Pink is the color of love and happiness.
I gleaned this, not by spending close to two hours in the love and happiness room at Quirk Hotel, but by listening to a Ted talk (as in Ted Ukrop was talking) about the hotel's restoration and renovation, a talk punctuated by the clinking glasses of the cocktail party vibe in the room and a fire alarm.
Given the blase age we live in, it was hardly surprising that, mid-talk, when the excruciatingly loud alarm began sounding, not a soul moved. In fact, a well-dressed guy turned and said to no one in particular, "Funny how no one's making a move to leave."
Funny? It took some time for the Modern Richmond crowd to begrudgingly accept that there was the possibility that the hotel above us was in dire straits and begin shuffling up the stairs, through the smoky lobby and outside.
We never got any explanation, but the moment the alarm ceased, we dutifully filed back in to hear more about how Quirk came to be from Ted and the architect. Like how they researched old photos at the Valentine to see what the lobby originally looked like back when the Italianate building was a toney department store.
How the second floor windows on the east side are original and high up on the walls, in the Italian style, so steps were added to access the views. How flooring from the building next door was used to fashion cabinets, closets and counters. How you can see the racetrack and the Diamond from the rooftop bar because it's the tallest building in the area.
Our ultimate goal was going upstairs to see a room and a loft suite, both with fabulous windows, local artisan-made ice buckets and Virginia art in every room and hallway. Since the rooms cost $200 and $400 a night respectively, it'll likely be my last look at them.
Chatting with a stranger about where I lived and how I liked it (J-Ward, love it) because she's considering a move to the city, she asks, apropos of nothing, "Do you work?"
I think this is about the oddest question you could ask an able-bodied person over 18 and under 65. Do I work? Do I need to pay for shelter and transportation? Do I have living expenses? What the hell?
Yes, I work.
I also eat, both for hire, for pleasure and for sustenance, meaning my next stop was dinner at Lucy's with my favorite walker.
Ensconced at the bar with "On the Town" playing silently on the screen, I licked a bowl of bacon and lentil soup clean and followed it with a fried Brussels sprout and mesclun salad jazzed up with goat cheese and red onions while my companion found religion with Lucy's incomparable cheeseburger.
Shortly, in came the chef and barkeep of Metzger, waiting to meet friends, but happy to share the plans for their new Scott's Addition restaurant in the meantime. While it certainly sounds like it's going to be fun, I can't help but wonder about the wisdom of this mass stampede to such a small and impossibly trendy neighborhood.
Or perhaps I'm secretly envious that more business owners don't consider some of the empty buildings in Jackson Ward when looking for real estate.
But no matter. In front of us was flourless chocolate cake dripping with real whipped cream on a plate squiggled with caramel sauce, so my attention was diverted to more important things like maintaining my daily chocolate quota.
That quota, in fact, had been the subject of discussion earlier today while I was out on my walkabout.
"I see you're still out here strutting every day," says the business owner whose shop I'd passed for years, at least until construction fences forced me to the opposite side of the street.
He felt comfortable giving me a hard time because we'd officially met and chatted at a nearby restaurant I was reviewing when he'd spotted me in non-walking attire. I reminded him that I strut so I can abuse chocolate and put off looking my age.
"I need to get back to the gym more often,:" he said, picking up the gauntlet and running with it before tossing me a delightful compliment (coincidentally, the third reason I walk).
Chocolate needs met for the time, I bade my companion farewell and set out for UR and the annual Musicircus,a tribute to composer John Cage. Since the first one I attended back at the old Chop Suey Books in 2007, I've been devoted to the one-hour cacophony of sound.
Wandering through the concert hall, I was a bit surprised at the small crowd, but there hadn't been much press or even social media about it, so it wasn't entirely surprising. In hallways and practice rooms, the crowd happened on all kinds of music and musicians.
A four-piece fado group, the singer's lovely voice shaping the words of Portuguese longing. A guy playing acoustic guitar and singing the stirring "This Land is Your Land." A piano and drum combo perfectly in sync. Gamelan musicians. A killer guitarist playing lap steel. A familiar sax player, eyes closed, wailing alone in a room.
One of the most unique sound contributors was The Hat, reading from his unfinished novel, using his best actorly voices and hand gestures for dramatic effect.
My only complaint was that the whole point of the Musicircus is the blending of all the disparate music being made, but with such a large building, even the sound of 50+ musicians didn't always reach to the next performer.
It was only when I ran into the jazz critic that I was clued in to the additional musicians playing their hearts out in the basement. Down I went, only to be rewarded with the best bleeding of sound by far.
Just outside a stairwell were three members of No BS - Lance using nothing but a mic'd cymbal and a xylophone, Marcus and Reggie blowing horns - making a disproportionately large sound for three people.
Two favorites - Scott and Cameron - whom I'd seen recently in separate outfits were reunited (and it feels so good) and playing with trumpeter Bob. A noise group turned knobs and produced sound so loud it scared some people off. A guy playing a keyboard with earbuds in seemed to be in his own world.
Walking in on Brian and Pinson, both drummers except tonight Brian - the event's organizer all these years - was playing piano (what?), a favorite gallerist arched an eyebrow and leaned in, saying, "I see your blog is back alive."
Now there was an unexpected compliment. You just never know what instruments people play or who might be paying attention to your blog, do you?
Fittingly, my final stop was a large room with an eight-piece (guitar, bass, drums, congas, trumpet, piano, two saxes) rocking out to the point that the two guys listening were head banging while the grooviest of light shows swirled red, green and yellow on the ceiling and walls.
Needless to say, their raucous sound was bleeding out and down hallways in a manner that had to have had John Cage smiling, wherever he and partner Merce are right now.
With any luck, they're in a place with walls painted in Benjamin Moore's "Love and Happiness Pink," coincidentally, the color of half the rooms at Quirk Hotel.
If only painting it made it so. We strutting types figure that love and happiness are where you find them.
