Tag: GPAC

On New Album and in Virtual Concerts, Iris Orchestra is Undaunted

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date February 19, 2021

CREDIT: Courtesy Iris Orchestra

Iris Orchestra, that unique hybrid organization headquartered at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), yet made up of stellar classical players from across the country and the world, continues apace as one of the most relevant and innovative classical organizations of our time. With the pandemic curtailing any live performances, Iris, helmed by conductor Michael Stern, carries on its multi-dimensional work in other media.

Courtesy Iris Orchestra

Michael Stern

As we saw last fall, the facilities at GPAC, coupled with the recording know-how of engineer Jamey Lamar, who captures all of their performances, the orchestra has adapted to a COVID-afflicted world by presenting freshly-recorded performances online in lieu of their regular concert season. Tomorrow and Sunday, their February performances will go live online, featuring performances recorded last weekend, even as Memphis suffered its first wave of February ice and snow.

Beyond that, this month has also witnessed the release of an album boasting the world premiere of a concerto by composer Bruce Adolphe, recorded at GPAC when it was performed by Iris in 2015. Earlier this week, I spoke with Stern about both the album and the online concerts. By the end of our conversation, I was more convinced than ever of our good fortune in hosting this committed group of players.

Memphis Flyer: How did Iris Orchestra come to be involved in this premiere of Bruce Adlophe’s work, I Will Not Remain Silent?

Michael Stern: This is all a happy confluence of events. Sharon Roffman, the featured soloist, is an incredible force. Her mother’s very involved in education and the violin. Sharon had known Bruce Adolphe since she was a kid. He had this idea to write this piece about Joachim Prinz, who was of course so closely aligned with Martin Luther King, Jr., and as it turns out, Prinz married Sharon’s parents.
Allen Cohen

Sharon Roffman

But above and beyond that, they were both interested in this project which was, first and foremost, a piece of wonderful new music. Secondly, a way to raise awareness about Rabbi Joachim Prinz and Martin Luther King, and to have that connection in terms of civil rights and social justice. But the other thing is, Sharon is passionately committed to education and engagement, especially with young people. Not only were we able to organize the premiere, by rehearsing and recording and performing it, but she, largely, along with Iris Orchestra, organized this community-wide education and engagement project embedded in the curriculum that she distributed to schools and churches and synagogues. We did something at the Jewish Community Center, as I recall, as well as the Civil Rights Museum and Houston High School. We had a writing project associated with it. We had an art project associated with it. And for kids across all lines to learn about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, and to learn about 1930’s in Germany and Joachim Prinz and Nazism, was a wonderful experience. So, all the way around it was a really rewarding moment.

The piece itself is so wonderful. I’ve done it with her since our premiere, and it holds up great. It’s just a really terrific composition, which really speaks to the fundamental subject matter and its importance.

I’ve see the curriculum. It’s really impressive. And it seems the piece itself addresses the subject matter thematically, with orchestral hits battling, so to speak, with this solitary, soaring voice of Sharon’s violin. It’s a striking contrast, and captures the power of a solitary voice speaking truth to power.

I agree. I will say that he’s got a program to it. The first movement is Joachim Prinz in Europe, and the second movement is Joachim Prinz in America. But it doesn’t sound manipulative at all. It doesn’t sound arch. It sounds very authentic and sincere and organic, and the entire piece, just from a musical point of view, works really well.

The second movement really does evoke a new time, a new atmosphere.

It also just underlines the idea that challenge, struggle and eventually overcoming and coming to a place of peace and triumph really transcends color, it transcends religion, it transcends geography. It just is what it is in terms of the human experience and the human condition. I appreciated Bruce’s intent from the beginning. The way he wrote the piece. Sharon was unbelievably devoted to the project, and in it 150 percent. It was inspiring to work on.

So the educational outreach happened around the time of the premiere and the recording in 2015?

Yes, but don’t say the word outreach. It sounds like that’s a one way thing. I prefer the word engagement. My mindset in doing something like this is not to deliver information, it’s to engage young people in this conversation. And I think Sharon especially, and all of us, tried to do that and I think we did do that. And one thing Bruce did, which was fantastic, was, he created a chamber version of the piece. So when we did go around, notably to the high school, we were able to talk about the story and to play some of the concerto without requiring the full orchestra to come. Instead, we could use a chamber ensemble and it made it much more mobile. And then of course, the fact that it was picked up by the Milken Archive of Jewish Music is meaningful, because the music stands as an American concerto, but beyond that, it also has these extra-musical, historical echoes which fit that series absolutely perfectly. I’m proud that our contribution to that series came out so well.

