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Elvis/Il Sogno, San Francisco, March 27
-
Dr. Luther
- Posts: 475
- Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 3:25 pm
- Location: SF
Just got home from the show.
Really nice -- although the pacing is awfully slow.
(It was interesting that Costello spent at least the majority of the Il Sogno performance observing from the Loge section just above the left of the stage. I didn't notice him until about 1/3 of the way through -- but he was there until the end...)
Pretty much the same set as Sydney in January -- except that "She" was dropped in favor of She Handed Me a Mirror -- and Alison was added as well. (Off the top of my head...)
His voice was far superior than Sydney -- very few glitches to speak of.
I could have gone home slightly disappointed, possibly, but the last 5 songs were just spectacular.
Birds was perfect. What an arrangement...
Alison was lovely (and I'm largely tired of it, honestly...)
GGMS -- tremendous
ISHTOG -- very nice
And my personal fave -
CCIU #4 was the finest vocal performance of this song that I've yet to hear -- with the (not over-done) orchestration making it truly wonderful.
May Peace Prevail
Really nice -- although the pacing is awfully slow.
(It was interesting that Costello spent at least the majority of the Il Sogno performance observing from the Loge section just above the left of the stage. I didn't notice him until about 1/3 of the way through -- but he was there until the end...)
Pretty much the same set as Sydney in January -- except that "She" was dropped in favor of She Handed Me a Mirror -- and Alison was added as well. (Off the top of my head...)
His voice was far superior than Sydney -- very few glitches to speak of.
I could have gone home slightly disappointed, possibly, but the last 5 songs were just spectacular.
Birds was perfect. What an arrangement...
Alison was lovely (and I'm largely tired of it, honestly...)
GGMS -- tremendous
ISHTOG -- very nice
And my personal fave -
CCIU #4 was the finest vocal performance of this song that I've yet to hear -- with the (not over-done) orchestration making it truly wonderful.
May Peace Prevail
Last edited by Dr. Luther on Tue Mar 28, 2006 8:40 am, edited 2 times in total.
http://www.monkeytom.com/monkeytom/2006 ... ee_el.html
Jill posts to listserv -
( extract)
Here's the setlist!:
Il Sogno Suite - San Francisco Symphony Alan Broadbent Conducting
(can't tell if it was the whole thing or not!!...maybe later Rozy said
it wasn't the whole thing, but the suite)
Intermission
intro You Left Me In the Dark (intro by symphony/Nieve only)
01 Still
02 Upon a Veil of Midnight Blue
03 Veronica
04 Speak Darkly My Angel
05 Almost Blue
06 Watching the Detectives
07 My Flame Burns Blue
08 She Handed Me A Mirror
09 The Birds Will Still Be Singing
10 God Give Me Strength
Encore
11 I Still Have That Other Girl
12 Alison (Strings version
!)
13 Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4
All in all a nice kickoff to the Symphonic tour~!
It was successful, but Elvis couldn't make the audience participate in
CCIU#4! I hope he just gets better and better with each show! He was
in great voice, did use the spray bottle once, but I don't think he
really needed it. Took a couple of sips of tea and some more water,
but he was vocalizing really well! I admire his ability to sing with
a wholly strange symphony in these pretty much one-off performances.
These symphonic orchestras are pros though and they can really follow
their conductor and their sheet music amazingly. They seemed to be
having fun and enjoying the show. They'd make faces, or listen
intently or look out at the audience to see their reaction at times.
Jill posts to listserv -
( extract)
Here's the setlist!:
Il Sogno Suite - San Francisco Symphony Alan Broadbent Conducting
(can't tell if it was the whole thing or not!!...maybe later Rozy said
it wasn't the whole thing, but the suite)
Intermission
intro You Left Me In the Dark (intro by symphony/Nieve only)
01 Still
02 Upon a Veil of Midnight Blue
03 Veronica
04 Speak Darkly My Angel
05 Almost Blue
06 Watching the Detectives
07 My Flame Burns Blue
08 She Handed Me A Mirror
09 The Birds Will Still Be Singing
10 God Give Me Strength
Encore
11 I Still Have That Other Girl
12 Alison (Strings version
!)13 Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4
All in all a nice kickoff to the Symphonic tour~!