Showing posts with label musicircus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label musicircus. Show all posts
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Cage Match
Some of us live in urban bohemia and some of us grew up in suburban bohemia.
The latter would be Slash Coleman, who came to the Library of Virginia tonight for a reading (actually a retelling) from his new book, "The Bohemian Love Diaries."
Three years ago, I spent Valentine's night with Slash and a bunch of other singles at Crossroads Art, listening to him and a few guests share stories about how the course of true love never does run smooth, a fact of which I was well aware at that time.
Tonight's reading drew a lively crowd, several of whom told me they were intrigued by the book's title.
After chatting with a woman about industrial farming and (no kidding) circumcision during the wine and cheese reception, Slash took center stage in a full beard and ripped jeans to bring us up to date on his life.
And while usually his stories have a humorous side, this one involved him getting a collapsed lung that eventually required surgery to re-inflate and causing him to cancel the rest of his book tour speaking engagements,
Well, except for this one because, here's the thing: Slash grew up in Chester, a word he humorously pronounced all evening long the way the locals do.
Showing us the book cover, we saw a picture of Slash when he was about eight, back when his artist father used to load up the family for monthly trips to Alaska to find an artists' colony.
Except they rarely got any farther than Fredericksburg.
Tonight's talk was about being raised by an eccentric family and his failed love relationships as a result of coming out of all that eccentricity.
He showed us an Italian version of the book with the title changed to "Love with a High Fever," a title he didn't think was any better than his.
I don't know about that.
Sharing the story of his parents' meeting at the tea room at Miller & Rhoads, we heard that Dad, a sculptor, had been a sign painter for M & R and Mom was French and a student at RPI. Along the way, he threw in that Grandpa danced at the Moulin Rouge and Grandma was a watercolor painter.
On his parents' first date, he showed up in a stolen car with a case of Manischewitz wine and a plan to win her heart. Instead he drank it all and passed out and she walked home alone to her dorm.
Disastrous as it sounds, he invited her to Passover for their second date, but they ended up eloping before the second date.
Slash recalled an early interest in sports that was of no consequence to his artistic parents. The closest to sporty they got was when his Dad organized a softball game between the Freaks, a bunch of sculptors, and the Pigs, a team of Richmond police officers.
Begging his mother to let him play baseball, she responded that he would be paralyzed and said no, but he eventually found an old glove in his Dad's studio and signed up for the team himself.
Sharing tales of gymnastics, wrestling and being brought home to his mother after sports injuries, he waxed poetic about Coach Walt, a man who wore Brut by Faberge and had a white person Afro.
It's a pretty vivid visual.
He recalled fondly the period when his father sold roadkill sculptures to support the family. It gets pretty odd here because while the head was from one animal and the legs from another, the body was always made of bread.
Yup, you read right.
So one of his pieces might have the head of a turtle, the legs of a lizard and a pumpernickel body. And when pieces didn't sell after a while, they were retired to the backyard as ornamentation, at least until the bread rotted or was eaten.
I'd say that's pretty bohemian.
In any case, the book is being shopped around as a TV series and who knows, a series could show up on TV about a boy from Chester who came from a family of six Leo women and eight artists.
During the Q & A, Slash said he prefers to read non-fiction because, "I'm interested in how people put their truths together."
Exactly the way I feel about non-fiction and no doubt part of the reason that people read my blog every day.
Or maybe they're eager to read about my love with a high fever exploits, who knows?
Truth telling aside, next on my plate was the annual musicircus at UR, the one hour beautiful cacophony of musicians playing whatever they choose.
Don't ask me, composer John Cage thought it up and I just participate every year.
The musicircus got a late start because the eighth blackbird show ran over, so it was almost 9 when the sirens went off and everyone began playing.
Wandering down hallways, up and down staircases, into practice and classrooms, the milling crowd had myriad options for what kind of music with which to begin.
Since so many people were gathered on the first floor, my fellow Cage lover and I sprinted upstairs in an attempt to beat the masses.
Brian Jones, an organizer of the annual event, had assembled a percussion ensemble that included jazz drummer extraordinaire Scott Clark on tambourine.
Perched on an upholstered chair with two girls on couches for an audience was harmonica player Andrew Ali, whom I've seen play with Allison Self and lately, Josh Small. Tonight he was flying solo, singing and blowing his best blues.
Improv troupe the Johnsons (from Richmond Comedy Coalition) had wedged themselves into a hallway and were hilariously making up stuff with every word that came out of their mouths.
For sheer effect, it was tough to beat Kill Vonnegut, a punk quintet playing under black lights to a rapt audience.
For something completely different, the Family Band looked impossibly young and clean cut, with not a whisker of facial hair in the bunch, belting out Fountains of Wayne's "Stacey's Mom." I think they were all about 8 when it came out.
Tucked into a small room was Monk's Playground, where I recognized Larri Branch on piano, Brian Cruse on upright bass and the female sax player from RVA Big Band. As to which Monk song they were playing, I couldn't tell you.
I spotted David Roberts, whom I recognized from Classical Incarnations, playing piano alone in a room but couldn't hear him over the din, so I stepped in.
Turning, he invited me to look at his score, where I saw the title "Vexations" and the composer, Eric Satie, and an instruction at the top to play the theme 840 times.
David said that Cage had once done it and it had taken him 18 hours. Since the musicircus only lasts one hour, that wasn't happening tonight, but I was curious if repeating the same page of music was vexing him yet.
"A little, yes," he admitted with a smile, but I gave him the award for most Cage-appropriate music choice.
Coming down a stairwell, we happened on a sitar and a moment later the young woman who played it arrived, sitting on the floor to play. It was easily the handsomest instrument of the evening.
And purchased online, of course.
Tucked into a classroom with staffs drawn on the white board were guitarists Scott Burton and Matt White with another musician between them turning knobs and adjusting the effects of their playing to an ambient guitar wall of sound.
Alistair Calhoun took home the prize for smallest guitar, using reverb effects and finger picking to entice me to linger and listen.
