Pictures and video from NW Folklife

Got back yesterday from NW Folklife. Fabulous as always. Am too tired to write much about it, but here are pics:

The Bobs, whom I first discovered as a college student, lo, these many (many) years ago in Santa Cruz. Musically interesting and lyrically silly a capella vocal group.

A closeup of Amy "Bob" Engelhardt's skirt. Thought it was cool.

Two points if you can identify this instrument.

Seattle Chinese Orchestra, the only traditional Chinese orchestra in the Pacific Northwest.





Classical Indian dance. This was one of my favorite things at Folklife this year; it just transported me. The video doesn't really convey the experience, of course. If you've seen this kind of dance before, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, get yourself to a classical (not Bollywood) Indian dance performance ASAP. It's amazing.

We saw Tango Argentino (caught their show last year) and once again I got to lust after the fabulous shoes the women wear. I have flat feet and use custom-made orthotics, so I'll never be able to wear this kind of shoe, which is possibly why I think they're so sexy. If you're interested, do a google search for tango shoes and you'll see what I mean, but you can't appreciate their full effect unless you see the women actually dancing in them. Yowza. Here's a video (this isn't the group I saw, but you'll get the idea):



There are about a gazillion tango videos on YouTube, if you wanna see more. It's pretty hypnotic stuff.

We got to see friends we (regretfully) only see once a year, and managed not to melt (it rained most of the weekend). I satisfied my yearly urge to contradance, and my sweetie got to play drums with Yeshivas Goldensteyn, otherwise known as the University of Washington Klezmer Ensemble. Here's a link to sweetie's blog entry if you wanna know more, complete with pics.

Gotta go collapse. Am SOOO tired, but also basking in the post-Folklife euphoric glow...

Hearing Lang Lang before a funeral

This morning I had the opportunity to hear the Chinese pianist Lang Lang play in rehearsal with the Oregon Symphony (staff were invited to this rehearsal in thanks for our hard work promoting and selling the show, and even though I'm not technically staff they generously allowed me to attend as well, which I appreciated). Tonight Lang Lang will be performing to a sold-out crowd in a special OS concert. 

For those of you who don't know who Lang Lang is, he's the pianist who was featured in the opening ceremonies at the Beijing games. The New York Times has called him, "The hottest classical musician on the planet." He's the current Big Deal in piano soloists. At 26, he's outgrown his prodigy status (he made his professional debut at 17 with the Chicago Symphony, to rave reviews), but he's flamboyant and dramatic and has sparked much debate within classical circles about whether he's the real deal or merely a talented musical drama queen. 

I've never had the opportunity to hear a musician of his reputation before. The Oregon Symphony doesn't usually have the budget to be able to afford the fees of the most famous artists on the classical performance circuit; we book excellent second-rank (not second-rate, note the difference) performers who in some instances are just as good, if not better, than the folks with the outsized reputations and performance fees. Still, I was curious to hear him play, to see what he was like close up and to find out if he was, to borrow a phrase from hip hop, All That.

I came to the rehearsal with a sober heart. My friend A's mother died two days ago, and after the rehearsal I would go sing at her funeral. I didn't expect to hear anything at the rehearsal that would touch on all the emotions I've been experiencing in the past few days, as I helped clean A's house, ran an errand for her and her wife M, and just generally kept her close in my heart.

Lang Lang was playing Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, not music associated with death or heavy thoughts. It's very romantic, lush and emotional, not really my style, and not something I'd go out of my way to hear (We attended an excellent performance a year ago and I certainly didn't need to hear it again so soon, but I was there for Lang Lang, not Rach). Would he be distractingly showy and employ the gesticulations and facial expressions for which he's been both praised and criticized? 

Surprisingly (and refreshingly) not. I'm sure he was saving a lot of his energy for tonight, but Lang Lang nonetheless gave us an emotionally honest interpretation, largely devoid of all that flourishy theatrical stuff that I find detracts from, rather than adds to, a performance. I could sense that he sincerely felt what he was playing during the run-through portions of the rehearsal, and the way he connected with the music made me connect with it in a way I never have before.

But what really surprised me was what happened at the end of the second movement. This is perhaps the most famous of the three, with a theme you'd have to be made of stone not to appreciate (I'll give Rachmaninoff his due; nobody wrote romantic melodies like he did, and if you're in the mood for something lush and schmaltzy you can't beat his music). At the end of the second movement, just before the orchestra comes in, there's a moment where the soloist plays a few ascending notes, filling out a chord, very slowly, and then comes to a quiet cadence. If it's done right, it's a lovely and graceful transition from the solo cadenza to the return of the full orchestra. When Lang Lang got to that place, he played with something more than technique and grace. He played those notes in a way that conveyed acceptance and something deeper: with those notes, and the completion of the chord, I had a powerful sense of a universal rightness. 

There's no good way to explain what I mean, but I'll try. The writer Madeleine L'Engle, who died not long ago at the age of 89, talks in one of her journals, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, about the death of her own mother, who lived with L'Engle and her family the last summer of her life. At the end of the book, after L'Engle's mother has died, L'Engle describes a moment between herself and her own four-year-old granddaughter Charlotte. Charlotte asks, "Is it all right, Gran? Is it?" L'Engle muses on what it means when we tell someone, especially a child, that things will be all right. She says we aren't promising that bad things won't happen, but that, in the end, in a universal, cosmic sense, things will be All Right.