Tell me about the February and March Iris concerts.

What we did for those concerts was just a string orchestra. Not the largest, not the smallest, somewhere in the middle. But nothing we played was an adaptation of anything. We played the pieces the way they were meant to be played.

I would say that COVID interrupted everybody’s plans for a lot of reasons. We can’t be too close to one another on stage, so that puts a cap on the number of players you can have onstage or in the hall at one time. Everybody has to be masked. There are all sorts of precautions and protocols. Beyond that, you can’t have wind players on the stage. The conventional wisdom is that wind players expel more droplets and more of a risk in terms of transmission, than strings or harp or piano would be. So we made the decision that we would just play whatever music we could play. And right now that’s music for strings only. But we present these programs without any sense of compromise. Would we like to get 40-60 more players onstage? Sure. Just not right now. We have to take safety first.

We had the cancellation of our soloist in the February slot. He couldn’t travel because of COVID concerns. He’s healthy, but just due to an abundance of caution he cancelled. Similarly our guest soloist and conductor, Jeffrey Kahane, who was going to play and conduct the March concert, also cancelled. And then we were faced with what do we do? We had already changed those programs, to piece for string orchestra only, now we had to change them again to accommodate those cancellations. And we just made the decision on the fly that we would overload the week and put more performance capture in the can, so we would have performances for February and March without imposing a second trip for all the musicians or for me or the engineers, because we didn’t know, and frankly still don’t know, even though vaccines are rolling out slowly, we still don’t know what the numbers are going to look like in early February and March. So we thought, let’s get as much music recorded as possible, and we’ll broadcast that for our February and March offerings, and keep our fingers crossed for May.

What we did was we took some really great music for strings alone. For February, we have this wonderful piece, a young, extraordinarily talented American composer, Jessie Montgomery, whose music is not only terrific, but also informed by her sense of activism and social justice, and is one of the brightest lights in American music right now. She wrote a piece called ‘Banner,’ which celebrates the 150th Anniversary of the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. But in her piece, built into this celebration, is also the awareness that the Star Spangled Banner should, but doesn’t actually, speak for everybody in this country. And to make those voices, who might be marginalized by the Banner or who have not been as included, historically, she wrote a piece which really reflected on the Pledge of Allegiance and the Star Spangled Banner in a really beautiful way. And we go through that piece… For the February presentation, I was able to sit down with Jessie and we had a conversation about the piece. And that’s a really incredible addition to the program.

On New Album and in Virtual Concerts, Iris Orchestra is Undaunted (2)

We also did this incredibly beautiful, heartrendingly beautiful piece by Puccini, called the Chrysanthemums, which he wrote as a memorial to a great friend of his who passed away. And then we finish with one of the great pieces in the string repertoire, the Dvořák String Serenade. And then in March, we have two other masterpieces, in terms of string repertoire. Mozart’s F major Divertimento for Strings, K138, and the great Tchaikovsky String Serenade. So in these two programs, we’ve got Dvořák and Tchaikovsky and Puccini and Montgomery, and the interview with Jessie. I think it’s a really great overview of some terrific music, and it lets us keep our contact with our public without needing to stop the music because of COVID. So that made us all very happy.

It’s a wonderfully diverse collection. Contrasting the cutting edge, Jessie Montgomery, with Mozart…

Well, we try! We try. Many of us hadn’t seen each other for almost a year. The October recording was a very small group of musicians. It was a chamber ensemble. So it was wonderful to be together.

Were there any special arrangements with the host families?

We spared the host families. We could not, and we would not, put that imposition on them. This is not the time to invite other people to your house, even cherished friends. So we put everybody up in a hotel.

Jessie didn’t perform with Iris, but Jessie Montgomery is a force of nature. She’s a wonderful violinist. She was composing a lot of music while she was still an active member of a regular string quartet, and she’s doing her doctorate at Princeton University. She is a very busy, very talented, very accomplished woman.

We’ve had this tradition of having chamber concerts at Brooks Museum. Of course we could not do that, but we didn’t want to deprive our audience of anything, so three of our musicians stayed an extra day. Jamey stayed the extra day, and they got that filmed and it was a great success.

I think there are some silver linings to COVID. Not many. It’s been a terrible time. And hopefully now, with a new feeling in the country, we can maybe start to address some of the divisiveness and some of the rancor. But I do think you need to try to see some good in everything. COVID has taken its toll, and yet in the process of going through it, the fact that we were isolated, but also technically involved with the regular routine of everything, meant that people could actually consider what was happening.