DJ Carlito spun world music heavy on the middle east and even getting people to start dancing in the hallway. Pianist David Eslek was playing Lennon's "Imagine."
Downstairs we found the Josh Bearman group, a lot of whom seemed to be the Hot Seats, playing their spot-on old time and bluegrass music.
The gamelan orchestra had a Balinese shadow puppet play on film playing over their instruments, an ideal accompaniment to the lyrical music.
Near the door, Dave Watkins grabbed people's attention coming and going with his electric dulcitar and endless looping to create the sound of a quartet or even quintet.
Because he's Dave, he kept playing long after other musicians had stopped (or even left), treating the lingerers to a sonic finale that blew minds. But then, he's Dave Watkins, so he always delivers the grandiose.
Every year I say it because every year it's true.
Richmond is incredibly fortunate that we have a musicircus put on every year, with dozens of musicians both new to their craft and long-standing, playing their hearts out for free for one hour.
I saw so many people I know taking it all in. There were musicians playing and musicians as guests. Students experiencing it for the first time. Even a few little children in headphones.
Heads full and ears happy, the musicircus beats even Barnum & Bailey for sheer delight in the experience. Plus, no animals are harmed in the making of the musicircus.
That's how I'm putting today's truth together, ladies and germs. Make of it what you will.
Should you have any questions, you can find me in New Bohemia...or thereabouts. Possibly with a high fever.
The latter would be Slash Coleman, who came to the Library of Virginia tonight for a reading (actually a retelling) from his new book, "The Bohemian Love Diaries."
Three years ago, I spent Valentine's night with Slash and a bunch of other singles at Crossroads Art, listening to him and a few guests share stories about how the course of true love never does run smooth, a fact of which I was well aware at that time.
Tonight's reading drew a lively crowd, several of whom told me they were intrigued by the book's title.
After chatting with a woman about industrial farming and (no kidding) circumcision during the wine and cheese reception, Slash took center stage in a full beard and ripped jeans to bring us up to date on his life.
And while usually his stories have a humorous side, this one involved him getting a collapsed lung that eventually required surgery to re-inflate and causing him to cancel the rest of his book tour speaking engagements,
Well, except for this one because, here's the thing: Slash grew up in Chester, a word he humorously pronounced all evening long the way the locals do.
Showing us the book cover, we saw a picture of Slash when he was about eight, back when his artist father used to load up the family for monthly trips to Alaska to find an artists' colony.
Except they rarely got any farther than Fredericksburg.
Tonight's talk was about being raised by an eccentric family and his failed love relationships as a result of coming out of all that eccentricity.
He showed us an Italian version of the book with the title changed to "Love with a High Fever," a title he didn't think was any better than his.
I don't know about that.
Sharing the story of his parents' meeting at the tea room at Miller & Rhoads, we heard that Dad, a sculptor, had been a sign painter for M & R and Mom was French and a student at RPI. Along the way, he threw in that Grandpa danced at the Moulin Rouge and Grandma was a watercolor painter.
On his parents' first date, he showed up in a stolen car with a case of Manischewitz wine and a plan to win her heart. Instead he drank it all and passed out and she walked home alone to her dorm.
Disastrous as it sounds, he invited her to Passover for their second date, but they ended up eloping before the second date.
Slash recalled an early interest in sports that was of no consequence to his artistic parents. The closest to sporty they got was when his Dad organized a softball game between the Freaks, a bunch of sculptors, and the Pigs, a team of Richmond police officers.
Begging his mother to let him play baseball, she responded that he would be paralyzed and said no, but he eventually found an old glove in his Dad's studio and signed up for the team himself.
Sharing tales of gymnastics, wrestling and being brought home to his mother after sports injuries, he waxed poetic about Coach Walt, a man who wore Brut by Faberge and had a white person Afro.
It's a pretty vivid visual.
He recalled fondly the period when his father sold roadkill sculptures to support the family. It gets pretty odd here because while the head was from one animal and the legs from another, the body was always made of bread.
Yup, you read right.
So one of his pieces might have the head of a turtle, the legs of a lizard and a pumpernickel body. And when pieces didn't sell after a while, they were retired to the backyard as ornamentation, at least until the bread rotted or was eaten.
I'd say that's pretty bohemian.
In any case, the book is being shopped around as a TV series and who knows, a series could show up on TV about a boy from Chester who came from a family of six Leo women and eight artists.
During the Q & A, Slash said he prefers to read non-fiction because, "I'm interested in how people put their truths together."
Exactly the way I feel about non-fiction and no doubt part of the reason that people read my blog every day.
Or maybe they're eager to read about my love with a high fever exploits, who knows?
Truth telling aside, next on my plate was the annual musicircus at UR, the one hour beautiful cacophony of musicians playing whatever they choose.
Don't ask me, composer John Cage thought it up and I just participate every year.
The musicircus got a late start because the eighth blackbird show ran over, so it was almost 9 when the sirens went off and everyone began playing.
Wandering down hallways, up and down staircases, into practice and classrooms, the milling crowd had myriad options for what kind of music with which to begin.
Since so many people were gathered on the first floor, my fellow Cage lover and I sprinted upstairs in an attempt to beat the masses.
Brian Jones, an organizer of the annual event, had assembled a percussion ensemble that included jazz drummer extraordinaire Scott Clark on tambourine.
Perched on an upholstered chair with two girls on couches for an audience was harmonica player Andrew Ali, whom I've seen play with Allison Self and lately, Josh Small. Tonight he was flying solo, singing and blowing his best blues.
Improv troupe the Johnsons (from Richmond Comedy Coalition) had wedged themselves into a hallway and were hilariously making up stuff with every word that came out of their mouths.
For sheer effect, it was tough to beat Kill Vonnegut, a punk quintet playing under black lights to a rapt audience.
For something completely different, the Family Band looked impossibly young and clean cut, with not a whisker of facial hair in the bunch, belting out Fountains of Wayne's "Stacey's Mom." I think they were all about 8 when it came out.
