REVIEW: "The Audition"

The Metropolitan Opera's HD series presented a different kind of opera experience this past Sunday—a screening of a documentary film titled The Audition. The film, directed by documentary filmmaker Susan Fromke and produced by the Met's Peter Gelb, told the story of the final days of competition of the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. The film picks up the story as the eleven semi-finalists are being chosen for the last week of preparation in New York before the final competition with full audience and orchestra on the Met stage. She follows most of the singers through rehearsals and personal moments, much of it in walk-and-talk segments as they thread their way through the metaphorical labyrinthine backstage of the Met.

Although the film does not cover it, the competition process begins with well over a thousand aspiring singers across the country; this number is whittled down to twenty or so regional winners through local and regional auditions. From that twenty, eleven become semi-finalists; and from that eleven, five or six are chosen as finalists. It goes without saying that to emerge as one of those five or six puts a singer on a favored path (no guarantees, though) toward an opera career, not only at the Met, but in major opera houses around the world.

My fear going in had been that the film might go for the shallow side and gloss over the inevitable un-pleasantries or personal agonies that arise in a competition with so much at stake. It is to Ms. Fromke’s credit that she kept an intriguing, equitable balance; she revealed just enough of the singer’s personalities and the brutal facts of judging to keep it interesting. Any more and the film would have been called “The Singers”; any less and it would have been just another pleasant promotional film for the Met.

It is clear that Fromke’s editing choices came not from a total objectivity, but was structured by her knowledge of who had won. Most of her finished film is spent following three tenors who do, in fact, emerge victorious. Alek Shrader is a 25-year-old tenor with boyish good looks, and the ability to pull off the high C’s in “Ah! mes amis,” from Donizetti’s Fille du Régiment. Michael Fabiano, on the other hand, is a brooding, serious young man with a fabulous voice who looks much older than his 22 years. He implies in his on-camera speeches, that the pleasantries among the singers are hypocritical as everyone is self-interested. His voice will open doors; hopefully, his personality won’t close them.

The third tenor’s story is heartbreaking, to say the least. Ryan Smith was a thirty-year old genial, yet overweight, singer whose road there had been filled with obstacles of all sorts. His performance was nothing less than brilliant, and he emerged one of the six finalists. In a sad postlude, the film revealed that Mr. Smith, after making a Met debut in Verdi’s Ernani and who had begun working with the Chicago Lyric Opera, died last November of lymphoma.

Obviously, to get to this point in the process, all of the singers had significant talents. Yet, the message here is that it must go much farther and much deeper than that. As Fromke herself explained: "The film is really about whether these young singers have what it takes to transcend their fears, walk on stage and face their futures.”

Knoxville Opera's Rossini Festival

One of the awaited events of the spring music season is less than two weeks away. The Knoxville Opera Rossini Festival hits downtown's Gay Street April 23–April 26. Among the events will be:

Knoxville Opera production of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

Saturday, April 25, 6:00 p.m.

Sunday, April 26, 2:30 p.m.

at the Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay Street.

For tickets, call Knoxville Opera at (865) 524-0795, or click here.

UT Opera Theatre production of Mozart's Don Giovanni

Thursday, April 23,

Friday, April 24, 8:00 p.m.

Saturday, April 25, 2:00 p.m.

Sunday, April 26, 8:00 p.m.
at the Bijou Theatre, 803 S Gay St.

Tickets are general admission at $15, $10 for seniors 60+, $5 for students with ID. For tickets, visit or call the Tennessee Theatre box office at 865-684-1200; or Tickets Unlimited at 865.656.4444, knoxvilletickets.com or visit the UT Central Ticket Office. Service fees may apply.

Rossini Festival Italian Street Fair

Saturday, April 25th, from noon to 9 pm, FREE

"Downtown Knoxville's Gay Street is transformed from a busy thoroughfare to a colorful European festival with three stages featuring a range of entertainment options, an upscale Artisan's Market, the smells and tastes of authentic Mediterranean foods and beverages, and a special children's area on Market Square with entertainment, fun and games."

The street fair is an event that should not be missed under any circumstances!

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In conjunction with the Rossini Festival, Part III of The Messiah by George Frederic Handel will be presented at First Presbyterian Church on State Street on Sunday, April 26th at 11 am.

In most performances today, Part III contains:
No. 45 "I know that my Redeemer liveth"
No. 46 (41) - "Since by man came death"
No. 47 (42)- "Behold I tell you"
No. 48 (43) - "The trumpet shall sound"
No. 49-50 (44) - "Then shall be brought to pass" (recit.) & "O death" (duet)
No. 51 (45)- "But thanks be to God"
No. 52 (46)- "If God be for us"
No. 53 (47)- "Worthy is the Lamb"
No. 54 - "Amen"

If it's not one thing, it's another…

Beset on all sides by difficulty, New York City Opera at last announced its 2009-2010 season — a conservative five productions — but covering the gamut that City Opera is known for. There's a Baroque work, Handel's Partenope; a familiar friend, Puccini's Madama Butterfly; a new production of Don Giovanni; an unfamiliar work, Étoile by Chabrier; and a modern offering, Esther by Hugo Weisgall.

