Scaling Back on Brassy Pomp, OpCarolina Brings Us a More Classic and Elegant Aïda

Review: Opera Carolina Presents Aïda

By Perry Tannenbaum

2022~Aïda-35

April 7, 2022, Charlotte, NC – Premiered in Egypt in late 1871 and brought home to Milan less than two months later, Giuseppe Verdi’s Aïda has become synonymous with all that’s grandiose and spectacular in grand opera. Opera Carolina has now produced this signature work nine times since its founding in 1948, only once allowing more than a decade to go by between productions. An eight-year interval is about the average in Charlotte, which we would have had if the current production has arrived, as originally scheduled, at the end of the 2020-21 season. The postponement seemed to benefit the design team responsible for the visuals; set designer Roberto Oswald, costumer Annibal Lapiz, and lighting designer Michael Baumgarten; all of whom collaborated on the 2013 production here at Belk Theater. A year further in the distance, deferred by the pandemic, this Aïda was perhaps fresher and certainly more welcome.2022~Aïda-14

With the exception of the Opera Carolina Chorus and baritone Mark Rucker reprising his Amonasro, the Ethiopian king, all of the faces onstage were new, especially tenor Arnold Rawls, substituting for the indisposed Gianluca Sciarpeletti as Radames on short notice. Infusing more freshness, almost upstaging the principals in the big scenes, were the elegant touches and classic symmetries of stage director Linda Brovsky and choreographer Gabriella Sevillano with dancers from Corta Jaca. Once again, Ancient Egypt was a no-twerking zone, graced with processions and tableaus that jibed with the times. Conducting his Verdi with customary panache, artistic director James Meena discreetly scaled back on the brassiness of the triumphal scene, recognizing that a parade of subdued Ethiopian prisoners, fettered in chains, isn’t the most glorious spectacle in 2022, when images of wartime destruction clutter our news media.2022~Aïda-07

Intertwined with the spectacle indoors and outdoors, in the blaze of day and the hush of night, was a poignant love triangle, heightened by the scintillating debut of mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin as Amneris, the cunning, jealous, amorous, and conflicted princess of Egypt. The smoothness of her arias, particularly the “Vieni amor mio” anticipating Radames’s arrival in Act 2, nicely chimed with her cool and confident manner, for once making the prospect of someday reigning with her over Egypt worth considering for the undeniably ambitious Radames. Conquering this princess’s heart was on a par with conquering Ethiopia. Also tilting the triangle, presumably because of a lack of rehearsal, was the slow-to-ignite chemistry between Rawls as Radames and Karen Slack, making her Charlotte debut as Aïda.

Launching his debut, Rawls didn’t show us all he can do vocally in his “Celeste Aïda,” and Slack similarly fell short on the self-reproachful “Ritorna vincitor!” – too nervous and melodramatic in realizing that a victory for her beloved Radames meant defeat for her native Ethiopia, and possibly death for her father, the king. More vulnerability and youthful confusion were needed here, and we never had a vivid impression that Aïda was observing even demure caution, let alone simulating deference, in keeping her royal identity from her mistress, Amneris.

2022~Aïda-21After intermission, both Slack and Rawls ascended to loftier levels, achieving parity with Martin. I was frankly surprised – and delighted – by how beautifully Slack sang the iconic “O patria mia” aria in the pivotal nocturnal scene in front of the Temple of Isis. The missing chemistry between Slack and Rawls then arrived with such a rush that it seemed like Aïda might forget to coax Radames into divulging his key military secret to the eavesdropping Amonasro. Martin and Rucker helped this denouement to crackle with tension, though Rucker wasn’t quite as imperious and intimidating as he was in 2013.2022~Aïda-23So the unique two-tiered finale played really well, with all three principals in top form. Rawls and Slack, buried alive as the lovers, consoled each other sweetly in their love duet as Aïda managed to sneak into the tomb and share Radames’s punishment for betraying his country. Meanwhile, Martin completed Amneris’s graceful arc above them, remorseful for triggering the downfalls of her beloved and her rival, wishing both of them peace.

Credit Brovsky and Sevillano for the stateliness and elegance of the public scenes, the one at the Temple of Vulcan, where the beneficence of Ptah is invoked, and the triumphal scene where Pharoah and Amneris preside. Song Zaikuan was a resplendent Pharoah, Jordan Bisch declaimed with stony certitude as Ramfis, the high priest, and Katherine Kuckelman was a sublime High Priestess – all in costumes to die for.

With both a matinee and an evening performance scheduled for Saturday, this review serves as a reliable guide to the upcoming evening encore. Only Bisch and Zaikuan will be on hand for the Saturday matinee – along with Meena’s sure hand with the score.

Originally published on 4/9 at CVNC.org

Charlotte’s Jazz Scene Takes a Big-Name Leap

Review: Bigger Names Are Invading Our Smaller, Club-Sized Venues, Bringing an Overdue World-Class Vibe

By Perry Tannenbaum

Kat-Edmonson

Singer-songwriter Kat Edmonson has performed on Austin City Limits, A Prairie Home Companion, and Letterman. She has sung at Carnegie Hall, the Montreux Jazz Festival, and Blue Note in Japan. Her 2020 concept album, Dreamers Do, topped Billboard’s traditional jazz chart, and she is not a stranger to the Southeast. Edmonson was a featured performer at Spoleto Festival USA in 2014, and I caught her gig at Savannah Music Festival in the spring of 2019.

Amazingly enough, Edmonson has been to the QC on numerous occasions – but not with her band.

“My greatest link to Charlotte,” she tells me in an exclusive interview, “is that my childhood friend – best friend – lives there, and I’ve often been to Charlotte to visit her. But not for any other reason, and I haven’t been to any jazz clubs in town.”

That is changing in a big way. Offering two sets on April 9, Edmonson is near the front of a grand parade of big-name jazz artists who will be marching in and out of the Middle C Jazz Club, playing to newly unmasked, capacity-sized audiences, newly liberated from the pandemic.Delfeayo-Marsalis

We’ve seen some of these players, like Kirk Whalum and Delfeayo Marsalis, before – at special events dating back to JazzCharlotte in the late ‘80s and, more recently, at Charlotte Jazz Festivals presented by Blumenthal Performing Arts. Jazz fans had to satisfy themselves with hoping that these special events, held indoors and outdoors at large venues, would return to us annually with such groovy cargo as Diane Schuur, Dave Brubeck, the Harper Brothers, Maria Muldaur, Renée Marie, and the Jazz @ Lincoln Center Orchestra.Kirk Whalum

Now the big names are playing our smaller venues, creating a more intimate jazz club vibe. Headliners following in Edmonson’s wake at Middle C include Nicole Henry (April 15-16), Joey DeFrancesco (May 20), Jonathan Butler (June 3-4), Delfeayo Marsalis & The Uptown Jazz Orchestra (June 10), Kirk Whalum (July 15-16), Jeff Kashiwa (July 22), Jeff Lorber (September 9-10), and Euge Groove (November 11-12).

