April 20th, 2008
whoa
This has been an incredible week for me. I want to thank Andy and Sonia, David, Laura and Julie for bringing to life the Zankel recital. It was a project that I've been wanting to do for a long time and because the subject matter was so dear to me I'm grateful for their help and their talent. I also must thank Jeremy Geffen for allowing me to do such a program.
Because the performance of the music was most important at the time I decided not to give a pre-concert talk. I thought I'd use this journal entry to touch on a few things that may have confused some people. Though most of the audience that attended got what we were trying to do some did not. I think the opinions of those people were voiced in a review by Jay Nordinger from The Sun. In a nut shell some wondered why I would add dance, lighting and video if I was trying to eliminate distractions. That's a good question and I wish I'd addressed it in the program notes. I see now that by not commenting on it I was actually creating a distraction. Anyway, the answer is that I don't consider visual art a distraction. I see it as something that heightens a person's experience rather than lessen it. All of our senses are involved when attending a vocal recital. We see, hear, smell and taste all the time. I have found that some of those things that tradition has dictated in a recital that are supposed to support the musical and artistic experience do not. For example when one reads along in the program I find that one uses a different part of his or her intelligence to read and that this stifles communication. If the text is part of the art that is happening something changes. Sometimes not knowing when to clap and when not to clap makes an audience member nervous. The lighting and the video were meant to take a person out of Zankel Hall, out of Carnegie, out of New York, out of time and for an hour put you in a different place. That was the intention.
Another question asked was why a dancer and why solo piano music? I was moved by Merton's last line of In Silence, " I will try, like them, to be my own silence: and this is difficult. The whole world is secretly on fire. The stones Burn, even the stones they burn me. How can a man be still or listen to all things burning? How can he dare to sit with them when all their silence is on fire?" I wanted to subtly show that even when we think there is silence and that we are alone we are not. Sometimes there was movement, music from the piano, and voice. Sometimes only one of each. Sometimes none and a variety of combinations. That was my way of expressing the mystery of how we experience life.
So, I hope this helps. Thanks again to everyone involved. It meant a great deal to me.
I'm glad he posted this, to explain that it's virutually impossible to shut out our senses because the world is constantly humming around us, and that's what he was trying to do. I was one of the confused at first but I did sort of settle into it, as I posted, and became emotional during one of the pieces. The snarky reviewer didn't do a review of the content, he simply criticized the format probably because he didn't get it, felt stupid and then got mad for feeling stupid. I think I'm a traditionalist in that I would have preferred a straightforward recital, especially since it was my first time seeing him in recital, but I'm not sorry I went. Well, my feet were sorry, but that was my own fault for walking to and from Penn Station in those shoes.
And on a mostly unrelated note, remember how I posted that I found $2 on my walk back to Penn Station? Well today I was out for a run and I found $1, a crisp new $1 bill. This is opera related in that once I get back down to my tiny former self and can fit into my size 6s again, I'll have new Fashion Options for my various backstage adventures, especially if I keep finding money every time I'm out moving at a brisk pace. Hopefully I'll upgrade to $20s soon...
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