And then you had the issues that were in front of all of us, and rightly so, with long overdue conversations, and I think people considering the real meaning, whether it’s Black Lives Matter or the environmental issues before us, or the terrible political divisiveness, we were able to process that with a little less knee jerk reaction and a little more thoughtfulness. And I do think, and I’m very encouraged by the fact that the reaction to those things did not simply become a flash point for a few weeks and then fade. I think the awareness that we are going to do better, and the awareness that the world is a little closer to real justice, is here to stay. And I think that is a really healthy thing. I can’t help but think that maybe that in and of itself is worth celebrating, and that’s a good thing.

Watch Bruce Adophe discuss “I Will Not Remain Silent” below.

On New Album and in Virtual Concerts, Iris Orchestra is Undaunted

Tags bruce-adophe, GPAC, Iris Orchestra, joaquim-prinz, Memphis Classical Music, Michael Stern, milken-archive

Music Music Features

Iris at GPAC: A Virtual/Hybrid Concert Debut

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date October 7, 2020

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.

Tags Germantown Performing Arts Center, GPAC, Iris Orchestra, Marcia Kaufmann, Memphis, Michael Stern, The Grove at GPAC

Music Music Features

GPAC’s New Front Porch, The Grove, is Ready and Waiting

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date May 20, 2020

Justin Fox Burks

Paul Chandler, executive director of the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), has long felt there was a problem with the magnificent performance space he helps to manage. “There’s an entire segment of the community that thinks a performing arts center is not for them. That it’s for somebody else.”

That’s about to change in a big way. This week marks

GPAC’s Paul Chandler

the completion of a new outdoor space adjacent to GPAC, known simply as The Grove. And it marks a tectonic shift in how GPAC will engage with the community, and even how the interior space, which has now hit the quarter-century mark, will be perceived. I talked to Chandler about all this recently, hoping to fill out some of the details of this long-anticipated space.

Memphis Flyer: This has obviously been in the works for a while, and you were understandably eager to open The Grove. But what does it mean to be opening up in the age of COVID-19?

Paul Chandler: The City of Germantown has been really awesome at getting information and putting a plan in place. So it’s been interesting for me, as a department head with the city, to sit in on all of those discussions, every morning at 9 a.m. It’s fascinating to hear smart, skilled people who’ve dealt with emergency management before, at a lot of high levels, and to get information from trusted sources. We’re constantly exchanging information, procedures, and survey results with them. Phase 1 of reopening allows purposeful gatherings of up to 10 people in our outdoor performance space in The Grove. So on Monday [May 18th], we will begin our “Grove Unveiling Events.” We’ll start with our board of directors. They’ll experience the video wall, not live entertainment. Then we will move toward the next group, the large contributors to The Grove. Then we will have the department heads within the city, and then subscribers. So The Grove unveiling is going to take a good period of time.
Justin Fox Burks

If and when Phase 2 opens, which allows purposeful gatherings of up to 50 people, we’ll have events with that many people. And if we feel like we can handle it, then we will move toward that. We’ll move to having the general public, and by then we will have hosted several hundred people who we already know: supporters, contributors, subscribers.

This is a really important time to reinvigorate our personal relationships with our patrons. We’re going to use this time to restart in a comfortable, inviting setting with people who are comfortable with us, and we with them. And then we’ll evaluate how we’ll unveil The Grove to the general public. We won’t jump into Phase 2 until we have experimented with Phase 1. It’s different for us. It’s not like we’re inviting people to come to our venue, which we know how to operate. It’s brand-new. We’ve got to open slowly, just to make sure we operate it correctly. Justin Fox Burks

Clearly live performances will be a major aspect of the outdoor stage, but what is the video component of the space, exactly?

It’s a high-definition video wall made by a company called Daktronics. They’re a global leader. They did the FedExForum scoreboard. They did the round video wall experience in the [Atlanta] Falcon’s stadium. They did the largest video wall in college football, in Auburn. So that video wall moves from the back of the stage to the front of the stage. And when it’s to the back and you turn it off, it just kind of disappears. Justin Fox Burks

But it’s very large — 30 feet wide and 20 feet tall. And it does a lot of things. It’s a digital backdrop to a performance. Whether it’s musical, theatrical, even a DJ performance. It’s a digital tool that can do anything you want. And it moves forward. But we will only show performing and visual art-related content: a concert movie, or a documentary about music or performing art, or about the visual arts or artists. So, not Shrek. And then the following capabilities will be completed at the end of this month. We’ve installed six remote control cameras inside the Duncan-Williams Performance Hall that lead to a control room, and that will allow us to simulcast events in the performance hall, out into The Grove. This is a giant component to the project.

