HANNA SHYBAYEVA & UTRECHT STRING QUARTET BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTOS 3 & 4……CD -DVD-BOOK OF THE WEEK

Posted on September 30, 2021 by strecker


Hanna Shybayeva’s somewhat recent CD arrived this afternoon and I’ve been doing a repeated back and forth, between Beethoven’s 3rd and 4th concerti, well into this evening. What an absolute pleasure these performances are, transcribed for piano and string quartet with bass added. Both are dynamic and intriguing in the interaction of piano and strings, both display a seductively assured yet subtly mysterious presence throughout. I know these works from many live and recorded listens, but now I hear them anew – I mean that – in these two spirited performances. Shybayeva carries one along with pianism that projects poise and dignity, one that is exciting with musical purpose. Her tone is ripe and firm, deeply rich with the security and beauty of, say, a precious jewel. I hold my breath for new discoveries in what I am hearing from both piano and strings- and they certainly continue to appear.

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COMPOSER/PIANIST FRANK HORVAT EXPLAINS HIS LATEST RECORDINGS: “I STARTED WITH THE HEALING ELECTRONIC SOUNDS OF ‘HAPPINESS IN A TROUBLED WORLD,’ FOLLOWED BY SOLOS FOR OUR TIME, ‘MUSIC FOR SELF-ISOLATION,’ AND NOW ‘PROJECT DOVETAIL’ WHICH FEATURES SOME OF MY CHAMBER COMPOSITIONS THAT ARE INSPIRED BY OTHER FORMS OF ART, LIKE VISUAL ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM” …. A REVIEWER INTERVIEWS PEOPLE IN THE ARTS

Posted on September 12, 2021 by strecker

JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us what you want the public to know about your recent project or one you are actively working on. For instance, what is it, why is it, and how is it done? Also, please tell us about your collaborators.

FRANK HORVAT: The album, Project Dovetail, marks the final release in a trilogy of releases in 2021. I started with the healing electronic sounds of Happiness in a Troubled World, followed by solos for our time, Music for Self-Isolation, and now Project Dovetail. Project Dovetail features some of my chamber compositions that are inspired by other forms of art…visual art, literature, film, etc. Project Dovetail features some of Canada’s top chamber musicians, including Edwin Huizinga (violin), TorQ Percussion Quartet, Kathryn Ladano (bass clarinet), Elixir Baroque Ensemble, Elizabeth Reid (viola)

JS: Please give us a brief autobiography, some stuff about yourself, that is relevant to this project.

FH: Born and raised in Ottawa (only child to loving parents who are immigrants to Canada). Lived my entire life in Toronto (stayed after attending U of T). Other than composing, I have also led my life as a performing pianist and music educator. I am very passionate about using my artistic output as a platform to bring attention to mental health issues, climate change and human rights.

JS: In what ways was this project easy to do and in what ways was it difficult to realize? How long did or will it take and why that long?

FH: It was quite easy to work on this project since I had musicians and engineers go through the recording process with me that are not only talented, but so easy-going and friendly. The challenge was the disruptions to our recording schedule due to the pandemic (the album was supposed to come out 1 year ago), but it was not a serious issue in the end and I’m so happy how it all turned out.

JS: Please us how you fund such a project, or how others help.

FH: I feel grateful to have received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and FACTOR to fund the production of this album.

JS: How did doing this project change you as a person and as a creator?

FH: Many of the recording sessions for this album were conducted during the pandemic. Despite precautions in the studio, it made me realize how resilient musicians are…we can create music under the most unprecedented circumstances.

JS: What kind of audience will this project interest? What new audience are you also seeking? Why to both questions?

FH: I hope that the album will be appreciated by both connoisseurs of modern classical music and those who are interested in the arts in general as they might find it interesting how all these other artistic disciplines inspired me to compose these works. I hope they will see a connection through the sound of the music.

JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?

FH: That’s a great question. I don’t really think about this as I never want my compositional process to be influenced by what an audience might think. I want the creative process to be as organic as possible.

JS: How are you planning to promote, market, and sell this project to the public?

FH: Spotify and YouTube are going to be the main platforms I hope people will experience the work. My wife, Lisa, is a talented video artist and she has plans to produce new videos featuring the works from the album.

JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?

FH: This might sound a bit “corny” to say, but it’s literally my heart and soul. I am a passionate individual about life so my music must also stand that litmus test.

JS: What are our biggest challenges as a creative person?

FH: It’s interesting that the biggest challenge happens to also be what I am most grateful about my life as a composer. Commissions and funding for projects can come my way in such an erratic way. I don’t have a steady paycheque so to speak. Even though that can feel precarious, it’s also exciting as I never know where the next opportunity might come from…. life always feels fresh.

JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that brought you to the creation of this work.

FH: Many of the compositions on this album were composed within the last 10 years. That time period was a time of creative revelation for me as I felt that I was becoming secure with my compositional voice. So, the release of this album is very much a celebration of that for me personally.

JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?

FH: That I am not an entrepreneur. There are many similarities between artists and entrepreneurs, but the key difference is that an entrepreneur looks at society and seeks to provide a product or service which is underserved or does not exist. On the other hand, a true artist creates what’s from their heart oblivious to the taste of the public and then markets the hell out of it afterwards. I’ve had many well-intentioned people ask me, “why don’t you compose music people want to hear?” I then have to explain how I’m different than a business person.

JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?

FH: As a composer, I would like to compose more choral music. I have composed very little thus far and I know I could create some wonderful works. I love the genre so much and get inspired by it. It just happened yet because most of the opportunities has just not gone in that direction yet…but I hope it does.

JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?

FH: I honestly would not change anything. I am extremely blessed to do what I love and to do it with people I appreciate. I hear a lot of people saying they wish things might happened earlier in life but I’m not like that. Everything happens for a reason.

JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?

FH: Because of technology, we leave in an artistic world that has democratized the distribution of the work. So, if you create something that resonates with people, they will find it some way or another. What concerns me is how the world will consume live performances moving forward as a ramification from the pandemic.

JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?

FH: That my work is an extension of what makes me tick as a human being…my hopes, fears and dreams. So, if someone never meets me personally, my work will still give them some insight into me.

JS: What exactly has the impact of the COVID pandemic been on your creative work and your life in the arts?

FH: The pandemic has been an incredibly productive time for me creatively. Being stuck at home has eliminated life distractions and given me focus on my craft. It’s reminded me that as artists, we can face many roadblocks, but still do what we do. And that’s so important.

JS: How has the pandemic changed you as a person?

FH: It has strengthened my life belief that I must traverse focussing as much as possible on what I have the ability to control and not worry about what’s out of my control.

JS: What’s next in the coming few years of your creative life?

FH: I’m so excited about many interesting commissions that I will start working on, including projects where I not only collaborate with other musicians but artists of other disciplines as well.

 

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DANCER OLGA BARRIOS PERFORMS SEPTEMBER 29 AT FALL FOR DANCE NORTH: A REVIEWER INTERVIEWS PEOPLE IN THE ARTS

Posted on September 9, 2021 by strecker

JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to others?

