Dance review: Sankai Juku comes to Southern California

In the world of Japanese butoh dance, the micro and the macro are fluidly interactive. Small gestures and subtle changes of angle and attitude count for much. In an ideal performance, an audience is transported, without warning or easy calculation, from the tangible to the symbolic and cosmic. Many such transformative moments took place Thursday at the Granada in Santa Barbara when esteemed butoh company Sankai Juku performed “Tobari -– As If in an Inexhaustible Flux,” presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures.

The modern dance company moves to the Irvine Barclay Saturday night (with a different program) to kick off JapanOC, a season-long festival of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

“Flux” is an operative word, as is tobari (the Japanese word for a fabric veil used as a partition) in this evening-long work directed, choreographed and designed by Ushio Amagatsu. He founded the all-male group in 1975 and achieves timeless, fashion-bucking relevance. Uniformly dressed in white robes and shaven heads, the dancers –- Amagatsu, Seminaru, Sho Takeuchi, Akihito Ichihara, Ichiro Hasegawa, Dai Matsuoka, Nobuyoshi Asai and Norihito Ishii -– became humble pieces within the whole of “Tobari,” each dancer sure and strong individually, but blended into the group persona.

Music review: California E.A.R. Unit at REDCAT

In its nearly 25 years in action, the California E.A.R. Unit –- Los Angeles’ premiere new music ensemble –- has brought to life reams of new works by outside composers. The agenda differed, on at least a couple of counts, with the group’s concert at REDCAT on Friday. This was a leaner machine, for one, as the former sextet pared down to a trio –- pianist Vicki Ray, percussionist Amy Knoles and violinist Eric KM Clark -– and the program was atypically more in-house, with compositions by the musicians and CalArts' David Rosenboom.

Other internal issues, of a poignant sort, simmered beneath the surface, concerning past members who have passed on. Knoles dedicated her opening piece, “Belgo II” to the recently departed founding percussionist and lovably eccentric dynamo Art Jarvinen, who left the group several years ago. That loss comes in the wake of the 2008 death of flutist Dorothy Stone, a founding Unit member. The last several E.A.R. Unit concerts have been marked by her conspicuous absence.

On a more vibrant note, Friday’s concert glimpsed into the these musician’s rarely heard compositional personae, moving in distinct and personal directions. “Belgo II” is minimalist-ish, rough and sleek, and full of life, with an abstract, improvised passage in the middle. By contrast, Ray’s impressive “Jugg(ular)ling” abides its titles by juggling rhythmic and harmonic invention with moments of lovely suspended animation. Clark’s “exPAT” was originally written for the New York City-based electric guitar quartet Dither, and this transcription featured suitably rocking voltage, replete with electric guitar-esque distortion on Clark’s violin.

Music review: John Williams at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts

In days of old, Los Angeles hosted many of the world’s great classical guitarists — including the upper echelon, still-evolving John Williams — at Pasadena’s Ambassador Auditorium. Out of the presenting game since the mid-’90s, that hall’s absence is still felt, especially for guitar fans. But Williams’ concert, Wednesday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, conjured up memories of the Pasadena haunt, given the Cerritos venue’s appealing blend of welcoming acoustics, warm wood surfaces and relative intimacy amid the hall’s grand upward sweep.

On Wednesday, Williams, now 69 and sounding characteristically and fully on his artistic game, took aim at the fertile but under-acknowledged  guitar music motherlode of Latin America. Central to the compact survey were dazzling pieces from Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, Cuban Leo Brouwer and Paraguayan Agustin Barrios Mangore. Also in Wednesday’s mix was a jubilant short piece, ”O Bia,” by the late Cameroonian guitarist-composer Francis Bebey and a few tasty morsels by Williams himself.