So there was a lot of work inside GPAC itself, just to prepare for The Grove.

Absolutely.

The literature about The Grove noted that there are only two other venues in the nation with such advanced video projection capabilities. How did GPAC come to be on the cutting edge?

I came from the video production world. I was a crew person, from a PA to a location scout to AD to production manager. Those were formative years for me. And I feel like that experience has a little bit to do with this, with understanding how to merge video technology with a performing arts space. It’s a merger of my careers. We were designing this Grove, and I went to a venue on the Gulf Coast called The Hub. It’s an all-purpose venue in a beach community, with food services and an AstroTurf lawn.They have this giant medium-resolution screen that you can only see at night. And it was on the upstage wall, way in the back. People enjoyed it, but you’re about 40 feet away from the screen.
The screen is deep, deep in the back of the venue. And you don’t want that barrier between the artist and the audience. So I thought, what if that wall moved forward? How would it feel? Then I went to a Chainsmokers concert at FedExForum. There are two people in the band, and they’re both DJs and singers. But there were 14 semi trucks for their tour, for two guys on stage. Because from floor to ceiling, they had video walls that were moving in all directions. There must have been 10 of these things. And they disassemble and reassemble every night.

Throughout the concert, at different times, a social media like or heart or thumbs up, would fly through the screen, connecting the kids to social media, connecting every fan to the entertainers after they’ve left the city. So that made me think about how we could utilize the video experience to interact with the audience in The Grove. Ultimately, we built ours so it could go to the upstage wall and turn off, or move forward and be a digital display. Justin Fox Burks

Really active kids, who might just squirm in their seat if they were inside, can experience music in an outdoor setting where they have the freedom to move around. Maybe little Johnny will express his interest in the cello, and maybe that family will go inside next time, and get a ticket to the live performances. There’s an entire segment of the community that thinks a performing arts center is not for them. That it’s for somebody else. And I think a lot of those people would come to an outside event that’s in a beautiful place, that has food and beverages, and is safe and inviting. And they can look up and think, ‘Hey, that’s pretty awesome; what’s going on inside? Maybe I should check it out.’ We feel like we’re inviting them to our front porch.

Tags city of Germantown, GPAC, Paul Chandler, The Grove

Music Music Features

Pickin’ a Fight: Sam Bush Has Something On His Mind

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date April 18, 2019

In a perfect world, one can easily imagine “Stop the Violence” becoming country radio’s latest summer hit. It’s the catchy new single by bluegrass/newgrass phenom Sam Bush, but don’t worry, Nashville: It doesn’t sound like bluegrass. Sure, there’s an undercurrent of banjo chugging along throughout, but this song is pure Southern Rock, a funky throwdown of stop-start riffs overlayed with Allman Brothers-perfect twin leads of electric guitar and … mandolin?

The single’s hard-driving choogle is a bit out of character, even for this most adventurous of bluegrass virtuosos. Though Bush is known as one of the founders of progressive bluegrass, beginning with his 1970s groups Bluegrass Alliance and New Grass Revival, rarely has he taken his mandolin excursions so far afield. But for Bush, the song’s rock sound conveyed the sense of urgency with which he and co-writer Jeff Black composed it.

“I don’t really have other electric songs that I want to do at this time,” Bush says. “But I wanted to say this. It just seemed to be the right time. We’ve been playing it for a year or two on stage, and I didn’t know if we wanted to record it. But back in November, I turned on one of the morning news shows, and they had this sickening statistic: ‘This was the worst mass shooting in 12 days.’ In 12 days! And I thought, ‘Wow, this is where we’re at? This is our norm?’ This can’t roll off our backs. It just can’t.”

Sam Bush

Indeed, the insistent chorus demands more than just an end to complacency, with the lyrics at times focused squarely on gun violence. “We wallow in the cause, strapped by the mark of Cain/Living in a barrel of cold blue steel/Who’s going to save us now?” A seeming refutation of the “good guy with a gun” scenario much beloved by NRA spokespeople, the song exists more as a howl of pain in the face of gun violence’s aftermath, without advocating any action in particular.

“This statement is not a political statement,” Bush emphasizes. “Less violence shouldn’t be a political issue. It’s a humanity issue. We’re just trying to create more dialogue, raise a little awareness.”

It’s much the same attitude with which he and Bluegrass Alliance appealed to younger progressive fans in the Vietnam era. “With New Grass, we’ve always been open to other thoughts,” Bush says. “In 1971, when we sang the song, ‘One Tin Soldier,’ that was somewhat of a controversial idea for bluegrass people to embrace, even though it was a radio hit at the time. Every once in a while, you just have to say something.”