OLGA BARRIOS: Recently I co-produced and presented the Vanguardia Dance Festival in Toronto in collaboration with my good friend and talented artist Norma Araiza. We created that festival in 2008 with the purpose of having a platform for us (independent artists of Latin American background) to present our works, and we have done it bi-annually since then. At that moment we were struggling to have the option of being selected to present our pieces in the regular festivals and platforms. The project has grown incredibly, and we have had the opportunity of supporting many artists of our community.

It matters because this project has given us the option to grow as producers, artists and of course as persons, while we support other people to grow. And it should matter to others because it is a space to support incredible artists of the minorities.

Also, the work Meitiza – (Mixed woman in Spanish). That I will be presenting at Night Shift. It is a project that departs from a personal research on cultural identity as choreographer of latinx background, digging into the traces of my indigenous origin in Colombia, where the traces of indigenous people have been erased as in many places in the globe. Thus, it expands in a wider dialogue based on the woman of many colors that I am, and with the many other voices that look for connection with those ideas of erased traces on history. The work looks for an extended dialogue with the diverse voices in the Americas. I expect to continue digging into questions in form and content such as in the corporal gesture, the protocols of the stage, the video, the voice and the sound landscape. I also look for an approach to the analysis of the voice of mixed-raced woman in a contemporary society and in my history.

JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?

OB: I consider the arts a basin link in the process of building community and society. So, all my artistic processes change me in a way of construction. Pursuing tools to become a piece of society that brings humanity, analysis, and new perspectives to the spaces I inhabit and the people that surround me.

JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?

OB: I think people appreciate my work on different levels, depending on the place where I stand with my work. I move through the realities of a “first and a third world”. So, the perspectives are many. I think what people can’t understand deeply sometimes is the amount of work that each process has. Or maybe it is that sometimes artists do not show much. The behind the scenes, the research time, the everyday questions of development, the multiple hats to make possible the realization of a work, the over work, the hard work.

JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?

OB: I put all myself. My full body, my time, my energy, my questions about life, my inquiries about society, depending on the moment of life where I am. I work full time in my craft. All what I do in terms of living I project into my work.

JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?

OB: Big challenges are time and money, sometimes to bring to life all the ideas on the table, or in the list of projects. However, those are things that creative people navigate in order to make things happen… but those are there constantly.

JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.

OB: My parents supported me when I decided to switch my ideas of a career and pursue my artistic career. Even though they were not people from the arts, and we are originally from a country where being an artist is maybe for some people with certain privileges, they gave me all their energy to support my ideas, without thinking if that was a regular career or even a career. After their support and energy, I found that the possibilities were within me. So, they are the main impulse motor that supports the whole thing. After that, I have worked in arts most of my life, and I have found in my work a strong place to belong into a society and into diverse communities.

JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?

OB: Most people think a person cannot live from working in the arts. But I have had the opportunity to do it. It demands a lot of work, and many hats, and of course artists we have to be very creative to survive and to develop the work.

JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?

OB: I already move between two countries developing projects, and I have created a bridge between Canada and Colombia. I am still developing those projects for more people. However, I would like to move more of my work to different countries. The delay is having the time to find the connections to move, and again time to go beyond the projects that I have right now.

JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?

OB: I really like all that I have lived so far, so maybe I will need a parallel life to do a few more things here and there. But probably, going into some intensive courses or working with other companies in other countries, for instance, but those are things that might happen, but if not, I have had the privilege of working with amazing artists.

JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?

OB: I see hope when the questions arise. I see hope when we question the models of society through our ideas in the arts. I see hope when artists and of course my students have a critical analysis of the hegemonic structures. I see hope when an honest proposal crosses my path. And I find it depressing when we start seeing art as a product.

JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?

OB: I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to do my work. That’s it what I like the most, to be able to do it. Of course, I like to move, to create, to contemplate, to explore, to do different things, to take diverse ways to go to places. To be on the move.

JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?

OB: I don ́t really remember exactly the comments, but I have had feedback from very diverse people including kids. And that is very rewarding, all feedback makes the work continue growing and moving.

JS: What exactly has the impact of the COVID pandemic been on your creative work and your life in the arts?

OB: It has had a strong impact. How to teach, how to perceive space, how to dialogue with my work through the screen, how to video/choregraph. How to re-connect with open spaces. I have been working constantly site-specific but these times have made us think of the scenic arts in diverse ways. A lot to learn, to think also about arts in terms of life and society.

JS: How has the pandemic changed you as a person?

OB: I was very blocked at the beginning, it made me question many things in relation to the socio-political, the environmental, privileges and life itself … I imagine there are as many on this planet. Then, my survival side jumped, and I started creating like crazy. But it also made me think about honoring my present and to be more generous with my time, my ideas, and with myself. I would say more fragile and also stronger at the same time.

JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?

OB: I couldn ́t really tell. I find myself in a continuous dialogue with myself… However, one thing might be the continued internal drive to move and to create, that sometimes helps others to go with me in the ride.

 

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DANCER BAKARI IFASEGUN LINDSAY PERFORMS OCTOBER 2 AT FALL FOR DANCE NORTH: A REVIEWER INTERVIEWS PEOPLE IN THE ARTS

Posted on September 9, 2021 by strecker

JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to others?

BAKARI IFASEGUN LINDSAY: You might not be expecting this answer, but the most recent project I have been working on has been my health. I was diagnosed with a life altering illness which had both an emotional and physical impact on my life. I guess my creative mind is what saved me. It certainly put a reflective perspective on my life as an artist because for three and half months I was incapable of moving beyond going from my back to my side which took a great deal of effort and caused tremendous pain. For a moment I thought I would not be able to dance again.

JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?

BIL: Well, I guess I can say it has opened my heart to appreciating the smaller things in life. I look at a lot of sunrises and sunsets. I even notice the fact that I am walking because there was a time just to walk was a challenge.

JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?

BIL: I work from an Africanist movement aesthetic that has reached a level of development and sophistication that it sometimes seems inherent because of my ethnicity (African Descent). So, the years of research and development get overlooked as natural talent.

JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?

BIL: The most important parts of myself that is in all my work are my spirituality, style and identity. Sometimes the use of spiritual elements is deliberate, while other times they are understated and support the performance. Design and beauty are key elements in my creative process, while my experiences often influence the work.

JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?

BIL: Time, there never seems to be enough time to thoroughly investigate work through the creative process. Which I guess is tied to resources, both physical and intellectual.

JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?

BIL: I would love to meet the late Martha Graham, and Alvin Ailey.

‘If you were not able to dance or create dance, what would you have done?’ It’s difficult to know what they would probably say, but they have left phenomenal words of wisdom.

JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.

BIL: Working with Vincent Mantsoe, the physical and spiritual power he was able to evoke in my dancing influenced my notion of physical limits for movement.

JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?

BIL: I feel it’s the insanity to practice an art form that offers so little financial rewards, but yet we continue to practice.

JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?

BIL: I think I have attempted all that has interested me artistically; however, there are opportunities that I would like to have, such as creating work for bodies that exist outside of my physical aesthetic.

JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?

