Performing Arts

Three of Brazil’s most fascinating, multi-talented and innovative musicians are coming our way for a rare concert at Cedar Cultural Center Thursday, December 11, co-presented by the Walker. It’s a concert that, as unlikely as it sounds, will appeal to fans of classic Brazilian music, electronica, indie rock, global pop and combinations of all four, it promises to be one of the season’s musical highlights in the Twin Cities and I don’t want you to miss it.

In 2000, Moreno Veloso (son of pioneering Brazilian composer/singer Caetano Veloso, one of the creators of Tropicália movement in the 60s) released his own first recording in Brazil called Music Typewriter. Word started to spread to the States about this fantastic release and a few years later it was released it in the U.S. to great acclaim (”…An original, deeply affecting sound….taking cues from genre masters while delicately incorporating modern touches…” JazzTimes; “If Brazil continues to produce albums as delicate and emotionally complex as Music Typewriter, that country’s music will occupy as honored a place in the 21st century as it did in the 20th.” – Time Magazine).

I am generally suspicious when it comes the talents of children of famous musicians, but once I heard Music Typewriter all reservations melted away. Moreno clearly had his own sound and vision. In early 2002, Moreno + 2 were organizing their first U.S. tour and I jumped at the chance for the Walker to present them. The resulting concert which filled the old Walker Auditorium on March 2, 2003 was as beguiling and charming as it was inventive and unpredictable. Here was a band who’s unique mix of samba, bossa nova and other regional Brazilian styles fused effortlessly with infectious electronic beats, loops, and experimental effects, creating what critics saw as “the sound of New Brazil” — idiosyncratic yet seductive, Brazilian music that somehow seemed to simultaneously embrace past, present, and future. Here’s what the Chicago Sun Times wrote about that first tour:

In a music world saturated with manufactured (music) events, it’s easy to become jaded. But then along comes a band like Moreno Veloso + 2 to prove why music still matters. The Brazilian trio….delivered the kind of show that had a history-in- the-making impact. In years hence, after Veloso and company have gone on to join the ranks of world-music superstars, the lucky crowd can claim “we saw them first” bragging rights.

Music Typewriter launched what is today a Brazilian superstar trio, which included not just Veloso, but also Domenico Lancellotti and Alexandre Kassin. All three are prominent, highly respected composers, producers, multi-instrumentalists and members of multiple bands. They so enjoyed working together on Music Typewriter, the trio decided to release a trilogy of records, one under each of their names. Domenico +2’s Sincerely Hot from 2004 was more experimental and electronic, but an equally fascinating record released on David Byrne’s intrepid Luaka Bop label (“Innately creative and defiantly adventurous, they are concerned only with hurling their talents together and stamping new identities onto Brazilian music.” —Global Rhythm Magazine).

The Walker was all set to present the trio again on its next tour in March 2006 but a failed airline sponsorship and other challenges that seem to bedevil Brazilian artists getting to the States forced a rare cancellation for the Walker. That didn’t however, lessen my total admiration of what these three artists were now regularly cooking up together. For instance, late last year, the +2’s third release came out – this one called Futurisimo under the name Kassin + 2. It was met with acclaim that might have even outstripped the first two: “an effervescent collage of samba, airy folk, and sheer mysticism” SPIN.

Let one of Brazil’s most exciting new groups warm up your December by heading down to the Cedar on Thursday, December 11 for what promises to be an unforgettable night of music.

Look forward to seeing you at Veloso, Domenico and Kassin at the Cedar on December 11th.

Warm Regards,

Philip

“The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928)” at New York Theater Workshop features, in foreground, Susie Sokol and Vin Knight. Photo by: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

I was so pleased to wake up this morning and read Chief New York Times Theater Critic Ben Brantley’s rave review of our friends Elevator Repair Service’s production of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (April 7, 1928). The Walker has long been in ERS’s corner, ever since I first saw their deliciously ridiculous Cab Legs at PS122 in 1998. On their first Minneapolis visit, we presented their odd-ball, ecstatic Total Fictional Lie as part of Walker’s 2000 Out There series. They returned with Room Tone (2003 Out There) and, most recently, we co-commissioned their audacious, every-word-of-the-novel marathon production of The Great Gatsby (GATZ) ,which received its U.S. debut here in September 2006.

