Week of 11/15/2008 - 16:00 to 11/22/2008 - 15:59

On Wednesday, Nov. 19, the Eugene Symphony announced that 38-year-old Bulgarian Danail Rachev had won the competition to become the symphony's seventh music director and conductor. I talked to Rachev the week before the news went public, and here's a short Q&A with him. (Hopefully, my longer article, for which I interviewed a number of folks, will be up later today or tomorrow. Swear it's a-comin' ... along with Gift Guide! By the way, this news is like the best possibly holiday or any day news for the Eugene Symphony. Rachev was superb with the musicians.)

Image of Rachev with the Eugene Symphony on Sept. 12, courtesy of the Eugene Symphony.

Danail Rachev on "A Very Good Car"
by Suzi Steffen
First of all, congratulations.
Thank you.

Tell me about your experiences with the musicians while you were here.
Well, I was very impressed with the way they are dedicated to playing great music, to playing an exciting performance. They seem absolutely devoted to playing well, and I felt that immediately, and once they understood that that’s what I wanted, the process was easy.

I watched you during rehearsals, and you seem flexible, interested in what the musicians have to say.
I think the time of the absolute dominators of a performance is [in the] past, and that’s the most important thing for me, that it’s a collaboration between a conductor and an orchestra. They watch me, see my instructions, and I listen to what they play and try to incorpoate it into my ideas about the piece.
It’s like we are chamber musicians, and we support each other.

Your wife has a good job with the Curtis Institute in Philly. I take it you’ll still live there.
Yeah, but I’m dedicated to spending as much time as possible in Eugene.

Can you tell me about the programming you have planned for the first season?
We started planning the season, with [Executive Director] Paul Winberg and [Operations and Education Director] Chris Collins, and we have created a draft of this season, but nothing is yet sure. I can’t tell you any details right now.

Do you plan to play more of a genre or composer, or do something different in a major way, than outgoing music director Giancarlo Guerrero?
No, no, one of the most important things for me is to continue this tradition of excellence in many ways — in the way the orchestra performs and connects with the community so that the concerts are well-attended and there’s a good connetion with the people and the patrons. I hope to continue the legacy of innovative programming that they had before. And of course I’m going to try to expand it, but I want this tradition to continue from the past. This orchestra, the Eugene Symphony, has a very good reputation within the musical community.

When you were here in September, you talked to me about how you’d had the experience of working with some of the best orchestras, and that was like driving a Maserati, and you didn’t want to go from that to driving a Saturn. So what car is the Eugene Symphony?
I think it’s one of the very good cars. In my career, I’ve had the opportunity of working with a variety of orchestras, not only Maseratis, I guess. I’ve worked with student orchestras as well as Dallas and the Philadelphia Orchestra. What I’m trying to do is use my experience with orchestras like Philadelphia to instill that sort of attitude that an orchestra like Philadelphia has. Of course, that orchestra has opportunities to recruit the best talent in the country, and there’s no way it’s the same in Eugene, but I hope to improve as much as I can in Eugene. My initial contract is for four years, and then we will see how things will continue, but hopefully more.

Anything else you want to say to Eugene?
I just want to thank everybody from the orchestra and the board and the staff and the guild, all these wonderful people I met in Eugene. Their passion for the orchestra is really something I felt immediately, and that attracted me to this position. I think that the interest of the people of the community makes the orchestra better. Their dedication to making their orchestra better is what makes this special.

"Unidentified human remains" to be precise were found at Pisgah/Buford yesterday, or so says the press release from the Lane County Sheriff's office this afternoon.

The human remains were found in a remote area of Mt. Pisgah by a work crew in the area.

The Sheriff's and Medical Examiner's Office are working to identify the remains and determine the cause and manner of death.

Word from the WOW Hall is that tonight's scheduled appearance by Mistah F.A.B. is canceled. No other details were given.

We got a little ahead of ourselves this week with the movie reviews; as it turns out, Synecdoche, New York does NOT open tomorrow, Friday, Nov. 21, but Wednesday, Nov. 26. You see what a holiday week will do to a person? Confuse her, that's what.

On the up side, now you've got more time to peruse reviews and articulate your pro- or anti-Kaufman stance before the movie actually arrives at the Bijou.

My Brightest Diamond plays this week and it should be a lush, orchestra-heavy sonic experience. Here's what we wrote about MBD this week:

Gothic Fairytale Chic

Imagine if a mezzo-soprano opera star got her own backing rock band, complete with string section and distortion pedals. That pretty much sums up Brooklyn’s My Brightest Diamond. Fronted by cultural maiden Shara Worden, MBD incorporates equal parts Tori Amos, Portishead and City of Lost Children. MBD’s sophomore release, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, kicks off with “Inside a Boy,” a rare high-energy track emoting Worden’s “love, love, love” for a boy. On an album of mostly slumberous lullabies, the opening song is a blitzkrieg. “Apples” also drenches Worden’s matter-of-fact narrative lyrics with a peppy drumbeat and staccato vibraphones, with pleasing results.