“We just had Gerald Albright, and then we just had Norman Brown, and they sold out,” says Middle C club owner Larry Farber. “We’ve got Brubeck Brothers (April 7) coming in, I mean it’s been really, really good. February and March have been our two biggest months since we opened in November 2019. Knock on wood, we’re on an upward trajectory.”

And in case you hadn’t noticed, the Jazz Room just announced their Season 16 – and boy, have they ever upped their game, bringing in such luminaries as Donald Harrison (April 8-9), Emmet Cohen (May 20-21), Jeff Tain Watts (July 8-9), and Pedrito Martinez (September 2-3) to their monthly series at the Blumenthal’s Stage Door Theater.Joey-DeFrancesco

A couple of these headliners, Henry and Martinez, can claim recordings that have now lingered for at least two months on Jazz Week’s chart of most-played albums on jazz radio, both peaking in the top 5; and a couple more, DeFrancesco and Cohen, are in the cumulative top 50 for the past year, with Joey D at the top of the heap.

Who could have imagined such a bounty of talent heading our way, such an upward trajectory, and such jazz jubilation just a year ago? We were smack in the middle of our COVID tribulations, more spikes in illnesses and deaths still on the horizon, with so many businesses around the country gasping for air.

“We were off and flying before the pandemic,” Farber recalls. “I think the pandemic became a catalyst. Because people then had to wait months and years to get back out, so I think now all this pent-up demand, in addition to what we already knew was going to be a demand in the market, gave us a double boost, and it’s really propelled us in a big way.”

Everywhere, artists and presenters were in survival mode after the abrupt shutdowns of March 2020. Farber and his business partners, including sons Reid and Adam, were forced to shut down completely for two months. When Middle C reopened in May, it was because they were the only jazz venue in town that could be classified as a restaurant.

Even so, state guidelines only allowed the Farbers to seat 60-70 patrons, a far cry from the inventory of 170-180 tickets they’re pre-selling now for their highest-profile attractions. To keep their doors open, they would have to delay booking big-name talent – and defer their dream of giving Charlotte the world-class jazz club they felt we deserved.

Edmonson, meanwhile, had been in the middle of a 40-city tour promoting Dreamers Do when everything shut down. Her hibernation was even more stifling professionally, but eventually, she was able to open an amazing window to bridge the gulf between the petite singer and her devoted fans. It was a weekly podcast, The Kat Edmonson Show, and it ultimately logged 66 episodes through last December, when her valedictory Christmas show, tethered to her latest Christmas album, drew an arena-sized crowd of 12,000 viewers.

With a barebones production originating in her living room in front of a cellphone camera, Edmonson found that her show not only sustained her connection with her fans, it actually strengthened it. The new medium offered unexpected advantages.

“I was able to reach them more readily and more regularly than I did even when I toured!” Edmonson exults. “On a tour, I go to one place and maybe I’ll come back two years later. In this case, I was able to reach my people once a week for an hour and a half.”

If you watch any of the archived episodes on YouTube, you can see Kat’s secret sauce working in real-frozen-replayable time. Many, many of the people tuning in to her show leave their marks in a column of chats, varying in length, that frequently scroll down the right side of the screen while Edmonson sings – and Kat interacts with these texts, acknowledging her followers by name and city, responding randomly, between songs and in the middle of them, to people who are new to the show and to those she recognizes from previous powwows.

“We all got to know one another in a really wonderful way, and eventually we were all remarking about how much it was like going to camp or something – like a campfire!” Edmonson recalls. “We would look forward to the Sunday meeting where we could all reconvene and talk about our week, on what’s ahead, and what was going on in our lives. The group that would tune in ultimately voted to name themselves because they felt like we were all part of a club. They suggested different names, and they voted for ‘The Dreamers.’ So when I go out now to play shows, people come up and say, ‘I’m a Dreamer!’ That’s really fun.”

Since Dreamers is largely a collection of Disney songs from the past century, obviously dating back all the way to Snow White (1937), maybe the Edmonson Show groupies should have named themselves the Kat-keteers, like Mickey Mouse Club members of yesteryear. Edmonson certainly hasn’t forgotten her fans’ loyalty, for in her mind, she is picking up the Dreamers Do tour that was abruptly halted two years ago. Dreamers who show up at 300 S. Brevard Street for one of Edmonson’s Middle C sets will hear plenty from that beloved album that has bonded them.

And they’ll be in two clubs at the same time. Watching multiple dreams come true.

Singing in a karaoke-like format to pre-recorded tracks set down by her long-time pianist Roy Dunlap, schmoozing between songs about her upcoming plans, dressed down and sporting a headset, Edmonson would often look away from viewers of The Kat Edmonson Show to catch up with her chat feed, taking requests as well as names, changing her prepared songlist on-the-fly. Definitely a funky, low-budget look and feel.Jeff_Lorber

Farber didn’t have the luxury of taking a low-budget road during Middle C’s semi-hibernation. A Charlotte native, his jazz memories go all the way back to Jonathan’s Jazz Cellar, which pre-dated the brief flowering of JazzCharlotte. After witnessing the recent success of the QC’s monthly jazz series, the Jazz Room series piloted by Lonnie Davis and the Jazz at the Bechtler Museum series led by saxophonist Ziad Rabie, Farber felt that Charlotte, a world-class city, deserved a full-time, for-profit, seven-shows-a-week jazz venue.

That was his bucket-list dream. Even before the pandemic, Farber sensed sufficient interest around town to make it all come true.

“We invested over $1 million to bring the best venue, the best sound system, and to make this all about music,” he says. “I’m lucky to have an investor group that’s not interested in seeking an 18 to 20% return as much as building for the future. And we’re doing that by reinvesting our profits in the talent.”

The model that the Farbers are activating is a schedule that will bring us 60-70% regional talent and 30-40% big names. So we’re probably talking 2-3 shows with big names in the weekly lineup of seven ticketed events. Like Edmonson, Middle C found that livestreaming was a useful tool in coping with COVID restrictions, opening a window that could potentially yield new recruits to their music.

“Best free marketing tool ever!” he quips.

As a revenue stream, streaming is only a trickle according to Farber, but it will provide fans of the big names a fresh avenue of access when tables and booths sell out. Middle C has been more preoccupied with enhancing the experience on site at the tables and making it appealing to a wider audience. Farber boasts a great bar menu and estimates 20 small plates and desserts to choose from on his menu – about triple what was being served before the 2020 shutdown.

That’s targeting a vibe like such Manhattan hotspots as Dizzy’s, the Blue Note, and Smoke – and not like the legendary Village Vanguard, the quintessential jazz cellar. Audacious and enterprising.

“What we’ve brought to Charlotte is unique,” Farber says, “and I think we’ve now become one of the biggest jazz names on the East Coast.”

2019~Savannah-17 copy

Edmonson has also gone beyond podcasting in widening her horizons over the past two years. Most of the songs she sang on her podcasts were originals she hasn’t recorded yet. There are drawers full of notebooks yet to be mined, and the songwriter claims to have written her first song at the age of nine, giving her about 28 years to pad her inventory. Some of those song will be in the mix at Middle C, along with others from Dreamers Do and recordings she made before 2020.