Bush reports that the anthem goes over well with his audiences. Which bodes well for his upcoming show at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), where he’ll be playing back-to-back sets with the Travelin’ McCourys.
The Travelin’ McCourys, for their part, are taking their version of bluegrass to a more political territory as well. The group’s latest single, a somber, rootsy remake of the the 1967 Buffalo Springfield hit “For What It’s Worth,” is sure to be aired at GPAC as well, along with tracks from last year’s eponymous album. Built with players from the Del McCoury Band, that bluegrass legend’s backing group for many years, the brother team of Rob and Ronnie McCoury are now pursuing their own style. “Since the Travelin’ McCourys got Cody Kilby on guitar, they’ve just become their own force,” Bush notes. “Now they sound like their own group. Ronnie’s one of my favorite mandolin players in the world, and I love him. Hey, if the name’s McCoury, I love ’em.”

Bush, a longtime collaborator with the younger McCourys and their father, is hoping the double bill has legs. “We’re kinda hoping we can keep this package going, and this’ll be the first one we’re gonna play. And of course I like to have both bands play together at the end if we can. Some of it might be planned out and some of it we just might wanna leave to chance.”

Who knows? They might even start a riot or two.
Sam Bush at Germantown Performing Arts Center, Thursday, April 18th, at 7:30 p.m.

Tags GPAC, Sam Bush, The Travelin' McCrourys

Music Music Features

Bela Fleck Brings Exotic International Trio to GPAC

Post author By Mark Richens
Post date November 1, 2018

CREDIT: Alan Messer

Collaboration has been an essential element in the distinguished careers of master musicians Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, and Zakir Hussain, each of whom has achieved iconic status on his respective instrument: banjo, double bass, and tabla.

An intriguing scenario emerged when Fleck and Meyer — whose musical relationship goes back 35 years to their days on the New Acoustic Music pickin’ circuit — reached out to Hussain to help compose a triple concerto commissioned by the Nashville Symphony to commemorate the grand opening of its new home, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, in 2006. This cross-cultural dream team yielded a Grammy-nominated recording, The Melody of Rhythm: Trip Concerto & Music for Trio, in 2009, and the trio realized their collaboration was a particularly fruitful one.

“In the case of Edgar and Zakir, I feel that there is still so much left for us to do,” Fleck wrote in a response to questions sent ahead of the trio’s sold-out Friday show at the Germantown Performing Arts Center. “We have not squeezed all the juice out of it.”

Alan Messer

Bela Fleck

Hussain, the son of Alla Rakha, a longtime tabla accompanist to sitar icon Ravi Shankar, was born in Mumbai, India, and has played in famed collaborative projects such as Shakti (with Mahavishnu Orchestra guitarist John McLaughlin) and Planet Drum (with Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart). He stressed that this trio’s creative success is built on deep personal chemistry.

“We first came together as composers who were going to write this piece for a symphony orchestra to play,” he says by phone from his home in Marin County, California. “[Playing as a band] came together over a period of time. What was interesting is our relationship as friends really grew, and our families got together and socially we were hanging out together a lot, and I firmly believe that is the reason we are able to make music like we do, with such comfort and ease.”

Fleck, 60, says he became fascinated with Indian classical music and music theory during a State Department-sponsored tour of India in the 1980s with his acoustic ensemble New Grass Revival. “It was clear that there was quite a lot that naturally could be assimilated into my musical consciousness,” he says. “The math is immediately usable to build new ideas, and also to understand the ideas I was already having.”

The trio lately has been augmented by a fourth member, Rakesh Chaurasia, who plays a bamboo flute called the bansuri that, like Hussain’s hand drums, is common to Hindustani (North Indian) classical music. His uncle, Hariprasad Chaurasia, now 80, is a renowned virtuoso on the bansuri who has recorded with Hussain and even contributed to “The Inner Light,” a 1968 Beatles track.

“Rakesh is a worthy successor to Hariprasad, and probably finest Indian flutist at the moment,” says Hussain. “One thing about young Indian musicians today, they not only grow up learning Indian music but simultaneously learn about all music around the world.”

Fleck says the group is performing compositions that incorporate Chaurasia’s flute melodies and the plan is to record another album as a quartet. “Rakesh is the new wild card,” he says, “who will alter all of us by his contributions.”

The group setting for Friday’s GPAC show might seem unfamiliar to fans who have seen Fleck play with his futuristic jazz-fusion combo the Flecktones or who caught his 2015 Beale Street Music Festival acoustic set with wife Abigail Washburn, but he says he thrives on such variety.

