Thursday Music Link
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking out for the police.
John Adams: I was looking at the ceiling, and then I saw the sky
I went to see this at the Theatre Royal Stratford on Tuesday. It's not Adams' greatest hour, frankly - he's trying to blend minimalism with West Side Story and it doesn't really work. I think the problem is a) very compromised instrumentation with too many piano-and-bass-guitar passages that sound like a church youth group, and b) very, very misguided attempts to bring the funk, including a surprising number of occasions where the priapic black preacher character disco-dances and where I found myself thinking "out of context and to an unsympathetic critic, this could come over as being rather too close to minstrelsy". But, a John Adams piece is always worth a trip to the end of the DLR for, and the opening number linked above is sublime.
Bonus: If you had ever wondered whether "Shaker Loops" would have been improved by being played at double speed with the bloke from Yes warbling hippy bollocks over it, the answer is here
ReplyDeleteMinstrelsy? Do you think it's there in June Jordan's lyrics, or is it a trap that this production has fallen into?
ReplyDeleteI think it's this production. In general, if you have a character in your play who is a black preacher who likes to shag the birds, then you need to be a bit careful about his dance numbers, particularly if they're scored to quite cliched pastiche disco. The singer in question was clearly an actor rather than a dancer; they just rather overdid the finger pointing and hip thrusting.
ReplyDelete(the lyrics were actually very good).
ReplyDeleteAfter the opening chorus, I've never been able to get on with the rest of IWLATCATISTS; the dreaded spectre of jazz-fusion looms over the rest of it too much for my tastes.
ReplyDeleteThis post prompted me to listen again to IWLATCATISTS and some other Adams operas. I think "Consuela's Dream" from IWLATCATISTS stands up pretty well in his vocal oeuvre. (My favourites are "Wild Nights" from "Harmonium" and "Night Chorus" from "Klinghoffer".)
ReplyDelete