Tag Archives: meany hall

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Pianist Christopher O’Riley Performs Radiohead and Nirvana

Pianist Christopher O’Riley wears many hats. Renowned for his interpretations of classical works by Ravel, Rachmaninoff, and Gershwin, O’Riley frequently tours as a piano soloist. But you may also know him as the host of NPR’s popular show From the Top, where he interviews talented young classical musicians. Or perhaps you’ve heard his piano arrangements of hits by Radiohead, Nirvana, and other legends of the rock world. O’Riley arranges classical music as well, tackling mighty orchestral masterpieces and paring them down for solo piano.

Pianist Christopher O'Riley (Photo: Wendy Lynch)
Pianist Christopher O’Riley (Photo: Wendy Lynch)

This week, O’Riley is in Seattle for two very different recitals at the University of Washington. The first of these, held last night at the intimate Meany Studio Theatre, featured O’Riley’s piano renditions of popular rock songs. Tonight’s concert on the Meany Hall mainstage is an all-classical program, including arrangements by Liszt and O’Riley himself.

Last night’s program was announced from the stage. O’Riley’s enthusiastic introductions for each piece made it clear that he’s very passionate about all the music he arranges. Bands represented included Radiohead, Nirvana, and Pink Floyd. O’Riley also performed songs by Portland singer-songwriter Elliott Smith and bassist Reid Anderson of jazz trio The Bad Plus. In addition, he slipped one of his own pieces into the program, a waltz composed as part of the score to an interactive e-book.

A self-proclaimed Radiohead fanatic, O’Riley has recorded two full-length albums of arrangements of the band’s songs. Much to the delight of last night’s crowd, nearly half of the songs O’Riley performed were by Thom Yorke and his crew, including two encores. These arrangements were the most exciting and engaging songs on the program. Most of them were from the 1997 release OK Computer, including a dazzling arrangement of the hit single “Paranoid Android”, which O’Riley dubbed as the band’s most orchestral song.

In general, Radiohead’s style lends itself well to arrangement. The band’s songs are a sea of colors and textures, pierced by Thom Yorke’s melodic crooning, which floats over the wash of sound. It’s very similar to orchestral music, where melodies are supported and enhanced by layers of symphonic sound.

O’Riley’s arrangements honor the orchestral aspects of Radiohead’s music. His renditions are are full of compositional motifs from the Romantic and Impressionist eras. Melodic chords chime out while arpeggios in the lower notes create a blurry texture — an effect reminiscent of Debussy. At times, O’Riley channels the great pianists Franz Liszt, especially during sections where the right hand pinky pings out the melody high up on the piano while the rest of the fingers are busy creating a lush accompaniment.

The concert struck an appealing balance between intense, raging anthems and slow, melancholic ballads. O’Riley’s version of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” doesn’t quite muster the raw angst of the original, but he comes close, rendering Kurt Cobain’s guitar chorus as enormous smashing chords in the piano.

In contrast, ballads like Elliott Smith’s “True Love” and Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” (made famous by the film Donnie Darko) have a much simpler texture evocative of Chopin’s Preludes or Nocturnes, featuring a singing melodic line in the right hand supported by a chord-based accompaniment in the left. O’Reily’s arrangements steer clear of sentimentality and sappiness. They’re full of emotion, but not overwrought.

O’Riley’s at the top of a growing genre of performers who are re-imagining pop and rock hits in different musical styles. In the local scene, the Seattle Rock Orchestra produces tribute concerts that bring together guest vocalists and a full orchestra for arrangements of popular songs by the Beatles, Queen, Arcade Fire, and other bands. They’ll be performing the music of The Smashing Pumpkins next month.

Judging from the whoops of joy as O’Riley announced each song, last night’s crowd was full of Radiohead fans. A look around the room confirmed that the performance attracted a decidedly younger set than the typical audience at a classical piano recital. It was a treat to see O’Riley perform and discuss his arrangements in such an intimate space, though it seemed that the performance could have drawn a larger crowd with more marketing and a better-known venue. I’d love to see O’Riley return next season to play Radiohead for a huge theater full of fans.

If you’d like to catch Christopher O’Riley before he leaves Seattle, tickets are still available for his an all-classical program tonight at the University of Washington’s Meany Hall. The concert, part of the UW World Series, features works by Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt, as well as O’Riley’s own transcription of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

Arts & Entertainment, Dance

For Compagnie Marie Chouinard, the Music Comes First

Choreographer Marie Chouinard performed her own work solo for twelve years before forming her Compagnie Marie Chouinard, developing her highly original style. It’s no surprise, then, that in both works she presented on the UW World Series at Meany Theater Thursday night (repeated tonight and Saturday; tickets), dancers performed individually much of the time, though often not alone on stage.

