sales.

Categories
Music Music Features

Charles Lloyd — Memphis Marvel

Of the many music talents that Memphis has sent out into the world, Charles Lloyd, the master of the saxophone and flute, may have traveled the furthest and the widest. Indeed, his genre-breaking career has taken him into such diverse musical landscapes, with such grace, that now, aged 80, he’s become a kind of musical Walt Whitman, singing the body electric in all its forms.

His appearance at the Germantown Performing Arts Center on September 28th will feature the Marvels. While the rhythm section of Rueben Rogers and Eric Harland remains, the group is filled out with Greg Leisz on pedal steel and Bill Frisell on guitar. This was the group behind Lloyd’s latest album, Vanished Gardens, which also features Lucinda Williams on some tracks, often re-imagining her own songs in remarkable ways.

Charles Lloyd

I connected with Lloyd to ask him what Memphis means to him, how the Marvels came to be, and walking the fine line between order and chaos in his music.

Memphis Flyer: What do you take away from your Memphis years that you still feel is fundamental to your playing today?

Charles Lloyd: The mysticism of sound has always been around Memphis, going back to the early spirituals and blues guys to W.C. Handy and Jimmy Lunceford. There was music everywhere. Just walking down a street — if the windows were open, you heard music. It was our inspiration and consolation. In the fourth grade at Melrose, I heard Willie Mitchell’s big band and it was like a thunderbolt to my heart. They were standing on the shoulders of Lunceford and Duke Ellington, but more modern — like Dizzy Gillespie’s big band. At that time, I had wanted to be a singer, but hearing Willie’s band encouraged me to appeal to my parents to get me a saxophone.

Memphis was a very rich environment with so many great musicians; Willie Mitchell, Jeff Greer, Andy Goodrich, Bill Harvey, Fred Ford, Hank Crawford, Floyd Newman, Onzie Horn, Luther Steinberg, Phineas Newborn, Robert Talley, Fat Sonny — to name a few. And Bird was conceived in Memphis, but was born in Kansas City — so I always link his roots to Memphis. It was an historic era for music and I was so blessed to grow up during that time.

Phineas Newborn Jr.

I was also blessed that Phineas Newborn Jr. discovered me early and took me to the great Irvin Reason for alto lessons. And Phineas put me in his father, Phineas Sr.’s, band. Together with Junior and his brother, Calvin, we played at the Plantation Inn in West Memphis. Phineas became an important mentor and planted the piano seed in me.

I went to Manassas High School where Matthew Garrett was our bandleader. Talk about being in the right place at the right time! We had a band, the Rhythm Bombers, with Mickey Gregory, Gilmore Daniels, Frank Strozier, Harold Mabern, Booker Little, and myself. Booker and I were best friends; we went to the library and studied Bartók scores together. He was a genius.

We all looked up to George Coleman, who was a few years older than us – he made sure we practiced. George and Harold and I used to play at Mitchell’s Hotel. Lewie Steinberg and I were great friends and we used to do small gigs around town — he played trumpet back then. Later, he switched to bass. After I left Memphis, he joined up with Booker T and the MGs. Last March I invited Booker T to join me for a special concert on my 80th birthday. We had never played together before… it was a magnificent evening.

Lewis Steinberg

Booker T and the MG’s

When I was 12, I started gigging with Bobby Blue Bland and Roscoe Gordon. That led to Johnnie Ace, Junior Parker, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Roosevelt Sykes, Rufus Thomas, and Big Mama Thornton. I got to play in Willie Mitchel’s band across the river in West Memphis at Danny’s Club. Al Jackson, Sr. had a great big band with Hank O’Day playing lead alto.

I met Al Vescovo, a great pedal steel player in West Memphis. We became friends and jammed together. We both loved music, but we couldn’t play together professionally during those days because of the racist setup. When Bill Frisell and I started playing together, I mentioned that I missed the sound of the pedal steel. He suggested we invite Greg Leisz to sit in during a concert at UCLA. Greg is an amazing musician and he is the “go to” guy for Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Jackson Brown, Emmy Lou Harris, Joni Mitchell – and so many. It’s an honor to have him with the Marvels. I’ve come full circle.

Growing up, Herman Green was a highly respected musician. We played together in Willie Mitchell’s band for a time. He has had an important impact on many Memphis musicians. Willie was also an important mentor to me. I am proud of having grown up in Memphis and to be a part of its musical heritage.

What more recent Memphis players do you admire or find noteworthy?

There are still many great musicians coming out of Memphis. Mulgrew Miller and James Williams are no longer with us, but there’s Donald Brown and Kirk Whalum, who have forged their way in the world. A few years ago I gave a master class at the Stax Academy and heard some fine playing. Carl and Alan Maguire were at that class and recently sent me a copy of their new recording. They have a double dose of talent and it is encouraging to hear this.