However, even that will turn out to be difficult since many involved can't seem to take si for an answer. Alan Gordon, executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents principal singers, the chorus, and stage managers, indicated the probability of a strike over an attempt by management to void their contract which does not expire until 2011. In addition, the orchestra's contract ends next month leading to speculation that that negotiation will determine what happens with AGMA. Stay tuned for the next episode.

JacobTV This Week…and it's free!

Who is Jacob ter Veldhuis?
That question will be answered in the next few days as the Dutch avant-something composer appears in Knoxville for a week-long residency and festival, MARCH 30-APRIL 4, 2009, under the sponsorship of the University of Tennessee School of Music and UT's Ready for the World program.

The director of the festival is Dr. Connie Frigo, Assistant Professor of Saxophone in the UT School of Music.

Popularly known in the Netherlands as JacobTV, he has become a frequently performed composer in Europe by orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Russian State Academy Orchestra and the Düsseldorf Symfoniker. Soloists who have gravitated to his works include Branford Marsalis, James Galway, Arno Bornkamp, Claude Delangle, Margaret Lancaster, Andrew Russo, Kathy Supové, Kevin Gallagher and Evelyn Glennie. What is remarkable is that classical, contemporary, jazz and rock musicians all find themselves keenly interested in his music--and audiences in Europe certainly do.

A three day JacobTV Festival entitled “Grab It! The Music of JacobTV” took place at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in May 2007. The New York Times' Anne Midgette had this to say about the first evening's concert.

In his “boombox" works, soloists or ensembles perform the scores to intricately structured audio collages that incorporate sound bytes from political speeches, commercials, interviews, talk shows, TV evangelists, and more. These are works that challenge the listener on one level, while simultaneously amusing and delighting them on another.

Some of these boombox works will be featured in a free concert on Friday, April 3rd – 8pm, in the Cox Auditorium on the UT campus. The concert will feature a wide array of performers including guest soloists from around the country, the New Century Saxophone Quartet, UT music faculty, and UT music students.

On Thursday at 8 pm in the Cox Auditorium, Tallahatchie Concerto US Premiere
Connie Frigo, alto sax
The University of Tennessee Wind Ensemble Gary Sousa, conductor

Shakespeare and Music

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices…

--The Tempest, William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare stands alone among playwrights, not just for his own work, but also for the creations he has inspired in others. In music alone, we have ballets, operas, incidental music, tone poems…by composers too numerous to mention. I suppose we could mention just a few: Purcell, Mendelssohn, Korngold, Prokofiev, and Carlson. Carlson—that would be Knoxville composer James Carlson, who has organized Sounds & Sweet Airs: Shakespeare & Music, an evening of music, theatre, and dance inspired by the Bard, including scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth.

Among the local artists performing on the program will be:
The Wild Thyme Players directed by Brandon Daughtry Slocum; Shake, Rattle & Role Stage Combat; Momentum Dance Lab; Lorraine DiSimone, mezzo-soprano; Patrick Harvey, piano; Hillary Herndon, viola; Rebekkah Hilgraves, soprano; Mark Hook, piano; Greg Horne, guitar/vocals; Julia Lawson, soprano; Lucie Novoveska, violin; Maria Rist, soprano; Thomas Tallent, lute; Daniel Stipe, organ; and Mary Weaver, alto.

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

Sleep not lest you miss this intriguing concert at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Saturday, March 28th at 7:30pm.

Sounds & Sweet Airs: Shakespeare & Music
Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church
2931 Kingston Pike
Knoxville
Tickets available at the door.

KSO 2009-2010 Season: A Feast!

The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra recently released the schedule of concerts for its 2009-2010 season, and it really looks interesting. Every concert seems to have intriguing elements—there are a lot of works here that I have been dying to hear but don’t get a chance to as often as I’d like. You are probably going to want to catch as many concerts as possible. Just for fun, though, here are a couple of highlights that jumped off the page at me.

In October, don’t miss Stravinsky’s Petrushka (I assume the concert suite); on the same bill is Dvorak’s Golden Spinning Wheel.

On the November Chamber Classics concert at the Bijou, KSO Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum takes the podium for three different Serenades for Strings by Elgar, Josef Suk, and Tchaikovsky.