The two works couldn’t be more different in atmosphere: 24 Preludes by Chopin, and The Rite of Spring, music by Stravinsky. Again, it’s no surprise that Chouinard calls these works by the titles of the music, because for her the music comes first. Her dancers recreate the music in bodily form. If you could hear nothing at all through your ears, you could sense the music through the the way they move, not just the the rhythm but the emotions the music conjures.

Thus, in 24 Preludes, she mirrors each brief prelude as contrastingly as did Chopin.

The dancers are clad in black swim suits, trunks for the four men, one-piece for the six women, with a black strap around each foot which is otherwise bare, and with some fantastical hairstyles including several mohawks. Chouinard uses hands, wrists and fingers frequently and effectively here, sometimes sharply angled, sometimes fluttering, suggesting flight. One prelude has arms raising Heil-Hitler style then going beyond and dissipating the memory, another has the dancers kicking a soccer ball around. Impressions like joy, toughness, ghostliness, athletes, humor, being imprisoned, spasticity all enter the mind.

Superbly trained athletes the dancers are, undeniably. There is huge energy here, as Chouinard uses the whole body in movements fluid or jerky, seemingly easy but requiring great flexibility. At the same time the dancers need to be closely attuned to the music as so much of what they do is dictated by the phrasing, the mood, the rhythms of each prelude. With considerable courage, given the needs of the dance, the company agreed to use live music provided by, in 24 Preludes, UW doctoral student in piano Brooks Tran.

The same courage applied for Rite, where the company used the UW Symphony Orchestra led by its music director Jonathan Pasternack. While the dancers are often performing alone in individual pools of light, there is still a feeling of primitive tribal dance, enhanced when they all come together as a group.

There’s cohesiveness of feeling here but each one is dancing to a personal vision, and above all it’s the music which drives the dance rising out of it. The vigor, the energy, the sexuality inherent without being sexy because it doesn’t seem to be directed at another person, all embody Rite’s music, which shocked the audience 100 years ago this year, and can still take us aback now. It’s merely an unemphasized part of the whole that the female dancers, like the men, wear only black swimming trunks, naked from the waist up.

One prop is used, sparingly. Five curved spikes like fingernails, about a foot long, sprout from a dancer’s hands, elbows and thighs, later from another dancer also. As as they move together, they undulate like jellyfish tendrils. Another time a group of dancers has only has one spike on each hand, a unicorn horn, a penis, a pair of horns.

The originality of Chouinard’s choreography shows starkly in there is one and only one movement, a leap, which appears to derive from classical ballet. Her lighting for Rites is equally imaginative, while for 24 Preludes, it’s achieved by the gifted Axel Morgenthaler.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

What We’re Hearing This Month: Classical Music Picks for January

Happy New Year! Seattle’s classical music ensembles and concert venues are off to a running start in 2013 with a stellar line-up of performances for the month of January. Explore exciting new works by local composers with the Seattle Rock Orchestra, experience chamber music classics at Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Winter Festival, and celebrate the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring at the University of Washington. If you’ve resolved to catch more live music in 2013, you’re in luck!

Pianist HJ Lim (Photo: Simon Fowler)
Pianist HJ Lim (Photo: Simon Fowler)

Jan. 10 & 12 — Pianist HJ Lim joins the Seattle Symphony for a performance of Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Also on the program are works by Stravinsky and Mozart.

Jan. 12 — Seattle Rock Orchestra performs new works for orchestra by a host of local composers, including Nat Evans, Jherek Bischoff, and Evan Flory-Barnes. The concert also features music from Beck Hansen’s Song Reader.

Jan. 12 — West Seattle’s Holy Rosary Church provides an atmospheric setting for Cappella Romana‘s performance of Rachmaninoff’s The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Last year, the Portland-based ensemble visited Seattle for a sold-out concert featuring Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil.

Jan. 18 — Cornish College of the Arts presents a recital by Trio de Kooning, a newly-formed string ensemble dedicated to performing new music by Dutch and American composers.

Jan. 18-26 — Seattle Chamber Music Society presents its 2013 Winter Festival, featuring six evenings of concerts. Highlights include a performance of all six of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (Jan. 24), Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (Jan. 20), and free pre-concert solo recitals by Festival artists.

Jan. 18 – 20 — Racer Sessions celebrates three years of improvised and experimental music at Cafe Racer with Cry and Roar, a three-day festival featuring musicians and ensembles that have played a key role in the Sessions’ history.

Eighth Blackbird (Photo: Luke Ratray)
Eighth Blackbird (Photo: Luke Ratray)

Jan. 22 – 23 — Chicago-based new music ensemble Eighth Blackbird visits the Seattle area for the first time. The Grammy Award-winning group will perform works by Glass, Ligeti, and others on January 22 at Kirkland Performance Center. On January 23, they’ll present a masterclass with students at Cornish College of the Arts.