There’s a deep feeling for Latin/Brazilian idioms in much of your music. What first turned you on to Latin sounds?

Charles Lloyd

When I was at the University of Southern California, Billy Higgins and I used to play in the pit band at the Million Dollar Theater. We played behind all of the Latin bands coming through L.A. I loved hearing Lucho Gatica, the Frank Sinatra of Latin America. Billy would go rambling with those Latin beats, and the songs opened another world for me. After the gig, they would have a big comida for us. It was great! During this time I also discovered Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, and the Ali Brothers.

You did a lot of work with the Beach Boys in the 1970s. Do you feel Brian Wilson gets his due recognition as a composer in the jazz world?

Brian Wilson is a great genius — I have recorded and performed several of his songs over the years. And he has performed on some of my recordings. As time goes on, more and more jazz musicians are recognizing his greatness and recording his songs.

Had you worked with Bill Frisell before the Marvels?

Bill and I used to run into each other at European festivals, and we had a mutual admiration for each other. In 2013, I invited him to do some dates with me. When we first got together, he told me that when he was in high school in Denver, he heard my quartet with Keith Jarrett and that the experience changed the way he looked at making music. Bill has a broad and far-reaching palette. We have a beautiful simpatico together; it’s telepathic.

Is the tension between the arranged and the free a constant in your music?

Charles Lloyd

This is a music of freedom and wonder. We challenge ourselves to go exploring. It’s about transformation and elevation.

Charles Lloyd — Memphis Marvel

Categories
Music Music Features

¡Cuba, Sí!

One of the leading purveyors of the rich musical heritage of Cuba will lead his 14-piece orchestra in concert Saturday at the Germantown Performing Arts Center. And he expects to get people moving.

“I like to see people dancing, and I like to see people listening,” says Jesus Alemany, trumpeter and leader for more than 20 years of the band Cubanismo. “Don’t even think we are gonna play in Memphis and people aren’t gonna jump up and dance. I like people to be part of the show.”

Alemany is an ambassador for the music of his home country and the influence it has left around the world.

“The essence of the band is just to give the audience the very wide history of the Cuban music,” he says. “Going back to different periods with the music. Playing some original compositions and also some traditional standards of the Cuban music, we try to show a variety of rhythms — rhumba, cha cha cha, mambo, descarga. Also going to the most recent style of the Cuban popular music, which is called timba — what people internationally call ‘salsa.’ But always focusing on the Cuban music.”

Alemany spoke by phone from Merida, capital city of the Mexican state of Yucatan, where he has lived for four years after 23 years based mostly in London. Living away from Cuba allows him and his band members to travel more easily to the United States, which still restricts travel and trade with the island nation.

“In 2004, we had a huge series of concerts throughout the United States, 40 concerts, but it was canceled because the State Department didn’t give permission to go to the U.S.,” Alemany says. “That was in a period when we were all living in Cuba. That was a really bad experience, and we had to make the hard decision to change some of the musicians and work with people who live outside of Cuba.”

Despite such obstacles, Alemany is committed to maintaining a cultural exchange between the United States and Cuba. He recalls Cubanismo being booked in the late 1990s for a series of concerts in New Orleans that culminated in the 2000 album project Mardi Gras Mambo, as well as American trumpeter Wynton Marsalis traveling to Havana to teach and perform for students there.

“Then that stopped for a while,” he says, “and we have to reopen this musical bridge.”

Alemany, 55, began his professional career at age 15 with Sierra Maestra, a band that sought to revive the classic Cuban musical style from the 1920s called son, considered the foundation of modern Latin American music. As a Cuban music revival was sweeping the English-speaking world, they recorded the 1994 album Dundundanza in London. with producer Nick Gold for his World Circuit label.

American producer Joe Boyd then approached Alemany about putting together a new band in Havana to record for his own label, Hannibal Records. This was the beginning of Cubanismo, and the sessions yielded two well-received live albums, Cubanismo (1995) and Malembe (1996). Meanwhile, Gold was putting together his own Havana sessions, featuring aging musicians from the pre-revolution period along with American guitarist Ry Cooder. The resulting album, Buena Vista Social Club (1997), sold more than 5 million copies, won a Grammy Award, and became an international phenomenon.

Two decades after Cubanismo and Buena Vista Social Club, Alemany and his band continue to perform around the world, but he admits that interesting a new generation of Cubans in this music has been a challenge.

“We are all struggling in a way with how there might be a new generation of people that consume this kind of music,” he says. “Because it is the original music, the most typical music that represents our culture, but now there is a different thing happening with reggaetón and timba and all that. The new generation of people are more into reggaetón. That’s just the way it is.”

Jesus Alemany and Cubanismo perform at 8 p.m. Saturday, February 17th, at the Germantown Performing Arts Center.

