Monthly Archives: November 2024

Harlem Gets Braided at Jaja’s

Review: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding at The Arts Factory

By Perry Tannenbaum

My dear old Mom was born and raised in Harlem over a century ago, when a massive African-American cultural and literary Renaissance named for Harlem had already begun, long after the fabled Manhattan district with its storied 125th Street had been a major destination for Northern Migration after Lee surrendered to Grant. Even then, it would hardly be respectful to change Harlem’s name to Little Africa after all these years.

Yet playwright Jocelyn Bioh in her 2023 drama, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,set on the corner of 125th Street, had me considering whether Bioh would rather call her Harlem – or at least this salon – Little Africa. The vibe and culture of Jaja’s, in Three Bone Theatre’s outstanding QC premiere at The Arts Factory, had me feeling that I was in another country while it was unmistakably my own.

Staffed and patronized by locals who hail from Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, neither Harlem nor Africa were the best places for Jaja’s craftswomen to be on a hot summer day of 2019 when Bioh’s action takes place. Aside from a breakdown in the braiding shop’s air conditioning, ICE lurks in the background as another of the women’s worries. Our own US President, the most powerful man on Earth, has bunched their homelands into the dismissive category of “shithole countries.”

Jaja’s daughter Marie, a brilliant bundle of chaotic energy, is running the salon today because Mom is getting married later this afternoon to an unpopular landlord who will provide her – and Marie – with the shelter of citizenship. That will free Marie, a valedictorian at her high school using a borrowed identity, to apply to an Ivy League school worthy of her energy, talent, and potential.

From the deluge of Marie’s opening monologue onwards, we realize that Jaja’s is a place bustling with life. Music is in the air, sometimes compelling the women to dance. There’s bickering, jealousy, hostility, vanity, teasing, and earthy humor. Not a murderer or a rapist in sight among the immigrants. Not even a pet eater.

About the only big mistake we can accuse director Donna Bradby of making is not helping us to observe Bioh’s signposts – via a wall clock and/or projections – of the time of day and the specified year this long, hot workday unfolds. Otherwise, Jennifer O’Kelly’s scenic design, Toi Aquila R.J.’s costumes, and Rod Oden’s lighting immerse us completely in Jaja’s humdrum-yet-exotic world for all of the show’s 95 minutes.

A clock on the wall, for instance, would help us to appreciate how long young Jennifer, an aspiring reporter, is willing to sit at Miriam’s station in order for the patient artisan to outfit her with a full head of microbraids. And how long does the bossy, rude Vanessa fall asleep at Aminata’s stand before waking to her new look?

The visible excellence of Bradby’s cast is matched by the variety of Deborah Whitaker’s pre-, post-, and mid-weave hair designs. When blackouts happen between scenes, stage manager Megan Hirschy must have a huge chore in the small Arts Factory space helping the scurrying players reappear with the right hair when the lights come back up. We never just sit there tapping our feet during transitions. They’re almost lightning-quick.

Nor does it trouble Bradby that it’s impossible to keep track of who’s from Senegal, Ghana, or Sierra Leone. Venecia Boone was assigned the task of dialect coach anyway, a really nice touch.

Of Ghanaian descent and native to nearby Washington Heights, Bioh obviously knows her characters as much as she loves them. She is also a performer, so Deity Brinson as Marie will not be the last of her players to be gifted with a juicy monologue. Like Marie and the braiders, we will wait a long time before Myneesha King appears as Jaja – in wedding white, of course, with a queenly crown of braids – and delivers the most powerful monologue of all.

Meanwhile, it’s Valerie Thames as Bea, the most fashionable and contentious of Jaja’s employees who fuels the liveliest action, seemingly able to hatch a new grudge at the drop of a spray bottle. The salon was her idea, not Jaja’s. Should have been a full partner in the biz. Refugee newcomer Ndidi is stealing her customers rather than customers just dropping Bea. Thames seethes, fumes, and makes scenes with a steely righteous dignity that sets us up for the turnabout that reveals her deep-down goodness and sense of community.

Until then, the human warmth of the shop emanates from Kellie Williams as Miriam and Vanessa Robinson as Aminata. Williams, rightly stationed upstage at the Arts Factory black box, is mostly distanced from the main sparring during her morning-to-night transformation of Jennifer’s tresses. But there’s a distant man on Miriam’s mind throughout her labors, and she’s spending enough time in Jennifer’s hair to become quite chummy with the 18-year-old by evening’s end.

While her bestie and gossip buddy Bea seethes and sneers, Robinson mostly effervesces as Aminata. She knows that she doesn’t have the patience for a daylong immersion in microbraiding, so she’ll have none of Jennifer despite her youthful sunniness. But EJ Williams as Vanessa riles her almost to the point of losing her cool, a comical series of shticks that begins with the pushy customer objecting to house rules that require her to step outside the shop to negotiate Aminata’s fee. Then Vanessa insists that she be braided with the implements and spray she has brought from home.

