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The Culture Vulture Files
Mar. 29th, 2022 11:31 pmDon’t Analyze This Dream: I was sharing a condo with the friends I play Codenames with several times a week. For some reason, one of them had set up some sort of puzzle / game / competition in the public areas of the condo (i.e. everywhere except the bedrooms and bathrooms). This involved various figurines and plushies, e.g. a ceramic snake with a tiny little Winnie the Pooh nest to it. One of these arrangements had a note suggesting that the contest would start in April.
The Devil’s Tree: There is consensus among my friends that the particular source of the vast clouds of pollen irritating all of us right now is that insidious monstrosity known as the Bradford Pear. These invasive trees are pure evil for other reasons - crowding out native plants, creating vast thickets of thorns, hosting non-native insects, and having weak branches prone to breaking off and obstructing paths and roads. But their greatest evil is their insistence on having sex outdoors, releasing highly allergenic pollen which, not coincidentally, smells like semen. Oddly, almost all of us who are allergic to this substance find it especially troublesome in our left eyes. Nobody has been able to explain this particular phenomenon. Weird but true.
Purim: Among the things I didn’t get around to writing about was Purim, which fell on Saint Patrick’s Day this year, leading to two excuses for drunkenness. (One of the things we do on Purim is get so drunk we can’t tell Haman - the villain - from Mordechai, the hero.) I actually limited myself to a couple of shots of amarula. I did also tune in to a virtual Purim Party but on by Jewish Gen, with a genealogy themed game of Family Feud, which featured a lot of confusion over the actual rules of the game. Even more fun was the Purim Cabaret put on by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, hosted by the always adorable Adam B. Shapiro and with a wide range of Yiddish songs and skits, plus the recipe for a special cocktail, the Hava Tequila, which is essentially a Tequila Sunrise with Manischevitz wine instead of grenadine.
Written in Stone: This is a set of four operas which I saw at the Kennedy Center last Monday. The first one was Chantal by Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran. That had to do with a surveyor assessing the condition of a monument and reflecting on what monuments are. I have to admit that this piece didn’t work at all for me. The libretto felt repetitive and I didn't care for the music.
The second opera was Rise with music by Kamala Sankaram and Libretto by A.M. Homes. The story involves a young girl who gets lost in the Capital Rotunda. There’s some humor as she searches for a bathroom and is aided by a powerful woman who is more interested in showing her the sites than addressing that need. After that situation is resolved, she reflects on the lack of any statues that resemble her, which leads, eventually, to the Portrait Monument of three women involved in the fight for women’s suffrage.
The third opera was, by far, my favorite. it all falls down has music by Carlos Simon and a libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph. I loved the music and I thought the story of a young man, slated to take over leadership of a black church from his father, who reveals that he is gay, resulting in division between the church members (including his father) and culminating in the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage was interesting and thoughtful.
The final piece was The Rift with music by Huang Ruo and libretto by David Henry Hwang, who is, of course, famous for his plays, including M. Butterfly. This had to do with the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and the controversies about its design. I thought it was most effective when it dealt with the effect of the finished monument on visitors to it. Including Robert McNamara as a character (as well as architect and monument designer Maya Lin) was also interesting. But I wasn’t crazy about most of the music.
Overall, this wasn’t particularly my sort of thing, but I was glad I saw it and I would look out for other work by Carlos Simon.
Michael Tilson Thomas: I was back at the Kennedy Center on Friday night to see Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the National Symphony Orchestra. I think I’d only seen him conduct the orchestra for the San Francisco Ballet previously, and I particularly enjoyed his introductions to the three pieces the orchestra performed. Those were interesting and informative and I felt that they really enhanced the performances for me.
First up was Angels by Carl Ruggles. This is a short piece (about 4 minutes long) and MTT talked about Ruggles, who was not a likeable man and about angels more generally. He pointed out that classical paintings show hell at the bottom and heaven, with angels, at the top, with musicians at all levels. However, the musicians at the top have the most pained expressions because they have discovered that G-d likes dissonance. And, indeed, the piece was fairly dissonant, but still interesting.
The second piece was MTT’s own composition, Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind. This is based on a poem by Carl Sandburg, which MTT described as “a honky-tonk Ozyymandias. He read the poem during his introduction. There were also supertitles for the parts of the composition during which the poem was sung. And those were interesting for the use of fonts to enhance the words. I found this piece enthralling.
The final piece was the most familiar one - Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring. Even here, there was something new, as MTT included a section that is usually omitted, in which a fire and brimstone preacher appears to caution a young couple about what lies ahead for them. That section definitely put a different tone to the piece as it returns to the variations on the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts.
All in all, this was a wonderful evening of American music and was definitely worth going to.
Crafts Fair: On Saturday, I went to the Capital Arts and Crafts Festival at the Dulles Expo Center with two friends. They were both designated as shopping discouragers and the only non-consumable I bought was a pin, which I insist was to honor the memory of Madeline Albright. I also bought some chocolate and some honey. And it was fun browsing and discussing potential purchases with both of them.