Although not generally associated with Villa-Lobos’ famed five preludes, this program's closest thing to core repertoire, Williams played them with revelatory cleanliness and insight. From the poignancy of the third prelude — one of the single most beautiful pieces in the guitar canon — to the other alternately rugged and melodic preludes, Bach’s influence mixes with Brazilian impulses, uniquely guitaristic effects and dreamily atmospheric passages. Williams nailed them, perhaps unsurprisingly.

Music review: Vibration Institute Orchestra and Evidence at Royal/T

A sure part of the allure with Wednesday’s ambient-oriented “experimental electronic music” evening was the ambience of the hosting housing, the back room of the unique eatery/art gallery/happening venue Royal/T in Culver City. Spaces matter.

Palatable ambient sound streams by the electro-acoustic-digital quartet called Vibration Institute Orchestra and the laptopping duo Evidence worked up their respective, improvised soundscapes amid works from the impressive contemporary art collection, including work by Kara Walker and Mike Kelley, of Royal/T owner Susan Hancock.

A giddy factor is indulged through Nick Rodrigues’ quirky “Porta-Party,” an outhouse-sized, iPod-shaped cubicle equipped with a disco ball, suggesting a variation on the "orgasmatron" in Woody Allen’s "Sleeper." In such company -- the antithesis of the neutral black box effect --  peripheral “distractions” translated into mood enhancements.

Overall, this evening represented a friendly neighborhood brand of electronic/computer music, more gently hypnotic than bracing or challenging. Vibration Institute Orchestra, led by bassist John von Seggern (on fretless electric) and here including electric guitarist Matt Piper, violinist Laura Escudé and noted studio/jazz musician Steve Tavaglione on electronics and EWI (electronic wind controller), is a malleable collective sound-painting unit.

Dance review: Rachel Rosenthal work goes to the dogs (but in a good way)

Courting and embracing the unexpected comes naturally to octogenarian iconoclast Rachel Rosenthal, whose work blends experimental theater, performance art, dance and, sometimes, music (as with the presence of California EAR Unit members Amy Knoles and Eric Clark in this weekend’s performances at Rosenthal’s Espace DbD). Among the memorable “unexpected” inspirations at Saturday night’s performance of Rosenthal’s all-improvisatory TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theatre Ensemble, was a non-human element: the beautiful white dog Sasha.

In the opening moments of several vignettes—entirely improvised by the numerous dancer-actors and musicians, and lighting/sound designer Kate Noonan—Sasha plopped down on the “stage” of the small performance space, and remained there, a combination mascot, prop and minimalist actor. Sasha endured performers’ dog-like maneuvers and sniffing fest in the first scene, and stayed, statuesquely implacable. A moment of high drama came at the very end, when Sasha turned her head as if on cue, when confronted by the personal space-encroaching Doug Hammett.

Between those dog-focused moments came an impressive, absurdist, alternately funny, primal and kinesthetic performance. It was an engaging confab of dance, enlightened onstage nonsense and experimental music.

Music, of course, is naturally predisposed to the improvisational impulse, and played an important role here. On the fly, the musicians both reflected and affected the actions onstage, also creating on the fly, in symbiotic accord. Varying degrees of concreteness, irrationality and emotional veracity wended through the performance onstage, just as the music element remained in steady, free-spirited flux. Knoles has previously collaborated with Rosenthal, on her final solo piece, “UR-BOOR,” and the musician has an intuitive feel for what’s right, in terms of abstract electronic sonorities, fleeting swatches of grooves, and hints of cultural references (including tidbits of “Spaghetti Western-ized” guitar samples).

Also a virtuoso percussionist, Knoles remained in the digital, sound painterly realm here. Clark’s violin was mostly colored by electronic treatments, although at one point, he suggested a folk melody with pizzicato, but quickly melted back into abstract mode.

Using an array of odd props, including plastic kitchen items, Mexican wrestling masks and Styrofoam heads that became ritualistic objects of desire at one point, the ensemble cooked up strange and inventive non-linear scenarios, but kept things lively, handily dodging overly cerebral dryness. Elements of the world we know snuck into the mix, as with a slightly chilling Abu Ghraib reference, but mostly the performance built a world of its own, a place where stately dogs and easy-access avant-garde notions rule.