¡Cuba, Sí!

Categories
Music Music Blog

Joe Restivo: Back to Trio Jazz in a Big Way

When I spoke with Joe Restivo about his jazz trio’s upcoming performances Friday, February 9th at Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), the Memphis guitarist and composer had just wrapped up a phone call about booking another gig. And the night before we spoke, Restivo’s trio finished a two-night residency at Spindini in downtown Memphis. Let that be proof positive that Restivo has, as the saying goes, a lot of irons in the fire.

“We’re going to be playing some tunes by Thelonious Monk. We’re doing some Benny Golson, two pieces by Billy Strayhorn, who was Duke Ellington’s arranger and co-writer,” Restivo says of the upcoming show’s set list. “I’m doing some arrangements of mine of some standards, you know American Songbook stuff. We’re doing a version of [the Stylistics song] ‘People Make the World Go Round’ that I arranged. A few things of mine. I think it’s going to be an interesting mix.”

“When I booked this,” Restivo says of his two shows at GPAC on Friday, “I was like ‘Is anybody going to come to this?’” Those Spindini sets aside, Restivo has recently spent more time soldiering in the soul trenches and playing with a quartet, but the busy guitarist was excited to try out some more straightforward jazz numbers during the two one-hour sets on Friday. The performances will mark a return, of sorts, for Restivo. While admitting to his eclectic influences, Restivo still has a fondness for “straight-ahead,” traditional jazz. But of course, any artistic change brings with it a degree of stress. “The next night Branford Marsalis is there,” Restivo says and laughs. “No pressure!”

Restivo is a Memphis-raised, New York-trained guitarist and composer who cut his teeth on live performance with a brief punk phase at the Antenna Club as a teenager, before quickly transitioning to jazz. He has played in trios, quartets, and larger ensembles, and he’s open about his diverse tastes, citing soul influences along with the jazz. Indeed, many know him best for his work with the Bo-Keys, backing soul greats like Don Bryant and Percy Wiggins.

Restivo’s quartet has been playing a weekly set on Sundays at Lafayette’s Music Room in Overton Square, but this week’s GPAC show will showcase a different group of musicians. He’s playing with a stripped-down ensemble of guitar, bass, and drums, and grooving in a more traditional style. “I haven’t been doing enough straight-ahead jazz,” Restivo says. “Not as much as I want to be, so to me, this gig has got me kick-started to do more of a straight-ahead thing as opposed to a lot of the other work I do in town,” he adds. “I’ve been doing a lot of soul music.” Restivo graduated from the Jazz and Contemporary Music Program at New School University in New York, but he readily confesses, “I have relatively eclectic tastes in music.

“I wanted to do something different. The City Champs is like an organ trio, and I’ve got a group called Detective Bureau, which is a sextet. It’s got horns and percussion,” Restivo says, ticking off a few of his many projects. “But I wanted to do something to get into the upright bass, drums, guitar trio. It’s just a certain kind of instrumentation that I’ve always loved. It’s really challenging, because you’re pretty much out there by yourself. You don’t have anything other than an upright bass harmonically to rely on. So there’s a lot of space, which is challenging but also really cool.”

As for the trio’s lineup, Restivo perks up when he mentions his fellow musicians. “I’m using Tim Goodwin and Tom Lonardo, who are Memphis stalwart players. I grew up watching them. These are musicians I looked up to coming up, so it’s an honor to include them on this,” Restivo says. “This GPAC thing has been sort of a catalyst to get back into that game.” Restivo says he feels as though he has grown as a musician since he composed some of his pieces included in the set list, and he sounds eager to flex his musical muscles while revisiting those songs with the challenging-but-cool trio instrumentation. And it all seems only to have whetted his appetite for traditional jazz. “Now, I’m like ‘Well, maybe I should make a record.’”

A short lull falls on the conversation as Restivo pulls up GPAC’s website to double-check the price of the event. The first show sold out, Restivo notes happily. After a pause, he adds, “Oh cool, the second show is sold out. Sweet.”

Joe Restivo, Friday, January 9th at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. at Germantown Performing Arts Center. $25.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Kodo at GPAC

Spectacle-laden physical theater has found a regular home at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC). This season, audiences have been treated to performances by Los Angeles-based dance innovators Diavolo, who work at the intersection of art and architecture, and by genre-defining pioneers like Mummenschanz. This week, GPAC showcases another cornerstone troupe of modern physical theater, when Japan’s world-famous Kodo drummers unveil the Mystery of their One Earth tour.

The Kodo drummers have a long and influential history. The group, based on Sado Island, Japan, 177 miles from Tokyo, was touring the world before hot-ticket percussion shows like Stomp and Blue Man Group were ever a thing. It was 1980 when Kodo adopted a puzzlebox name that means both “heartbeat” and “children of the drum.” But the troupe’s roots stretch back decades, and the drum and dance traditions have evolved over centuries.