Tucked into a small room was Monk's Playground, where I recognized Larri Branch on piano, Brian Cruse on upright bass and the female sax player from RVA Big Band. As to which Monk song they were playing, I couldn't tell you.
I spotted David Roberts, whom I recognized from Classical Incarnations, playing piano alone in a room but couldn't hear him over the din, so I stepped in.
Turning, he invited me to look at his score, where I saw the title "Vexations" and the composer, Eric Satie, and an instruction at the top to play the theme 840 times.
David said that Cage had once done it and it had taken him 18 hours. Since the musicircus only lasts one hour, that wasn't happening tonight, but I was curious if repeating the same page of music was vexing him yet.
"A little, yes," he admitted with a smile, but I gave him the award for most Cage-appropriate music choice.
Coming down a stairwell, we happened on a sitar and a moment later the young woman who played it arrived, sitting on the floor to play. It was easily the handsomest instrument of the evening.
And purchased online, of course.
Tucked into a classroom with staffs drawn on the white board were guitarists Scott Burton and Matt White with another musician between them turning knobs and adjusting the effects of their playing to an ambient guitar wall of sound.
Alistair Calhoun took home the prize for smallest guitar, using reverb effects and finger picking to entice me to linger and listen.
DJ Carlito spun world music heavy on the middle east and even getting people to start dancing in the hallway. Pianist David Eslek was playing Lennon's "Imagine."
Downstairs we found the Josh Bearman group, a lot of whom seemed to be the Hot Seats, playing their spot-on old time and bluegrass music.
The gamelan orchestra had a Balinese shadow puppet play on film playing over their instruments, an ideal accompaniment to the lyrical music.
Near the door, Dave Watkins grabbed people's attention coming and going with his electric dulcitar and endless looping to create the sound of a quartet or even quintet.
Because he's Dave, he kept playing long after other musicians had stopped (or even left), treating the lingerers to a sonic finale that blew minds. But then, he's Dave Watkins, so he always delivers the grandiose.
Every year I say it because every year it's true.
Richmond is incredibly fortunate that we have a musicircus put on every year, with dozens of musicians both new to their craft and long-standing, playing their hearts out for free for one hour.
I saw so many people I know taking it all in. There were musicians playing and musicians as guests. Students experiencing it for the first time. Even a few little children in headphones.
Heads full and ears happy, the musicircus beats even Barnum & Bailey for sheer delight in the experience. Plus, no animals are harmed in the making of the musicircus.
That's how I'm putting today's truth together, ladies and germs. Make of it what you will.
Should you have any questions, you can find me in New Bohemia...or thereabouts. Possibly with a high fever.
Friday, March 22, 2013
History Lessons
I can't decide which I enjoyed more, the dead musician or the dead artist.
Garnett's provided the fueling up required for the next six hours with a farmer's salad and coconut cake with my gang of four.
From there we headed west to University of Richmond for the first of two John Cage Centennial Concerts.
Arriving as the lights were dimmed, we found seats in the fourth row and almost at once I heard someone hiss, "Karen!"
It was one of my favorite sculptors saying hello, so we touched fingers a la Michelangelo and turned our eyes forward.
A half a dozen members of Gamelan Raga Kusuma doing music Cage had written for artist Marcel Duchamp and a film of swirling images and some of the films Cage had scored for other artists friends got things started.
Next came a dining room scene with four people seated and making music with silverware and hands.
Then there was modern dance accompanied by a "prepared" piano, which we had to guess meant a piano with something laying across the strings, given the sound.
Cage's most important work according to him was 4:33, a piece in which the pianist comes out to play and doesn't.
The piece is about the ambient sound of the room, the audience, whatever and not everyone gets it.
Personally, I was thrilled to experience it after having only read about it and I can only imagine how shocking it must have seemed when first played in 1952.
We got more dancing accompanied by another pianist banging on the wooden part of the piano and a singer chanting.
Members of eighth blackbird came out and played tin cans, piano and playback and we finished with a pianist actually playing piano while imagery of Cage's drawings and paintings rolled by the screen.
It was an awesome sampler of Cage's body of work and a fitting tribute on the occasion of his centennial.
Seconds after the performance ended, the lights came up and immediately a Dixieland band started wailing from the balcony.
It was the signal that the Musicircus, another Cage creation, had begun.
Cage's rules were one venue, 100 musicians, one hour, free and open to the public.
"You won't hear a thing, you'll hear everything" Cage famously said about the event and it's a perfect description.
I go every year to see who's playing and to savor the cacophony of so many musicians playing different music so closely together.
I've been to the musicircus many times, first when it was at the old Chop Suey and since then at the Visual Arts Center.
This year's move to UR was intriguing because of the myriad possibilities for where musicians could play.
Exiting the room, we began stumbling over and into musicians in every nook and cranny.
No BS's Lance Koehler was paired with Josh Small at the bottom of a staircase.
I found Scott Burton playing guitar and Reggie Pace turning knobs and holding a mic in a hallway upstairs.
During one of my trips downstairs, I came upon Scott Clark drumming and Jason Scott on sax tucked into the stairwell.
Pianist Joanne King was plinkling away at a toy piano near a door.
Sax players David Hood, Marcus Tenney and John Lilley held court in another hallway.
There was even a bluegrass duo on the freight elevator, possibly the coolest location of all.
I spent the full hour roaming Booker Hall and listening to music fade and come into earshot, sometimes finding that groups had morphed since I'd seen them fifteen minutes earlier.
There really is nothing like the musicircus for a truly original hour of music and we should all bow down to drummer Brian Jones who organizes the event for Richmond every year.
Just one more example of what an amazing scene we have here.
When that was over, I ditched the rest of my gang and drove to Carytown to meet a friend for the French Film Festival.
The last thing I expected was so many other people willing to wait in a block-long line in 30-degree weather to see a film about the painter Renoir at 10:10 on a school night.