Aminata’s man troubles are nearer-to-hand than Miriam’s, for her wayward ne’er-do-well husband James only circles back to the nest to take advantage of her. Righteously divorced, Bea insists that Aminata drop this loser, dismissing the love factor that keeps her from following through with her resolve. Can’t help it when Graham Williams as James drops by and pushes his wife’s buttons.

So these skirmishes between Thames and Robinson, before and after James’s invasion, are the most delicious that we witness. Aside from her dreamer worries, Brinson as Marie is occasionally thrust into the middle of disputes, laying down the law for the prissy Vanessa and stepping into the middle of Bea’s various tussles with Ndidi, Aminata, and her defecting customer, Michelle. At one point, Marie even exiles the incorrigible Bea to the street!

The younger folk are calmer and more acclimated to post-truth America than their diva elders. Before we know it, Aminata is asking Marie how to tune the smart TV to YouTube. Sarah Oguntomilade as Ndidi, the highest-grossing braider in the shop, is especially cool – thoughtfully equipped by Bioh with headphones and loud music to tune out Bea’s accusations and tirades. There’s a really nice interlude when Graham fawns over and flatters her as the Jewelry Man, lavishing her with freebies. This Nigerian cameo as Olu was at least as crowdpleasing as his subsequent turn as the roguish Ghanaian, James.

Graham’s most impactful role is as Eric, the DVD man, who serves as the caring eyes and ears of the community. But it would be cruel to divulge any more.

Things happen quickly at Jaja’s. Notwithstanding the oppressive summer heat, each new character changes the temperature in the shop. Less obtrusively than Graham, Germôna Sharp brings in a variety of flavors as three different customers. The most dramatic of these is the diffident Michelle, who thought she would be switching to Ndidi when Bea wasn’t there. Most comical is Sharp as Chrissy, wanting braids that will make her look like Beyoncé.

As if.

Charismatic Parnther Justifies Shostakovich’s Top Billing at the Knight

Review: Charlotte Symphony Presents Shostakovich and Mendelssohn

By Perry Tannenbaum

November 8, 2024, Charlotte, NC – Hailing from Norfolk, VA – and perhaps the Sith Order of the Galactic Empire – guest conductor Anthony Parnther has brought a big James Earl Jones voice to Knight Theater and an even bigger personality. He instantly engaged Charlotte Symphony subscribers with a lengthy intro to the first piece of the evening, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in A Minor (1898). Amid some insightful observations on the Black Britisher’s talents and his fin de siècle milieu, Parnther threw in some shtick that drew attention to his mighty larynx, looking askance at what appeared to be a perfectly fine microphone and coming to the mic’s rescue with his “opera voice” and, a bit later, with his “Shakespeare voice.”

In short, he dared to educate us and did a damn good job of it. The performance was just as brash, though occasionally too loud for the hall. There was gravitas in the opening measures sweeping into a zingy elan. Violins excelled in the midsection of the work with some very tender section playing, and the piece built nicely to an anthemic climax, reminding me of Jean Sibelius’s less-neglected symphonic masterworks. North Carolinians can point with pride to the best recorded version available on Spotify or Apple Music, featuring the Royal Liverpool Phil directed by Grant Llewellyn, who has given so much to The Old North State. Beyond that, Parnther could tell us very confidently that Black composers, according to the latest tallies, account for only 2.5% of programming among America’s top orchestras, knowing that we were quite entitled to feeling superior in the wake of hosting Sphinx Virtuosi a month ago – in a mostly Black and Hispanic program.

Sphinx’s visit turned out to be a gift that kept on giving, for the guest soloist playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, 16-year-old Amaryn Olmeda, was a first-prize winner – and audience fave – at the 24th Annual Sphinx Competition and toured with the Virtuosi two years ago. While I wouldn’t wish to compare Olmeda’s performance to my favorite recordings; including those by David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, and even Itzhak Perlman (who gave a live rendition at Belk Theater in 2019); there was certainly beauty aplenty in Olmeda’s account, with virtuosity to spare. But Symphony concertmaster Calin Lupanu attacked the infectious Allegro opening more fiercely in 2021, bowing with bolder panache when he played the piece online with Christopher Warren-Green at the podium. After a simple and lovely transition from principal bassoonist AJ Neubert, Olmeda was at her best in the middle Andante movement, freeing Parnther and the CSO to give her more robust support.

Olmeda relaxed and reveled more in the closing Allegretto-Allegro than she had in the previous outer movement, so Parnther and the CSO could be more assertive in their support, but true brilliance seeemed still beyond her at this tender age. Nonetheless, the audience joined me in giving Olmeda a standing O, perhaps sharing my feeling that we should pay her forward. Although attendance at the Knight was strikingly sparse, the young violinist was beaming. With a nicely articulated Bach solo, she returned our appreciation with an encore. Instinct tells me that the ripple of applause from the audience as intermission ended was in response to Olmeda joining them.