“It’s like playing different games, really,” he says. “If you get tired of Monopoly, you can play Sorry. Most of the music I play has improvisation, but the improv may have different rules. It keeps your mind alive and responsive. Life will change on you whether you want it to or not, so you better be prepared to respond to the challenges!”

Tags Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, GPAC, Zakir Hussain

Music Music Blog

Gillian Welch Wows GPAC

Post author By Alex Greene
Post date August 17, 2018

CREDIT: Jamie Harmon

Jamie Harmon

An audience sat in rapt attention Thursday evening as Gillian Welch and David Rawlings presented the austere songs and sublime harmonies they’ve perfected over the past couple decades. And if they were well rehearsed and precise in their playing, the night still benefitted from the couple’s easygoing looseness. After a confident opening singing “Scarlet Town,” they suffered a false start on their second number, “Ruination Day (Part 2),” with Rawlings insisting on tuning up again. With their vintage instruments, this was to prove a recurring theme of the night. But Welch took it all in stride.

She took on a faraway look in her eye as Rawlings tuned up. “Way off in the distance,” she quipped, “you see professionalism, out on the horizon.” And while the pair’s humility, dedication, and sensitivity were always felt, once such banter was over, they locked down with breathtaking unity.

Their axes of choice, with Welch on a warm, big-sounding vintage Gibson (or banjo) and Rawlings on what appeared to be a pre-WWII parlor guitar, complemented each other perfectly, as the tinnier sound of Rawlings’ guitar meshed with Welch’s rhythmic strums.

And of course, there were the harmonies. Local songwriter Cory Branan noted after the show that “they sounded like blood relations,” and indeed, the blend they achieve is reminiscent of many country sibling groups of the past.

At times, Rawlings would sing lead, trotting out songs from his Dave Rawlings Machine solo project. After they sang one such number, “Midnight Train,” Welch commented that “That’s as rambunctious as we get. Now we’re gonna bring you all way down.” And with that, they launched into the curiously tormented “The Way It Will Be.”

A few more songs in, and they had the crowd on their feet with “Elvis Presley Blues.” Until then, I hadn’t realized how appropriate it was to hear them play during “death week.” But as soon as they played the song, I felt it, and so did the audience, who gave the pair a standing ovation. “That’s the most an audience ever got that song,” Welch enthused.

After ten songs, there was a short intermission, followed by another set. One treat of their live show, as distinct from the records, is that Rawlings becomes gradually more unhinged in his playing as the evening wears on. While he takes some fine solos on their released recordings, his live playing becomes more exploratory, at times reminiscent of a veteran jazz musician in its venturesome quality.

At one point, Rawlings took over all instrumental duties with his banjo in hand, giving Welch little to do except sing, hambone, and dance a little jig that came off as homespun clogging.

Though Welch hasn’t released any original material under her own name for some seven years, it mattered little to this audience, a veritable who’s who of Memphis musical talent. Welch’s songs are built to last: the spare, suggestive lyrics all share a classicism, even when singing of contemporary concerns like the girl who “put a needle in her arm,” and the music suggests classic country and bluegrass, but always with a twist.

The classics are never far away from her songs, of course, and it was wholly appropriate when Welch and Rawlings finished up with a rousing “I’ll Fly Away,” the chestnut inspiring the typically reticent Memphis crowd to sing along with abandon (and harmonies). It was a heartfelt night for performers and audience alike.

Check out the slideshow from last night’s show, with photos by Jamie Harmon.
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Tags David Rawlings, Gillian Welch, GPAC

Intermission Impossible Theater

Mömandpöp Bring a Rocking “Pizza Party” to GPAC

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date January 5, 2016

At home with mömandpöp.

Okay, there probably won’t be any actual pizza involved, but I’m betting this song gets played at least once. There may be encores.

mömandpöp isn’t “kid rock.” The band’s “Comeback Special” may be aimed at the shorter short people in our lives — and younger kids really do love it — but the musical variety show quickly transcends. Husband and wife duo Bobby and Virginia Matthews are terrific writers with a knack for improv and a gift for crafting infectious pop ditties so full of love and life they defy easy categorization. If you’re physically able to take your kids (or somebody’s kids!) to see mömandpöp at GPAC Saturday, you really should. If you don’t have access to kids, you’ll have to go it alone. It’s only 50-minutes. You won’t be sorry.

The gimmick goes something like this. Once upon a time mömandpöp were rock stars, but they abandoned all that to become plain old mom and pop. Now after many (many, many, many) years off the scene, they’re pulling their British Invasion/folk revival-inspired act out act out of mothballs and retooling it for younger listeners. Think Schoolhouse Rock meets the Partridge Family, but more mod 60’s than groovy 70’s.