BIL: No regrets, no changes. I have a full, notice I said have and not had, because I plan to have lots more of an artistic life.

JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?

BIL: It’s depressing, but very little gives me hope in the ARTS. There seems to be less and less resources and respect for the form. The advent of technology has made the arts and artist dispensable.

JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?

BIL: My work often transforms an audience and that excites me. I love that I tell physical stories that offers transcendence to the audience participant.

JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?

BIL: That the work was developing a new Canadiana in dance.

JS: What exactly has the impact of the COVID pandemic been on your creative work and your life in the arts?

BIL: Hmmmm, because I was ill for most of the pandemic it has not really impacted me yet. I guess I am slowly getting back to it. I would say ask me in a year from now.

JS: How has the pandemic changed you as a person?

BIL: Yea, my illness coincided with the pandemic, so my focus has been on me and not so much of the pandemic. I guess as I begin to reintegrate into regular life, whatever that is, I will have to reflect. Ask me in a year or so.

JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?

BIL: I am a very spontaneous person; however, I am a very methodical and analytical person which is kind of an oxymoron.

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NOTES ON THE ARTS: TOP THEATRE, BOOKS, DVDS, PLUS AN ASININE REMARK

Posted on September 5, 2021 by strecker

1.Three Tall Women by Edward Albee at the Stratford Festival: At one point, as I watched Martha Henry playing A, I listened to her speak Edward Albee’s meticulously crafted lines and let my eyes wander into the deep darkness above the last row of the Studio Theatre. Henry’s authoritative voice then became and took hold of that absolute realm of darkness where physical body becomes sound, a resonance of human existence that we see in the voices we hear. It was a breath-stopping moment for me since, if anywhere, live theatre, live dance and live music, say, tend to offer for me a deeper intimacy in spirit with my own species.

Theatre, like dance and music, is the language of now and essential to us. Now is most often taken away from us, but all the arts – not too many years ago I was transfixed by a Barbara Hepworth sculpture at London’s Tate Modern – keep us real in now. Watching Lucy Peacock working her own unique magic as B, I also remembered once taking my mother, who had never in her life been to a live play, to a performance of As You Like It at the Festival Theatre in which Ms Peacock did some essence of rustic charm as Rosalind and inspired affection, even love, love from all of us who watched. My mother’s response: “Can we come back and see it again?” Theatre had worked its unique magic again.

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2.Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021): Long ago in 1969, during the seven-year period of the junta that imprisoned the recently-deceased Mikis Theodorakis, we were walking through the Plaka area of Athens and got into a casual chat with, of all people, a Greek soldier. A month later, we saw the film Z which had just opened in London, and started to feel deeply uneasy because, as All Movie Guide says, “The Greek junta or Regime of the Colonels was a far-right military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. On 21 April 1967, a group of colonels overthrew the caretaker government a month before scheduled elections which Georgios Papandreou’s Centre Union was favoured to win. The dictatorship was characterized by right-wing cultural policies, restrictions on civil liberties, and the imprisonment, torture, and exile of political opponents.” The producers had used the music of Theodorakis for the film.

Many years later, I went backstage at Madison Square Garden during intermission to ask Theodorakis for an interview when he brought his company to Toronto in a few days. We spoke in French and, soaking in sweat, he willingly agreed. Alas, singer Maria Farantouri fell ill and the interview, like the concert, was cancelled. Nevertheless, I had already got to attend several Theodorakis concerts and have played – often weekly – LPs (some bootleg), CDs, and even a DVD of his music for decades. Many of his recordings have been essential to my life since I discovered them years ago; they seem to push the blood in me through my veins and into the earth we all of us share.

Allow me to recommend some of these:

-Axion Esti that uses the poetry of Greek poet Odysseus Elytis, especially with distinctly-voiced and legendary Grigoris Bithikotsis singing the lead parts;

– Canto General that uses poems of Pablo Neruda (I prefer the live recordings from Piraeus and Athens in August, 1975, in which Petros Pandis and Maria Farantouri are featured;

-The Ballad of Mauthausen which uses  lyrics based on poems written by Greek poet Iakovos Kambanellis, a Mauthausen concentration camp survivor;

-L’Otage based on a play by Brendan Behan and featuring the well-known To Yolasto Pedi;

-18 Lianotragouda that uses poems by Greek Yannis Ritsos, especially the recording by singer George Dalaris whom I did indeed once get to interview with his wife in Toronto (he later sent me five of his LPs from Greece), all signed “very friendly”;

-the soundtrack to the film Z, the soundtrack to the film Zorba the Greek of course, and so many songs sprinkled throughout his recordings.

-Oh, yes, Peoples’ Music, The Struggles of the Greek People from Smithsonian Folkways contains a personal favorite: In the Cellar of the Taverna.

I remember two very useful books by Gail Holst and read long ago: Theodorakis Myth & Politics in and Modern Greek Music and Road to Rembetika: Music of a Greek sub-culture, songs of love, sorrow and hashish. Each provided, many years ago, much hard to find information. I also just remembered that I used to track down stores on the left bank or at the Bastille in Paris that sold hard to come by books of Theodorakis songs.

And this just popped into my memory: I once bought a copy of Axon Esti by Elytis at a Greek bookstore on Charing Cross in London, so I might understand the musical works, and when I stepped outside, Vanessa Redgrave walked by and I asked her to sign my book of Greek poetry, which she did.

3.If You Should Fail by Joe Moran: We live and we fail, repeatedly, over and over, endlessly. Why? Because we are alive, because we are human. Of course, you can’t tell this to the folks at McMaster University near my home, since they promise, blank at heart and thus blanketly, the achievement of excellence to all who enter here (thank you, Dante, for “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” – but that was another kind of hell). Moran eschews the automatic, empty-souled, and out-of-touch, cowardly “positive thinking” of our time and prefers our looking into the mirror, where fourth-placed Olympians and Leonard da Vinci (yes, even the master reconsidered as a failure) also dwell. One feels a new beauty to one’s fucked-up life while reading Moran’s hard-hitting but insightful, provocative, and very kind book.

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4.I’d been long wanting to re-experience Leos Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen, and some of his other operas too, since Opera Canada’s productions long ago at the O’Keefe Centre, Then recently, in the middle of Milan Kundera’s book of essays titled Encounter, I got the needed push when Kundera writes “Among Janáček’s operas are five masterworks…” Immediately I ordered two DVD recordings of “Vixen,” one conducted by Charles Mackerras, widely valued as a right-on specialist in the composer’s works and the other featuring the uniquely timbred and hauntingly heartfelt soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian. Kundera’s book is rich with meaty prose, charm and sophistication, mind and passion – it’s a book I eagerly returned to each day, and now it’s Janacek’s turn.

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5.Casablanca: Script and Legend: Certainly, there are six essays included here by the likes of Roger Ebert and Umberto Eco, but it’s an especial pleasure to read the truly classic film’s script and mutter the lines under one’s breath as one’s memory and imagination work side by side, with the help of “25 classic stills” included in the book, to become Bogie, or Ilsa if you will, and bring the film to life again for the thousandth time.

