Meals From The Marketplace

            As summer’s heat begins to fade and evening shadows appear earlier every day, the advent of fall is good news for Sacramento-area residents who enjoy high-class artistic performances.  The Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts (on the campus of U.C. Davis) will host its tenth season of the best of those performances with two highly anticipated concerts serving as bookends to the season.

            The year will start big with the reunion of Chick Corea’s great fusion band, Return to Forever.  The group made history forty years ago with its brilliant melding of jazz and rock and, along with Corea’s keyboard virtuosity, featured heavyweight jazz greats Stanley Clarke on bass and Lenny White on drums.  For this reunion tour guitarist Frank Gambole and jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty will round out the quintet, which will likely perform RTF’s original material as well as new works by the band members. 

            Opening for the Return to Forever reunion will be Zappa Plays Zappa, featuring the music of the legendary Frank Zappa as interpreted by his son Dweezil and his band of top musicians. 

            The Return to Forever concert at Mondavi is scheduled for next Wednesday, September 21.  The concert has been sold out for months, but our advice would be to check with the box office on the day and evening of the performance for late ticket returns or unused house seats.

            Ten days after the RTF concert, another jazz great will return to Mondavi for what promises to be another night of terrific jazz.  Saxophonist Wayne Shorter led the other great jazz fusion band of the early 1970s, Weather Report.  His quartet will appear at Mondavi on October 1 in what had originally been the scheduled opening night of the season (before RTF was added).

            More great jazz is on the Mondavi schedule with the Overtone Quartet appearing on February 25 and the SFJAZZ Collective performing a concert of Stevie Wonder’s music on March 29.

            Mondavi’s orchestral concerts are always highlights and this year’s will be no exception, with the venue’s unofficial “house band,” the San Francisco Symphony, making two appearances.  For the first, James Conlon, music director of the LA Opera, will conduct Shostakovich’s Symphony #14 and the Ravel arrangement of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”  That concert will take place on October 13.

            And then, to kick off 2012, on January 5, the SF Symphony, this time with music director Michael Tilson Thomas at the helm, will perform Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, his “Winter Dreams,” along with Ligeti’s violin concerto, with violinist Christian Tetzlaff.

            The other two orchestral concerts will also feature great Tchaikovsky symphonies.  On Saturday, January 28, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by its long-time musical director, Charles Dutoit, will perform Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #5, along with Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto #5 (featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet). 

            And, to conclude the season with a bang comparable to the Return to Forever opening night, on May 12, the New York Philharmonic, with musical director Alan Gilbert conducting, will perform Tchaikovsky’s great Symphony #4, along with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #3 (with the legendary Yefim Bronfman) and Dvorak’s “Carnival Overture.”

            (Not to be outdone, in terms of Tchaikovsky at least, the Sacramento Philharmonic is scheduled to perform the magnificent Pathetique, the composer’s sixth and last symphony, in the spring, albeit not at Mondavi.)

            Dance will also be well represented at Mondavi again this season.  The highlight will be the U.S. premiere of the ballet of the Grimm’s Brothers’ fairy tale, “Snow White,” by the French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj.  Entitled “Blanche Neige,” the ballet is danced to music by Gustav Mahler.  It will be presented twice, on Saturday evening, March 17, and on Sunday afternoon, March 18.

            Other dance performances will be provided by the Scottish National Ballet (October 19) and the Trey McIntyre Project, with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (November 12).

            The Mondavi Speaker series will include addresses by Jonathan Franzen on autobiography and fiction writing (October 8), film-maker extraordinaire Oliver Stone (February 3) and ex-punk rock star Patti Smith (May 9).

            And, of course, the season will include a number of excellent recital performances.  Highlights this year should be those of violinists Hilary Hahn (October 29), Rachel Barton Pine, with the Chamber Soloists Orchestra of New York (February 4), and pianist Garrick Ohlsson (March 9).  The San Francisco Symphony Chamber Ensemble, with violinist Alexander Barantschik, will perform works of Handel and J.S. Bach on May 2.

            Other scheduled concerts of note include those of k.d. lang (October 20), the Chieftains (February 22), the Blind Boys of Alabama (December 15), the annual performance of the “Messiah” by the American Bach Soloists (December 18), Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder (September 30), Loudon Wainwright III and Leo Kottke (February 14), and Bettye Lavette (April 13).

