Music Review: Ute Lemper and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 24 March 2011 10:00

Written by Jack Angstreich

Ute Lemper Performs the Music of Kurt Weill
Featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
Vibraphonist Warren Wolf,
Music Director Ted Nash

Ute Lemper brought her avant garde, "mannerist", Weimar-era stylings to an arresting, mostly chronological tour through the career of the great composer Kurt Weill in exciting jazz orchestrations, on the evening of Thursday, March 3, 2011 -- the first of three dates -- at the Rose Theater of Lincoln Center, joining eminent bandleader and jazz trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis, and his spectacular Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. At age 47, Lemper seems to have lost none of her vocal power or purity of tone.

The first half of the program surveyed the Weimar era and Lemper opened with "Alabama Song" -- popularized by The Doors -- from the relatively unsung Bertolt Brecht collaboration, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, the instigation for one of the playwright's most important theoretical writings as well as the basis for a legendary unfinished film by the master-animator Harry Smith. This number featured a superb trumpet solo by Marsalis.

Lemper commented that while Weill was probably observing from Heaven, his wife and muse, Lotte Lenya, was most likely watching from Hell, "drinking her whiskey and smoking her pipe".

The historical sequence proper began with the "Kanonen Song" and "Pirate Jenny" from the most famous Brecht-Weill collaboration, Threepenny Opera. Lemper jokingly remarked that the hard-core Marxist Brecht only shared 30% of the royalties with the composer.

Weill's less well-known collaboration with the German Expressionist dramatist Georg Kaiser, Silbersee, was featured with "Lotterieagents Tango", sung in German. Then Lemper performed "Surabaya Johnny" from the final Brecht-Weill Brecht collaboration, Happy End.

She closed the first half of the program with three songs from Weill's relatively unknown French musical, Marie Galante: "Le Grand Lustucru", "Youkali" -- sung in French and the highlight of the sequence and of this part of the evening -- and, finally, "J'Attends un Navire".

The second half surveyed Weill's extraordinary American career, opening with "My Ship" from the composer's interesting collaboration with the great lyricist Ira Gershwin, Lady in the Dark, a musical about psychoanalysis later filmed by Mitchell Leisen with Ginger Rogers.

She then beautifully sang the magnificent "September Song" -- one of Weill's best -- made famous by Walter Huston, in the composer's first collaboration with playwright Maxwell Anderson, Knickerbocker Holiday, here presented in an unusual arrangement which relied musically upon the gorgeous Gymnopedies by Erik Satie.

Lemper then performed "The Saga of Jenny", one of the best songs from Lady in the Dark, memorably sung by Julie Andrews in Robert Wise's undervalued musical, Star! Weill's collaboration with S. J. Perelman and Ogden Nash, One Touch of Venus -- later filmed with Ava Gardner -- was represented by the lovely "Speak Low" and this number proved to be one of the highlights of the evening.

The composer's late collaboration with celebrated lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, Love Life, was then featured with "This is the Life". Lemper concluded the evening with a showstopping rendition of "Mack the Knife", which she sang in both German and English.

Ute Lemper - Jazz at Lincoln Center
March 3 - 5, 2011

Rose Theater at Lincoln Center
33 West 60th Street
New York, New York 10023
212-258-800
www.jalc.org
Opens March 3, 2011; closes March 5, 2011

Cinefantastique Round Table Podcast: Zemeckis Vanishes into the Uncanny Valley

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 14:18

Written by Daniel Persons

It's another weekly round-up of news, events, and home video releases at the Cinefantastique Round Table, the podcast with a Sense of Wonder. Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski focus their sights on what's happening in the world of horror, fantasy, and science fiction cinema, including a discussion of the dissolution of Robert Zemeckis' mo-cap empire, some HuffPost responses to our reviews of Drive Angry 3D and Battle: Los Angeles, Larry's take on Battle, Steve's review of Walt Disney Home Video's Tangled Blu-ray disc, and Dan's thoughts on the unusual horror film, Black Death, and the finale of Big Love. Also on the table for discussion: a fond farewell to actor Michael Gough, a fine character actor who appeared in numerous genre films, ranging from Horror of Dracula (1958) to Sleepy Hollow (1999). Plus previews of the week's upcoming theatrical releases.

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Theatre Review: American Idiot

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 04:14

Written by Lucy Komisar

American Idiot
Book by Billie Joe Armstrong & Michael Mayer
Music by Green Day
Lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong
Directed by Michael Mayer
Sets by Christine Jones
Costumes by Andrea Lauer
Starring Van Hughes, David Larsen, Justin Guarini, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Libby Winters, Jeanna de Waal, P.J. Griffith, Joshua Henry

American Idiot plumbs angst among youths with no politics or vision

This vibrant rock production about youthful rebellion in the face of a fraudulent society is in the tradition of Hair. But it’s not Hair with the memorable tunes that we still remember decades later. It’s more like MTV: fast, often driving, and the kind of hard rock of the 28 Green Day tunes that doesn’t much distinguish it from anything else of that genre.

The protagonists are beer-drinking kids from 18 to their 20s. A U.S. flag hangs upside down. North Korea has successfully detonated a nuclear weapon. There’s a video of the second Bush. The kids sing/shout: "We are the kids of war and peace/ From Anaheim to the Middle East" and "Let’s start a war shall we." "I’m not part of a redneck agenda," declares one.

They rage against lies and consumerism. But the lyrics reflect free-floating political angst, though not much politics. These working class kids are self-destructive or destroyed.

A youth seduced by drugs, head shaved, body tattooed, asks, "Do you know the enemy?" The enemy is partly themselves. One tries to hold up a convenience store, then admits his mom ignored him. A guy wears a big cod piece; women are glittery cover art. Lives diverge. One couple has a baby, another takes heroin.

Converging with Hair – we have bloody wars every few decades, don’t we? — one of the youths becomes an army officer with iconic reflecting glasses. We hear the sound of artillery, of troops in battle. Then the inevitable grievously wounded soldier arrives.

There’s also a generational thing about diminished attention span, melody replaced by sensory din, the audio cacophony of rock and the visual cacophony of modern technology: the stage is filled with pulsating video screens ranged along the backdrop and hanging from the rafters.

I wish I’d understood all the lyrics, which listeners of a certain age perhaps imbibe, but which is lost on people who can’t absorb the screeching slurred words. Nonetheless, the words take second place to the stunning visuals and staging. Perhaps another sign of the times.

In fact, the most innovative part of the play is the set by Christine Jones and staging by director Michael Mayer -- except for some hokey production touches, such as a bad imitation of Andrew Lloyd Weber: the hero and a woman fly through the air.

American Idiot
St. James Theatre
246 West 44th Street
New York, NY
212-239-6200
Opened April 20, 2010; closes April 24, 2011.

For more by Lucy Komisar, visit thekomisarscoop.com.