Kat dramatically broke out of her pop princess, Disney jazzer, and podcasting queen cocoons by appearing recently off-off-Broadway in The Hang, an edgy Taylor Mac musical, drawing reviews that parallel her past recording and concert triumphs. Aside from a year of study under the live oaks at the College of Charleston, Edmonson also graduated after two years at The William Esper Studio in New York City, where she studied the Meisner acting method.

So yes, Edmonson is eyeing possible opportunities in TV, film, and even straight plays. But no, when her style is described as absorbing the recordings of Blossom Dearie, Billie Holiday, or even country crooners like Patsy Cline, expect Edmonson to repudiate any such artifice – and to push back a little if you try to pigeonhole her as a jazz singer.

“It’s just me,” she says when accused of a persona. “I know that I’m forthcoming. I can be disarming. I know that about me. I come in this very petite package. I would seem demure, but I am actually very straightforward and opinionated, and I think I affect people in that way. Meanwhile, quite friendly. And I don’t mince words! I say what I mean, and I sing what I mean. Nothing ambiguous. You know, when I meet someone, I like to look them in the eye, and I think I perform that way.”

Yet after watching a full Kat podcast and speaking with her for over 40 minutes, I was able to find a label that Edmonson allowed to stick.

“Do you want to be Peter Pan someday on stage?”

“Oh, I’d love it!” she instantly exclaimed. “Yes, there is no mistaking – and incidentally, I’ll be performing a song from Peter Pan in my set! You know, in the play I was recently in, I was cast as a fairy, and I sort of have that persona. Yes, I do.”

Jinjoo Cho and Joshua Gerson Make Impressive Belk Debuts

Review: Charlotte Symphony Plays Barber’s Violin Concerto

 By Perry Tannenbaum

2022~Barber Violin-20

March 25, 2022, Charlotte, NC – While Christopher Warren-Green’s tenure as music director at Charlotte Symphony winds down, as he transitions to the roles of conductor laureate and artistic adviser in seasons to come, the appearances of guest conductors at Belk Theater and Knight Theater are gaining an extra aura, an extra sparkle of excitement. For this stately parade of baton-wielders can now be construed as a prolonged set of auditions as audiences, Symphony execs, and orchestra musicians make up their minds on who should follow in maestro Warren-Green’s footsteps. Suddenly, everything going on behind the scenes at Symphony is freshly cloaked in intrigue.

Was the absence of Kwamé Ryan, listed on our own calendar as guest conductor, a last-minute indication that he is fielding offers elsewhere and withdrawing from candidacy? Was his replacement, Joshua Gersen from the New York Phil and the New World Symphony, a hot new prospect for our upcoming vacancy, or was Symphony’s substitution based on Gerson’s availability and preparedness for the planned program? With Jinjoo Cho slated to play Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto as the headline piece, Gerson’s readiness needed to be on par with the musicians’ for that work, since they had presumably mastered their parts sufficiently to greet Cho and Gerson at rehearsals when they arrived.

No notice of the substitution came our way via email, but changes weren’t so last-minute that Symphony’s program booklet couldn’t be changed in time for Cho’s Charlotte debut with Gerson. Digital brochures, thankfully, can be altered more nimbly than printed editions, the pre-pandemic norm. Impressively enough, Gerson was able to conduct the preamble to Cho’s appearance, Errollyn Wallen’s Mighty River, a 2007 British piece that certainly isn’t standard rep. César Franck’s Symphony in D minor, however, had to be jettisoned, replaced after intermission by Robert Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony No. 3. Some of the answers about what was going on behind the scenes were answered – you have to pay attention, folks! – by the announcement of Symphony’s 2022-23 season earlier in the week. Ryan resurfaces as one of the 10 guest conductors who will continue the pageant of candidates, and Franck’s Symphony also resurfaces as part of next season’s classics playlist, but they are no longer linked on the same program.2022~Barber Violin-02

Subscribers who were not attuned to these program and performer shuffles probably didn’t notice any significant glitches. I’d have to say that Symphony’s musicians not only rose to the occasion but were energized by its challenges. If that didn’t happen before they assembled on the Knight Theater stage, then Gerson’s extended and enthusiastic introduction to the music could have provided the spark. As relaxed and genial as he was speaking to the audience, Gerson was as instantly intense when he faced away from us to his musicians.

Born in Belize in 1958, Wallen was commissioned to write a piece celebrating the bicentennial of the repeal of the Slave Trade Act. Since the British Parliament passed that landmark legislation on March 25, 1807, Charlotte Symphony’s first performance of the piece was a celebration in itself, staged exactly 215 years later. Principal French hornist Byron Johns, played no small part in assuring that the debut was a success, playing the affecting “Amazing Grace” melody that frames Wallen’s composition and often infuses it throughout. The title was Wallen’s affirmation of the flow of history toward freedom, driven by the yearning and pursuit of all who respond to their human instincts and nature’s law. Horns and strings wasted no time in percolating their evocations of that flow. Principal timpanist Jacob Lipham furnished the most distinctive landmarks along the way, with principal harpist Andrea Mumm Trammell adding vivid detail, supplemented by Erinn Frechette tweedling her piccolo. Wallen handed off solo honors to the oboe, flute, and other winds before handing it back to Johns, with principals Hollis Ulaky on the oboe and flutist Victor Wang making their colors count the most.2022~Barber Violin-19

We’ve seen both Joshua Bell and Elmar Oliveira playing the Barber concerto here in Charlotte over the past 25 years, so to say that Cho’s performance with Gerson eclipsed them both is no small claim. Head-to-head, Cho generated more electricity than Oliveira, and behind the glamorous violinist, Gerson and the Charlotte Symphony got out of her way more deftly than the Houston Symphony and Christoph Eschenbach were able to manage in 1998. Cho was sublime in the opening Allegro and seemed to summon a special ardor from Gerson and the orchestra in their response – I don’t think we ever did get enough of the catchy main theme.

In the hushed Andante that followed, Cho may have been even more magical, more transported by the score. The concluding Presto in moto perpetuo, rewritten according to Gerson to provide a greater challenge to the soloist, seemed to become a new and spontaneous challenge that Cho and the orchestra hurled back at each other. There actually was a pause for the native Korean to gather herself as the ensemble rushed on. After a visible deep breath, Cho’s fresh onslaught was even more fiery and swift.2022~Barber Violin-24

The power of the Barber drove a fellow critic and his spouse to the back of the hall after intermission, but the Schumann proved worthy of staying for, not at all an anticlimax. The zest and drive of the opening Lebhaft of the “Rhenish” were unlike anything I’d heard in live performances before – certainly better than anything on the complete set of Schumann symphonies by Roy Goodman and the Hanover Band, ballyhooed as the first complete recording on period instruments (and a complete RCA dud). No, you have to listen to the John Eliot Gardiner set on DGG, also on period instruments, to find an equal to the glories unfolded at Knight Theater by our Symphony.

Gerson didn’t quite achieve the lightning bolts you’ll hear from Gardiner in the opening movement, though he sustained a wondrous sense of expectancy in the relatively quieter section between the great pinnacles. The middle movements, culminating in the rich heraldry and solemnity of the penultimate Feirlich fourth movement, achieved parity with Gardiner’s benchmark recording for me. But it was the grand military Lebhaft finale where Gerson and Symphony surpassed what was previously on record, establishing a new highwater mark for the “Rhenish.”