Fortunately the wait was less than a quarter of an hour and since I ran into the man-about-town and discussed the Latin Ballet, I had good company while I shivered.
Inside where it was warm, I found my girlfriend and after securing popcorn, we climbed over people to score two seats front and center.
Asking me about my earlier plans, she observed, "Where do you get the energy?"
If I knew the answer to that, I'd bottle it and sell it and give up my life of abject poverty.
How could I resist a film set in the sun-soaked French Riviera with azure-blue water and a beautiful young model who re-energizes the 70+ painter at a time when he was still grieving for his recently dead wife?
Not this art history geek.
But it wasn't just the senior Renoir's story because his son Jean came home from WW I wounded and looking to recover only to meet his father's muse and fall in love.
Since she wants to act and he's interested in movie-making, it's a match made in heaven.
At least until he decides to re-enlist and his brothers-in-arms tell him film-making is a bad idea for a Frenchman, getting a lot of chuckles from the audience.
But even if there hadn't been the story of two creative men, one at the beginning and one at the end of his creative life, the film was the best kind of eye candy.
Shimmering waterfalls, picnics in tall grass, food so sensual it was almost obscene and always the young girl's translucent skin as she posed for the painter through endless sunny days.
It was a beautiful way to end the evening and a fitting start to the next three days of French film we have in store.
I'd heard a thing. I'd heard everything. I'd seen art. I'd seen love.
It seemed like enough for one night..
Garnett's provided the fueling up required for the next six hours with a farmer's salad and coconut cake with my gang of four.
From there we headed west to University of Richmond for the first of two John Cage Centennial Concerts.
Arriving as the lights were dimmed, we found seats in the fourth row and almost at once I heard someone hiss, "Karen!"
It was one of my favorite sculptors saying hello, so we touched fingers a la Michelangelo and turned our eyes forward.
A half a dozen members of Gamelan Raga Kusuma doing music Cage had written for artist Marcel Duchamp and a film of swirling images and some of the films Cage had scored for other artists friends got things started.
Next came a dining room scene with four people seated and making music with silverware and hands.
Then there was modern dance accompanied by a "prepared" piano, which we had to guess meant a piano with something laying across the strings, given the sound.
Cage's most important work according to him was 4:33, a piece in which the pianist comes out to play and doesn't.
The piece is about the ambient sound of the room, the audience, whatever and not everyone gets it.
Personally, I was thrilled to experience it after having only read about it and I can only imagine how shocking it must have seemed when first played in 1952.
We got more dancing accompanied by another pianist banging on the wooden part of the piano and a singer chanting.
Members of eighth blackbird came out and played tin cans, piano and playback and we finished with a pianist actually playing piano while imagery of Cage's drawings and paintings rolled by the screen.
It was an awesome sampler of Cage's body of work and a fitting tribute on the occasion of his centennial.
Seconds after the performance ended, the lights came up and immediately a Dixieland band started wailing from the balcony.
It was the signal that the Musicircus, another Cage creation, had begun.
Cage's rules were one venue, 100 musicians, one hour, free and open to the public.
"You won't hear a thing, you'll hear everything" Cage famously said about the event and it's a perfect description.
I go every year to see who's playing and to savor the cacophony of so many musicians playing different music so closely together.
I've been to the musicircus many times, first when it was at the old Chop Suey and since then at the Visual Arts Center.
This year's move to UR was intriguing because of the myriad possibilities for where musicians could play.
Exiting the room, we began stumbling over and into musicians in every nook and cranny.
No BS's Lance Koehler was paired with Josh Small at the bottom of a staircase.
I found Scott Burton playing guitar and Reggie Pace turning knobs and holding a mic in a hallway upstairs.
During one of my trips downstairs, I came upon Scott Clark drumming and Jason Scott on sax tucked into the stairwell.
Pianist Joanne King was plinkling away at a toy piano near a door.
Sax players David Hood, Marcus Tenney and John Lilley held court in another hallway.
There was even a bluegrass duo on the freight elevator, possibly the coolest location of all.
I spent the full hour roaming Booker Hall and listening to music fade and come into earshot, sometimes finding that groups had morphed since I'd seen them fifteen minutes earlier.
There really is nothing like the musicircus for a truly original hour of music and we should all bow down to drummer Brian Jones who organizes the event for Richmond every year.
Just one more example of what an amazing scene we have here.
When that was over, I ditched the rest of my gang and drove to Carytown to meet a friend for the French Film Festival.
The last thing I expected was so many other people willing to wait in a block-long line in 30-degree weather to see a film about the painter Renoir at 10:10 on a school night.
Fortunately the wait was less than a quarter of an hour and since I ran into the man-about-town and discussed the Latin Ballet, I had good company while I shivered.
Inside where it was warm, I found my girlfriend and after securing popcorn, we climbed over people to score two seats front and center.
Asking me about my earlier plans, she observed, "Where do you get the energy?"
If I knew the answer to that, I'd bottle it and sell it and give up my life of abject poverty.
How could I resist a film set in the sun-soaked French Riviera with azure-blue water and a beautiful young model who re-energizes the 70+ painter at a time when he was still grieving for his recently dead wife?
Not this art history geek.
But it wasn't just the senior Renoir's story because his son Jean came home from WW I wounded and looking to recover only to meet his father's muse and fall in love.
Since she wants to act and he's interested in movie-making, it's a match made in heaven.
At least until he decides to re-enlist and his brothers-in-arms tell him film-making is a bad idea for a Frenchman, getting a lot of chuckles from the audience.
But even if there hadn't been the story of two creative men, one at the beginning and one at the end of his creative life, the film was the best kind of eye candy.
Shimmering waterfalls, picnics in tall grass, food so sensual it was almost obscene and always the young girl's translucent skin as she posed for the painter through endless sunny days.
It was a beautiful way to end the evening and a fitting start to the next three days of French film we have in store.
I'd heard a thing. I'd heard everything. I'd seen art. I'd seen love.
It seemed like enough for one night..