It was successful, but Elvis couldn't make the audience participate in
CCIU#4! I hope he just gets better and better with each show! He was
in great voice, did use the spray bottle once, but I don't think he
really needed it. Took a couple of sips of tea and some more water,
but he was vocalizing really well! I admire his ability to sing with
a wholly strange symphony in these pretty much one-off performances.
These symphonic orchestras are pros though and they can really follow
their conductor and their sheet music amazingly. They seemed to be
having fun and enjoying the show. They'd make faces, or listen
intently or look out at the audience to see their reaction at times.
(Ray) Davies Symphony Hall
First, a shout out to Elvis' manager/handler. Elvis finished talking with a group backstage (Good News! Elvis is back in June with Allen Toussaint at the Paramount in Oakland), dashed in to the dressing room for a moment, then was ready to speed off. His manager saw me standing forlongingly with my sharpie and Artist's Choice CD. He directed Elvis to me! I thanked Elvis for putting "Last Time I Saw Richard" on the disc, as it's become one of my 12-year-old daughter's favorite songs. He seemed pleased to have educated one more of today's youth on the glory that is Joni Mitchell.
Now the hard part. I never thought I would type these words to describe an Elvis concert: I was disappointed. Perhaps the first clue was that he didn't start the show with his patented "Good Evening," though Steve did his ritual skip/hop on his way in. Every show I have ever been to, in all of Elvis' incarnations, has had a tension to it: what's he going to do, how's he going to do it? This was true even with the Juliet Letters show. I know there are limitations to the orchestral format, but instead of the desired "I'm Elvis Costello and I'm going to knock you on your ass," it was "I'm Elvis Costello and I'm going to entertain you."
Where's the adventure in an orchestral version of "Almost Blue?" Nothing compared, say, to the reworking of "Clubland" on the latest disc. I thought "... and in Every Home" would be a guaranteed number. Wouldn't have been great to see the string section battling out over a medley of tunes from Get Happy? What would an orchestral workout of "All this Useless Beauty" been like?
There seemed to be no sense of familiarity between the orchestra and performer; both seemed to proceed with trepidation. I'd hoped Elvis would set up camp here for a week so that they could get to know each other, but that apparently didn't happen. It's going to be difficult playing with different orchestras each night of the tour.
Now the hard part. I never thought I would type these words to describe an Elvis concert: I was disappointed. Perhaps the first clue was that he didn't start the show with his patented "Good Evening," though Steve did his ritual skip/hop on his way in. Every show I have ever been to, in all of Elvis' incarnations, has had a tension to it: what's he going to do, how's he going to do it? This was true even with the Juliet Letters show. I know there are limitations to the orchestral format, but instead of the desired "I'm Elvis Costello and I'm going to knock you on your ass," it was "I'm Elvis Costello and I'm going to entertain you."
Where's the adventure in an orchestral version of "Almost Blue?" Nothing compared, say, to the reworking of "Clubland" on the latest disc. I thought "... and in Every Home" would be a guaranteed number. Wouldn't have been great to see the string section battling out over a medley of tunes from Get Happy? What would an orchestral workout of "All this Useless Beauty" been like?
There seemed to be no sense of familiarity between the orchestra and performer; both seemed to proceed with trepidation. I'd hoped Elvis would set up camp here for a week so that they could get to know each other, but that apparently didn't happen. It's going to be difficult playing with different orchestras each night of the tour.
-
AlmostBlue
- Posts: 179
- Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 1:49 am
- Location: Berkeley, California
Nice concert, but I caught members of both the cello and violin sections snickering at times, but only a couple of eye rollings.. The adventure is gone with a fixed setlist and no surpises, but just amazing to hear GGMS live. Elvis didn't mention that one tune was written with Paul McCartney, and one with Burt Bacharach, but mentioned others. The PA system was the worst I ever heard.. it was such a relief to see him go off mic! I heard the wait outside in the rain fans got snubbed.. perhaps due to a post concert reception for the USBank / Levis crowd.