Kodo at GPAC

Kodo is sensory overload. Ritual, song, dance, athleticism, illusion, and puppetry figure into almost every aspect of the performance. Tiny drums and cymbals buzz like thousands of insects while kettles weighing up to a ton are pounded with clubs the size of baseball bats. Amid the din, enormous lions and demons shudder to life. Snakes and dragons awaken and uncoil. Dancers cut through the darkness illuminated by the glowing orbs attached to their heads.

In his artist’s statement, Kodo Director Tamasaburo Bando says he’s created this piece with the idea that theatergoers would experience a “mood of mystery” and leave with a “sense of purification.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Mummenschanz at GPAC

Physical theater becomes more commonplace all the time. Cirque du Soleil has become enormously successful, and groups like MOMIX and the Pilobolus dance company have toured the Memphis area. But before all of these groups were a twinkle in their founders’ eye, there was Mummenschanz.

In 1976, an unusual three-year-old Swiss performance company that had been touring America went on The Muppet Show, and without uttering a single word, introduced a generation of young viewers to experimental theater, mask play, and a strange new derivation of Commedia dell’arte.

Mummenschanz

In one memorable bit, two actors in black tights sat side by side, each of their faces covered in amorphous blobs of clay. From his blobby nothingness, one performer sculpted a neat beard, then a nice mustache and some fluffy eyebrows. His less dexterous companion tried to copy the look, but without much success. As the face sculpting grew competitive, both actors morphed into terrifying bird monsters and flapped around, terrorizing one another until their faces collided and and stuck together, turning the two, into a single mess of sticky entanglement. It was silly, sublime, and unlike anything else you were likely to encounter on ’70s TV.

The troupe’s unusual name is derived from the German word for “mummer,” a performer combining mime and mask play. But long before The Lion King or War Horse, Mummenschanz was also exploring the boundaries of puppet work. The latest tour is a retrospective of highlight performances from the company’s 40-plus-year history.

Categories
Opinion

Best and Worst Acoustics in Memphis

Live-Microphone.jpg

Because of the large number of public hearings on consolidation of governments and school systems, I have visited a few dozen forums in the last six months. And the message I bring to you, my fellow Memphians, is “I can’t hear you.”

At least not well. The acoustics in public and private facilities range from great to awful. As a patriot once said, I may not agree with a word that you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it so long as you say it clearly and limit your remarks to two minutes.

I am a little fanatical on the subject of clarity. My job depends on getting it right as far as “Jim” or “Tim” or “$5 million” or “$5 billion” or “6 p.m. Tuesday” or “6 p.m. Thursday a week from now.”

For several years I refused to get a cellphone for that and other reasons. But “call me on a land line” is no longer an option. So my typical conversation with friends, family, and newsmakers includes several “I’m sorry could you please repeat thats.” On an assignment for an out-of-town newspaper, I once had a conversation with an editor that went something like this:

Me on a borrowed cellphone with the wind blowing and truck engines whining in the background: “I am in Dyersburg and the police are saying the hostages are okay but there have been shots and they are still negotiating. What is your deadline?”

Editor in New York: “So ….. there are many dead … and shot in the head …. and no longer negotiating ….. … have given them a deadline … and your source is a sheriff named ZXXBXBDL! Can you have that for the early edition?”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Thoroughly Modern

Paul Taylor’s story is incredible. From the beginning, the celebrated dancer and choreographer defied conventional wisdom. Trained as an athlete and visual artist, he never studied dance until he got to college. And in this arena, where only the dainty survive, this large, powerfully built man excelled, capturing the full attention of modern-dance pioneer Martha Graham, who became his instructor and friend.

Taylor, who started his first dance company in 1954, was inspired by modern artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg who celebrated common objects and gestures in their paintings and sculpture. His earliest danceworks celebrated ordinary movements such as looking at a wristwatch or waiting for a bus, but over time, he developed an aggressive and athletic yet painterly style, referencing everything from the most minimal modernism to the most benign aspects of the Broadway musical. His longevity and limitless versatility have led numerous observers to speculate — with few harsh detractors — that Taylor is currently the world’s greatest living choreographer.

On Thursday, October 18th, at 7 p.m., Germantown Performing Arts Centre will screen Dancemaker, Matthew Diamond’s Oscar-nominated documentary about Taylor, featuring footage of his early work with Graham’s company. The latest incarnation of Taylor’s own company will make its move at GPAC on Saturday, October 20th.

Paul Taylor Dance Company, Saturday, October 20th, 8 p.m. Germantown Performing Arts Centre. Tickets start at $30. Admission to Thursday’s film is free.