-- Josef Woodard

Music review: Green Umbrella concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Satisfied customers of the Green Umbrella series, and there are many, may recognize recurring programming patterns in the series. In the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s long-running, dedicated contemporary music series, we might hear 20th century masterpieces, as with Schoenberg’s classic “Pierrot Lunaire” last month, or world premiere-stocked “what’s next” brand programs. As witnessed with Tuesday’s “Green Umbrella” installment, “Focus on Eötvös,” the series also extends valuable spotlights to living composers deserving wider recognition.

Renowned internationally but too rarely heard on the left coast, Peter Eötvös was last showcased hereabouts at the Ojai Music Festival in 2007 (where he conducted). He is a fascinating, complicated, engaging and even slyly funny musician, possibly poised to inherit the legacy as Hungary’s greatest living composer, with the passing of György Ligeti (although György Kurtág is also in that sweepstakes).

As heard through three pieces on Tuesday, Eötvös’ musical palette, not unlike those of Ligeti and Kurtag, moves in multiple directions at once, resisting easy dogma or description. He happily wanders through Modernism and music’s deeper history channels -- as with his imagined exchange between Mozart father and son in “Korrespondenz,” played here by the grand, game Calder String Quartet -- to compelling and freshly expressive ends.

Eötvös’ theater-related music background also filters into his sometimes wily imagination and re-inventive leanings in compositional settings. “Snatches of a Conversation,” conducted by Gregory Vajda (replacing the injured Lionel Bringuier), wields its edgy yet playful contemporary language, with soloist spots going to a double-belled trumpet (Brandon Ridenour) and a speaker (the charismatic Timur Bekbosunov), issuing half-absurd texts softly enough to lure our eavesdropping instincts.

Echoes of Hungarian music mark his “Sonata per sei,” given its U.S. premiere in Ojai. Written in tribute to Bartok during his 125th birthday year, the piece is a post-post-Modern tour de force, for three percussionists, a sampler keyboardist and, at the gripping sonic epicenter, twin pianists, roles filled expertly by Mark Robson and Bryan Pezzone.

Opening the evening, on a logically linked note, was music by the composer’s gifted protege and assistant, Lithuanian Vykintas Baltakas. His “(co)ro(na)” is a picturesque study in tensions and texture, with instruments producing high, antic fluttering sounds about the grounding force of piano, percussion and long tones on horn. Some strange and sonic tone poetry is at hand, with the bracing sounds balanced by suspended clouds of harmony. Like his mentor, this composer adroitly addresses both the now and the then.

-- Josef Woodard

Photo: Peter Eötvös conducting at the 2007 Ojai Music Festival. Credit: Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times

Monster Mash: Autry president to retire; Einstein's theory of relativity goes public; LuPone's ballet debut

--Bidding farewell: John L. Gray, president of the Autry National Center of the American West, will announce his retirement today. (Los Angeles Times)

--Scientific treasure: The original 46-page manuscript of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity will go on public display for the first time in Jerusalem. (Jerusalem Post)

-Money woes: Photographer Annie Leibovitz reportedly is turning to a private equity firm for loans to help address her financial troubles. (Financial Times)

--Song and dance: Patti LuPone will make her debut -- in a singing role -- with the New York City Ballet in Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's "The Seven Deadly Sins" in the spring 2011 season. (New York Times)

--Bound for Texas: The late writer David Foster Wallace's papers have been acquired by the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center, which also possesses the archives of authors Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo. (Austin American Statesman)

--Box-office bounce: Less than two months after it opened, the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's “A View From the Bridge,” starring Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson, has recouped its initial investment, the show's producers say. (New York Times)

--Box-office blues: In New Jersey, the American Repertory Ballet cancels the rest of its season while the 12 Miles West Theatre Company suspends operations. (Star Ledger)