The young prodigy could not be faulted for the disappointing turnout, for the Sphinx Virtuosi had triumphed at Symphony’s annual gala last month. More likely, it was Shostakovich, topping the bill with his Symphony No. 9, who was the culprit on a beautiful autumn evening. Yet here was where Parnther and the CSO were at their best. The Norfolk native was pointedly suggestive in his introductory remarks, but mostly objective in his lengthy explorations – cuing us on what to look for in each of the five movements rather than telling us what to make of it. Thorough but never boring or academic, not at all show-offy or self-indulgent. Truly helpful.

The performance was spectacular, brilliantly contoured to the hall with fine evocative details, fully justifying Parnther’s enthusiastic intro. Which instrumentalist shone brightest in the opening Allegro was a tossup between Lupanu and piccolo stalwart Erinn Frechette, but principal trombonist John Bartlett stole all the scenes, emphatically partitioning the many episodes and injecting Shosty’s comedy with just two oompah notes. From that lighthearted opening – antithetical to what all Ninth Symphonies should be in the wake of Beethoven’s behemoth – we plunged into the depths and dolor of the Moderato, the lengthiest movement in this lapidary stunner. Principal clarinetist Taylor Marino, bolstered by section mate Samuel Sparrow, set the doleful tone of this sharply contrasting movement (again antithetical to the triumphal music Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin expected in 1945), achingly extended by two other principal winds, flutist Victor Wang and Neubert. Dreary strings increased the profundity of this oppressed lament, with Marino returning to soar above it in near-manic anguish.

It’s easy to lose your place after this unforgettable pairing of light and dark movements because the last three are played without pause, steadily increasing in intensity until a steady locomotion of victorious woodwinds are prodded into accelerating by the pulsations of the lower strings. These, in turn, triggered and excited the violins. Blaring brass then drove the journey into complete madness – and off the rails. Adding to the overwhelming bite of this sonic climax, the slashing, plucking, and sawing of the bowstrings across the stage added vivid visual drama.

Photos by Perry Tannenbaum

With a Riddling Program, Sphinx Virtuosi Youthfully Inspire Symphony’s Gala

Review: Sphinx Virtuosi @ Charlotte Symphony’s Annual Gala

By Perry Tannenbaum

October 9, 2024, Charlotte, NC – It’s always encouraging when an annual gala at least partially sheds its patrician aura of black ties, ball gowns, and champagne toasts. So I heartily applauded Charlotte Symphony’s musical director emeritus Christopher Warren-Green when, instead of mentioning crass sums of moneys raised or needed, he notified us that a part of tonight’s proceeds would be sent to those in dire straits in Western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene. In an even more unexpected gesture, the evening’s guests, Sphinx Virtuosi, announced that they would linger in Charlotte to play an additional concert on Friday at Charlotte Preparatory School – free if you bring a Hurricane Helene contribution.

They all worked well, together and apart, in gifting the gala audience at Belk Theater with a fine show, though not exactly what was initially planned. Or even what was listed in the printed program. Instead, a series of changes to the program were announced by email before and after the program went to press. Even then, a couple of new wrinkles emerged after the lineup seemed to be settled in the last inbox update on September 19. Maybe the plutocrats who dined and toasted earlier at the pre-concert cocktail and dinner sessions got a heads-up.

As a result of the first alteration, changing the title of LA-based composer Levi Taylor’s from American Forms to Daydreaming (A Fantasy on Scott Joplin), the opening segment of the concert became an explicitly extended tribute to Joplin. Actually, the Overture from Joplin’s only surviving opera, Treemonisha (1911), was nearly as new as Taylor’s offering and similar in length. The orchestration chosen by Warren-Green, arranged by Jannina Norpoth with Jessie Montgomery (a Sphinx Medal of Excellence winner in 2020), was premiered last year in Toronto as part of a “reimagining” of Joplin’s opera, so it didn’t quite sound like any of the handful of versions that Spotify can offer. Principal clarinetist Taylor Marino was brilliant playing the catchy recurring theme, an instrumental assignment that Norpoth reaffirms, but principal trumpeter Alex Wilborn’s spot struck me as a lively improvement upon Norpoth’s predecessors.

In a shorter, no-intermission program, it was nice to have a proper mood-setter leading into Taylor’s premiere – and Sphinx Virtuosi’s entrance – rather than a genial throwaway aperitif. Paradoxically, the Joplin overture, aimed for an opera house, was not as raggy as Taylor’s new work, an homage to the Joplin music we’re most familiar with. Personably introduced by cellist Lindsey Sharpe, the piece had an engaging solo spot for principal cellist Tommy Mesa and a refreshing jauntiness. Amazing how much more highbrow and classical the Joplin idiom sounds when you ditch the piano so justifiably associated with the “King of Ragtime.” Taylor took a well-deserved, enthusiastically applauded bow when concertmaster Alex Gonzalez pointed him out in the audience.