Click the video below to listen to one of my favorites. (Okay, my very favorite. But “A Week in the Life” is also pretty spectacular. So is “Take Care.”)

Mömandpöp Bring a Rocking ‘Pizza Party’ to GPAC (2)

So good.

The Matthews family has deep roots in Memphis. Bobby was an art teacher here and played alongside the Grifters’ Tripp Lamkins and Stan Gallimore in a band called Dragoon. Virginia worked with Voices of the South for years, composing original music for the company’s shows and developing original scripts like An Old Forest Fairy Tale.

For event details and tickets click here. To watch a deeply silly (and wonderful) reenactment of old ladies in tennis shoes saving Overton Park, click below.

Mömandpöp Bring a Rocking ‘Pizza Party’ to GPAC (3)

Tags childrens theater, GPAC, momandpop

Intermission Impossible Theater

Original Game of Thrones: Tennessee Shakespeare’s Dan McCleary Talks Richard III

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date October 29, 2014

CREDIT: Photo: Joey Miller.

Photo: Joey Miller.

Dan McCleary as Richard and Caley Milliken of the Spirit World in TN Shakespeare Company’s production of RICHARD III playing at GPAC October 30 – November 1 at 7:00 pm. Children admitted FREE with paying, attending guardian. Box Office: 759-0604; tnshakespeare.org.

It’s almost Halloween, and as good a time as any to talk about dry old bones that have come back to haunt the living. Also, given the wild success of contemporary TV shows like Game of Thrones and this season’s installment of American Horror Story, set against the backdrop of a mid-20th-Century freakshow, the cultural stage couldn’t be more perfectly set for a reconsideration of Shakespeare’s gruesome historical tragedy, Richard III. And that’s exactly what the Tennessee Shakespeare Company will be providing in an extremely limited run (October 30-Nov 1) with TSC’s founding director Dan McCleary starring as the deformed and determined soldier who would be king.

It’s almost as if the spirit of the last Plantagenet called out across the centuries, begging to have his twisted bones exhumed from an anonymous grave. In September, 2012, a team of archeologists from the University of Leicester, working with the Richard III Society, broke ground in a parking lot poured over the site where Greyfriars Friary Church once stood. On the very first day of the dig the team discovered human remains. It was the body of a smallish man in his 30’s with a number of wounds, some clearly inflicted after death. The most compelling physical feature was a spine, severely twisted by scoliosis. Over time it became clear that the team’s first discovery, in the first hole they dug, was the body of Richard III, best known to the world by way of Shakespeare’s tale of a murderous hunchbacked villain who slaughtered anybody who stood between him and the throne. Shakespeare’s play presents an image of the King the historical society responsible for unearthing the remains has long dismissed as Tudor propaganda. Earlier this week I talked to McCleary about his approach to playing Richard, and the degree to which information drawn from the newly-discovered bones combines with current pop cultural fascinations to inform how the historical horror story might be understood by contemporary players and audiences.

Intermission Impossible: This is one of Shakespeare’s longest plays and one of his most demanding roles. I can’t even imagine how you can run the company, keep up with young twin boys, and rehearse this part. How are you holding up?

Dan McCleary: The boys just came to tech rehearsal last night. They’re really interested in this cartoon called Mike the Knight. I wear some pretty full armor on my torso for the duration of the play and so thay became immediately interested. They wanted to know why I wasn’t wearing a visor or a helmet. It wasn’t about Shakespeare for them.

This isn’t my first time to play Richard. I played him once before when I wasn’t this old and tired and grisled. It’s been 17 years and I was very different then, in a very different take on the play. So yes I did know what it would likely mean to do the part again and that’s why brought in a long time associate David Demke to direct, so I could feel like I had confidence in that area. I wanted to surround myself with some folks who were quick studies and knew the play.

It’s a short run, at least.

It’s a strange schedule you know? It’s more like an opera or a concert. One of the originations of Halloween is a reconsideration of saints or souls, so when GPAC had a few days available over Halloween I seized on that, and also the fact that Richard’s actual remains are still are above ground right now. I thought it was a perfect confluence of creative impulses they came together. In terms of schedule we’d love to run for two or three weeks obviously but it’s fitting quite nicely on the stage.

I’m glad you brought up the bones. There’s been a lot of contention regarding the historical Richard III. Does having seen the remains change how we see the play? And how it’s performed?