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6.Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir: Eddie Muller’s now “Revised and Expanded Edition” appears on glossy paper with sharply-focused photos throughout, so the book is both a visual and tactile delight that one holds respectfully but lovingly in one’s hands. Muller, who hosts TCM’s weekly Noir Alley, is encyclopedic in his references and here he lives and breathes the idiom with an infectious writing style that sends us all, unselfconsciously, back to the forties and fifties. This is underbelly of America stuff, stylishly done, and very irresistible, whether you own a trench coat or not.

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7.If you want to explore the hollow, pretentious, cowardly, self-centred, artificial, destructive, stifling, unsportsmanlike, clueless, selfish, jealous, self-limiting, phony, spiritually-vacant, culture-killing, and pathetic (etc,etc.etc.) dominance of patriarchy in our culture, two invigoratingly passionate and scholarly-based series from historian Amanda Vickery are essential viewing: “The Story of Women and Power” and “The Story of Women and Art,” both highly-recommended, will surprise you at every turn, inform you richly, make you angry in your heart, fill you with admiring respect, and inspire you in ways you didn’t yet know about.

In this vein, what better ending for this posting than an example of male limitation, here from critic Norman Lebrecht’s The Life and Death of Classical Music, in which he describes contralto Kathleen Ferrier as “devoid of beauty, brilliance, or sexual appeal.” Such unreflective and puerile posturing, one that points elsewhere and does not look into the mirror at oneself, does not reflect on Ms. Ferrier at all. But it does bring into question the life experience and the personal biases, of this critic, that determine the aesthetic limits of his views, whatever the subject at hand.

 

 

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WELCOME BACK, SHAW FESTIVAL, AND THANKS FOR THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE

Posted on July 26, 2021 by strecker

I think it was 1968 on one of my first trips to the Shaw Festival, situated at the time in the charmingly tiny Court House of Niagara-on-the Lake, when the announcement was made that Frances Hyland was too ill to perform that day. Ergo, much disappointment, and home we went. Leap ahead to COVID of 2020 and the cancellation of the whole Shaw season. Keep leaping and it’s now 2021 and my first live play in two years, Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. Am I thrilled to be here? Let me count the ways!

I’m having a coffee in the Festival Theatre’s courtyard when the Shaw company’s Patrick Galligan and Neil Barclay walk by. “Hark, do I see actors” says I. “We’re glad to be back, says Galligan. “I am so glad that you are back,” says I, this to an actor whose performance in Edward Bond’s The Sea a few years ago still haunts my memories of the Festival. If you’re in the mood, check my review of that production and my interview with playwright Edward Bond elsewhere on this blog.

The theatre is a tent in the Festival Theatre’s parking lot, one that holds an audience of 100, 50 observing the play from one side of the stage and 50 observing from the other. We are all of us separated according to the shifting sands of Ontario’s guidelines and actors must climb a few stairs to the stage. Fresh air is all around us and it’s weird indeed to see actors attired a la 200 years ago of revolutionary America making exits behind the bushes.

But it’s also a thrill, truly a thrill, to have imaginatively accomplished actors collaborating with my imagination to create a reality that soon becomes my own. A few words into the play and already I share the seething inner turmoil Chick Reid’s Ann Dudgeon. I’m soon suspicious of the self-assured decency of Graeme Somerville’s Reverend Anderson, soon intrigued by the lifetime-tested and hip wisdom of Tom McCamus’ General Burgoyne.

The key dramatic tension is a delightfully compelling one between Martin Happer’s Richard Dudgeon and Katherine Gauthier’s Judith Anderson, the former being both a dynamic everyday guy plus a ‘Devil’s Disciple’ quite at home in Shavian dialogue and the latter being the minister’s duty-bound wife plus a woman of awakened multitudinous urgings that gallop through her attempts at piety and composure. We are hooked as both Happer and Gauthier negotiate the inner shadings and ambiguities that propel them.

But this is the Shaw Festival and the whole cast, as expected, represents a company of sharply-honed and wide-ranging depth that makes for memorable productions. Small parts thus possess the inherent weight and substance of large parts, and over the years I’ve come to maintain that each character as portrayed according to the Festival’s high standards could easily be fleshed out into the focus of his or her own play. Of course, having an insightful and incisive director like Eda Holmes, ensures that a playwright’s text deftly and subtly melds our hearts and our minds.

Thus, to name a few, we have Kristopher Bowman’s Major Swindon, Jonathan Sousa’s Christy Dudgeon, and Shauna Thompson’s Essie as individuals who seem, each one, trapped in a box of some kind. Some, like Peter Millard as Uncle William or as Sergeant, seem to create a world around them, a world made of brushstrokes that no other hand can erase. When Sergeant orders his soldiers to march, his unforced but unbending authority takes command of all of us and we know, if even for a few seconds, a real life unfolding through art before our eyes. That’s one reason why the Shaw Festival is so important to me.

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TWO NEW POEMS ON THE KILLING OF REGAN RUSSELL – JUNE 19, 2021

Posted on June 20, 2021 by strecker

INTRODUCTION:   Last June 2020, when animal activist –  and friend for forty years – Regan Russell was killed or murdered at Fearman’s Slaughterhouse in Burlington, I wrote a cycle of five poems which was included in this blog later last summer. On the anniversary of Regan’s death on June 19, 2021, I wrote two new poems, the first – FOR REGAN, JUNE 19, ONE YEAR AFTER – being a poem of loving remembrance.  The second poem, in five small sections,  -REGAN DIED ONE YEAR AGO, THIS JUNE 19 – is one which Ingrid Newkirk of PETA told me was “moving and right and righteously angry.” The two poems follow below in that order.

FOR REGAN, JUNE 19, ONE YEAR AFTER

    for Mark, Pat, and Bill

 

     “..all I want to do is tell people to DO SOMETHING for her,

      carry her torch by DOING.” …Ingrid Newkirk

—————————————-

She was made of a love beyond any pride or vanity,

a giving love plain and secure.

I knew her in a deep unspoken place, where words

surrender their intentions to silence, and silence

speaks a bonding I have no words to describe.

 

We were lucky, both of us, to love cats, feline friends

who see beneath our camouflage of words, and still

come close. In time, they seem to say, “I am safe here,

I will not be wounded if I put down my guard, I need

no weapon for defense, beside you I am already safe.”

 

Regan and I loved to talk about our cats, endlessly.

We knew our cats trusted us, because they knew

us deep. And when they took us into their grasp,

where we could be silly, unguarded, and open

to their care – it was a place where they could have

their way with us – and we felt a freedom, for an

hour or two, from the burdens of the world on us.

 

We were free somehow as they dangled us like

puppets. We did not win, we did not lose, we felt

honoured to be valued and trusted by cats – we would

never let them down. But how brief is our trust in

most people of the world – once broken, our trust learns

only, looking behind itself, to get through the day

 

Yet sometimes another person gives us ease,

and we need no pretense as we too often do.

We know the other has unchangeable wounds and

is trying, still, to be kind. Such kindness lets us dare

to hope and, harder still, to be loved. When my trust,

unspoken, was valued high and given back to me,

I knew myself new again and glad to be alive.