            All in all, season number ten for this wonderful venue looks like one that will be taking us across the I-80 causeway on a regular basis.

            (Tickets and further information for these and all other Mondavi performances are available on-line at www.mondaviarts.org or by phone at 866-754-2787.)

“Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”

-Bob Seger (“Against the Wind”)

            I was five years old on December 7, 1951, the ten-year anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan, probably too young to have understood if there was a big deal made of the decennial.  That day of infamy had been long since vanquished by then, so I’m guessing it was not quite the event the pending commemoration this weekend of another infamous date promises to be.

            The attacks of September 11, 2001 were probably no more horrific in the grand scheme of things than was the unprovoked bombing raid of December 7, 1941.  Fewer Americans died at Pearl Harbor, but their deaths were no less tragic, no less mourned, no less the cause for a national sense of rage and for a new understanding of America’s place in the world.

            Both events plunged the country into wars, against Germany and Japan in 1941, against al Qaida and the Taliban in 2001, and, soon thereafter, against Saddam Hussein and the Iranian affiliates who moved in and continued the battle on his demise. 

            But whereas World War II united the country even further and led to a period of amazing prosperity in its aftermath, the War on Terror fractured the country much as the Viet Nam War did a generation before.  And it has been marked with economic travails the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Great Depression (which, of course, WW II ended, once and for all).

            The attacks of 9/11 were a national nightmare, pure and simple.  Everyone has his or her own memory of the moment we realized what we were witnessing.  For many it was the sight of the twin towers, those magnificent symbols of America’s economic supremacy, crumbling in a cloud of dust, and the awareness that thousands of lives were being destroyed as those great edifices fell.

            I vividly recall those minutes as my wife and I watched the televised images of the towers as they burned and then collapsed.  We hugged each other as if to hold onto a sense of sanity as we mumbled those anxious questions: What is happening?  Who is doing this to our country?   

            What had happened is now all too clear, except, perhaps, to the conspiracy theorists who want to conger up an internal government plot devised by Dick Cheney as a means to get us into a war in the Middle East, where his former company, Halliburton (which he still owned a gazillion shares of stock in) would rack up record profits undertaking all the non-military work that needed to be done to rebuild the countries we would be destroying.

            Funny thing about that theory, whether true or not, it ended up working out just about that way, didn’t it?

            And, of course, the war in Iraq, even though the claim of weapons of mass destruction was just another sham, has been prosecuted to its bitter end, which we probably won’t see for another ten years, as U.S. non-combat troops remain in country for at least that long, a continuing target for whatever brand of radical Islam wants to maintain the pressure, so as to destabilize the puppet regime the U.S. tries to keep in power against Iranian infiltration.

            Isn’t it interesting how easy it is to free associate with the things that have happened since 9/11?  Its impact has been obvious only to the extent America has become unsettled.  The wars—depending on how you count, all two, three, or four of them—have been largely unfunded and essentially unauthorized, if the Constitution is the test.  The economy has been weak at best, especially when viewed relative to the boom times of the prior decade, and near collapse at worst.  A solid majority thought it was electing its most liberal president in 40 years, but now appears ready to swing even more to the right than it was under his very conservative predecessor.

            And the national psyche is awash in a mix of depression and anger.  Few believe what the candidates—all of them—say: that the country’s best days are ahead of it.  Most view the new century as America’s last days as a true superpower.  The rest of the world is no longer willing to march to America’s drumbeat, even if its fortunes still rise and fall with America’s economy.

            And the country’s youth, once its fount of idealism and hope, is now largely comprised of cynics and skeptics.  They were lifted by the candidate of 2008, only to see more of the same in the president he has become.  They have no patience with the country’s governmental institutions, with Congress inept at best, nefarious at worst, with federal and state agencies seemingly always at least a step or two behind the real problems that need to be confronted, with a war-making machine that seems to have an insatiable appetite, and with a corporation-dominated economy that has little regard for its consumers or its workers.

            Would the country be as badly adrift as it is now had 9/11 or anything like it never occurred?  It’s an imponderable question, of course, but no one can doubt that our lives would be considerably easier.  For one thing, we would have much quicker check-ins for air travel.