In January, violinist Rachel Barton Pine returns to Knoxville to perform the Brahms Violin Concerto. Also on that program is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4. Then at the Chamber Classics concert…Ah, some Haydn at last! That concert will include Haydn’s Symphony No. 16 in B-flat Major. And UT faculty pianist David Northington will be performing a Mozart piano concerto, although which one was not mentioned.

The February Masterworks concert will feature Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I really adore the J.S. Bach secular cantatas—and the March Chamber Classics concert will include the charming Coffee Cantata of Bach as well as a virtually unheard and underplayed work, Pachelbel’s Canon. On the other hand, you may have never heard it performed live… outside of weddings and funerals, that is. The March Masterworks concert should be a real treat—the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 with pianist Adam Golka, and the Symphony No. 1 from the young Dmitri Shostakovich.

In April, the Mozart Requiem with the Knoxville Choral Society and some great local soloists—what else needs to be said? To conclude the season’s feast, the May Masterworks is a real treat: the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 (with Rachel Lee, violin) and Respighi’s Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome.

However, a word of advice…once you get your KSO schedule brochure for 2009-2010, please try not to drool over the page, as that will make marking off your favorites more difficult.

Who is Jacob ter Veldhuis?

Who is Jacob ter Veldhuis?
That question will be answered in a few weeks as the Dutch avant-something composer appears in Knoxville for a week-long residency and festival, MARCH 30-APRIL 4, 2009, under the sponsorship of the University of Tennessee School of Music and UT's Ready for the World program.

The director of the festival is Dr. Connie Frigo, Assistant Professor of Saxophone in the UT School of Music.

Popularly known in the Netherlands as JacobTV, he has become a frequently performed composer in Europe by orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Russian State Academy Orchestra and the Düsseldorf Symfoniker. Soloists who have gravitated to his works include Branford Marsalis, James Galway, Arno Bornkamp, Claude Delangle, Margaret Lancaster, Andrew Russo, Kathy Supové, Kevin Gallagher and Evelyn Glennie. What is remarkable is that classical, contemporary, jazz and rock musicians all find themselves keenly interested in his music--and audiences in Europe certainly do.

A three day JacobTV Festival entitled “Grab It! The Music of JacobTV” took place at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in May 2007. The New York Times' Anne Midgette had this to say about the first evening's concert.

In his “boombox" works, soloists or ensembles perform the scores to recorded audio collages that incorporate sound bytes from political speeches, commercials, interviews, talk shows, TV evangelists, and more. These are works that challenge the listener on one level, while simultaneously amusing and delighting them on another.

Some of these “boombox” works will be featured in a free concert on Friday, April 3rd – 8pm, in the Cox Auditorium on the UT campus. The concert will feature a wide array of performers including guest soloists from around the country, the New Century Saxophone Quartet, UT music faculty, and UT music students.

JacobTV’s Festival and Residency coincides with the UT Saxophone Project. More details are available on this UT Music information site. I will have more to say on Jacob ter Veldhuis in the coming days.

KSO to Premiere Work by W.M. Harrell

The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Masterworks concert this February 26th and 27th will feature two works by Johannes Brahms and a world premiere of Time Like An Ever Flowing Stream by Knoxville composer M.W. Harrell. You can read my profile of Harrell in this week's Metro Pulse or online here.

The two works by Brahms are the Symphony No. 2 and the Liebeslieder Waltzes.

REVIEW: Pianist Konstantin Soukhovetski

Russian-born pianist Konstantin Soukhovetski is quite the storyteller. In fact, his performance style draws one along in much the same way a master storyteller is able to use dynamic extremes and subtleties, construction of images, pacing, anticipation, and …surprises.

On Sunday afternoon, Soukhovestski appeared as the second pianist in a series of three concerts under the auspices of the Evelyn Miller Young Pianist Series. His program selections followed a noticeable arc -- Schubert, Strauss, Liszt, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Prokofiev--although describing exactly what the gradation was would be difficult. I single out two pieces in particular for special note. First-- an arrangement by Percy Grainger of Richard Strauss' Last Love Duet from his opera Der Rosenkavalier ( entitled The Ramble on the Last Love Duet from "Der Rosenkavalier"). Soukhovestski rendered the emotion and drama of the scene with extremes of dynamic subtlety that was thrilling. Second-- the Sonata No. 4 in C Minor, op. 29 of Sergei Prokofiev, written in 1917, is a workout and a test of extremes, probably best not left till last on a program. On the other hand, it ends so exuberantly, it is practically impossible not to feel hopeful, if not optimistic.

Drop in for a bite at Classical Café

No need for wailing, hand wringing, or gnashing of teeth…Mostly Classical will continue unabated, usually with longer previews and reviews.
But classical commentary is also now available from yours truly in the blog section of the MetroPulse.com site as Classical Cafe. Use that link or navigate to it from the Blog menu on the main page.

Please drop in for a bite.