Death is a part of that rightness. From what A told me, her mother had an excellent death. She died at home, surrounded by family, and she retained both her mental capacity and her spirit until the very end. My paternal grandmother died of cancer when I was 17, but the radiation used to treat her cancer caused her brain to shrink, and for the last seven months of her life she was like a person with advanced Alzheimer's disease. Her short-term memory was wiped out, and she often didn't recognize her own family members. She didn't remember our visits, which were frequent (in the case of my father, daily), and she would often berate him for neglecting her. She had always been proud of her appearance, and to see this tiny bald woman with a hostile suspicious expression glaring at me from her bed was heartbreaking. Everything that made my grandmother who she was was erased by her illness and subsequent treatment. 

A's mother was a Roman candle who illuminated the lives around her with her vibrant energy, and she continued to make her wishes known right up until the day she died. In the words of Wallace Stegner, "...and she is not going to be shushed, not even by cancer. She will burn bright until she goes out; she will go on standing on tiptoe till she falls." I am glad, for A's sake and for that of her family, that they got to keep her mother with them until the very last moment.

My heart aches for A. She was so close to her mother, and in many ways is very much like her. I cannot help reflecting on my own relationship with my mother (we're also extremely close), and I am so grateful that she is well and, G-d willing, will remain so for many years to come. But underneath my sorrow, I know that A will be all right, in time, as she learns to live (as my sweetie puts it so eloquently) with the mom-sized hole in her heart. That was what I got from Lang Lang today, and, as I listened to him tear into the exuberant third movement, I felt unexpectedly comforted.

Folklife 2008

This past weekend Sweetie and I returned to Folklife, after missing it last year. Folklife is North America's largest folk festival, which has taken place in Seattle at the Seattle Center every Memorial Day for the past 37 years.

What makes Folklife so special is its emphasis on participation. You don't just go to Folklife to hear great music or see outstanding performances of dance, storytelling, etc. etc. You get to make the music, dance the dances (any kind from almost anywhere in the world), attend workshops to learn anything from how to jam in klezmer style to west African dance to mask making to how to tell lies (this was a new one this year, an opportunity to hone your skills at tall tale-telling. I didn't get to see it, but our friend S. said it was hilarious). In short, for four days you get to inhabit an amazing folk world where all cultures mingle and everyone is exploring and enjoying. 

I've been to other folk festivals, but nothing compares to Folklife. I started going in 1998. Last year when Sweetie and I had to miss it I felt like I was in exile from Folkland. I've been a folkie since the age of five or six when I started folk dancing, and that identity was cemented when I started playing guitar at age nine. I have since immersed myself in other kinds of music, especially classical, as a professional singer, teacher and writer/researcher, but I am a folkie at heart and always will be. I've discovered that a number of other classical music friends and colleagues share this folk identity, which is really no surprise. As Duke Ellington so eloquently put it, "If it sounds good, it is good." He resisted labels his whole life, and I admire that. Why be pigeonholed? 

Some highlights of our experience this year:

The Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band. This is a community concert band from Ballard, an area in Seattle that plays Sousa and other band music, but since most of them are over 40 they've eschewed the marching part of the band experience and stay seated. Our favorite part is the Sedentary Majorette.  I took a movie of her because she has to be seen in action to be fully appreciated, but am having trouble uploading it to Blogger. I'll see if I can figure out another way to have you all see it if you want. Baton twirling is a dying art form, sad to say.

Some excellent klezmer, courtesy of Disciples of Goldensteyn and the Kosher Red Hots, two of our favorite regional bands.

Contradancing, of course. This year they featured a pickup band of about 20 people playing klezmer tunes (they billed it as "contras from the shtetl;" this is an experience you can only have at Folklife). Sweetie and I also went to a Yiddish dance party (this is different from Israeli dancing) and I also checked out a workshop on Scottish Country Dance. Last time I did anything specifically Scottish was when I was a kid, and I was amazed to find the nuances of the steps and hand holds come back to me as if I'd been doing it all my life. I love the way the body remembers things the mind thinks it's forgotten.

A new thing for Folklife this year:  participatory classical music. They offered a readthrough of the Vivaldi Gloria and Mozart's Requiem. Sweetie and I sang through most of the Gloria, a piece I'd never sung before, and it was great fun to sightread choral music again; I haven't done that in about 15 years.  Also cool to be surrounded by adults who can read music. 

Sweetie and I also checked out the shapenote singing, which we usually do at Folklife. I'm amazed people can sing like this for more than an hour; it's a very raw, primal sound that sounds more like shouting at times. I can't do it for long, but I enjoy it, and again, it's way cool to be around a buncha folks that can sightread, and do it using solfege to boot (think Do-Re-Mi Sound of Music stuff).

Also heard some great a capella gospel, saw a native American fashion show with gorgeous traditional and contemporary costumes/clothing (the cultural focus for this year was urban Indians), watched some amazing capoeira, looked at amazing handcrafted clothing, pottery, jewelry, art, etc. etc., ate some delicious Folklife food (Lebanese, Thai and, just to be different, a chicken artichoke crepe) and had a fabulous time. Also got to spend time with friends in Seattle I don't otherwise get to see, and bumped into several folks we know from our shul in Portland.

I can't seem to put captions to my pics, so points to you if you can identify which pictures are which bands/events.