Jan. 22 — Up-and-coming Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii presents a solo recital at Benaroya Hall, featuring works by Debussy and Chopin. 24-year-old Tsujii, who is blind, won the gold medal at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Jan. 24-26 — In honor of the 100th anniversary of the premiere of The Rite of Spring, the dancers of Compagnie Marie Chouinard perform Stravinsky’s influential work accompanied by the University of Washington Symphony Orchestra. Also on the program is an original choreography set to Chopin’s 24 Preludes, featuring live music by local pianist Brooks Tran.

Jan. 28-29 — The UW World Series presents pianist Christopher O’Riley in two recitals. On January 28, the popular host of NPR’s From the Top will perform his own transcriptions of popular songs by Radiohead, Arcade Fire, and Nirvana. The next day, he’ll take the stage at Meany Hall for a more traditional program featuring works transcribed by Liszt.

Jan. 31 & Feb. 2 — The Seattle Symphony gives its inaugural performance of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, featuring guest artist Cynthia Millar on the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument similar to the theremin.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Pianist Hélène Grimaud’s Dramatic Return to UW’s Meany Hall

A favorite with Seattle audiences for years, French-born pianist Hélène Grimaud returned to Seattle on November 1 for a solo recital at the University of Washington’s Meany Hall. The performance was part of the UW’s President’s Piano Series. Known for her idiosyncratic style of musical interpretation, Grimaud brought a fresh and exciting perspective to her program, which included works by Mozart, Berg, Bartók, and Liszt.

Pianist Hélène Grimaud (Photo: Robert Schultze/ Mat Hennek/ DG)

The evening’s diverse repertoire highlighted Grimaud’s masterful sense of timing and drama, resulting in many breathtaking moments, especially in Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor. One of the composer’s most monumental works for solo piano, the Sonata depicts a wide range of emotions, flickering rapidly between ecstasy and hopelessness. The piece is considered to be one of the most difficult in the classical piano repertoire.

Grimaud tackled the Sonata’s technical and interpretive challenges with aplomb. In the most dramatic moment of the piece, Grimaud played a series of plodding, sonorous notes at the low end of the piano, her head drooping over the instrument. One by one, the notes trailed grudgingly down the keyboard, a vivid illustration of despair.

Grimaud’s bold performance of Mozart’s Sonata in A Minor captured the work’s personality without a strict adherence to traditional performance styles. Her rendition of the energetic first movement contained a few Romantic Era touches, especially her use of rubato. Despite these unconventionalities, Grimaud’s interpretation was both convincing and captivating. The contemplative second movement and lively third movement were more straightforward, but still impeccably executed.

The other two works on the program, Berg’s Piano Sonata No. 1 and Bartók’s Román népi táncok (Rumanian Folk Dances), were both composed in the 20th century. With the Berg Sonata, Grimaud painted an emotional landscape of peaks and valleys. The piece weaves between tension and release, an ideal playground for Grimaud to demonstrate her skillful sense of timing. Like her performance of the Mozart, Grimaud brought a subtle Romantic touch to the Berg Sonata, lending a sense of epic drama to the ebb and flow of musical emotions.

For Grimaud, Bartók’s Rumanian Folk Dances were studies in expression. These six short dances build dramatically towards the whirling final movement. Grimaud’s performance accentuated the vast difference in character and mood between each of the dances, highlighting the flow of energy from movement to movement.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

What We’re Hearing This Month: Classical Music Picks for November

Seattle’s classical calendar is full of intriguing events in November, from musical comedy to Mahler 4. Experience recent developments in microtonality, celebrate the 100th anniversary of John Cage’s birth, and revel in the ethereal sounds of medieval chants. Explore something new this month!

Classical music comedy duo Igudesman & Joo (Photo: BR Public Relations)

Nov. 5 — In 2006, comedy duo Igudesman & Joo became an Internet sensation with their YouTube hit “Rachmaninoff Had Big Hands“. Next week, they’re bringing their signature blend of classical music and hilarious hijinks to Seattle for the first time. Catch this pair of world-class musicians at Town Hall, where they’ll perform their musical comedy show A Little Nightmare Music.

Nov. 7 — New Jersey-based Newband presents a program of microtonal works by composer Henry Partch at the University of Washington’s Meany Hall. The ensemble will perform on a collection of instruments invented by Partch, including the 31-tone zoomoozophone.

Nov. 8, 10-11 — Renowned composer John Adams conducts the Seattle Symphony in a performance of his Harmonielehre. Also on the program is Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto, performed by notable young pianist Jonathan Biss.

Nov. 9 — Seattle Modern Orchestra presents a tribute to John Cage at the Good Shepherd Center’s Chapel Performance Space. The program features performances by SMO, Seattle Percussion Collective, and Cage specialist Stephen Drury. The evening will also include a multimedia presentation and documentary on Cage’s life.

