Big City Classical

OK. OK. I started a really long post on this topic last week. And yesterday, my post was destroyed when I tried to open another page. I wish I could say the page that destroyed my long, brilliant post on the National Endowment for the Arts etc. (see below) was, say, the webpage for something quite intellectual, say a chess-playing site.

But it wasn't. It was my favorite LOLCATS site.

Multitasking.

Anyway. I was gone for two weeks at the (clearing throat) Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism/National Endowment for the Arts Institute in Classical Music and Opera.

Before I go on, let me say that I got to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge at night (I've walked across it many times before, but never at night). That was freakin' glorious and worth the humiliating writing workshops.

Read all about it here.

Well, not all about it because I'm discouraged after yesterday's debacle. Many thanks to the taxpayers and to the EW for funding this fellowship! Here's how it was:

Intellectually stimulating. The 23 fellows from 17 different states met with people like Alex Ross (the New Yorker's classical music writer, whom I interviewed the day the institute began for this paper); Justin Davidson, who's kind of my ideal future (not as in to be WITH him, duh, but to be LIKE him); the witty and charming Karen Henson, who taught a quick and dirty but wonderful guide to opera; NYU's Michael Beckerman, whose teaching style engaged us after long days of lectures; Joe horowitz, who began the program and with whom many of us disagreed (at times quite violently) but who was an excellent writing workshop leader; and many others.

Full of concerts and operas. We saw, not in order because there's too much to remember:
• Handel's Agrippina (which I enjoyed for its amazing staging and sets; I'm such a theater geek ... my review of it to follow in a minute after I transfer it from the laptop.)

• The Metropolitan Opera's Lucia di Lammermoor. Sadly, we didn't get to see Natalie Dessay, around whom the entire fall ad campaign for the Met was built, and her cover (whose name I don't know, and it's not in my program) wasn't convincing at all in the "mad scene." OTOH, I really came to understand the term "park and bark," as the Famous Met Singers came out on stage, didn't do much in the way of blocking (I think they must have frustrated director Mary Zimmerman to no end), stood and delivered. Admittedly, they had great voices. Still, I'm a theater person. Don't park and bark! Move and groove!

•The Cleveland Orchestra playing Mahler's Symphony No. 2 at Carnegie Hall (I'll post that review too--I did a much better job on that one.)

• A concert of new music called "Hybridity" at Zankel Hall (note: I was in Zankel as people above us, in Isaac Stern Auditorium, were hearing J.K. Rowling tell that Dumbledore was gay!). I enjoyed much more of this concert than did my peers. See, I'm a Philistine. I like the art/music mix. OK, some of the concert wasn't good (the new Scott Johnson piece, for instance), but hearing a Charles Mingus piece premiere in NY? WOW. Also, there was a British cellist whose piece I loved. (I'll find out more and come back and explain.) I even liked it that she didn't play, that her piece had been recorded in the studio and was played back as a screen played electronic images. The cello is such an evocative instrument.

• The L.A. Opera and Ravinia Festival's James Conlon directing the New York Philharmonic in a New York premiere of Alexander Zemlinsky's Oscar Wilde-based "A Florentine Tragedy" (along with Jonathan Biss playing, rather uninspiredly, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2). Conlon spoke to us earlier in the day, and he was both brilliant and inspirational. He also opened up the discussion a bit wider because he was in Cologne and Paris, each, for a long time, so it wasn't all about New York. Speaking of that, the next day, we saw ...

• The London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davies with Haydn's Creation (too, too many recitatives for my taste; but the arias and chorus parts were lovely)

•An up-close-and-personal (literally I was about two feet away from the players) concert with the Pacifica Quartet in Columbia University's Philosophy Hall Lounge. That was too, too cool. Even if the Q&A afterwards proved that people in NY are just as annoying and stupid as people in Eugene, once you stick a microphone in front of them.

• And, most wonderfully, a private concert with pianist (and blogger!) Jeremy Denk, who performed the Concord Sonata by American composer (and kind of weirdo, I guess, or just isolated genius?) Charles Ives. The location for the last concert was the words-cannot-convey-the-beauty-of-this-location Bargemusic. As Denk played (and explained each movement before he got to it — a perfect combination of intellectual rigor and technical/emotional skill with the music), the sun set and the lights came up in lower Manhattan.

At that moment, I felt what Wallace Stevens described so brilliantly in "The Idea of Order at Key West":

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

And you know what? That, and the subsequent dinner and walk across Brooklyn Bridge, couldn't have been better. But there were painful parts, and I felt...

