The performing arts season got off on a good start last weekend with a performance of "Tribes" at Cyrano's that featured several established local theater veterans and very impressive fresh talent. The play -- in part about the physical deafness experienced by a few and, in sum, about the psychological deafness experienced by most of us from time to time -- continues through Oct. 11 and will have two signed performances on Oct. 3 and 4.
I'm also eager to see Perseverance Theatre's production of "Annapurna," which opens Friday, Sept. 25 in the Sydney Laurence Theatre. A draft of the script was sent to me and I expect some powerful theater.
But for sheer emotional catharsis, it will be hard to top Saturday's concert in the Autumn Classics chamber music series. The guests were the superbly cohesive Ying Quartet from the Eastman School of Music. The group is brilliantly bookended by cellist David Ying and violinist Robin Scott, who moved into the first chair slot this spring. Janet and Philip Ying had the inner violin and viola parts.
The program opened with an arrangement of Randall Thompson's elegant choral piece "Alleluia" and continued with an arrangement of the Schumann Cello Concerto by Juilliard-based composer Phillip Lasser. The quartet became the orchestra and cellist Zuill Bailey joined with the solo parts. It was a curious piece in that the voicing was generally effective as chamber music, but it simultaneously exposed the clumsiness of Schumann's score. The biggest benefit of the arrangement over the original may be that it allowed one to hear the solo part plainly throughout.
The audience returned from intermission chatting and laughing, even after the house lights dimmed and the Ying players raised their bows to begin Schubert's Quintet in C Major, Op. 163. Bailey, playing the second cello part, had them hold off the better part of a minute while the crowd settled down.
This long work, with note after perfect note, is one of the finest pieces ever written, among the most sublime creations in any form by any member of our species ever. And the musicians did it full justice with a precise yet passionate reading. By the end of the slow movement I was physically trembling and the listeners were as silent as new snow. A long standing ovation followed the performance and an air of transcendence permeated the mood. If there is such a thing as the holy in music, this was it.
Sweet Ads send-off
Last year, the Alaska Sound Celebration women's chorus won their regional competition in Spokane, entitling them to contend for the national championship coming up in Las Vegas next month. As a warm-up -- and to get an idea of how they sound with an audience in the seats -- they're inviting all of Anchorage to a free performance at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29, in Atwood Concert Hall. The bill will include their sets for both semifinals and finals, with local storytellers filling in the breaks to keep the audience amused. Battle Dawgs, a nonprofit that uses sled dogs to help veterans with PTSD, will be in the lobby, promoting their program, and there will be door prizes. This show is a great one for the whole family. The singers can use everyone's help in filling the seats and I can just about guarantee that you won't get a better free show all year.
Nights at the Opera
Anchorage pianist/composer/teacher Kathleen Bielawski is conducting a series of classes timed for the big screen Met Opera Live In HD broadcasts, seen at local theaters. Each Thursday evening, starting Oct. 1, Bielawski will take a close-up look at the opera coming up on Saturday, covering the plot, music and context of the show in an "informal, fun group" that will include discussions of the specific operas as well as the big picture of the art form and its place in the creative universe.
Sessions will take place in the Turnagain Arts Building, 4105 Turnagain Blvd., Suite J. Cost is $15 per session or $60 for all five operas scheduled through December, beginning with "Il Trovatore," which will be shown on Oct. 3, followed by "Otello," "Tannhauser," "Lulu" and "The Magic Flute."
Information is available by calling Frozen Music Productions, 245-2328 or online at frozenmusic.com. Bielawski is also teaching a class in global music appreciation, "A Music of the Hemispheres," as part of UAA's continuing education program. Information about that program is available by calling 786-6790 or at uaa.alaska.edu/continuinged.
Piano man needed
Producer/director/actor Ron Holmstrom is looking for a man of a certain age who can both act and play the piano for a new dinner theater project in the works. If you have the chops, send him an email at holmstrom@alaskalife.net.
Alaska featured in out-of-state arts
Several big art events in the Lower 48 will transpire over the next several weeks. Former Fairbanks composer John Luther Adams has back-to-back performances of his music scheduled from Boston to San Diego and all points in between. They range from his early pieces ("songbirdsongs") to "Become Ocean," the big orchestral piece that earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Music. The lineup includes the New York premieres of three major works by the International Contemporary Ensemble at the Miller Theater, "Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing," "For Lou Harrison" and, perhaps my favorite big Adams piece, "In the White Silence." The Calder Quartet will give the world premiere of Adams' "Canticles of the Sky" on Dec. 8 in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. A new work for percussion and electronics, "Ilimaq" -- spirit journey -- will be released by Canteloupe Music in October.
Columbia University in New York City is the venue for a show of 10 Inupiat drawings from the university's indigenous archive showing the messenger feast, or kivgik. The drawings, made in the late 1800s, "are thought to have been produced by Inupiat people working closely with missionary teachers Tom and Ellen Lopp in the village of Kingigan in Wales, Alaska," says the press release. "Messages across time and space" at the university's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race will be on display through Nov. 20. Admission to the exhibit is free.
The Z Below Theater in San Francisco will supply the stage for the premiere of "an unconventional play with music" by Sharmon J. Hilfinger and Joan McMillen titled "Arctic Requiem: The Story of Luke Cole and Kivalina." The plot is based on the true story of the late Cole, a lawyer who took an interest in the situation in Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo village where the habitat has been dramatically mutated by pollution and climate change. Luke and the Inupiats stand together against greed, corruption, prejudice and pollution in an arctic environment whose transformation may be irreversible." Following the rule that a play can't be about Alaska unless it includes a raven, the blurb notes, "Raven, the Inupiats's mythical creator and archetypical champion of transformations, leads Luke through an end-of-life dream." "Arctic Requiem," presented by BootStrap Theater Foundation, will open on Oct. 23 and run through Nov. 15.