Savage Sublimity and Sublime Savagery
A quick take on Tucson Symphony Orchestra's return to the TCC Music Hall stage.
Program
FESTIVE OVERTURE, Grant Still, 1944
THE FOUR SEASONS OF BUENOS AIRES, Astor Piazzolla, 1970
SYMPHONY #4, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, 1878
HIGHLIGHT NOTE:
Lara St. John is a complete MADWOMAN with a violin and bow in hand. The type of stage performer who goes into a trancelike state of melding with the music through her instrument, she possesses off-the-scale virtuosity and delivers full fire at furious tempi. Both the most savage and sublime passages that a composer could imagine, were sculpted under intense shut-eyed concentration, with complete technical ease. This sublimely crazed virtuoso, Ms. St. John, occasionally glanced out to the audience while performing, toying us slightly with a devil's knowing look of the unknowably advanced and savage artistry she was laying down. Absolutely SPECTACULAR.
>>> A recording link of Lara's insane encore. With the TSO she lassoed cello and bass leads Anne Gratz and Jim Karrer for the accompaniment.
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MUSIC IS THE FOOD OF THE SOUL
“You with the old gun, and me with the belt and the ammo, feeding you Jack! Feed me, you said, and I was feeding you, Jack!” In a surreal scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 savage satire of the ubiquitous threat of nuclear annihilation, Colonel Mandrake tries to prevent global nuclear holocaust by budding up to General Jack D. Ripper, hoping to obtain the recall code for the B-52 bomber wing that Ripper has sent to attack Russia.
Last night, in the TCC Music Hall, under the global, almost one-and-a-half year shadow of COVID-19, and the increasingly violent and deadly anthropocentric demise of Earth’s ecosystems, another surreal scene unfolded: 1000+ pandemic-weary, mask-wearing humans presented concert tickets and proof of vaccinations to enter the Music Hall and get to their seats. We said, “Feed us, Maestro José! Feed us, Lara St. John! Feed us, Tucson Symphony Orchestra!” And oh, did they ever! After a rousing ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, we devoured a veritable feast of live orchestral music by Grant Still, Astor Piazzolla, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The sheer joy coursing through this highly educated, very aware, and decidedly mature audience, was palpable throughout. The pandemic may still ravage millions of lives (a B-52 bomber may slip through defenses!), and this fast-warming planet may soon become a mass extinction zone (the unthinkable Doomsday Machine may be triggered!), yet we now revelled in the dazzling mastery and creativity of 85 musicians, who defiantly, in this Age of Hyper Individualism, acted as one, facilitated by a players' director under whose baton they love to perform, as they delivered the hard won visions of some of Western culture's great artists. All three works clearly leaned into the rhythmic savagery of popular music as part of their backbone; yet each sublimated, often wildly, into other dimensions, now reflective, now a lightning bolt, through full spectrums of human emotion. To open this very unusual season by firing off this series of masterworks, each of which dares to embrace expressive antinomies in close juxtaposition, is a great triumph of programming by Maestro Gomez. That this music was vigorously and lovingly executed by him and the orchestra players, and deeply appreciated by the audience, was no surprise, yet deeply satisfying.
It seemed to me that all of these people, myself included, were somehow a bit lost this evening. A rise in consciousness of the fundamental uncertainty of where and how each of us may now best fit into this fast-shifting world, seemed present, like a low splotchy translucent / transparent cloud on the floors of the Music Hall. Such was the general current among this trying-to-socially-distance "crowd", even as we were generally well-dressed and pleasantly conversing. We WERE lost; yet in the one space we most desired to spend time: breathing deeply of, and luxuriating, in the art music that defines, embodies, mirrors, and delineates the best ideas, inspiration, and experiences of our lives.
~ Steven Gendel
HEAR IT -- Humanity's Expressive Artists Reveal & Illuminate Truth
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