Originally published on 3/27 at CVNC.org

“Women in Jazz” Bops and Enlightens, A Giant Step in Resuming the QC’s Nightlife

Review: JazzArts Charlotte Presents “Women in Jazz”

 By Perry Tannenbaum

2022~Women in Jazz-25

March 17, 2022, Charlotte, NC – Aside from the mix of masked and unmasked concertgoers, the revocation of social distancing, ushers who skipped over asking for my proof of vaccination, and the absence of masked musicians onstage, the most gladdening indication that nightlife in Charlotte is returning to normal may be the three-day Women in Jazz residency at the Stage Door Theater. The JazzArts Charlotte celebration of Women’s History Month, paused by the global pandemic in March 2020, emphatically hit the play button – with a completely new guest lineup – to the delight of a nearly full house. Memories of the isolation, quarantines, and lockdowns imposed upon us by COVID weren’t totally erased, since one of the musicians, Francesca Remigi, was a last-minute replacement for the originally scheduled drummer, Allison Miller, absent due to illness.2022~Women in Jazz-07

My wife Sue and I were nearly absent as well, due to St. Patrick’s Day traffic and a 21-minute delay on I-77 induced by a crash, but radio personality Curtis Davenport, emceeing with his usual verve, had enough to say to prevent us from missing any of the music. Leading the female quartet, pianist Ellen Rowe had plenty to say in her own right, and persistently solicited questions from the audience, dispensing with the all-too prevalent assumption that people at a jazz concert must all be aficionados. Rowe was wonderfully in tune with the idea of a residency, not merely providing the title of every song but also some info about it. No hipster “of course that was…” codas after any of the tunes, a refreshing change.

This approach jibed with the discreetly educational vibe of the Jazz Room series and with the JazzArts mission. While the ambiance at the Stage Door is very much like a jazz club when JazzArts invades, the walls sport poster-sized photos of jazz greats like Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington, and a big screen monitor suspended behind the bandstand presents a slideshow of other jazz greats – not so quickly that it becomes distracting. At Women in Jazz, hardly a man was onscreen, the slides presenting a potpourri of influential woman, from pianist Mary Lou Williams and trombonist Melba Liston, way back when, to today’s Artemis supergroup.2022~Women in Jazz-24

Downstage on the bandstand, saxophonist Sharel Cassity was a dominant presence, playing both alto and soprano. Yet she tilted toward alto, especially in the heritage and tribute pieces, bending toward the higher instrument when she played on Rowe’s originals. Upstage, bassist Marion Hayden didn’t simply make the trip to recede demurely into the background, as we could have assumed when all three bandmates drew solo space on the opening “Kenny’s Quest,” a bopping tribute to contemporary altoist Kenny Garrett. The be-bop continued on “All the Things You Are,” Rowe supplying its Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie context while explaining how she inverted Gillespie’s famed preamble in her arrangement. Here Hayden not only set the tone with the inverted intro, she actively lurked after Cassity launched the familiar Jerome Kern melody and, following the full three-chorus solos from Rowe and Cassity, added three eloquent choruses of her own, firmly establishing that she would be part of the evening’s conversation.2022~Women in Jazz-06

Hayden was part of the framework on the bop staple that followed as well, spelling Cassity at the bridge in introducing the melody and reprising that role in the out-chorus. By this time, it was apparent how brilliantly Cassity could burn on alto, drawing a few delighted exclamations from the crowd. So we were curious to learn what kind of flame she could ignite when she picked up her soprano sax. Unfortunately, the first two originals that she played on that instrument, Rowe’s “Sylvan Way” and “Defractions,” didn’t require her to turn up the tempo or the heat, and on Rowe’s “Phoenix” – proving, according to the composer, that she could write a happy tune – Cassity didn’t get enough blowing time to achieve lift-off. But her tone and lyricism on soprano were gorgeous, true to Rowe’s prevailing New Age flavor, sounding more comfortable when confined to the melody than she was on alto.

Rowe’s style was rather chameleonic when she played. On “Kenny’s Quest” and Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move,” her shuttling between light-fingered and heavily percussive passages hinted at a wisp of McCoy Tyner influence. After the latter gem, she hoped that at least the bandstand moved. When we reached Oscar Pettiford’s “Blues in the Closet,” where everyone excelled, including Remigi at her drumkit, Rowe seemed to be channeling a slew of ‘50s keyboard greats, Bud Powell or John Lewis when she frolicked with her right hand in the treble, Red Garland or Erroll Garner when she switched to two-fisted block chords. I was afraid that Cassity’s performance of the melody would go without the wonderful harmony Pettiford wrote for it, so I found myself singing it at one point. But Rowe came to the rescue, and thankfully, I could shut up.

Originally published on 3/19 at CVNC.org

Kirkwood’s “The Children” Asks Hard Questions of Good, Smart, Caring People

Review: Three Bone Theatre Presents The Children

 By Perry Tannenbaum

The Children1

March 13, 2022, Charlotte, NC – Two retired nuclear physicists, a husband and wife both in their sixties, have taken up residence in a cozy coastal UK cottage, where they are visited without receiving prior notice by a former co-worker they haven’t seen in some 38 years, also in her sixties. These are the only characters we see in Lucy Kirkwood’s acclaimed drama, now playing at The Arts Factory in a taut Three Bone Theatre production – and I can’t say that any of the three physicists ever mentions his or her parents. Nor are there any flashback scenes in this 90-minute one-act that take us back four decades or more to when these over-the-hill atomic whizzes were young and previously together. So why exactly has Kirkwood called her dystopian drama The Children?The Cast of The Children

It’s the sort of question that rewards repeated asking as the plot proceeds and we learn more and more about the past that Hazel, Robin, and Rose have shared – and the daunting future ahead of them. There are a couple of substantial answers that gradually emerge, the subtler of these turning out to be personal and intimate. For the lives and careers of all three retirees have been shaped by past decisions to have or not to have children. More obvious, and more to the point, are the decisions that must soon be made in the wake of a disaster at the nuclear plant where all three of these physicists used to work, decisions that will impact not only their children, but also, locally and globally, the children – depending on how guilty, responsible, or obligated they feel.

We’re obviously dealing with a catastrophe on a scale equal to those at Chernobyl in 1986 and, even more pertinently with the earthquakes and tsunamis enfolded into Kirkwood’s concept, Fukushima in 2011, five years before the commissioned piece premiered in London. The cottage where Hazel and Robin are living is perilously close to the fenced-off area surrounding Ground Zero, which remains destabilized. Amid the brevity of Rose’s visit, Kirkwood manages to spread a veil of nebulosity over the extent and permanence of the damage inflicted by the catastrophe. There’s an ongoing rationing of food and electricity, but the couple’s isolation and their aversion to the Internet puts a lid on the info we get. Hazel and Robin are retired, yes. But in light of their isolation, ignorance, and apathy, we might also say – as Rose probably would – that they are resigned, not really thinking about how they might best use their remaining time.