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Who Questions Much Shall Learn Much
Was Lewis Ginter gay? How good is a vegan cookie? How can you stand three feet from a musician and not hear the sounds that he's making?
Should a blog post start with all questions?
My evening began with a reading at Chop Suey Books where Brian Burns was talking about his new book "Lewis Ginter."
I'd met Brian at a hurricane party last week and caught his enthusiasm for his subject matter, the man who brought mass-produced cigarettes to the U.S.
Well, that and the Jefferson Hotel. And the neighborhoods of Ginter Park and Bellevue.
Brian had made sure that the reading was more like a get-together with a cooler full of drinks (including Stewart's orange soda in bottles and lemonade) and a tray of cheese and crackers ("Ooh, Captain's wafers!" one attendee exclaimed).
Since Ginter left no personal papers, Burns turned to old newspapers from the 1880s through the 19920s, recently digitized and available ("Isn't that fabulous?" he asked).
Using the keywords Ginter, tobacco and Pope (Ginter's long-time companion and the man he mentored was John Pope), Burns uncovered plenty of source material about Ginter.
When Ginter started his cigarette factory, they were hand rolled by white women. Jefferson was his idol.
Tobacco was part of the rations for a Civil War soldier, of which Ginter was one.
His motto was "If you see an opportunity, take it."
He designed his own cigarette packs and was a major supporter of the arts.
But did it mean anything that Ginter lived with a man thirty years his junior until his death?
Burns didn't uncover the answer to that one, despite untold hours researching it and inquiring minds wanting to know.
But with the two framed pictures sitting on the table, Ginter and Pope side by side as they had been in real life, it didn't seem that far-fetched.
Not that it was the kind of thing Ginter would have wanted to share in 19th-century Richmond. Oh, my, no.
All the talk of repressed sexuality was making me hungry.
A mere three blocks away at Amuse, I arrived to a full dining room and an empty bar. Empty of people, not of spirits, that is.
I had the Sette Ventiquattro Spumante, a Prosecco-style sparkler that worked well with my mussels and Surry sausage in a lemon butter broth.
Unexpectedly, I had company when a friend who'd just gotten off sat down next to me for dinner, also ordering the mussels and sharing the Spumante with me.
We got in a discussion with the bartender about friends and wanna-be friends and how no one has enough time to spend it with people they don't care about.
That's when I was told about the "reject line," a handy-dandy phone number to give people who request your digits when you don't want to hear from them.
And here I've just been saying no when asked. Leave it to technology to save people the trouble of being honest face to face.
For dessert, we got an item brand-new to the menu, so new that the bartender hadn't even laid eyes on it yet.
It was a chickpea cookie with saffron and Mandarin and lemon sorbet on the side.
True, the cookie was gluten-free and vegan, but I don't know who could tell that from a taste of it.
We talked about how a lot of people probably wouldn't order it because they wouldn't understand what it was, but if they tasted it without knowing, they'd think it delicious.
But I think that's true of sweetbreads, too.
A torrential rain began while we ate our dessert and since I had to leave soon, my friend saved me from becoming a soggy mess when he pulled out an extra rain jacket from his backpack.
Only a guy would have two rain jackets in his bag and if that sounds sexist, so be it.
I didn't have far to go in the rain, but the jacket couldn't save my feet, which had to step through ankle-deep puddles to get to my car.
My cute sandals will never be the same.
But wet feet couldn't keep me from the Musicircus, the annual tribute to composer John Cage that drummer Brian Jones coordinates every year.
From outside the Visual Arts Center, I could see Matt Coyle playing vibes in a front window but all I could hear was the driving rain.
Just inside, I stood three feet from Josh small playing banjo, but all I could hear was the Gamelan orchestra in the next room.
Moving from room to room, I heard sax player Jason Scott playing as a duo with a grimacing drummer, trombonist Bryan Hooten with two other horn players, Marionette's bassist with two clarinet players, and of course Brian Jones, tonight playing as part of a two-bassist jazz quintet.
SCUO, the duo of Scott Clark and Scott Burton finished just as I walked in their room. My loss.
One of the more interesting musicians played a collection of everyday items, like clay flower pots, restaurant-style metal kitchen containers, cans of paint taped together, a watering can and a piece of sheet metal.
It was a percussion wonderland amidst a musical extravaganza.
You have to experience the musicircus to understand how fascinating it is to see one group playing and hear another.
Or how you have to practically get on top of some musicians to hear them over the cacophony of others.
Or to realize how lucky we are to have an annual free Musicircus featuring some of the best musicians in Richmond.
Wouldn't Lewis Ginter and John Pope have raised a glass of Spumante to that?
Should a blog post start with all questions?
My evening began with a reading at Chop Suey Books where Brian Burns was talking about his new book "Lewis Ginter."
I'd met Brian at a hurricane party last week and caught his enthusiasm for his subject matter, the man who brought mass-produced cigarettes to the U.S.
Well, that and the Jefferson Hotel. And the neighborhoods of Ginter Park and Bellevue.
Brian had made sure that the reading was more like a get-together with a cooler full of drinks (including Stewart's orange soda in bottles and lemonade) and a tray of cheese and crackers ("Ooh, Captain's wafers!" one attendee exclaimed).
Since Ginter left no personal papers, Burns turned to old newspapers from the 1880s through the 19920s, recently digitized and available ("Isn't that fabulous?" he asked).
Using the keywords Ginter, tobacco and Pope (Ginter's long-time companion and the man he mentored was John Pope), Burns uncovered plenty of source material about Ginter.
When Ginter started his cigarette factory, they were hand rolled by white women. Jefferson was his idol.
Tobacco was part of the rations for a Civil War soldier, of which Ginter was one.
His motto was "If you see an opportunity, take it."
He designed his own cigarette packs and was a major supporter of the arts.
But did it mean anything that Ginter lived with a man thirty years his junior until his death?
Burns didn't uncover the answer to that one, despite untold hours researching it and inquiring minds wanting to know.