Humiliation. The New York Times' Tony Tommasini, pianist and chief classical music critic, essentially thought my review of Agrippina sucked. And my peers, as people in writing workshops will do when the leader begins by saying, "You all did this totally wrong," jumped on board (not only on me, but on several other people).

On the other hand, writing workshops with Joe Horowitz and Terry Teachout, who started his career at the newspaper from which I learned to read even while he was writing there (the Kansas City Star), were awesome. I suspect, nay, I am fully aware, that I disagree with Teachout politically, but he was an excellent commenter on my think piece (with which I suspect he passionately disagreed) about how the NEA Institute needed to make sure it not only reached out to participants of color but also included...oh hell, I'll post it in a minute.

Fellowship. Other than the brilliant Flyover Journal and my regular discussions with Molly and Chuck, I don't get to chat about arts journalism very often. But here are a mere few of the people I got to talk to about how to write, what to write about, how to push for more arts coverage, etc.:

Stephen Marc Beaudoin, Willy Week's classical music critic. His fun and incisive blog. (Plus, a link to a story he wrote about the Oregon Symphony's problems.)

Rich Copley, arts writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader and awesome blogger. His smart blog.

Brenda Tremblay, a totally fun radio person from Rochester, New York. Her charming and intellectually stimulating blog.

Bryant Manning, also a young critic (like Stephen; they were quite bonded, and decided that they liked the name I gave them the first day, "the baby critics"). Bryant's blog, where you can also find links to the playlist on his radio show.

Aaron Green, who was actually much younger than Bryant or Stephen, and who (like Stephen and me) hails from the greater KC area — in Aaron's case, St. Joseph. Because he had gone to school in Princeton (but not at Princeton), and because I used to go to NY a lot before I moved so far away from it, we were always pushing ahead of the group and trying to strike out on our own on the subways. That usually worked quite well. Aaron's hilarious photo/bio on About.com, where he's the classical music "guide" (aka writer).

Margaret Kelley, our program, um, Den Mother, as she put it on her blog. Margaret kicked ass. She was hilarious and patient with us cranky fellows, and she always responded to my pathetic requests for cold soda with a fast response time.

Gigi Yellen, evening host of Seattle's KING FM, who was the most Northwest-y person along with me. By that I mean that we talked about farmed salmon vs. wild Pacific salmon, were prepared for the rain that came on only one day (otherwise it was actually hot and humid) and, along with the Minnesota folk (Rob Hubbard, editor for American Public Media's Performance Today, and Jay Furst, the managing editor at Rochester, Minnesota's Post-Bulletin), she and I kept on asking questions about race and classical music.

The Des Moines Register's Michael Morain, who made me happy with his Iowa-ness and general awesomeness. Also, he was by far the best dressed of any of us. BY FAR. Michael's blog.

Jenni Laster of the San Antonio Express-News was a great companion and, despite my hatred of SUVs and her husband's possession of one (he owns a construction business, so I forgave her), we got along quite well.

Valeria Wenderoth, a freelancer for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and another who shared my concern about the whiteness — and the boy-ness — of the Institute. Valeria, originially from Rome, also was in charge of the lengthy Italian food order for our table on the final night. I blame her for barely being able to waddle across the Bridge afterwards!

And so many others. Really, it was a great time, and I learned so much about classical music and opera, and I'll never, now, shut up about it, I'm sure. Also, I think my leads of any kind will now be better after that agonizing Tommasini workshop (Terry Teachout also made fun of me for using a hugely long parenthetical statement along with a semi-colon, and he's right, I'm a damned academic writer sometimes).

Problem now? I miss the city. Also problem? I didn't get to attend any THEATER in NY. That is just wrong. Must return soon.

Since I returned, I've twice been to the Eugene Symphony (last night's concert, featuring Joshua Bell, had its boring moments — none of those included Bell, who was effing splendiferous — and its high moments [flute solo, anyone?]), once to a play at the UO, once to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for closing night, and twice to teach my night classes. Tonight: The Lord Leebrick's opener of I Am My Own Wife. Tomorrow night: The VLT's Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, to which I've been humming the music for about a month now (Here is Shar Nelson's review from 10-25). Sunday: Either the UO School of Music's extravaganza at the Hult or the Mozart Players' All-Amadeus concert. Oh, and the benefit I wrote about this week for Carol Westlake, of course.

So OK, it's not New York, but at least I'm not bored.