MBD veers into Gypsy-cabaret territory on “Black and Costaud,” imagining the fictional Belgium character Le Schtroumpf Costaud in a boxing match. But Worden loses me with lyrics that seemingly wandered off the page of a sophomore creative writing student’s notebook: “Black and Costaud / Black and chic / Black, black, black / Jolly fellow, jolly fellow, black.” As the centerpiece of the album, it’s a misstep that Teeth doesn’t fully recover from until the final track, the Beth Gibbons-inspired “The Diamond.” But, as far as dark soap operas go, Teeth succeeds time and time again. My Brightest Diamond plays with Clare & the Reasons at 9 pm Friday, Nov. 21, at WOW Hall. $12 adv., $14 door.

Also, listen/download MBD's cover of Soft Cell's "Tainted Love". Not what I'd expect from MBD. This is a good thing.

So now that Peter Matthiessen has won the National Book Award for Fiction for Shadow Country, will the literary world erupt into a noisy discussion about whether a "reworking" of an older trilogy should really be eligible for the award at all? I admit to a bit of skepticism myself, but the book description on Amazon goes to great pains to suggest it's a totally different thing (except not):

Peter Matthiessen’s great American epic–Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone–was conceived as one vast mysterious novel, but because of its length it was originally broken up into three books. In this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has cut nearly a third of the overall text and collapsed the time frame while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. In Shadow Country, he has marvelously distilled a monumental work, realizing his original vision.

So it's a bold new rendering, but is it a new book, published for the first time this year? Does it have to be? The NBA rules simply say, "Judges consider only books written by American citizens and published in the United States between December 1 of the previous year and November 30 of the current year." Nothing about first publication. Thus, it counts. I still can't seem to get very excited about it, but it counts.

The other NBA winners are:

Young People's Literature: What I Saw and How I Lied, Judy Blundell. I'd almost say this was one of the category's dark horses; previous finalist Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak) also had historical fiction on her side, and people (myself included) really liked E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. I have to admit, I do love that the Booklist review quoted on Powells.com begins, "Blundell, author of Star Wars novelizations ... ."

General Nonfiction: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, Annette Gordon-Reed. Interesting. Based simply on their titles, the two current-events books may have canceled each other out, but nothing here seemed like the standout choice based on my inexact estimation of buzz and awareness. The author had previously published a book about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, but with a university press; this Norton title doubtless will find a bigger audience.

Poetry: Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems, Mark Doty. This book "collects the best of Mark Doty's seven books of poetry, along with a generous selection of new work," according to the publisher's description.

For more about the whole NBA dinner spectacular, see The New York Times, whose writers doubtless had the luxury of, y'know, being there.

Thor Hanson will read from his book The Impenetrable Forest and give a multimedia presentation at 7 pm Thursday, Nov. 20, 182 Lillis Hall, UO.

Hanson has tales from humorous anecdotes of machete-stealing gorillas to sad stories of the tragedy of HIV/AIDs in Uganda

You can read the review in tomorrow's EW but I wanted to post this in advance, since the talk is the same night the paper comes out.

Gorilla aficionados, Peace Corps wanna-bes, conservationists, eco-tourists and the Africa interested this is the talk for you.

The review of West Moon Street comes out tomorrow in the paper. I should note that this paper was massively squished for space, and I didn't have nearly the room I wanted to talk about class issues and specific actors (more on that when I have time, maybe Thursday, but kind of doubtful given the Gift Guide schedule):

Sybil Merton (Sarah Adler) and Lady Windemere (Rebecca Nachison) in the Lord Leebrick's West Moon Street. Photo by Gretchen Drew.

Of Fakes, Frauds, Marriage and Murder
In the Leebrick’s lagniappe lurk lightness and laughter
by Suzi Steffen

Relax into the ridiculous. With economic news straining emotions on the outside, West Moon Street, a farce at the Lord Leebrick, makes for a pleasant diversion.

No, it’s not quite meaningful, and the second act doesn’t hold up well (pacing may improve as the play continues its run), but so what? When the outside world turns grim, communal laughter provides warmth: Opening weekend sold out.

The script, adapted and revised by UO alum Rob Urbinati from an Oscar Wilde short story, hints at larger issues while capturing Wilde’s offhand tone. Some actors play this humor with uncanny apititude — Rebecca Nachison stands out as the arch Lady Windemere — while a few others need to work on capturing the spirit of the affair. Steen Mitchell’s gorgeous set and Sarah Gahagan’s nicely fussy costumes provide striking visuals as backdrops to the mostly capable cast.

The larger issues remain submerged but clear. In Wilde’s story and in Urbinati’s play, the main character must commit murder in order to deal with marriage. As those in committed relationships know, most humans require a kind of self-maiming, a loppping off of personality, to please partners (or society). Oscar Wilde certainly understood that. In West Moon Street, murder becomes an external task on the long checklist that precedes a wedding.