Still to Come: I still need to write up the Women’s Storytelling Festival and my trip to Boston (which was in between the two visits to the Kennedy Center). And I am behind on various other things.
The Devil’s Tree: There is consensus among my friends that the particular source of the vast clouds of pollen irritating all of us right now is that insidious monstrosity known as the Bradford Pear. These invasive trees are pure evil for other reasons - crowding out native plants, creating vast thickets of thorns, hosting non-native insects, and having weak branches prone to breaking off and obstructing paths and roads. But their greatest evil is their insistence on having sex outdoors, releasing highly allergenic pollen which, not coincidentally, smells like semen. Oddly, almost all of us who are allergic to this substance find it especially troublesome in our left eyes. Nobody has been able to explain this particular phenomenon. Weird but true.
Purim: Among the things I didn’t get around to writing about was Purim, which fell on Saint Patrick’s Day this year, leading to two excuses for drunkenness. (One of the things we do on Purim is get so drunk we can’t tell Haman - the villain - from Mordechai, the hero.) I actually limited myself to a couple of shots of amarula. I did also tune in to a virtual Purim Party but on by Jewish Gen, with a genealogy themed game of Family Feud, which featured a lot of confusion over the actual rules of the game. Even more fun was the Purim Cabaret put on by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, hosted by the always adorable Adam B. Shapiro and with a wide range of Yiddish songs and skits, plus the recipe for a special cocktail, the Hava Tequila, which is essentially a Tequila Sunrise with Manischevitz wine instead of grenadine.
Written in Stone: This is a set of four operas which I saw at the Kennedy Center last Monday. The first one was Chantal by Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran. That had to do with a surveyor assessing the condition of a monument and reflecting on what monuments are. I have to admit that this piece didn’t work at all for me. The libretto felt repetitive and I didn't care for the music.
The second opera was Rise with music by Kamala Sankaram and Libretto by A.M. Homes. The story involves a young girl who gets lost in the Capital Rotunda. There’s some humor as she searches for a bathroom and is aided by a powerful woman who is more interested in showing her the sites than addressing that need. After that situation is resolved, she reflects on the lack of any statues that resemble her, which leads, eventually, to the Portrait Monument of three women involved in the fight for women’s suffrage.
The third opera was, by far, my favorite. it all falls down has music by Carlos Simon and a libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph. I loved the music and I thought the story of a young man, slated to take over leadership of a black church from his father, who reveals that he is gay, resulting in division between the church members (including his father) and culminating in the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage was interesting and thoughtful.
The final piece was The Rift with music by Huang Ruo and libretto by David Henry Hwang, who is, of course, famous for his plays, including M. Butterfly. This had to do with the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and the controversies about its design. I thought it was most effective when it dealt with the effect of the finished monument on visitors to it. Including Robert McNamara as a character (as well as architect and monument designer Maya Lin) was also interesting. But I wasn’t crazy about most of the music.
Overall, this wasn’t particularly my sort of thing, but I was glad I saw it and I would look out for other work by Carlos Simon.
Michael Tilson Thomas: I was back at the Kennedy Center on Friday night to see Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the National Symphony Orchestra. I think I’d only seen him conduct the orchestra for the San Francisco Ballet previously, and I particularly enjoyed his introductions to the three pieces the orchestra performed. Those were interesting and informative and I felt that they really enhanced the performances for me.
First up was Angels by Carl Ruggles. This is a short piece (about 4 minutes long) and MTT talked about Ruggles, who was not a likeable man and about angels more generally. He pointed out that classical paintings show hell at the bottom and heaven, with angels, at the top, with musicians at all levels. However, the musicians at the top have the most pained expressions because they have discovered that G-d likes dissonance. And, indeed, the piece was fairly dissonant, but still interesting.
The second piece was MTT’s own composition, Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind. This is based on a poem by Carl Sandburg, which MTT described as “a honky-tonk Ozyymandias. He read the poem during his introduction. There were also supertitles for the parts of the composition during which the poem was sung. And those were interesting for the use of fonts to enhance the words. I found this piece enthralling.
The final piece was the most familiar one - Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring. Even here, there was something new, as MTT included a section that is usually omitted, in which a fire and brimstone preacher appears to caution a young couple about what lies ahead for them. That section definitely put a different tone to the piece as it returns to the variations on the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts.
All in all, this was a wonderful evening of American music and was definitely worth going to.
Crafts Fair: On Saturday, I went to the Capital Arts and Crafts Festival at the Dulles Expo Center with two friends. They were both designated as shopping discouragers and the only non-consumable I bought was a pin, which I insist was to honor the memory of Madeline Albright. I also bought some chocolate and some honey. And it was fun browsing and discussing potential purchases with both of them.
Still to Come: I still need to write up the Women’s Storytelling Festival and my trip to Boston (which was in between the two visits to the Kennedy Center). And I am behind on various other things.