Certainly, the cottage dwellers aren’t stressing over their culpability for the devastation that surrounds them when Rose intrudes. They would seem to be following Candide’s example at the end of Voltaire’s wicked, wicked novel, tending to their own gardens – or in Robin’s case, their fields, where he makes his daily escape before coming home to dine on Hazel’s homegrown salads. After 38 years, Hazel and Rose still have each other sized up rather well, Hazel knowing more about Rose’s attachment to her husband – and vice versa – than he would believe, and Rose knowing something about Robin’s wife that he never even suspected. As Kirkwood interweaves these personal revelations with the possible global crisis engulfing them, we began to understand how a group of nuclear physicists could have been blind for so long to the fiery red flags signaling so clearly to them that nuclear catastrophe was at hand. In their personal and professional lives, they have seriously miscalculated.The Children- Robin and Hazel

Directed by Three Bone co-founder Robin Tynes-Miller, with set design by Ryan Maloney and props by Jackie Hohenstein, this Charlotte premiere huddles the audience around the action in an intimate stadium layout like a miniaturized Circle in the Square on Broadway. The humble coziness of the setting, not at all contradicted by Davita Galloway’s costume designs, make this cottage look more rusticated than most production photos that come up on a Google search. Likewise, Lillie Ann Oden and Michael Harris have a more weathered look than the London and Broadway marrieds, as if they had aimed their portraiture toward farmers in their sixties or physicists in their seventies.

This rustic approach actually has some advantages, for Mitzi Corrigan as their visitor seems slightly younger, more active, more enlightened, and more modern than her hosts at first blush. She claims to have forewarned Hazel and Robin via email before appearing at their doorstep, and the laptop she is toting backs her up, looking out of place here in this back-to-basics abode. When it becomes apparent that Rose has been around the neighborhood for some time on her personal crusade, we cannot be surprised that this couple – steeped in stasis – has been unaware.The Children- Hazel and Rose

Another key thing that Tynes-Miller gets right, despite the longstanding hurts and grudges that will emerge among these former co-workers, is that all of them are good people, bonded together by the preventable tragedy that has broken them all. Oden has an edge to her as Hazel, dealing with the most guilts, savvy enough to be wary of Rose, yet the defensive chip on her shoulder is more like a light skillet held behind her back than a double-barrel shotgun dangling under her arm. She is polite, she is friendly, even loving, but you’ve got to coax it out of her now. As the former Don Juan of the nuclear plant, Harris mixes a shrunken amount of confident swagger into Robin and an occasional urge to dance into his prevailing disillusion, disappointment, and bitterness – with more to swallow heading his way. Beneath the crusty brooding, he’s tenderer, more considerate than his spouse, still sharp enough to be shocked and to make a quick decision.

Rose has had the most hurt to deal with over the years, yet Corrigan poured a sheen of insouciance and quiet purpose over her – until the old hurts and grudges spurted to the surface. She needed to be impressive in tamping down these emotions, with clear-eyed pragmatism and poise to succeed in her ultimate mission of persuasion. Or was it seduction that motivated her, as Hazel had good reason to suspect?The Children- Rose and Robin 1

Sadly, we cut all these people a hefty amount of slack because there is so much more than the overly hasty development of nuclear energy befouling our planet. Other industries are complicit in building a multitude of time bombs we constantly hear ticking around us, and many governments have dirty hands. Chernobyl and Fukushima have receded into the past, our gazes drawn to other filthy objects and humans. These ordinary people, for all the wrong they have done to each other, all the mess they have left for their children to clean up, are questioning whether they should continue sitting back, enjoying their retirement years, and doing absolutely nothing about it.

Maybe they’re the ones who should pitch in and help, despite the fact that no one person living in a toxic irradiated wasteland can even begin to turn the global tide. No, these fine actors are telling us as we look over their shoulders: many, many more ordinary people need to be doing the asking – and the acting.

“The Falling and the Rising” Offers a Kaleidoscopic View of the Military Experience

Review: Opera Carolina Presents The Falling and the Rising

 By Perry Tannenbaum

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March 11, 2022, Charlotte, NC – Four men give their lives to save just one woman soldier, a woman so severely injured that she must be placed in an induced coma to give her any chance of continued survival or even partial recovery. The math and the logic may not seem to add up unless you’ve served in the military or you’ve witnessed The Falling and the Rising, a fairly new opera by Zach Redler and Jerre Dye that may impact Opera Carolina audiences more freshly today than when it premiered in 2018.

Before COVID and Ukraine, when the White House was occupied by a grifter who labeled people who signed up for battlefield duty as “suckers,” the mentality passionately advocated by The Soldier protagonist – that military service is not only a commitment to give your life for your country but also a commitment to give your life for your soldiering comrades – may have seemed rabid, over-the-top, or naively gung-ho. After witnessing the bravery of so many healthcare workers routinely facing the perils of a deadly transmissible disease for the past two years and, more recently, the inspiring popular resistance of so many outgunned Ukrainians, we can likely view that military mentality – and those four soldiers’ sacrifice – as making more sense.2022~Falling and Rising-07

This brash Opera Carolina production, conducted by Emily Jarrell Urbanek and stage directed by Sam Mungo, brings the company to a new venue, the Sandra Levine Theatre in the gorgeously renovated Sarah Belk Gambrell Center, while it brings subscribers a radically different experience. Once the female Soldier is comatose, we’re carried along with her for the bulk of the opera on a kaleidoscopic cavalcade of dream sequences, so the military experience is conveyed to us not only by soldiers in battle and trauma, but also by dedicated doctors and anxious family.

The immersion begins in the Gambrell lobby, where you can pick up info on the Montford Point Marine Association and the Blue Star Mothers of Charlotte. You can also peep in on artworks and obtain a comprehensive coffee table book produced by Bullets & Bandaids, a non-profit veteran and civilian art project. Immersion couples with education at the Gambrell, so it’s fitting that the complex is on the Queens University campus, for the world premiere of The Falling and the Rising was also on academic soil at Texas Christian University, one of seven organizations that commissioned the piece.

A new work set in wartime might trigger a couple of red flags for traditional opera lovers averse to chaos and cacophony. But you’ll find that Redler’s score is comfortably tonal and melodic when soprano Melinda Whittington begins singing a birthday video into a laptop computer for her daughter’s upcoming thirteenth, apologizing and commiserating because they will not be together to celebrate. In fact, when Redler has Whittington pivoting to a shuffle beat, you might briefly wonder whether the composer has crafted a score that’s too casual and accessible.