--Old faithful: The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History--the most popular museum in the country--is preparing to celebrate its centennial. (Washington Post)

--Master builder: Architect Bruce Graham, who designed Chicago's Willis Tower (originally known as the Sears Tower) and the John Hancock Center, has died at 84 in Hobe Sound, Fla. (Chicago Tribune)

Also in the L.A. Times: Columnist Patrick Goldstein on the layoffs of Variety's chief theater and film critics; Josef Woodard reviews the Los Angeles Master Chorale's performance of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

--Karen Wada

Photo: Albert Einstein in 1938. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

 

Music review: Los Angeles Master Chorale's 'St. Matthew Passion'

For three hours on Sunday, Walt Disney Concert Hall felt duly transformed into a sacred space. The occasion was the debut Disney Hall performance of Bach’s soaring and sadly meditative “St. Matthew Passion,” in a refined, powerful performance by the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

This impression of “sacredness” wasn’t necessarily in terms of creed, by which any listener relates depending on religious affiliation, but as a purely musical epiphany. The opportunity to hear a strong, lucid reading of this indisputable choral masterpiece, in an inspired venue like Disney Hall, made it a musical experience fit to worship.

Site does matter, and Bach himself incorporated site-specific staging elements in his home-base Thomaskirche in Leipzig when the piece premiered in 1727. On this night and in this hall, Master Chorale  music director Grant Gershon, celebrating a decade at the helm, exerted precisely the right touch. He beautifully marshaled and shaped the various forces -- the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra and the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus abetted the Chorale -- all necessary to make the “Passion” sing, and on the grand and the intimate scale required.

Music review: Smashing violin and 'Pierrot' at the L.A. Phil's 'Green Umbrella'

 

 

When it comes time for “Green Umbrella,” the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s bold, bright and long-standing new-music series, the spotlight is typically on music of our time. On Tuesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall, however, it was time to pay homage to a nearly 100-year-old classic. This was the night of “Pierrot.”

Schoenberg’s greatly influential chamber work, “Pierrot Lunaire,” circa 1912, fascinates still. Tuesday’s visit confirmed its fresh appeal, as played with properly chilled panache by a sextet conducted by Stefan Asbury and featuring incisively expressive soprano Kiera Duffy. Whether limning melodies or exercising the composer’s signature semi-singing “Sprechstimme,” Duffy beautifully captured the magic, abandon and melancholy in Schoenberg’s 21 miniatures, from “Mondestrunken (`Moondrunk’)” to the final line “O, ancient scent from far-off days” -- now somehow relevant to the venerable opus itself.

Despite its age, “Pierrot” is anything but a war horse. One of the earliest proto-Modernist masterpieces, along with “Rite of Spring,” “Pierrot” helped pry open the 20th century’s exploratory musical spirit. Ripples of its influence extend through much of contemporary music, subtly or in affectionately explicit ways, as with Tuesday’s other featured piece, Peter Maxwell Davies’ crazily engaging “Eight Songs for a Mad King.”

Dance review: Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company at Granada Theatre

One of the more semi-ironically radical aspects of Christopher Wheeldon’s celebrated and adventurous young dance company Morphoses may be its willingness to soften the very edges of radicalism, to make peace between modernity and traditionalism. Wheeldon’s background as a soloist with the New York City Ballet and his measured strides as an iconoclast make for a mostly happy stylistic marriage here.

Or at least that was the impression from evidence laid out lavishly and athletically at Santa Barbara’s Granada Theatre on Friday in the company’s Southern California debut, presented as part of UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures’ 50th anniversary.

Morphoses nudges outward toward the edges while heeding a cultural gravitational pull toward the center, and Wheeldon and company seem to be seeking fresh ideas and creative energies in the process. If not everything works out in this push-pull scenario, the sum effect can be dazzling and reassuring for the cause of making the modern accessible, and vice versa.