            More to the point, we wouldn’t be so afraid, so limited in our view of the possible. 

            In some respects, 9/11 changed the way we feel about ourselves.  We can’t pretend that everyone loves us anymore, or even that most of the rest of the world does.  In fact, we now know that we are hated by many, and not just by those who attacked us.  We’ve made more enemies than friends in the last ten years.  For every threat we’ve neutralized, we’ve created two new ones. 

            We lost our innocence on 9/11.  “Our world will never be the same,” I told my law students that afternoon.  I said it without knowing exactly what I meant.  Now I do.

            Wish we didn’t know now what we didn’t know then.

           The recently concluded 61st season of the Music Circus, Sacramento’s premier organization that produces seven musicals in the round every summer, was something of a mixed bag, with two less disappointing productions detracting from the otherwise solid offerings that even included a pair that were nothing less than great.

           We’ll take it from the top, in terms of quality, in summarizing our impression of all seven productions, and we’ll offer grades for each and an overall grade for the entire season.

           “Miss Saigon” – A+.  The season’s last show was the best the organization has staged in years.  In telling the story of the last days of America’s involvement in the Viet Nam War, director Stafford Arima and his superb cast, led by Kevin Gray, Ma-Anne Dionisio, and Eric Kunze, created an experience that was emotionally stirring and intellectually stimulating while still being highly entertaining. 

           “Anything Goes” – A.  Cole Porter’s musical about the search for love on a cruise ship was the perfect vehicle for what the Music Circus does best: big song and dance numbers.  A great ensemble cast added to the scene stealing performances of Vicki Lewis and James Graae (playing Public Enemy #13), and the direction and choreography by Marcia Milgrom Dodge brought it all together delightfully.

           “Annie Get Your Gun” – B+.  Feminism got a lift with this Irving Berlin chestnut, as Beth Malone was a great Annie and Edward Watts was almost as great as her paramour/foil.  A strong supporting cast (including Music Circus stalwarts Dick Decareau and Ron Wisniski) made the silliness of the story easy to take, as did great tunes like “There’s No Business Like Show Business” that gave everyone ample opportunity to sing and dance.

           “The Producers” – B.  The Mel Brooks laughfest was only slightly less funny as performed in the round, with some of the gay humor falling flat, despite the efforts of a strong cast and the direction by Glenn Casale.  Still, it’s hard not to laugh at songs like “Keep it Gay” and “Springtime for Hitler” or to chuckle at the sight of Roger Debris (the in-play director) in drag or of Franz Liebkind (the in-play playwright) in a Nazi uniform.

           “Camelot” – B-.  The Lerner and Loewe classic still wears well, especially when the three leads are solid.  For this production, they were, with Davis Gaines giving perhaps the strongest overall performance of the season as Arthur.  Unfortunately, for this show, Glenn Casale’s direction failed to deliver key scenes as effectively as they should be, thereby reducing the amount of emotional intensity the script merits.

           “Oliver!” – C.  Bringing Dickens’ classic tale to the stage in the form of a musical with comic segments was never an easy task, and while the music in Lionel Bart’s creation still resonates, this production lacked focus, as the sympathy intended for Fagin (well-played by Ron Wisniski, back again) fell flat.  A definite plus, however, was the performance of Roland Rusinek as Mr. Bumble.  His was the best supporting actor performance of the season.

           “I Do! I Do!” – D+.  Matthew Ashford and Christina Saffran Ashford, real life husband and wife, did their best to bring life to this two-person show about the 50-year marriage of the fictional couple.  They succeeded about as well as the material would allow.  But if the Music Circus decision-makers insist on going small once a year, as they most definitely did with this lightweight and lighthearted study of the perils of married life, they need to choose better vehicles.

           Overall grade – B.  Any season that includes the wonder of a “Miss Saigon” is a clear success, especially when it is backed up by a near-perfect performance of the kind of musical this organization is best at producing, as was the case with “Anything Goes.”  But better care needs to be shown in the selection and staging of other offerings.  Thus, we must reluctantly give the 2011 Music Circus season an overall grade that is in no way intended to diminish the greatness of those two shows or the overall quality of most of the others. 

           Here’s hoping for more performances of the straight-A variety in the 2012 season.