The roadside IED explosion, with a striking video montage by designer Michael Baumgarten (lights/scenery/video), puts that worry permanently to rest. After the hospital huddle of doctors and a ZOOM consultation where the induced coma is prescribed, the opera is largely a series of extended arias and duets until we reach a closing paean to the men and women who serve, joined by a pre-chosen brigade of vets parading up to the stage from the audience.2022~Falling and Rising-23

Sound at the Levine is noticeably more resonant than the Belk Theater and marginally warmer than Knight Theater, halls where we normally hear Opera Carolina and Charlotte Symphony. Although directors might be tempted to mic student plays and musicals in this 1000-seat space, all of the soloists projected quite easily on opening night to Row M, where we were seated. Redler’s orchestration for 11 musicians balanced well with the singers, and Urbanek had no difficulty in coaxing a hearty variety of colors from her band, which included a French horn, clarinet, guitar, piano, two percussionists, and strings. There is an orchestra pit at the Levine, but it doesn’t protrude far – or impinge on the bond between audience and performer. When baritone Kenneth Overton as the Homecoming Soldier concluded his church sermon, seated in a wheelchair in front of a large wooden crucifix, it didn’t feel like he was calling across a wide gulf when he asked us for an “Amen!”2022~Falling and Rising-11

Gathered from interviews at Fort Myer, Fort Meade, and the famed Walter Reade Military Medical Center, Dye’s libretto was suffused with authenticity and often riveting. Mezzo-soprano Audrey Babcock exuded intensity as Staff Sergeant First Class Toledo, steely and tough as her nickname, which figures into the boot camp segment of her aria. Dominic Armstrong took us to the skies with his heroic tenor voice as Jumper, a First Sergeant who mixes hard-nosed honesty with patriotism as he readies Soldier for her first parachute jump. Parting words: “Don’t forget to pull the string!” After that uplift, bass-baritone Peter Morgan brought us back down to earth as Colonel, seen in civvies in his living room, hoping that his military wife will survive.2022~Falling and Rising-17

Each of these monologues was substantial enough to give Whittington a chance to rest her voice before she joined in duet, a mercy when you consider the extra decibels she can pour out. The most brutally honest testimony in this cavalcade came from Overton in his wheelchair as the Homecoming Soldier, ideally placed by Dye at the juncture of his libretto between the last of personal testimonies and our protagonist’s emergence from her coma. Also artful were the spins that Dye put on his title, for we quickly learned that The Falling and the Rising wasn’t simply, as we expected, about the traumas and dramas of battlefield injury and recovery. We first encountered “The falling and the rising” in the Soldier’s memories of her daughter, back when she was an infant and Soldier was simply a mom watching her baby’s breathing as she slept. Later it was the impending leap from an airplane, with all of its danger and exhalation.

So there is music and drama in this latest Opera Carolina production – and poetry as well.

Originally published on 3/13 at CVNC.org

Ukraine’s Colors Shine Through Charlotte Symphony Celebration

Review: Dona Nobis Pacem at Belk Theater

 By Perry Tannenbaum

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March 12, 2022, Charlotte, NC – When 57 musicians gathered at the Carolina Theatre on Tryon Street to present the inaugural Charlotte Symphony concert on March 20, 1932, none of them could have possibly predicted how the orchestra’s 90th anniversary would be celebrated in 2022. Three of the five pieces that Christopher Warren-Green conducted, nearing the end of his distinguished tenure as Symphony’s music director, hadn’t been written yet, and one of the composers hadn’t been born. Even last May, when CSO’s 2021-22 season was announced, Warren-Green himself couldn’t have predicted how grimly appropriate Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem would be for the occasion. As originally conceived, the program was an olive branch from England to America, three British composers conducted by one of the Crown’s finest, two of the pieces paying homage to Walt Whitman, our greatest poet.

A small dent in the all-English lineup turned up when Symphony’s Australian second trombone, Thomas Burge, finished enough of his to-be-continued “Charlotte Symphony Fanfare” for it to serve as a preamble to the orchestra’s celebration. What truly turned the tone of the anniversary festivities upside-down was Vladimir Putin’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, lending Dona Nobis Pacem – “Grant us peace” – unforeseen pertinence and meaning. With St. Patrick’s Day weekend revelers teeming along the sidewalks and spilling over onto Tryon and Fifth Streets, there was a dramatic contrast for concertgoers who became pedestrians shortly after hearing Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and the Dona Nobis at Belk Theater on Saturday night. The most festive of the night’s festivities were outside the hall.

Burge’s new composition will no doubt impress more when it takes its intended place at the launch of a future Symphony’s classics season and the composer’s showy post-pandemic staging can be realized: three brass choirs spread out across the Belk balcony. For the 90th, the brass battalion was confined behind the masked string sections, but the peep we had into the work-in-progress was sunny and glorious. Gustav Holst’s Walt Whitman Overture, a youthful piece completed in 1899 when the composer would turn 25, was arguably the most sustained celebration of the evening, though it might be somewhat deflating to learn that Holst had been dead for over 48 years when the piece was first performed in 1982. The transparent violins at the beginning, hovering over churning basses and cellos before flutes and brass peeped in, struck me more like Schubert than any American or British music. When the brass first broke through, however, there may have been a glint of Sousa, and the final swell of the piece was in a grand Victorian vein.

The Four Scottish Dances by Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006), premiered in 1957, were clearly the most winsome offering of the evening, shuttling between slow and fast tempos – not only between dances but sometimes within them. Inspired by Louis Armstrong more strongly than by Whitman, Arnold’s music displayed a more American élan, geniality, and broad humor than the other Brits’. If your head wasn’t spinning from the abrupt acceleration that Warren-Green called forth in the opening “Strathspey Pesante,” which ended with a pedestrian “shave and a haircut” phrase, then the slowdown in the ensuing Vivace (Reel), initiated by Joshua Hood galumphing on his bassoon, would certainly have caught your ear. And if that weren’t sufficient mischief, Warren-Green’s hambone slacking and slouching at the podium added a visual cue. Perish the thought that Maestro Warren-Green’s predecessor, Christof Perick, would ever have tainted himself with such levity.

After these pranks, which reminded me of the Western merriment in Copland’s folksier pieces, the work of principal harpist Andrea Mumm Trammell, principal flutist Victor Wang, and oboist Erica Cice was sublime in the penultimate “Hebridean Song,” shining through the shimmer of the strings. The concluding “Highland Fling” had as much Scottish flavor as the “Pesante,” rushing at us unabated with sudden shifts in volume, the tweedling of the high woodwinds answered by onrushes of orchestra colored with fiery alarms from the trombones.

If the customary programming conventions for galas were being observed, I’d strongly question the wisdom of delaying the comparatively solemn and serene Tallis Fantasia until after Arnold’s suite, which would have sent us off to intermission in a lighter mood. But Symphony president David Fisk had already solemnized the occasion by dedicating the concert “to Ukraine and the courage, strength, and resilience of its people,” a theme that would subsequently be echoed in the digital program and by Warren-Green, when he prefaced his performance of the Dona Nobis. By coincidence surely, Vaughan-Williams composed his 1910 Fantasia very similarly to Burge’s spanking new “Fanfare,” dividing his aggregation of strings into three parts, two string orchestras with a string quartet within the larger orchestra. Concertmaster Calin Ovidiu Lupanu had the last and most eloquent solo among those doled out to the four principal string players, but kudos should also go to principal violist Benjamin Geller, whose solo launched the memorable quartet episode.