Nov. 13 — Explore contemporary electro-acoustic chamber music at Cornish College of the Arts. Visiting ensembles the Living Earth Show and the Mobius Trio present a program of newly commissioned works.

Newband and the Harry Partch Instrument Collection (Photo: Newband)

Nov. 16 & 18 — Now in its fifteenth season, Music of Remembrance presents concerts and outreach events devoted to the memory of Holocaust musicians and composers. This month, they’ll perform Viktor Ullmann’s opera The Emperor of Atlantis, composed in 1943 at the Terezín concentration camp.

Nov. 17 — Dedicated to the performance of vocal music from the Byzantine and Slavic regions, Portland-based ensemble Cappella Romana presents a concert of medieval Latin hymns at the atmospheric St. James Cathedral. Famed French choral director Marcel Pérès will conduct the ensemble.

Nov. 29 & Dec. 1 — Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot takes on Mahler’s momentous Symphony No. 4, featuring soprano soloist Donatienne Michel-Dansac. Also on the program is Berg’s Violin Concerto, performed by up-and-coming young German violinist Veronika Eberle.

 

 

Arts & Entertainment, Music, Theatre, Visual Arts

Laurie Anderson’s “Dirtday!” Enthralls at UW’s Meany Hall

At age 65, Laurie Anderson still defies description. Her performance-art pieces combine visual, musical, and electronic elements into dramatic, highly-personal multimedia events. Anderson’s long career has taken many twists and turns. Trained as a sculptor, she entered the performance-art world in 1969 with a musical work written for car horns. In 1981, her single “O Superman” climbed the pop charts in the UK. Anderson is also known for her experimentation with electronic music and sound, particularly in the area of voice modification. Her inventions often involve the use of the electric violin and keyboard.

Laurie Anderson (Photo: Warner Bros)

On Saturday, Anderson arrived at the University of Washington’s Meany Hall to present her most recent work, “Dirtday!”. Upon entering the auditorium, the sold-out crowd was greeted by a constellation of candles scattered around the sparse, darkened stage. Anderson’s electronic keyboard and violin huddled on one side of the stage, while a leather armchair stood on the other. Just off center hung a blank white screen suspended above the stage.

Illuminated by a single spotlight, Anderson begins the performance with a brief, improvisational solo on the electric violin. Throughout the 90-minute show, she returns to the violin again and again, using instrumental interludes to bridge sections of the performance.

Though music plays a vital role in “Dirtday!”, much of the performance centers on Anderson’s spoken-word monologue. The work is an immersive odyssey into Anderson’s world, a platform for the expression of her ideas, emotions, anecdotes, and musings about life. Anderson’s voice, with the meditative cadence and lyrical tones of a yoga teacher, remains a soothing force even when she’s discussing topics like the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the US government to detain citizens suspected of terrorist activity without trial.

In terms of content, “Dirtday!” sprawls, digresses, and covers much ground. Anderson touches on a huge range of topics, including Darwinism, dreams, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and fond recollections of her piano-playing dog, Lolabelle. At times, her presentation feels like the ramblings of a chatty, dog-loving grandmother, albeit one with sharp political opinions and a wry sense of humor. The ideas don’t always adhere together in a cohesive manner, but we don’t hold it against Anderson. As spectators experiencing her personal, artistic, and intellectual odyssey, we are guests in her world.

Anderson’s monologue is accompanied by simple but dramatic visual and audio effects. Colored lights illuminate the stage and the hanging screen in glowing hues, slowly shifting between reds, blues, and greens. A soundtrack of dramatic beats is enhanced by effects from Anderson’s keyboard, which she plays while speaking. At times during her monologue, Anderson switches on one of her signature voice filters, which lowers and deepens her voice, making her sound manly and ghoulish. One of the most effective moments of the performance involves Anderson singing a duet with herself, her normal voice echoed by the sinister filtered version.

Sometimes, all of this is a bit overly cinematic. At times, the pounding electronic rhythms give the performance the air of a cheesy spin-off of the Inception film trailer. When coupled with the diabolical tones of Anderson’s filtered voice, the glowing colors of the stage lighting turn the suspended screen into a diabolical Eye of Sauron, straight from the set of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

Anderson doesn’t miss the opportunity to show off one of her electronic inventions. She incorporates a demonstration of her modified “pillow speaker”, a small device that fits into her mouth and transforms her voice into violin tones. This doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of “Dirtday!”, but the technology is so enthralling that it doesn’t matter. The performance would have been enhanced with the inclusion of more of Anderson’s gadgets and inventions.

Despite Anderson’s constant digressions, the force of her personality and the immersive nature of her presentation are enough to hold one’s attention throughout “Dirtday!”. The Meany Hall audience remained riveted, giving Anderson two standing ovations at the end of her performance. It’ll be interesting to see what this iconic artist comes up with next in her journey of creation, innovation, and expression.