 

So many of us exist, washed over by self-deceptions.

We need fantasies to call ourselves real. The

cruelties we see are too much for us. And why do

we, willful, cause pain, why do we kill, why are we

so often lowly and mean? Would the earth not be

better off without us? For every animal is equal to us.

 

And if you would talk religion or philosophy,

when you speak of humans and other animals, go

stand knee-deep in slaughterhouse blood, and learn,

in this hidden killing place, good reason to be kind.

 

But we are bound to this world. We cannot change

our species, we cannot, with honest hearts, abide the

rottenness we can be. Still, Regan’s existence was

a blessing to her world where we live – and to me.

 

I admired you, Regan. You took on the world

endlessly, that it might put away its cruelties and

knives. You lived unbending passion for animals,

you loved with a bowman’s accuracy and took good aim.

You made a large mark of your beautiful self on all of us.

 

Some days the suffering, you were witness to, might

drape your spirit in despair. But you were more a bold,

enduring light. It showed us, bright, the kindness that

our species can become, and must – must – forever be.

 

It is your heart that stays with us, even within the

unbearable pain of your dying. It is your heart that

now speaks for us. You were driven by compassion

and your love would not be silenced. Your love

 

for all the living would have its way. You looked

each cruelty in the eye and offered all your love,

though each animal’s suffering hurt you through

and through. To truly honour your spirit and cause,

we must vow, all of us, to have a heart like you.

 

Wherever your spirit may be woven into darkness,

now, I touch a cat and know that you are dancing free.

I touch a cat and know, once again, that I touch your

 

heart. In your heaven of cats and pigs, chickens, fish,

and cattle, know that we understand life’s value as you

understood. Your compassion guides us, from this day.

 

© 2021, James Strecker

 

REGAN DIED ONE YEAR AGO, THIS JUNE 19

1.

I read this account of her dying:

The driver sets up his kill. He sees

Regan clearly and studies all her

moves, left and right. Then he

accelerates, digs his foot into the floor.

 

His truck becomes a weapon of

misogyny, masculine and gutless. Her

body is now his trophy, crushed in

bloody pieces through the asphalt below.

His speed has broken the law, but police,

duty-bound to be here, stay away.

 

Has her body become a trophy for

killer and police somehow? The facts

are plain, this was murder. The killer

walks free to kill again, his charges

show contempt for us, for Regan’s

cause – careless driving, nothing more.

 

2.

We’ve become a people that looks the

other way. We vote what proves

deceiving con men to govern us, to

make their cowardly laws so we can

have no say. When they, uncaring

and blasé, destroy our lives and

 

land, we do not condemn the venom

of their presence, we do not stand

tall in dignity’s name. We feel no

shame for words we do not say.

 

And my poem becomes a beggar for words.

It fails to spit defiantly on these artisans

of death: to spit upon free their enterprise

and its fawning, doormat government.

 

Yet we, in feeble silence, despise you

“buddies” for profit at any cost, who gag

compassion for cattle and swine – and for

 

women beaten and raped, for men who

decay in their needy old age, for children

molested, abused, and forever terrified.

The powerless living are condemned by you.

 

3.

It is our government that idly wills more

suffering than any living flesh can endure. I

dare you give your own helplessness to the

malice of these men who make their laws

 

of ego, profit, and, for you, disdain. One

day, at their mercy, you will understand

their purpose for greed so well, that

you, in despair, will beg and plead to die.

 

But are you made of equal measure

that would wound and disembowel

them until, like pigs in slaughterhouse,

they scream endlessly? I warn that you

have these human enemies: they are

your fatal disease, they are your hell.

 

4.

At three in the morning, it is aloneness

we feel. We look into darkness and our

memories of the dead we loved so much

stand firm beside the living we look

upon and despise. We become

 

entrenched with impotent sadness, we

feel unworthy to smile, as we allow these

butchers and murderers their way.

 

But have you, like Regan, a word

that is tender in love for the tormented,

beautiful swine she gave her own life

to save? Have you, like Regan, seen

all life’s beauty and meaning spoken

 

soft in one pig’s eyes? Have you a well

grounded curse that will forever damn

the cowards who conceal her murderers?

 

5.

Regan might walk with justice among

us now, if Region of Halton upheld the

law. Still, Mr. Premier, do not assume we

shall look the other way. Your Bill-156

 

has deemed compassion a crime. I twice

wash my skin when you call us your

“friends” and shed your cynic’s tears.

 

Yes, Regan had more balls than any

man, like you, Mr. Premier. And when

she died to fight your hush-hush, cunning,

strategy, she dealt an open hand of

 

compassion, she exemplified humanity.

Without your façade of politics, without

the laws you have twisted into your own,

she wrote disgrace beside your name.

 

Regan stood, long-lasting and fearless,

for the standards of human worth you

are too empty to reveal with humane

 

heart. Regan was courage, integrity,

decency, she gave her deepest love

for all of life. Regan offered a boldly

 

merciful heart that beats for all the

living, not merely a trifling, greedy deceit

that creeps along too cowardly for shame.

 

 

 

 

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CHRISTOPHER DARTON: FILMMAKER, WORKING ON HIS NEW DRACULA FEATURE FILM, SAYS, “I REALLY FIRMLY BELIEVE THAT WHATEVER I DO MAKE WILL COME OUT WELL ENOUGH TO ATTRACT AN AUDIENCE OR AT LEAST INTEREST SOMEONE ENOUGH TO SAY, “HEY, I WONDER WHAT THIS GUY COULD DO WITH A LITTLE MORE MONEY?” …. WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MY CREATIVE LIFE? – JAMES STRECKER REVIEWS THE ARTS

Posted on June 6, 2021 by strecker

.JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us what you want the public to know about your recent project you are actively working on. What is it, why is it, and how is it done?

CHRISTOPHER DARTON: Thanks James. Well, I’m working on my first feature length non-documentary film; after eight years of shooting documentary films and doing very well with it; making two feature length docs and a third unfinished one, on The Cameron House on Queen Street West in Toronto … as well as five short documentaries. It’s been a really good run. I’ve had films screened in festivals all over North America, in particular a number of Indigenous Film Festivals. Most recently two of my docs screened in the First Nations Film and Video Festival in Chicago and last weekend I won Best Editor and Best Director at the Hollywood North First Awards in Toronto. No complaints … documentaries have been very good to me. But also in there I’ve shot a couple of music videos, promo videos, you name it … most importantly though I produced a couple of short horror films that did well and the end goal has always been to produce or direct a feature length genre film. I love all forms of films but horror is where I first found a real love of film and the reason I attended Sheridan College for film in the 80’s. So here we are in 2021 and I’ve been working on this film since last November; it’s written, it’s about 95% cast and crewed, I’m scouting locations, FX are being designed, storyboards and shot listing is being worked on and musical compositions created. It’s a huge project for me and unlike my documentaries where everything hinged on me and the story because I acted as a one-man band, this new film is a team effort. But it’s a real challenge because for a film of this size it’s a small group and I’m handling all the producing chores. So on any given day I’m sourcing out prop weapons that we really can’t afford, hotel rooms, food services, locations, coordinating crew meetings on Zoom, our first script reading is in a week with the cast … you name it. To say there’s a lot of moving pieces is an        understatement. It’s overwhelming really. But I feel like I’m finally “doing it” after this over 35-year love affair/obsession with making a horror feature … so I’m not complaining. It’s all part of the process.