Sphinx’s outreach to Helene victims is quite natural when you consider its DNA. Conceived in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan in 1997, Sphinx quickly became an important of young Black and Latino talent with its annual junior and senior competitions, open to musicians up to age 26, and its Performance Academy, a competitive boot camp, where faculty members include Norpoth, Gonzalez, and second violinist Rainel Joubert – who would play in the Delights and Dances string quartet when the Michael Abels composition, commissioned by Sphinx, had its Charlotte premiere.

The full ensemble departed – all too briefly – as Warren-Green and CSO delivered a more familiar Leonard Bernstein overture to his opera, Candide. If Sphinx had lingered offstage longer, the CSO performance might have been more prudently paced. Dynamics were OK, but when piece started off too swiftly, there was little room for Symphony to speed up when the piece thundered and thrust to its climax. The whole acceleration plus crescendo effect, so exciting in multiple Rossini overtures, was never even a possibility, surely the nadir of Warren-Green’s work with CSO as far back as I can remember.

Then the listed world premiere of Curtis Stewart’s Drill went AWOL, along with guest percussionist Britton-René Collins. This surprise was less of a disaster than the lackluster Bernstein, for the Sphinx Virtuosi returned instead with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Allegro Moderato, the opening movement from his Four Novelleten (1903) for string orchestra. So many of Coleridge-Taylor’s principal works have yet to be recorded that it’s probable that this excavation, listed as Op. 59 in Wikipedia, has yet to get a hearing outside of Sphinx’s orbit – another gladdening example of the ensemble’s vital and generous outreach.

All the remaining works were glorious, throwing the Bernstein blooper far into our rearview mirrors. It helped a little to know your Vivaldi when Sphinx moved upstage to merge with the CSO as tango king Astor Piazzola’s “Verano Porteño (Buenos Aires Summer)” movement from his Four Seasons of Buenos Aires filled the stage with violinist Adé Williams as guest soloist. For those who saw Aisslinn Nosky playing the complete Vivaldi at the Charlotte Bach Festival, the Piazzola Four Seasons evoked some pleasant nostalgia, especially since the Festival Orchestra, like the Virtuosi, often performs without a conductor.

Williams, a winner of the Sphinx Junior Division back in 2012, still played with youthful vitality and joy. Both Symphony and Warren-Green were obviously fond of her playing, her swooping glisses, and the tango twists Piazzola brought to his baroque inspiration. Controversial in Argentina for his modifications of the trad tango – cab drivers often turned him away! – this summer piece was popular enough for Piazzola to draw encouragement for him to complete his seasonal cycle. The Belk audience responded favorably as well, with their first standing O of the evening.

The Abels piece was an even longer, grander gatherum, with the string quartet arriving upstage where Williams had just stood. Joubert and CSO principal second violin were to Warren-Green’s left opposite CSO principal viola Benjamin Geller and cellist Gabriel Cabezas, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence winner in 2016. The Delights were rather delicate before the composer, who famously co-wrote the acclaimed Omar with Rhiannon Giddens, gradually ramped up to the Dances.Cabezas was more than able to eloquently launch Abel’s slow-building piece, which tacked leftward after his engaging solo with additional solo spots for the rest of the quartet members.

Nor was Abels in any hurry to layer on the orchestra, for their first contributions were background pizzicatos behind the full quartet before they picked up their bows. The piece is no less than the title work on a 2013 album recorded by the Harlem Quartet and the Chicago Sinfonietta conducted by Mei-Ann Chen. Definitely worth a listen if you missed the gala – and Abels’ Global Warming leads off the Sphinx Virtuosi’s recent Songs of Our Times release, their first album. Some rousing fiddling embroidered the loud and lively climax of Delights & Dances, easily the most epic piece of the night, programmed in exactly the right spot.

Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s Conga del Fuego Nuevo (1996) was no less appropriately placed in the encore slot, starting up white-hot and danceable without lowering its flame. Fully recovered from his Bernstein misadventure, Warren-Green not only led the combined ensembles zestfully, he exhibited some winsome showmanship of his own, not only bidding Wilborn to stand up for his solos on muted and unmuted trumpet, but also commanding the winds and the brass to rise when moments came. How can a piece we’ve never heard before sound so familiar? Maybe via discreet borrowing and insistent repetition. No matter, CSO’s jolly encore became a curtain call at the same time – and a wonderful welcome to the 2024-25 season. Hopefully, the Coleridge-Taylor and the Abels were previews of the next Sphinx recording.

Photos by Perry Tannenbaum