So I asked Eric Fredericksen, host of next week’s Speak & Sing at On the Boards on St. Patrick’s Day for any information he can divulge for what will happen or what we can do to prepare for his lecture. He sent me this link. And I was like, “Great, Eric. Now I have to read a book. Thanks a lot!” So instead of reading I do a google search. (Who’s SMART now?)

From Wikipedia:

The Practice of Everyday Life is a book by Michel de Certeau which examines the ways in which people individualise mass culture, altering things, from utilitarian objects to street plans to rituals, laws and language, in order to make them their own.

From Amazon:

Volume 2: Living & Cooking goes into “tactics of resistance and private practices that make living a subversive art” developing a social history of “making do” based on microhistories that move from the private sphere (of dwelling, cooking and homemaking) to the public (the experience of living in a neighbourhood).

Interesting, Mr. Fredericksen. Here is my Youtube response:

Join us at Speak & Sing next Wednesday. And it’s my birthday, so it would be great to see you. Seating is limited, karaoke lovers… so call the BOX OFFICE NOW

- Mike P

In case you’re interested in leading the crowd through an Irish standard or a drinking song at next week’s karaoke event, we’ve put together a quick list so that you can get to practicing. Write down the songbook numbers (in parentheses) or watch the linked videos before Mar 17 to prepare!

Irish Standards:
Wearing of the Green (5234-2)
Danny Boy (5837-5)
When Irish Eyes Are Smiling (5187-4)
Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral – Irish Lullabye (5234-1)

Songs to Drink to:
The Doors | Alabama Song (Whisky Bar) (5834-10)
George Thorogood & The Destroyers | One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer (6242-15)
Jimmy Buffett | Margaritaville (5184-12)
Metallica | Whisky in the Jar (6220-5)
Beer Barrel Polka (5234-13)

Are there any that we’re missing? Let us know so that we can go through the songbook and make sure they’re included!

Here’s what some local publications are saying about the past weekend at OtB:

“Songs of Wars I Have Seen is defined by tension. Stein’s deceptively colloquial prose is a slick surface hiding rugged, polyphonic topography, while Goebbels’s composition bobs and weaves between almost pastoral peace and brooding, martial passages. (In its dramatic structure, Songs of Wars I Have Seen is also reminiscent of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.) Together, the two evoked life’s lurching shifts in focus from the domestic—sugar, honey—to the noisy clash of nations. It was marvelous.” – The Stranger

“Heiner Goebbels is a well-known European avant-garde composer whose works have rarely been performed in the U.S. This is too bad, if Song of Wars I Have Seen, a stunning hour-long chamber work, is representative.” – CrossCut

Zach Carstensen posted some more background on how Seattle Chamber Players came to find Heiner Goebbels and why this composer is making important waves in the contemporary art scene:

The Seattle Chamber Players’ interest in presenting Goebbels’ music started in 2005, when the group visited the Warsaw Autumn Festival. David Sabee, a member of the Chamber Players, attended the second performance of another piece by Goebbels — “Landscape With Distant Relatives.”

“It was overwhelming in scope, intricacy, and impression, with a multitude of themes,” Sabee says. “Hard to describe, it came closest to being classed as an opera. Needless to say, the impression of this two and a half hour work was very strong. Immediately, I began dreaming of somehow bringing the work of this amazing and distinct voice to Seattle.”

 Read more.

Someone just posted this to the facebook event invite for Speak & Sing next week:

That’s the Swedish Chef, Animal and Beaker singing “Oh Danny Boy.” Thanks to Basil for putting this up!

I expected Goebbels’ work to be more “operatic,” but in fact there is almost no singing at all, and no drama or acting per se. Fragments of text by Gertrude Stein are woven into the music, spoken by the female instrumentalists. The music itself is really interesting and often quite beautiful without being overly sentimental. While the piece occasionally references other historical styles — baroque, classical, jazz, minimalism — it all fits together seamlessly, and the sections in Goebbels’ own style are refreshingly hard to pin down. I would not know how to classify or even describe his music, which is to his credit. His use of electronic and sampled sound was integrated deftly into the fabric of the live music and was never intrusive or superficial. The final elegiac trumpet solo, played against a sonic backdrop of many live and recorded Tibetan singing bowls, was especially moving.

I was especially struck by the contrast between the music and the language. I should preface what follows by saying that I tend to not think of myself as a “typical American” (whatever that might be). But when I travel to another country, I’m instantly reminded of how totally American I really am — mom, apple pie, baseball, the whole bit. Likewise, it’s easy to imagine Gertrude Stein as somehow exotic or “weird”: a lesbian avant garde writer who lived most of her life in France writing books that most Americans don’t understand or want to read, a thoroughly cosmopolitan and intellectual woman who could go head to head with the (male) titans of the European art world. And yet in this setting, amidst all of this very “European” sounding music and historical background, she seems as American as Mark Twain. Aside from the repetition, there is nothing at all “difficult” about Stein’s writing as presented here. It’s charming and witty, at times almost banal, and only slightly eccentric. The spoken vignettes reminded me of John Cage’s odd little stories in his “Indeterminacy.”

Goebbels mentioned in the Q&A that he had only been introduced to Stein’s work fairly recently; I wonder if he has heard the recordings of her reading her work, and if so, if he intentionally avoided her more lilting and melodic style of speech. Here the delivery was more prosaic, and it was obvious that the words were being read by musicians, not by actors more comfortable with speaking parts. He clearly made a choice in this regard, and I’m not suggesting it was the wrong one. But I found myself missing the overt musicality of Stein’s language.