JS: Please tell us how you fund such a project. How can others help?

CD: So the film will be financed via crowdfunding and the goodwill of family and friends and of course if I have to reach into my own pocket to make it happen that’s what I’ll do. I’ve applied for a grant through the Canada Council for the Arts but that’s a really crap shoot. The grant coming through would be the equivalent of winning the lottery. I’ve structured the budget in three tiers: a low $12,000, medium $27,000 and a high $55,000 if the grant happens; but I’m not counting on that. So, we’re in the midst of year two of a pandemic and I’m running an Indiegogo campaign shucking and jiving for money throughout the month of June. Talk about uphill battles. So, no matter the outcome of my budgets it’s going to be tight making this film but I’m prepared. I’m extremely organized. My cast and crew are talented and dedicated and ultimately when we get backed into a corner instead of being able to throw money at it as a way out … we’ll get creative. Our Indiegogo campaign can be found under The Damnation of Dracula or by this link https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/thedamnation-of-dracula? utm_medium=email&utm_source=lifecycle&fbclid=IwAR1REXLiMZGp Ygnb3n21U4fVZ9NvXeBm84LyWH2NAOVfdKVI49jnQLY40WE#/

JS: What kind of audience will this project interest? What new audience are you also seeking? Why to both questions?

CD: Horror fans are probably the most passionate and dedicated film fans there are out there. I decided early on if I was going to take a year and a half of my life to work on something this big it had to be something I would want to see on screen myself. I didn’t want any easy ways out, so it’s not your typical micro budget project … it’s very ambitious. I think it will appeal to fans of horror, Canadian cinema fans because it’s very very Canadian in tone and finally I think that there’s always a built-in interest from Indigenous people when a film gets made that speaks to them, relates to them and portrays our people as real living breathing thinking entities. We gravitate to these projects because there’s so few of them. Jeff Barnaby made the fantastic Blood Quantum a couple of years ago and that’s certainly a positive model of what I was shooting for with the script … a smart, socially relevant Canadian Indigenous piece. As far as a new audience, well I think it will appeal to anyone that’s not a horror fan too because it’s astute and not over-the-top, so really anyone might appeal in the characters who are very real.

JS: In what ways is this project easy to do and in what ways is it difficult to realize? How long will it take and why that long?

CD: I’m not sure any of it is easy. Without the cash hose to wash away your problems you really need to burrow in and stay determined. Be tenacious. Filmmaking like this takes guts, it really does. I said to our director Sebastien Godin, “if this doesn’t kill all of us a little, we’ve problem done something wrong.” That said … I don’t want to sound morose … I’m thrilled and, really, I’m going at this with a very stoic philosophy, “the obstacle in the path; is the path.” What brings me great comfort is I’ve got friends working with me and we’re like family. I’m the catalyst but they’re a talented group of creators that I’ve helped bring together. So in that sense, we’re all in it together and we’ll make it happen together. The impetus for the whole project was Seb Godin asking me to do some work in his last film The Abominations of Frankenstein, a $3000 feature he shot in his hometown of North Bay. I knew Seb from Facebook and running into him at an occasional horror convention. He was a huge fan and out there making films, and even though he was about 21 when I first met him, I admired his perseverance. So, I had the idea that Seb is out there making film after film, I’m making documentaries but want to venture into a feature horror film … what if I produced his next film? The objective being we bring together his resources with mine, we up the budget some, bring in some better equipment, some of my crew and friends and just really shoot for something bigger and better. He agreed. We chatted and I left it to him what we would shoot … he pitched me Dracula. My heart sank. How do you do Dracula in a 2021 setting? Dracula is costumes, castles, horses and buggies and exotic locations. I asked Seb if he wrote, he said not really, more or less story concepts but not screenplays, so I decided to write it; which was a huge leap for me. I wrote screenplays for over 20 years but never really “made it” and I hadn’t written a feature in at least 11 years. So, I just really burrowed in, watched a ton of vampire films, read a lot of books on writing, reflected and decided to re-image a Dracula set today, here in Ontario and make it socially relevant without being pretentious and added in a healthy dose of me and what I know. I had just graduated University online getting my degree in Indigenous Studies so those teachings were fresh … so I just kept it real and grounded despite how fantastical the situation. It turned out to be the fastest screenplay I’ve ever written by far because I set definitive deadlines and goals. We’ve been in preproduction since January and will been shooting in November 2021.

JS: How are you planning to promote, market, and sell this project to the public?

CD: That’s the wild card … always. For me it’s always the Field of Dreams philosophy … build it and they will come. We’re really hoping on a distribution deal on this one. I think it’s going to be that good, despite the budget. I feel confident that we make this one for however much it ends up being and hopefully the next one is a $75,000 or a $100,000 film. That’s the goal. That’s always been the path for me since producing the horror shorts, that the progression would be a couple of shorts and then a low low budget feature and then hopefully something moderately budgeted. I really firmly believe that whatever I do make will come out well enough to attract an audience or at least interest someone enough to say, “hey I wonder what this guy could do with a little more money?”         .

JS: Please give us a brief autobiography, some stuff about yourself, that is relevant to this project.

CD: I’m a filmmaker and writer always. Since graduating last December from Laurentian University in Indigenous Studies I’ve gone on to work for the Métis Nation of Ontario as an educational officer. We do a lot of preserve the Michif language, perpetuate our history, culture and traditions with grade school, high school, college and university students. I’m just in the final stages of Illustrating a book written in Michif, English and French. It’s fantastic and I love it. On top of my Bachelor’s degree from Laurentian I studied Illustration for a year at Sheridan and then did three years in the media and film programs. I’ve had a magical approximately eight year run of shooting documentaries and everything else that crosses my lens. Stories that range from blues musicians like Gary Kendall and Danny Brooks to suicides going over Niagara Falls; Ornithologist, scientist, musician, philosopher Harold Axtell to Angie Sandow who was born was a congenital birth defect in her right arm and overcame that obstacle to play guitar in her own band and ride motorcycles. I’m that guy that when the first 10 or 15 people on the list say no to making a film someone mentions me and I do it. I’ve embraced that and kind of relish in it. It seems like being a hotshot never worked for me; the role of the underdog is much more conducive to a healthy creative life. With regards to this project, I have a couple of really fun award-winning horror shorts I’ve produced, I’ve watched horror films my entire life and at 55 I like to feel I’m finally ready to tackle something this big. All the chess pieces are in place. I just feel it’s time, not just for me but for the people I’ve surrounded myself with. My oldest son Tobe is shooting the film, it will be his first feature after some fine work on shorts and music videos in Toronto … so this is a golden opportunity for him as well. He’s a talent and it brings me a lot of pride to be working with him.

JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s COVID society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?

CD: It’s been a long haul. It’s sad because I see people struggling everyday between losing jobs and mental health; illness and the challenge of separation from family. Artists are resilient but the fact that many have had their livelihood swept out from under them, that makes it tough. For me personally, I was in University online for the first part of Covid and then was hired by the MNO, working from home. So, I was in training for this isolation stuff. I’ll be honest, I’m almost embarrassed to say it but I’ve thrived during this period. I love being at home and creating. I released two films last year and both have done wonderfully. I wrote the screenplay to the new film, started pre-production … it’s been good for me. The only issue I had was due to the lockdown’s and everything that goes with it, I had a new documentary derailed. It was a short, 30 – 45 minutes that I was ready to go on but put the brakes on because it was unsafe. I would have been shooting out in the streets a lot, around vulnerable people. It was unsafe for them, unsafe for me so it didn’t happen. It’s a shame because it would have been an important one but I get it, these things happen in life. I’m hopeful that we’re in the final chapter of this thing. Maybe we’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel finally. I find it really disheartening though that like anything that happens on this scale, like a pandemic, you see the absolute best in society and the absolute worse. But I fear the worst outweighs the best. What we saw this time around is something we’ll live with the consequences of for a long time, there’s no easy fix to this division or righting this ship. When it comes to changing a culture it’s a monumental undertaking.

JS: What’s next in the coming few years of your creative life?

CD: I’ve got a couple of other docs in the waiting and if the horror film goes well, or even if it doesn’t, I’ve got a next feature idea that I’ll write and produce and maybe even direct. I work constantly, being busy is extremely healthy for me creatively. As well I’m going to write a book. That’s always been in the cards for me to do. So, as I get older and hauling the equipment all over gets tougher, I’m getting close to that moment. The book writing has been very patient waiting for me to be ready. I love making films but making films on a big scale like this current project brings a lot uncontrollable dynamics to the table … like money. It’s great to be able to “pull it off” like a magic trick but to do it time after time wears on you. The little docs I make or even the features … I was in control of every single aspect of those processes. That’s comforting to me knowing that if it’s good, it’s because I’ve made it so. My instincts and decisions were right. And if it’s no good … that’s on me too. No one else. It helps that I have ultimate support system in my wife Katherine. She loves that I do what I do and never waivers when I say … “hey, this Friday I might drive to Ottawa to interview David Wilcox for the new film, I’ll be back the next day.” Or when I hang up the phone as she walks in and I say … “I was just talking to a guy with only one leg that we need for an effect in the film.” That’s not normal in a relationship that your partner rolls with that kind of lunacy. But that’s us and it brings me great solace.

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ESIE MENSAH – DORA-NOMINATED CHOREOGRAPHER, DANCE ARTIST, & DIRECTOR ON HER FILM TESSEL AND ITS WORLD PREMIERE ON JUNE 1…. A REVIEWER INTERVIEWS PEOPLE IN THE ARTS

Posted on May 26, 2021 by strecker

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Photo byMikka Gia

Photo by Felix Russell-Saw, Design by Tony Tran

JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to others?

ESIE MENSAH: I am releasing my second film within the pandemic called TESSEL, which amplifies the voices and bodies of 14 Black dancemakers that come together in conversation of what change looks like today. Due to the pandemic, the myriad of deaths that occurred in North America and the micro and macro encounters with racism unveiled a truth that many have been struggling to deal with. They occur on an insidious level that breaks down the spirit like 1,000 paper cuts. As a Black woman, I’ve had my fair share of micro and macro aggressions throughout my life and career. However, after last year I knew I needed a space to talk, so when I got the call from Ilter Ibrahimof (Artistic Director of Fall for Dance North), I instantly knew I wanted to give space for conversation so I could amplify these voices and not just their bodies. I knew that in order to break the pattern we all needed space to lean into our vulnerability so our words can be heard and felt by the community.

JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?

EM: It reminded me how much I needed to believe in myself. This project was a tall order. I asked a lot of myself with this project from conception to facilitation, to writing and directing. I recognized only during the project the amount of work that was required of me. The amount of times I felt like I needed to come up for air because I was too deep under the water, became great life lessons. Learning to pace myself. Not drowning myself in work and taking care of myself. Listening deep to the voice within me to guide me through and I made my way to the other side. I am grateful. Now I get to enjoy riding the wave.

JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?

EM: The source of my ideas come as a powerful burst of energy. It feels very clear and concise. Then I spend the remaining time trying to understand why the idea came and how to manifest it. Why did this idea choose me? Why now? Why is this important? What do I need to learn from this journey? My creations serve me and my community and I learn just as much, if not more, from what I create.

JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?

EM: My Spirit. I bring all of myself into my art. I continue to challenge myself to invest more than just the steps or just an idea. I feel that is what makes my work so unique. I’m extremely intentional but I do love some happy accidents—the things you didn’t know would end up the way they did when you were working. The syncing of ideas in a beautiful cosmic way.

JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?

EM: Doing the work! It’s tiring, it’s taxing but it’s also very rewarding! Moving through the ebb and flow of manifesting the idea can take a lot out of you. We don’t discuss enough how the work can affect the person but it can have a major impact on you personally and emotionally. Finding a balance to step away is necessary and important if you want to create good art.

JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?

EM: Maya Angelou is someone I would love to sit down with. She has had such an extraordinary life and used her most traumatic events as her superpower. I would ask Dr. Angelou what she feels we need at this point in time to help us move forward in this ever-changing world. I feel she would take my hand and tell me that everything we need is inside of us. To look deep within and that the answers are all inside of us waiting to come out.

I would also love to speak with author Paulo Coelho about creating The Alchemist. That book felt like a download from God. A message to the people of Earth. I would want to ask him what the process was like creating the book and how it feels to create something with such impact on people’s lives. That book felt like it was created for every individual who reads it. A story of self-discovery, trust and, most of all, faith. I feel he would say that it’s important to maintain a connection to the soul of the world in order for it to receive what it needs to move forward. To not lose sight of what is meant for us.

JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.

EM: One major turning point in my life was not allowing my shade to dictate my future. I dealt with a lot of uncertainty and closed doors throughout my career that often made me feel pigeon holed. It restricted me but it didn’t stop me from finding new ways to see myself. That restriction was my breaking point. I said to myself I have to be so good they can’t deny me. I have to be so amazing, extraordinary, undeniable that my shade will never be an issue. My dark skin became my superpower and that empowered me to walk the path that I am on today.

JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?

EM: As a dancer, we are often placed on the bottom of the spectrum of society’s ideas of elite art. People often look down on dancers, whether they are aware of it or not. Helping the general public to see the opportunity and impact that dance can bring is integral to its growth. Dance was one of the first forms of expression amongst racialized communities. We danced to celebrate, mourn, and everything in between. Movement has always been a part of us and reminding people how important it is can truly give those around a different point of view and experience.

JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?

EM: It would be amazing to create a feature film or Broadway show. I have many more ideas but I’ll keep those ones close to me.

JS: If you could relive your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?