Rights issues with the Fitzgerald estate have tragically not allowed the brilliant GATZ to yet be seen in New York City, but a year after the Walker introduced the work to the U.S., it did successfully tour to cities like Portland OR (at PICA’s TBA Festival), Philadelphia (at the Philly Live Art Fest.) and Seattle (On The Boards). So, it’s a bit irritating that both Brantley and Justin Bergman (who wrote an ERS preview last Sunday in the Times) seem oblivious to the fact that GATZ ever came to the U.S. at all (“ the famously venturesome Elevator Repair Service” wrote Brantley “ …toured Europe with a seven-hour rendering of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “ Great Gatsby” …).

While Brantley and Bergman maintained the Times’ long-standing New York parochialism (assuming nothing of cultural interest takes place West of the Hudson), Brantley did do a nice job of articulating the steep challenge that director John Collins and ERS set up for themselves in taking on the notoriously dense and, at first read, confusing, first section of The Sound and Fury, which is told from the point of view Benjy Compson, a 33-year old mentally disabled man. “ Trying to translate this perspective from the page to the stage would seem to be an act of folly and hubris,” wrote Brantley… “ Benjy’s nonlinear, noninterpretive point of view has been the bane of uninitiated English students for decades. But reading this account of a Mississippi family’s decline is like looking at an impressionistic painting that at first seems to lack discernible forms, but stare long enough, and details emerge so precisely that it’s finally sharper than any photograph….”. In the end, the company’s rigor and ingenuity wins over Brantley completely – “ (ERS) brings a sanity, humility and theatrical ingenuity to their interpretation that, like the novel, illuminates the clarity within apparent chaos.”

Congratulations again to director John Collins all our friends at ERS. I can’t wait to catch up with the production (and all of our ERS pals) on my next trip to New York in mid-May.

Click here for the NY Times article on ERS Faulkner’s Haunted Family, Moving in and Out of Time April 30, 2008.

I just returned from New York where it seemed everyone involved in modern dance or contemporary art was talking (or perhaps “ raving” is more accurate) about the Jérme Bel project that won over full houses at Dance Theater Workshop and was the unanimous critical hit of the Performa ‘07 visual art-performance festival. In last Friday’s New York Times Jennifer Dunning called Jérme Bel and Pichet Klunchun’s performance “ funny, touching and provocative… (which) says a great deal about the subtleties of skilled performing and the nature of dance.” She went on “ the fascination of the must-see Pichet Klunchun and Myself should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Mr. Bel’s career” (full review below.)

Alas, this difficult-to-describe (or at least difficult-to-make-interesting-sounding) show has not yet fully found its audience and I am afraid it will come and go quickly and many will regret not making a point to come. The piece speaks directly to our artistic times, turning a seemingly simple exchange into an illumination of issues spanning globalization, conceptual art, cross-cultural understanding, post-modern dance, the place of tradition in artistic practice and other key subjects. And, Jérme and Pichet do all this in the most witty, sometimes moving, often beguiling ways.

I think the work also helps illuminate where contemporary dance, performance work and even conceptual visual art practice has been heading in recent years. In other words, seeing this work I think helps one gain a different kind of understanding around other artists also coming to the Walker – from Miguel Gutierrez (opening Out There) to Romeo Castellucci, from Tino Sehgal (exhibition opens in December) to Back to Back Theater (June ‘08).

I recently scanned reviews and on-line comments from other international cities (the piece is only making three stops in America) where this two-year old work has toured and could not find a single negative response. One critic picked it as her favorite show of the massive 2006 Melbourne Festival (involving scores of remarkable projects). Another, a guy writing on the “ countercritic” web site was perhaps my favorite. He began by summing up how many people probably felt when they read descriptions of the work before seeing it:

“ When I walked into the theater and I saw two chairs facing each other, separated by about 20 feet, two bottles of water and a laptop, I was sure this was going to be an utter disaster, a pretentious piece of shit, and something unduly excruciating that I would not be able to escape…” Instead, he says he found “ an altogether mesmerizing and soul-filling experience…It’s also very entertaining, and it communicates massive amounts of information, in a way that works of art cannot always communicate on their own. This is art about art. Dance about dance. And, mainly, its about today.” click here to read the rest of this thoughtful review.

click here for tickets