Then there’s the issue of spiritualism. In the late 19th century, depicted here, palm-readers (Daniel Borson as Mr. Podgers) and other snake-oil peddlers fooled wealthy Victorians out of their money, and sometimes, out of their minds. The Oxford-educated Lord Arthur, whom the voraciously queeny Lady Windemere desires for her collection of lovers, enlists his butler (Larry Brown) for aid in following Podgers’ prophecy: Lord Arthur must commit murder before he may marry.

When his elderly relative Lady Clem (Laura Robinson-Thomas) dies of natural causes instead of the poison he administers, Lord Arthur postpones his nuptials with Sybil Merton (the focused Sarah Adler). A subplot involving anarchist Herr Winkelkopf (Greg Gumbs, amusing even as he wanders between accents) and archbishop’s daughter Jane Percy (Zoe Grobart) needs tighter pacing at its denouement, as does much of the second act. Yet eventually, the deed is done — and delicious deceits are revealed.

Coherent West Moon Street is not, but those looking for laughs will want to see Nachison, Grobart and Robinson-Thomas strut their stuff on the silly, pretty stage.

**
West Moon Street runs through Dec. 6 at the Lord Leebrick Theatre. Tix at www.lordleebrick.com or 465-1506.

This calendar submission came in too late for tomorrow's issue, but the event is for such a good cause I'd thought I'd post it here.

The Little French School is having a Fall Fundraiser starting at 2 pm Saturday, Nov. 22, at 18th and City View. Donated items and crafts from the children are featured. All proceeds will go toward the purchase of a permanent home for the school. Call 345-3818 for more information.

There's a press conference going on right now at the Hult Center to announce the selection of Danail Rachev as the new music director for the Eugene Symphony, beginning in the fall of 2008. Here's the story that will appear in the paper tomorrow:

Magnificent, Incredible — and Ours
Symphony reveals new music director
By Suzi Steffen

First there were 300; then there were three; now there’s one. And that one’s a humdinger.

The Eugene Symphony announced in a press conference on Nov. 19 that its new music director will be Danail Rachev. Rachev, 38, has been assistant conductor in Dallas and Philadelphia and was one of three finalists who gave free public concerts with the Eugene Symphony in September.

Roger Saydack, chair of the search committee, said, “I think he’s going to be magnificent.”

Saydack has chaired four music director search committees, and he has also seen hundreds of aspiring conductors in his work with the League of American Symphony Orchestras. “This level of talent that Danail has is very rare,” he said.

Rachev said in a phone interview from Philadelphia that he was “impressed with the way the Eugene Symphony musicians are dedicated to playing great music, to playing an exciting performance.” He added, “The time of the absolute dominators of a performance is past, and the most important thing for me is that it’s a collaboration between a conductor and an orchestra.”

“The musicians are ecstatic,” said Lydia Van Dreel, a horn player who served on the search committee. Their preference seemed clear at the concert Rachev conducted Sept. 12 at the Hult Center, when the orchestra clapped, clattered bowstrings and stamped their feet for the candidate, giving him a solo bow. Concertmaster Kathryn Lucktenberg said Rachev was a consummate muscian’s musician, whose intensity and love for the music inspired the orchestra to do better work.

Saydack witnessed the players’ enthusiasm days before the concert. “During the second rehearsal, I had musicians coming to me at break saying, ‘Get out the contract; close the airport; don’t let him leave town! This is our guy.’”

When current Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero announced last fall that he was leaving to become the music director for the Nashville Symphony, the search process began. The committee received more than 300 applications and winnowed them to three finalists, in an intensive process that one committee member estimates took more than 200 hours per person. Van Dreel said, “We talked to lots of musicians that had worked with [Rachev], and across the board, the reaction from them was that he’s an incredible musician.”

Symphony Executive Director Paul Winberg agreed. “I’m thrilled. He’s one of the most intriguing musicians I have met.” He added, “For the next phase in the musical development of the orchestra, Danail will have the capacity to do something interesting and profound.”

**
A longer version of this story and a short Q&A with the candidate will be up at blogs.eugeneweekly.com on Friday, Nov. 22.

Haha! Fooled! This is what you get for trying to read something on EW! A blog that can easily be read on EW's website (with images). Although you can't leave comments on our website. Yet.

Seriously, why is a review of a play posted a year ago the all-time most viewed blog entry? At least, Molly and I want to know. Suzi's probably thrilled.

Just walked past a pretty serious traffic accident at 10th and Charnelton (around 2:05 pm) involving a bicyclist and a motor vehicle. The bicyclist was immobilized and taken away in an ambulance.

Ironically I was dropping off my bike at Hutch's Bike Shop for repair when the accident occurred, so I didn't witness it. I won't have my bike back for another week, but this is a handy reminder, even though it's really hot out for November, to always remember to wear your helmet and practice extra caution (whether your in a car or riding a bike). Even on a pleasant day like today can horrific accidents happen.