Music at OtB is always a dicey proposition, as the acoustics are so utterly hostile to it. The opening set by Pacific Musicworks really suffered in this regard. They sounded thin and anemic and the notes seemed to fall to the floor immediately upon leaving their instruments. Too bad, as they played very well. I would love to hear them again in a room that is more friendly to unamplified music. Goebbels’ piece fared much better. The instruments and voices were amplified and given some reverb, and sound engineer Al Swanson did a great job of balancing all of the elements of such a large and diverse ensemble. Kudos also to amazing conductor Anu Tali, and congrats to the SCP gang for successfully pulling together such a huge and ambitious undertaking.

- Steve Peters

Last night, with so much to look at, listen to, and comprehend, I found myself ebb back and forth between both overwhelming curiosity and peaceful enjoyment. Listening to the music of Heiner Goebbels, performed by Seattle Chamber Players and Pacific Musicworks was a mind whirling treat. Three works in length, the show was a smooth transition from a short overture, to an amusing rendition of Monteverdi’s II Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (where I was highly intrigued by the Monty Python –esque character reenactments) to the third, hour long piece by Goebbels.

Incorporating the words of Gertrude Stein, Goebbels constructed an atmosphere that completely enveloped my attention. Captured by the vocal commentary of the women musicians, I was led to develop my own story about war and romance, honey and chickens. At times I took notice of fully developed thoughts achieved between both musicians and narrators. Other times felt abstract, pulled apart, full of the repetition and confusion found within a time of war. The music worked both as the main story line, intertwining with the spoken words, as well as a form of punctuation, coming in at just the right moments to emphasize and further develop the ambiance.

Occasionally I became intrigued by the romance of war, the simple stories of those who survived and those who were lost. I would then find myself drawn away from the idea of romantic warfare and look at the harsh realities. While listening to Goebbels composition I kept coming back to music and text as a channel for the artistry that revolves around times of crisis. I am left reflecting the notion that stories of people within the chaos and the appreciation of the simple things, when the simple things are not available, are captivating to tell.

-Monique Courcy

An audience has an awareness of place: ambiance, assumptions, and expectations of the venue. This is not limited to theatres and the performing arts – most viewers will look at visual art differently if they encounter it at a museum, the wall of their local coffee shop, or a small gallery. Context matters. I’m not sure how I would have judged the Monteverdi if I had encountered it in a different venue, but at On the Boards the staging felt silly. This is a venue where you can break apart some of the deeply ingrained traditions of classical music and experiment – why not take advantage of that? The costumes and backdrop communicated pageantry and made the work unnecessarily quaint and archaic. The instrumentalists were bundled off in one corner of the stage and the three singers moved within their alloted space, without a strong sense of the visual impact of stage blocking. This, more than the music or text, was what caused it to jar with the second half of the program. The music was very good and well-performed, and in some venues that would have been enough.

I don’t recall how long Songs of Wars I Have Seen lasted. It reframed my sense of time. Within this space, Heiner Goebbels creates such imposing rigidity (through the instrumental orchestration as well as the pace of the spoken text) that when it is relaxed, there is a feeling of relieved exhalation; the music and spoken accounts that fall into those spaces of relief pull you closer. There is a hope that this story of a dog and a chicken is going to give me a reassurance of comfort in humanity and for a moment it does. Intricate attention to instrumentation and balance allows freedom of movement within the act of listening. There is a melodic tonal theme, then there is an undercurrent of sound – in my mind it turns from static into sand into rain. Goebbels is a strong composer and a masterful, compelling, generous artist. He doesn’t merely reference other works of art (Gertrude Stein and Matthew Locke, at the root of both: Shakespeare – and at the root of Shakespeare: too many to count) or use them as props, he enhances them. He gives them room to breathe and interact in a new context just as we are breathing and interacting in a different context with familiar themes.

- Kate Ratcliffe

I’d like to take the opportunity of having opera in our theater to post a few short cartoons that shaped my understanding of opera. Just click on the images to watch the YouTube videos:

What’s Opera, Doc? (1957)

Rabbit of Seville (1949)

Yesterday morning I got a phone call from my mother. She had received word from Austria that her cousin, a woman I called an aunt, had died. In 1943 my mother was 6 years old. She and the rest of my family had been moved out to the countryside after an Allied bombing of Innsbruck destroyed their apartment building and killed her sister. When my mother talks about the war now, her memories are of the farm life, of how her siblings and cousins all played together in the barnyard and helped their grandfather tend the beehives. They are memories of an idyllic landscape, the War an abstract idea left behind in the crumbling city.

I was already thinking about these things when I sat down in the theater last night to listen to Songs of Wars I Have Seen. I knew practically nothing of what to expect from this piece, but Gertrude Stein’s text, spoken by female members of the ensemble, immediately felt familiar. Tethered to the present moment by blips and whirring from a digital source, the dimming and brightening of the floor and table lamps echoed my mother’s stories of the black outs, alarms that warned a city into darkness. And here, now, were all these women, playing instruments and speaking this history so deftly, with a care that erased all triteness. As the piece wound to a cinematic conclusion, I was still wrapped in my own family’s history, thinking about how a war changes a childhood.

My mother said that her cousin, a devout Catholic, wouldn’t be buried as was the tradition. Instead, she wanted to be cremated and her ashes taken to the family farm. For them, 1943 was a good year, full of honey and homeschooling. In sitting in the darkness last night, listening to this brilliant music, I appreciated Stein’s careful words and the complexity of a war’s effect on memory.

- Tania