What will stand out for me, however, was the extraordinary alchemy of this performance. Whether it has always been baked into Vaughan-Williams’ orchestration, maybe something special that Warren-Green was able to elicit from his musicians, or whether it was the unprecedented high placement of the small string orchestra on the platform where the Charlotte Master Chorale would soon sing, flush against the upstage vestigial pipes at the Belk… I could have sworn that there was a softly playing organ in the orchestral mix. Needless to say: amazing.2022~Dona Nobis Pacem-27

Those organ pipes were more verifiably involved in the culminating performance of the Dona Nobis Pacem, after more than 40 Master choristers filed in, followed by our two guest soloists: soprano Christina Pier and, in his Charlotte debut, bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch. It was then that Warren-Green dedicated this piece to the valiant, freedom-loving people of Ukraine. Between the moment that the maestro turned away from us and Symphony began to play, those silvery pipes, illuminated until then entirely in blue light, suddenly became halved into stripes of gleaming blue and yellow gold, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. A proud moment for us all.

Whether prescribed by COVID protocols, Warren-Green’s decree, or the unmasked singers’ personal preferences, Pier and Okulitch sat further apart than the vocal soloists we usually encounter at Symphony concerts. With Pier mostly singing the “Agnus Dei” refrain that contains the Latin title, and Okulitch confining himself in the middle movements in Walt Whitman’s English – and Old Testament translations in the Finale – the separation between the singers wasn’t awkward at all.

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Pier tended to sing with the orchestra and the choir, but there was an extended stretch where Okulitch, standing to Warren-Green’s right, was accompanied solely by Lupanu, seated to his left. So the tableau enhanced the intimacy of their duet. What was really unfortunate and compromising for us were the vast stretches of incomprehensible text from the chorus that Vaughan-Williams had scored so splendidly. If there had been supertitles above the stage or printed programs in our hands, the experience would have been even more powerful. Those of us who were able to download the digital program were adequately equipped, but the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center has had repeated problems with transmitting these copious, colorful, and informative materials.

In future performances where we’re expecting to follow along at the Belk, I will try to download the digital materials before I leave home. Clearest of all was the chorus’s mighty “Beat! Beat! Drums!” refrain from one of Whitman’s most metrical Civil War compositions. Even when we might be lost in the less familiar words of other war poems by the Good Gray Poet (“Reconciliation” and “Dirge for Two Veterans”), the music, the voices, and the colors of the fighting Ukrainians’ flag landed on us forcefully. It was thrilling.

Originally published on 3/14 at CVNC.org

Absent in 2020, Nnenna Freelon Offers a Heartfelt Raincheck

Review: Jazz @ the Bechtler Presents Nnenna Freelon

 By Perry Tannenbaum

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March 4, 2022, Charlotte, NC – We hadn’t seen or heard Nnenna Freelon singing in Charlotte for over four years before she returned for two shows with the Ziad Jazz Quartet last week, her latest Jazz at the Bechtler concert. The interval would have been just over two years if Freelon had appeared as scheduled at the Bechtler series’ all-star 10th anniversary celebration on January 3, 2020. While it’s tempting to assume that Freelon’s cancellation was part of her grieving process in the wake of her husband’s death of ALS the previous July, the six-time Grammy Award nominee had already gone into the recording studio in October 2019. The album that emerged from that stage of her grief processing, Time Traveler, was eventually released last May, so it could have come to us two years ago as the core of her canceled gig at the Bechtler, a nice little scoop for us.

Not to worry, after a bopping “Just Friends” warmup from his quartet, Ziad Rabie was now able to introduce Freelon as a seven-time Grammy nominee, with the outcome of her latest nomination for Time Traveler to be announced in Vegas on April 3. And there was also a scoop: Freelon will soon be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame, alongside such greats as Nina Simone, James Taylor, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Kate Smith, Loonis McGlohon, and Roberta Flack. The theme of Time Traveler was certainly evident in the concluding set we heard at 8:15, for it was doubly a time capsule, packaging songs we could have heard two years back at the originally-scheduled 10th anniversary gig alongside songs we did hear in November 2017.

There was nothing sneaky or accidental about the repeats, though Freelon didn’t point them out. As before, Freelon led off with her uptempo “Nature Boy,” rewriting the lyrics with a feminist twist the second time around after a searing soprano sax solo from Rabie. The ending was also the same, a “Moon River” that started off unusually mournful, hit a swinging midtempo, and eventually heated up to exultation. In a fascinating way, this questing read of “Moon River” merged Freelon’s time capsules together, for in 2017, she sang it as a tribute to two recently departed jazz greats, singer Al Jarreau and pianist Geri Allen, and she recorded it almost two years later as a tribute to her husband, famed architect Phil Freelon, who had designed Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro.

2022~Nnenna Freelon-01Did the audience give Freelon and bassist Ron Brendle a standing ovation for their deep, mesmerizing duet on Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark” because they recalled it fondly from 2017 – or because it was so achingly lovely and poignant now? Also back from 2017 was Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile,” with drummer Al Sergel navigating the transitions back and forth from Freelon’s waltzy 3/4 time to Rabie’s break-loose solo on tenor sax in a fleet 4/4 tempo. These non-lunar reprises were all from Freelon’s Homefree album of 2010, and so was her slowed-down and bluesy “I Feel Pretty,” complete with her 2017 exhortation to the men in the audience to sing out the title line, because we needed to answer for nearly all the ugliness in our world. Notwithstanding #MeToo, probably truer in 2022 than before.

Despite its aching moments striving to reach across “Moon River,” Time Traveler remembers and celebrates love far more than it bemoans loss. Aside from versions of the title composition, two tracks address the main theme, Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” and Jule Styne’s “Time After Time,” the one Freelon elected to bring to the Bechtler. Freelon repeated and obsessed over the title in a concluding cadenza that was every bit as ardent as her studio version, if not more so. Solos between the vocals, pianist Noel Freidline floating gracefully over Brendle’s bass, enhanced the soulfulness. But the album isn’t simply celebratory or sentimental, for Freelon gave Harold Arlen’s “Come Rain or Come Shine” a performance that was as down-to-earth as her spoken intro, confessing that she had no idea what she had said “I do” to at the altar when she and Phil were wed.2022~Nnenna Freelon-11

Always gorgeous, Freelon’s voice seems to be acquiring more varied textures. Up high, the Ella Fitzgerald sass is often joined with a Dinah Washington grit; and below, the Roberta Flack sensuousness occasionally gives way to a Carmen McRae worldliness and wisdom. The Freelon original, “Just You,” lost a little of its righteous gospel flavor in transitioning from the studio, where an organ and a guitar imparted a churchly tang, to the Bechtler’s lobby, where neither instrument was in attendance, though Rabie supplied superb fills on soprano sax. But a dominant motif of Freelon’s Time Traveler tribute is simply a return to songs that recapture the 1970’s, when the Phil-Nnenna romance first bloomed. Aside from “Time in a Bottle,” which serves double duty, Freelon revisits the ‘70s with Dionne Warwick’s “I Say a Little Prayer,” the Stylistics’ “You Make Me Feel Brand New,” and a Marvin Gaye medley.