I think it does. I really should only speak for myself. But it has for us and it’s one of the questions at the heart of what we’re doing. As Shakespeare was writing England into being he knew very well who his monarch was. He was writing for the Tudors, and as we know, history is written by the winners. Also, Shakespeare is writing at at a time when there is a true and genuine belief, not just a religious belief but a humanist belief, that what’s on a person’s outside was the stamp of God. And because it was a stamp of God they were the same on the inside. We know Richard was not buried as a monarch. He wasn’t buried as a king or with any blessing or ceremony. Shakespeare wrote about a withered hand, and he didn’t have one. What may have made him a smaller person of 5’1” or 5’2” was, quite likely, the onset of scoliosis at the age of 10, which twisted his back quite painfully, and visibly into the shape of the letter C. That wouldn’t have prevented him from being a fierce warrior, but it would’ve forced him to find a way to breathe differently. To reorganize his internal organs. To walk differently. To fight differently. To approach life differently, maybe like the elephant man. We’ve considered those things, and we spent a lot of time looking at people who do indeed live through this. It forced us to come to terms with some of Shakespeare’s writing with an overlay of Richard’s bones.

It does humanize the monster.

Instead of creating a vice or a morality play, or some monster or creature, we’re considering who the man had to be considering the humanist and religious thoughts about what people look like on the outside, and how he was born, which is talked about very explicitly in Shakespeare’s play. We have to consider any horse accident he may have had after the age of 10 and everything he had to do to live, not just physically, but psychologically as well. He was a child born into war. He called himself deformed, and yet he was the most fearsome warrior there was. So we’re trying to figure out what might make him so.

The face of evil?

So the remains suggest a more sympathetic view?

The remains force us to look at is what Shakespeare created for Richard in acts 4 and 5, which is a subconscious, his waking dream when the ghosts visit. There’s a lot of fun working toward Richard becoming King. But there’s about six beats of silence in one of the first lines after he becomes King. He only gets six beats of happiness as king and then he’s already thinking about having to kill a child or children. So with the remains being above ground the impact on our production, so far, has been more heartbreaking than harrowing and more painful than Machiavellian.

Audiences seem more familiar with Richard III than they are with the other History plays.

The monster that Shakespeare was writing for the Tudor family made it a very popular play for 400 years. It’s easy to make into a fun story about a monster but I’m not quite sure that’s what Shakespeare intended, especially as we get to his fourth and fifth acts where we are able see the actual man. And then there’s the remains. Eleven wounds to the body. Nine to the head. Two of them lethal. And then there are the wounds inflicted on the body after he was dead, the shaming wounds. And the body unceremoniously dumped into a mass grave.

You know, right or wrong, good or bad, they’ve decided legally to give him a ceremonial burial in the spring. So that informs us as well.

Original Game of Thrones: Tennessee Shakespeare’s Dan McCleary Talks Richard III

I know your production isn’t directly informed by Game of Thrones or American Horror Story. But it seems to me, given the huge popularity of these kinds of TV shows, that the time is absolutely ripe for bringing Richard back. He’s so clearly an inspiration for the GOT character Tyrion Lannister. Even shows like Walking Dead force us to confront a dark side born of circumstance. So, do you think that these trends in pop culture also shape how we experience Richard?

I don’t watch those shows so I can’t say. We always want to create something through Shakespeare the talks directly to our Memphis audience about time and about geography. We want immediacy, urgency, and relevance. This might not be something that’s as Memphis-flavored as our [Taming of the] Shrew. But the bones being aboveground is what excites. We’re going to have a reconsideration of Shakespeare’s Richard with this overlay of natural history. And we’re going to find ways to visualize that. In regard to pop culture, there’s a fascination and always has been a fascination with perceptions of human evil. How can someone do such a thing to someone else? Or to themselves? Something we do I find, as humans, is attempt to not to just be a spectator, but to understand it. We don’t just pay five dollars to go and see the bearded lady, but to find out what it means for us. You know, I’ve killed a fly before. I’ve done something mean. That’s basically the foundation and Shakespeare is really the first playwright to be fascinated by this and to investigate.

He also knew human nature and our sick attraction to oddity. In The Tempest, which he writes much later, he says that people who “will not lay out a droit to relieve a lame beggar” will pay good money to see “a dead indian.”

Well, he was a marketing guy too. He was a business owner and he knew what would bring audience to the theater. And I don’t blame him at all for that. But really, Richard was probably presented as a morality play, and, to me, that seems like a foreign kind of theater and a form that’s already settled its case. This way there are more unknowns involved. I much prefer that.

Richard III is at GPAC Oct. 30-Nov. 1.

Tags American Horror Story, Dan McCleary, Game of Thrones, GPAC, halloween, Richard III, Tennessee Shakespeare Company