EM: I think if I could relive a moment then I think I would go back at different times in my career and cherish the memories more. There is not much to take home after a dance performance (the video will never do it justice). The chance to hold onto these experiences a little longer would be amazing.

JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?

EM: What gives me hope is that people are waking up to the beauty of dance. I always tend to find that within the arts industry, dance tends to be on the lower end of the spectrum. I feel we don’t receive the same level of notoriety as visual arts or theatre. I’ve been feeling this increase on the horizon and I think it’s very promising to witness. For genres outside of ballet, I do feel the public is getting accustomed to discerning different types of dance as an elite artform.

What I find depressing is that funding for dance is still rather low. Dancers are still being paid a couple hundred (even if that) to perform for shows, music videos, and productions. Anything to help support an artist’s vision. This is highly problematic and has been for a long time. However, as a producer myself I do understand that you are stuck between a rock and a hard place because of funding issues. Do you fulfill the project with less funding or do you cancel? It’s important to fulfill your vision and I think many artists can relate to this struggle. I’ve never been certain of the solution as I understand both sides but I hope there is some common ground that we can get to.

JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?

EM: I enjoy seeing my ideas transform into reality. It’s exciting to feel an idea download into my spirit and then see how it begins to manifest. It’s quite humbling to go through the growing process and pains of an idea. It is an uncomfortable growth period but I find it yields the best results.

JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?

EM: I’ve heard from audiences how visceral and impactful my life has been. That has changed peoples’ point of view of the world that surrounds them. I never knew that creating art could truly have that impact. Once I understood that impact, I recognized I had a greater responsibility to myself and my community. So, I am grateful people respond to my art as they do.

JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?

EM: I love me some cartoons! Pixar movies are my best friends.

 

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TIMES FIVE: A SERIES CALLED PUNK INCLUDING THE SLITS, A CENTENNIAL EDITION OF LADY IN SATIN, A MEDIEVAL FLORENTINE GARDEN WITH THE SOLLAZZO ENSEMBLE, VIOLINIST VILDE FRANG, AND MATHEO ROMERO’S ROMERICO FLORIDO

Posted on May 11, 2021 by strecker

.1.I’ve watched many times the four-part film series “PUNK,” with its executive producer being Iggy Pop, partly because it’s a necessary release nowadays to vicariously bring down the shitty system in which we find we live by listening to the brilliantly anarchic Never mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols. Also, because I admire and feel bluntly refreshed by the assertively driven The Clash on their eponymous first CD. Didn’t I play “I’m So Bored with the U. S. A.” over and over during the Trump years? And, by the way, I have a photo of me with an American cop in front of Washington’s Capitol in 1947, so it’s a well-grounded connection in many ways over the years – plus an American-born editorial-reading mother, and I also diligently followed McCarthy. Vietnam, Watergate, et. al. and had many arrogant relatives in the USA to tolerate from childhood onwards. My fave discovery in the PUNK series was The Slits whose CDs The Slits: In the Beginning and The Slits: Cut have been repeated listens, especially for their -as drummer Paloma/Palmolive puts it – “beautiful, wonderful noise.” It’s an inspiring story how the Slits pushed their way through a misogynistic world onto musical stages and I very much enjoyed reading guitarist Viv Albertine’s memoir “Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boy: A Memoir ” which was “Selected by the New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years.” I found it to be a splendidly candid, touching, and unerringly insightful read on many counts.

..2.Lady In Satin: The Centennial Edition from Billie Holiday features not one but three CDs, the first being an expanded version of her original album Lady in Satin and the second and third being a collection of twenty-five cuts like It’s Easy to Remember (takes 3-7) or February 19, 1958 The End of a Love Affair (takes 1-4) or February 20, 1958 The End of a Love Affair (vocal overdub takes 1-4). This is in-session, in-studio stuff with all the repeated attempts at nailing a song, including a number of flubs after which, for example, we hear from Billie “la di da O, I messed up.” We also hear the great one talking and laughing and trying out different phrasings but only briefly because a good take was the goal. I once hung out with Dizzy Gillespie in his hotel room after our interview and, before I drove him to his gig at Artpark, at one point he said, “come see this.” “This” turned out to be the inside of his trumpet case in which he had attached maybe a dozen photos, one being of Billie Holiday, a photo I’d never seen before. Lady in Satin was a rare recording of Billie with an orchestra because her most perfect fit was with comparatively smaller jazz groups in which her voice was truly like an instrument. But even here, in an alien unswinging musical context, we hear, when she sings, a trumpet or a sax in how she plays with the beat, with dynamics, with the sound. She was truly a wonder, so of course she, a black woman, was persecuted by the white man’s sexist, racist laws.

.3.Firenze 1350 – A Medieval Florentine Garden from Sollazzo Ensemble with Anna Danilevskaiaas leader “brings together musicians passionately attached to the medieval and Renaissance repertories, with a particular interest in the transition between the two periods.” I got turned on to this group and their repertoire when I caught a televised performance on Mezzo/Mezoe Television featuring four other singers, and not those of this CD. They were an uncanny blend of ethereal magic, flesh-rooted passion, and haunting timbres of voice which I fortunately recorded and play over and over. Thus, I’m only gradually adjusting to the equally fine singers on the CD, but, either way, I spend much time with this music, especially at 3:00 a. m.  when one torment or another is keeping me awake and I need the world to be, at least briefly, a good place of meaningful connections.

.4.Another enjoyable discovery, first the music, that being the Britten and Korngold Violin Concertos, and second, the violinist, that being Vilde Frang. This violinist obviously feels assertively at home in the technical and evocative demands of both works, as she did in the Stravinsky Violin Concerto I saw, again, on Mezzo Television. We are informed that “both concertos on this new disc were written when their composers were exiles in the USA around the time of World War II.  The Korngold was completed in 1945, the Britten in 1939.  In the course of the 1930’s Korngold, an Austrian Jew, had become a prominent Hollywood composer, but could not return to his homeland after 1938; the young Britten, a pacifist, left the UK for New York shortly before the declaration of war in 1939.  Both composers had been child prodigies and both concertos are centered around the key of D, the most ‘natural’ key on the violin and the tonal focus for the violin concertos for Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.” One bonus for me is that Frang has the bearing of a hippie, a pixie, and a lead in an Ingmar Bergman film all mixed together, ergo an endearing and mysterious presence which invites the listener into ever new worlds.

.5.Matheo Romero’s Romerico Florido sung here, uninhibited and invigorating, by Cappella Mediterranea, with the ten instrumentalists of the Ensemble Clematis and their leader Léonardo Garcia Alarćon, is devoted to the composer’s secular work. We read that “the three- or four-voice tunes are clearly influenced by Iberian music, and also bear witness to the influence of Italian madrigal, Franco-Flemish polyphony, and everything that heralds the birth of opera.” Included is Romerico Florido sung by soprano Mariana Flores, who also performed it in overdrive, verging on Flamenco-ish, at the Ambronay Festival in France, a performance I also saw on Mezzo/Mezoe TV. Like Sollazzo Ensemble, this group displays a compelling excellence in music-making throughout and takes us into many, perhaps unknown, worlds.

 

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