But with the two framed pictures sitting on the table, Ginter and Pope side by side as they had been in real life, it didn't seem that far-fetched.
Not that it was the kind of thing Ginter would have wanted to share in 19th-century Richmond. Oh, my, no.
All the talk of repressed sexuality was making me hungry.
A mere three blocks away at Amuse, I arrived to a full dining room and an empty bar. Empty of people, not of spirits, that is.
I had the Sette Ventiquattro Spumante, a Prosecco-style sparkler that worked well with my mussels and Surry sausage in a lemon butter broth.
Unexpectedly, I had company when a friend who'd just gotten off sat down next to me for dinner, also ordering the mussels and sharing the Spumante with me.
We got in a discussion with the bartender about friends and wanna-be friends and how no one has enough time to spend it with people they don't care about.
That's when I was told about the "reject line," a handy-dandy phone number to give people who request your digits when you don't want to hear from them.
And here I've just been saying no when asked. Leave it to technology to save people the trouble of being honest face to face.
For dessert, we got an item brand-new to the menu, so new that the bartender hadn't even laid eyes on it yet.
It was a chickpea cookie with saffron and Mandarin and lemon sorbet on the side.
True, the cookie was gluten-free and vegan, but I don't know who could tell that from a taste of it.
We talked about how a lot of people probably wouldn't order it because they wouldn't understand what it was, but if they tasted it without knowing, they'd think it delicious.
But I think that's true of sweetbreads, too.
A torrential rain began while we ate our dessert and since I had to leave soon, my friend saved me from becoming a soggy mess when he pulled out an extra rain jacket from his backpack.
Only a guy would have two rain jackets in his bag and if that sounds sexist, so be it.
I didn't have far to go in the rain, but the jacket couldn't save my feet, which had to step through ankle-deep puddles to get to my car.
My cute sandals will never be the same.
But wet feet couldn't keep me from the Musicircus, the annual tribute to composer John Cage that drummer Brian Jones coordinates every year.
From outside the Visual Arts Center, I could see Matt Coyle playing vibes in a front window but all I could hear was the driving rain.
Just inside, I stood three feet from Josh small playing banjo, but all I could hear was the Gamelan orchestra in the next room.
Moving from room to room, I heard sax player Jason Scott playing as a duo with a grimacing drummer, trombonist Bryan Hooten with two other horn players, Marionette's bassist with two clarinet players, and of course Brian Jones, tonight playing as part of a two-bassist jazz quintet.
SCUO, the duo of Scott Clark and Scott Burton finished just as I walked in their room. My loss.
One of the more interesting musicians played a collection of everyday items, like clay flower pots, restaurant-style metal kitchen containers, cans of paint taped together, a watering can and a piece of sheet metal.
It was a percussion wonderland amidst a musical extravaganza.
You have to experience the musicircus to understand how fascinating it is to see one group playing and hear another.
Or how you have to practically get on top of some musicians to hear them over the cacophony of others.
Or to realize how lucky we are to have an annual free Musicircus featuring some of the best musicians in Richmond.
Wouldn't Lewis Ginter and John Pope have raised a glass of Spumante to that?
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Thursday Thrills
Ever since the VMFA transformed itself into a world-class museum, it's been one amazing thing after another. The latest was the lecture tonight by Jun Kaneko, the Japanese sculptor who did all those massive and beautiful pieces temporarily residing in the VMFA sculpture garden.
The evening got off to an auspicious start when, while walking to Will Call to pick up my ticket, I passed an Asian man with flowing white hair and glasses who smiled at me. Smiling back, I immediately knew that he was the artist and I don't even know why. And I could tell I was going to enjoy hearing him talk.
I joined a nearly full house to hear this painter-turned-sculptor share his life and art. His passion for creating imbued every word of his lecture and he emphasized that creative energy comes from curiosity. Being a naturally curious person myself, I loved having my need to know validated.
He said his origins as a painter left him in the dark about sculpture. "It's really great not to know anything because you have nothing to worry about, " he recalled. "Lots of things I did shouldn't have worked."
I could say the same about my own life, although I have no sculpture to show for it (well, except for the little blue glazed flower pot I made in 4th grade...but I digress). Next up was dinner.
With flamenco on the menu at Olio tonight, I couldn't resist a stop for food and a chance to listen to the flying fingers of guitarist Frank Bourke. I'd heard him previously at the Listening Room, so I knew how good he was. And how often do I have a chance to hear flamenco guitar playing?
I arrived in between sets, so I went to the counter to choose my meal. One thing I love abut Olio is that you don't have to order off the menu. Tonight I chose a couple of things from the case, paid by the ounce and was delivered a lovely plate of roasted chicken salad on mesclun greens with cumin-spiced black bean and corn salad on the side. It looked so much more appealing on the plate than it had in the plastic containers.
Between songs, a nearby diner asked if he could join me at my table, despite there being plenty of empty tables. He asked if I played guitar (ha!), informed me he likes music without lyrics and
then said I looked fantastic in blue ("It's your dark hair."). It seemed like a good time to leave for the Visual Arts Center and one of my favorite annual events.
Musicircus, the yearly tribute to composer John Cage, is assembled by drummer extraordinaire Brian Jones. The cacophony of a dozen or so different musicians and groups performing whatever they like simultaneously is an aural treat unlike any other.
Moving from room to room and space to space, music blends and becomes something different entirely. Tonight's offerings included Josh Small and Lance Koehler (banjo and percussion), yet another Brian Jones trio (drums, two bass clarinets), Scott Clark and Scott Burton aka SCUO (drums and jazz guitar), Richmond Gamelon Orchestra (they encouraged viewers to play the cymbals with them), Happy Lucky Combo, a female duo (violin and viola) and a bluegrass band I didn't know (upright bass, two banjos, fiddle, guitar and washboard). And that's just what I remember right now.
