Fame or Famine

I mentioned before that Sting had an album out featuring the songs of John Dowland, accompanied by lutenist extraordinaire Edin Karamazov. They’ve now got, in addition, a PBS Great Performances special. Unfortunately, it’s not all sunny reviews:

"Clearly, Sting likes Dowland. Like many pop stars (Paul Simon, for example), he takes a reportorial, almost passive approach toward lyrics that says the passion is in the writing, not in the singing. But Sting’s uninflected, vibrato-free, elongated vowels – they sound like electronic droning – reduce Dowland to a series of abstract sounds that substantially obscure the music’s content and meaning. In effect, …read more

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I got this video–and you can get quite a few more–via the indefatigueable Shanmonster. This is exactly why I bought a video iPod…so that I can have transcendent moments like this available to me all the time.

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Anyone seen the stage version of "Edward Scissorhands"? My daughter and I watched the dance video clips, but were largely unimpressed. She did say that when he danced with the blades on his fingers it was more interesting.
To be honest, some things don’t need to go to the stage. Of course, I really can’t talk, since I’m going to see "Lion King" when the touring company hits Appleton, WI this June. But I kind of wish they would use some of the zillions of original stories and give them the space on the stage.
Besides, again to quote my daughter, "Johnny …read more

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Wouldn’t you know it, I’m sitting here trying to distract myself from the relationship difficulties I’ve been having, and decide that talking about the fine arts and specifically Toronto (a place I’ve always wanted to visit, and which actually had a minor role in said relationship difficulties).
Toronto is doing a revival of Phantom of the Opera, that great and tragic tale of doomed love. I hear people poo-pooing Andrew Lloyd Webber left and right, and personally, I think it’s silly: the guy is a genius, and while he may not be Shakespeare or Mozart, there’s no denying his ability.
So …read more

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This is why I love the web. Via Great Dance I come to A Life Less Examined (which is where I will always go from now on for dance reviews) and from there I find my way to YouTube and to this short piece by Sylvie Guillem, who I’ve gushed about before:

Seeing the strong, struggling woman is especially meaningful today, as my friend Heidi Miller goes in for surgery on her hands. Here’s happy thoughts her way.
Tags: sylvie guillem, dance, ballet, modern

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…who provided this link on the GreatDance blog to the Pilobolus performance at the TED talks. I actually listened to a lot of them (Al Gore was unbelievably good, and made me weep for what might have been…).
Tags: pilobolus, dance, technology, education, design, TED

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Ever hear of Joyce Hatto? Me, neither–but apparently she was an amazing pianist, with a repertoire that was as stunning as her performances were unforgettable. Well, except nobody actually saw the performances–but they heard about them! And the recordings themselves, distributed on a minor label by her husband (after her death of cancer) were collector’s items, highly prized.
Until the digital age came along:

"Several days ago, another Gramophone critic decided to listen to a Hatto Liszt CD, of the 12 Transcendental Studies. He put the disc into his computer to listen, and something awfully strange happened. His computer’s player identified the …read more

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    I’ve long been a fan of online dance, having even created a few "just-for-the-web" dances myself. Over at the Great Dance Blog, Doug Fox recently reviewed a dance recital he saw in Second Life. He had lots of techilical diccifuddies, but in the end he said:

" I thought it was intriguing and I want to learn much more about how it was created and performed. I’d like to understand how avatars are controlled, scripted, animated and synchronized. Plus, I haven’t seen other performances in SL to make comparisons. So I’m going to have to go back to an upcoming …read more

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This morning I was reading a comic by Warren Ellis, called "Fell". Warren talked about how the comic (which is cheaper and shorter than most) is kind of an experiment, a desire he had to return to the basic art of storytelling and, at the same time, make it affordable again. As he put it, he has more graphic novels currently out than anyone, and so has earned the right to do whatever the hell he wants.
Jennifer Taylor, a local artist, pointed me towards David Byrne’s website, which is an amazing exploration into what the man is doing now. You …read more

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While we’re on the subject of cool performing arts, an online friend is working  the show “The Four Horsemen Project” which opens in Toronto on my birthday, February 15.
“Five years in the making, The Four Horsemen Project is a multi-disciplinary extravaganza conceived and co-directed by Toronto’s dance-theatre dynamic duo, Ross Manson and Kate Alton, in collaboration with Vancouver animation studio Global Mechanic. Live, on-stage, swirling animation and sonic hi-jinx make the poetry of Canada’s 1970s avant-garde scene leap off the page and onto the stage.”
My source tells me it’s VERY good. I bet it just sizzles with energy, and hope it …read more

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