Nnenna testified at the Bechtler to Phil’s adoration of “Betcha by Golly, Wow,” further evidence that he was a Stylistics fan, but he obviously wasn’t alone. Enhancing the studio version, Freelon was able to call upon the Bechtler audience to sing along with her on the refrain. Here the live instrumentation meshed almost perfectly with the studio performance as Freidline radically altered his piano timbre from acoustic to electric and Rabie more than ably substituted for Kirk Whalum in adding a smooth jazz vibe. As with “Moon River,” facets of Freelon’s concept came magnificently together. After remembering the 2017 Bechtler playlist by repeating some of it, she was giving us a raincheck on a hit she could have brought us in 2020, remembering her departed husband by singing a song they both loved. Through the mystery of music, we were singing along with Nnenna, joining her ritual of remembering Phil, while evoking memories of our own.

Originally published on 3/7 at CVNC.org

Brooklyn Grace Receives a Classic Museum

Review: BNS Productions Presents The Colored Museum

By Perry Tannenbaum

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In every decade since it premiered Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 1986, George C. Wolfe’s The Colored Museum has had a homegrown revival here in Charlotte. GM Productions premiered it up in the Attic Theatre at the old Afro-Am Cultural Center on 7th Street in 1993, and Carolina Actors Studio Theatre brought it to their C.A.S.T. location out in Plaza-Midwood ten years later. On Q Productions finally smuggled Wolfe’s 11 vignettes – or “exhibits” – into an Uptown site at Spirit Square in 2011.

Now BNS Productions has brought Colored Museum to its unlikeliest location, the Brooklyn Grace Venue, alias the Grace AME Zion Church on S Brevard Street. Each new revival more fully cements Wolfe’s satire as a classic – Winthrop U and UNC Charlotte have also chimed in with productions since 2009 – and each new resurrection that I see strikes me as fresh and hilarious as the first.

Of course, nothing compares with the edge and impact of your maiden encounter. Wolfe hurls a few choice barbs at white folk, mostly mocking their bland cruelty, but armed with an all-Black cast, it’s African-Americans and their culture that he assails with the most conspicuous gusto. All Colored Museum casts get to feast most hilariously on the sufferings and posturings of the Younger family in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Walter Lee’s wailings against “the man” in this “Last Mama-On-The-Couch Play” take a detour into Beau Willie Brown’s barbarity in Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls.CCC02756

Familiarity with those two stage gems helps you to savor Graham Williams, Sr.’s over-the-top brilliance as Walter-Lee-Beau-Willie, but his reappearance, immediately after intermission, as The Man only magnifies his triumph. For Wolfe delights especially in depicting the disfigurements that black people inflict upon themselves to survive and succeed in white America. The Kid, played by Jonathan Caldwell, must now disown and discard his Afro-comb, dashiki, autographed Stokely Carmichael photo, Afro-sheen, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone recordings, along with Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice – replaced, The Man tells him, by The Color Purple.

Black Power and protest must be tossed into the trashcan along with slavery if you wish to get to the top. The Kid is dismayed, incredulous, and beside himself when The Man reaches for… The Temptations Greatest Hits! Yes, if The Man is to feel totally comfortable in his black business suit and fully acclimate to white blandness, even “My Girl” must bite the dust.CCC02782

Women also get choice bits from Wolfe, beginning with Nasha Shandri as our prim stewardess, Miss Pat, welcoming us aboard Celebrity Slaveship and inviting us to fasten our shackles as we cross the Atlantic to Savannah. Dancing in the aisles seems to be allowed during our voyage – as long as we keep our shackles on – but “No drums!” Of course, we will get a bluesy cooking lesson from Sandra Thomas as Aunt Ethel, teaching us, with abundant historical ingredients, how to cook up “a batch of Negroes.” Uncanny Aunt Jemima resemblance here.

Shandri and Thomas both reappear in “The Last Mama-On-The-Couch,” with Thomas in the title role switching from cheery to grumpy and Shandri upbraiding Walter-Lee-Beau-Willie (and cataloguing her own sufferings) as Medea Jones, a subtle reminder that white folk are also known to drop babies from great heights. Most of this skit targets Raisin, of course, with Toi Aquila R.J. as Lady in Plaid serving as Shange’s leading Colored Girls emissary.

Meanwhile James Lee Walker, II, has a tasty role as our narrator, bestowing an Oscar-like statuette upon one actress after a heart-rending monologue and then ripping it out of her grasp when the next actress tops her.CCC02580

Walker has already topped himself as the regal, finger-snapping drag queen who imparts “The Gospel According to Miss Roj.” Revisiting Wolfe’s Museum, director Dee Abdullah limits herself to the crossdressing that’s in the script. In 2003, by contrast, Aunt Ethel and Last Mama were also done in drag. But Abdullah brings back Chris Thompson from the CAST production, so the West African choreography at Brooklyn Grace – and the forbidden drumming – have the same sparkle.CCC02717-1

Acoustically, the Grace isn’t ideal for theatre, nor is the place outfitted for professional-grade lighting design. But Abdullah, Sandra Thomas, and Shacana Kimble compensate, teaming up for an admirable array of costumes, from the frumpiness of Last Mama to the imperious splendor of Roj – and on the other side of intermission, the voguish gown of LaLa Lamazing Grace, an expatriated Josephine Baker wannabe done with slaying disdain by Jess Johnson. Until her down-home roots are exposed.CCC02449

In “Hairpiece,” Shandri plays a woman who has literally burnt her roots. Or as Johnson puts it as LaWanda, “She done fried, dyed, and de-chemicalized her shit to death.” All to please the man that Shandri is now dumping. LaWanda is actually a talking wig stand, facing us on a makeup table (and presumably Shandri as well in a fourth-wall mirror). She’s debating whether her owner should be shaking her hot-pressed tresses back and forth when she irately gives her boyfriend the ax, or whether Janine, the Afro wig contemptuously advocated by LaTonya Lewis, should be the fearsome choice to make him shrivel.

While the wigs are debating whether Shandri is most powerful in her natural or chemicalized crown, it’s easy to forget the satirical barb that Wolfe has tossed toward the menfolk. The finally-dispensable boyfriend was a “political quick-change artist,” Janine dishes. Every time “he changed his ideology, she went and changed her hair to fit the occasion.”

Style is important, that’s for sure. Aside from Raisin, the most sacred cow that Wolfe takes down is Ebony Magazine, the barbershop bible of African-American life. Lewis and Williams are the supermodel couple of “The Photo Shoot” who have given away their lives to be beautiful and wear fabulous clothes month after month. Relentlessly smiling and feeling no pain.

Perhaps the wisest thing about Wolfe’s Museum – the good, the bad, the ugly, and the absurd – is that it’s simply there. Do with it as you wish.

“The ultimate questions from Wolfe apply with a fierce pertinence to all oppressed peoples,” I wrote in response to Abdullah’s 2003 production with CAST. “How do we carry the baggage of the past into the future without hampering and crippling ourselves? And how do we leave this baggage behind without discarding key parts of our culture, our heritage, and our identity? These grim questions go unanswered, but watching this energized ensemble wrestling with them will likely double you over with laughter.”

Can’t improve very much on those observations – unless I compress them for 2022 into Wolfe’s words. At the beginning of our journey and again at evening’s end, our stewardess, Miss Pat, tells us: “Before exiting, check the overhead as any baggage you don’t claim, we trash.”

That’s the key choice Wolfe aims to leave us with.