Moving around to hear and see different music, I ran into all kinds of random people. The complimentary biologist whom I'd also seen at the Kaneko lecture, the jewelry-maker I'd met at the Down Home Family Reunion, the renowned local guitarist I'd asked to explain pedal steel playing to me, the fellow former coworker who barely leaves the house anymore, and of course the walking writer I run into everywhere.
But I never lingered to chat for long because Musicircus only lasts for an hour and I didn't want to miss a moment of the experience. As Cage said, "You should let each thing that happens happen from its own center..."
And there was much happening from many centers. I was just there to bear witness to it all and smile with the pleasure of being part of it.
And, no, I did not have the nerve to pick up the cymbals and join in, although I thought about it. Maybe next year.
Because if Brian Jones puts on a musicircus, I will come. I always have. I always will.
The evening got off to an auspicious start when, while walking to Will Call to pick up my ticket, I passed an Asian man with flowing white hair and glasses who smiled at me. Smiling back, I immediately knew that he was the artist and I don't even know why. And I could tell I was going to enjoy hearing him talk.
I joined a nearly full house to hear this painter-turned-sculptor share his life and art. His passion for creating imbued every word of his lecture and he emphasized that creative energy comes from curiosity. Being a naturally curious person myself, I loved having my need to know validated.
He said his origins as a painter left him in the dark about sculpture. "It's really great not to know anything because you have nothing to worry about, " he recalled. "Lots of things I did shouldn't have worked."
I could say the same about my own life, although I have no sculpture to show for it (well, except for the little blue glazed flower pot I made in 4th grade...but I digress). Next up was dinner.
With flamenco on the menu at Olio tonight, I couldn't resist a stop for food and a chance to listen to the flying fingers of guitarist Frank Bourke. I'd heard him previously at the Listening Room, so I knew how good he was. And how often do I have a chance to hear flamenco guitar playing?
I arrived in between sets, so I went to the counter to choose my meal. One thing I love abut Olio is that you don't have to order off the menu. Tonight I chose a couple of things from the case, paid by the ounce and was delivered a lovely plate of roasted chicken salad on mesclun greens with cumin-spiced black bean and corn salad on the side. It looked so much more appealing on the plate than it had in the plastic containers.
Between songs, a nearby diner asked if he could join me at my table, despite there being plenty of empty tables. He asked if I played guitar (ha!), informed me he likes music without lyrics and
then said I looked fantastic in blue ("It's your dark hair."). It seemed like a good time to leave for the Visual Arts Center and one of my favorite annual events.
Musicircus, the yearly tribute to composer John Cage, is assembled by drummer extraordinaire Brian Jones. The cacophony of a dozen or so different musicians and groups performing whatever they like simultaneously is an aural treat unlike any other.
Moving from room to room and space to space, music blends and becomes something different entirely. Tonight's offerings included Josh Small and Lance Koehler (banjo and percussion), yet another Brian Jones trio (drums, two bass clarinets), Scott Clark and Scott Burton aka SCUO (drums and jazz guitar), Richmond Gamelon Orchestra (they encouraged viewers to play the cymbals with them), Happy Lucky Combo, a female duo (violin and viola) and a bluegrass band I didn't know (upright bass, two banjos, fiddle, guitar and washboard). And that's just what I remember right now.
Moving around to hear and see different music, I ran into all kinds of random people. The complimentary biologist whom I'd also seen at the Kaneko lecture, the jewelry-maker I'd met at the Down Home Family Reunion, the renowned local guitarist I'd asked to explain pedal steel playing to me, the fellow former coworker who barely leaves the house anymore, and of course the walking writer I run into everywhere.
But I never lingered to chat for long because Musicircus only lasts for an hour and I didn't want to miss a moment of the experience. As Cage said, "You should let each thing that happens happen from its own center..."
And there was much happening from many centers. I was just there to bear witness to it all and smile with the pleasure of being part of it.
And, no, I did not have the nerve to pick up the cymbals and join in, although I thought about it. Maybe next year.
Because if Brian Jones puts on a musicircus, I will come. I always have. I always will.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Music, Music Everywhere
"You won't hear a thing; you'll hear everything." I wish those were my words, but they belong to the Musicircus event creator, composer John Cage; the annual rva incarnation was held tonight at the Visual Arts Center. Last year's event was at the old Chop Suey Books and featured far fewer musicians; tonight's Musicircus had over 60 musicians, playing solo, in groups and in every combination in between and spread out over two floors, the entryway and the garden out back. A visitor couldn't walk more than a few steps without encountering more music. And that's exactly the point.
The beauty of the Musicircus is that you have to almost be on top of the performers to distinguish what they're playing. If you attempt to listen from a distance, you're bound to hear music from other sources; it can be disconcerting to be watching a banjo player and hearing Christmas carolers. Or watching a jazz trio and hearing the beats of a dj's mixes. Several musicians incorporated multi-media into their performances, providing additional visual stimulation. As the audience walks endlessly through the spaces, each was creating their own individual Musicircus experience, just as Cage intended.
Cage dictated that because the musicians are not paid, the event must be free to the public. How fortunate for Richmond that our own drum king Brian Jones has made this event an annual feast for the ears. I spoke with a half a dozen local musicians, both performers and attendees, tonight and every single one mentioned how lucky we are to have an annual Musicircus here. Don't I know it.
The beauty of the Musicircus is that you have to almost be on top of the performers to distinguish what they're playing. If you attempt to listen from a distance, you're bound to hear music from other sources; it can be disconcerting to be watching a banjo player and hearing Christmas carolers. Or watching a jazz trio and hearing the beats of a dj's mixes. Several musicians incorporated multi-media into their performances, providing additional visual stimulation. As the audience walks endlessly through the spaces, each was creating their own individual Musicircus experience, just as Cage intended.
Cage dictated that because the musicians are not paid, the event must be free to the public. How fortunate for Richmond that our own drum king Brian Jones has made this event an annual feast for the ears. I spoke with a half a dozen local musicians, both performers and attendees, tonight and every single one mentioned how lucky we are to have an annual Musicircus here. Don't I know it.
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