Kristen Loken
FLAME BURNS BLUE: Elvis Costello sang orchestrated arrangements of his pop tunes in concert with the San Francisco Symphony. The orchestra also played excerpts from his 2000 classical work "Il Sogno" ("The Dream").
http://insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3648004
Whatever the genre, Elvis Costello makes a song most meaningful
By Leslie Katz, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
The line between classical and pop music was appealingly blurred Monday night at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco when Elvis Costello opened his 2006 tour with a stirring program.
In a San Francisco Symphony presentation, the show opened with Costello's 2000 full-length orchestral composition, "Il Sogno" ("The Dream"), a piece commissioned by Italian dance company Aterballetto for its ballet adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Later, Costello, with the help of San Francisco's Michael Tilson Thomas, revised the score for a 2004 Deutsche Grammophon recording featuring MTT leading the London Symphony Orchestra.
MTT wasn't in the house, though. In perhaps the only rock concert moment of the evening, someone in the audience yelled, "Where's MTT?" to no response. Conducting duties went to the New Zealand-born Alan Broadbent, who has served as touring musical director for Costello's wife Diana Krall.
Before the orchestra began, Costello thanked MTT and briefly greeted concertgoers in the sold-out hall with a modest disclaimer: They wouldn't be hearing a symphony, but rather a "series of episodes" linked to certain characters. And with a nod to fans most familiar with his prolific pop career, he gave the OK for people to clap — whenever.
"Don't wait until the end to applaud. Knock yourself out," he said. "It's San Francisco. Take your clothes off."
But the audience, which looked to be a mix of open-minded symphony subscribers (who apparently got first dibs on the tickets) and die-hard Costello followers, took a short while to get with the program. It wasn't until the second or third pause in the 30-minute piece did people feel moved to clap.
Although detailed program notes outlined scenes of the ballet giving listeners markers for enjoying the music, the piece's varied landscape didn't really benefit from the explanations. "Il Sogno" represents a pleasing, if not revolutionary, blend of influences from Debussy to Stravinsky to Bernstein to Bacharach.
Not all 24 "episodes" on the recording were played. Eighteen were presented, featuring amiable melodies sprinkled throughout, with special attention given to the saxophone, vibraphone, cimbalom and jazz drum. The ending, however, came quite abruptly.
Wearing a tux for the second half of the concert, Costello took the stage to sing 13 pop songs, most fantastically dressed up in full orchestral arrangements. Just three tunes into the show, the experience began to feel like something you'd want to go on forever, hearing Costello go through his entire huge repertoire with new, evocative interpretations. He's so good, he probably could even pull off a symphonic version of "Pump It Up." (He didn't play that one.) The lineup was rich, beginning with "Still" from the 2003 album, "North," a collection of moody, bittersweet ballads. Next came the ballad "Upon a Veil of Midnight Blue" written for Charles Brown and arranged by Bill Frisell.
The ultra-poppy "Veronica," co-written by Paul McCartney, was a real treat — the only number not featuring symphony accompaniment. Costello played acoustic guitar and his longtime pianist Steve Nieve pounded out a thrilling, passionate version that highlighted Costello's often hard-to-decipher lyrics.
"Speak Darkly My Angel," off Costello's 2006 release "My Flame Burns Blue," was a tune written for his Brodsky Quartet collaborations. It was followed by a gorgeous version of "Almost Blue." The old rock standby "Watching the Detectives," done big band-style with lots of brass, took on a whole new meaning, and afterward Costello remarked he felt like Efrem Zimbalist Jr. should have been in the room.
Back in a mellow mood, Costello sang a smoky Billy Strayhorn melody, "My Flame Burns Blue," to which he wrote new lyrics, then moved to the gorgeously devastating new "She Handed Me a Mirror" from a collaboration with Copenhagen's Royal Danish Opera based on Hans Christian Andersen's infatuation with Jenny Lind. Costello said it was about "a misfit man in love with an unattainable woman."
Another Brodsky Quartet number off "The Juliet Letters," "The Birds Will Still Be Singing," preceded two heartbreaking tunes from "Painted from Memory," the amazing 1998 album with Burt Bacharach that sounds timeless.
Costello ended the show with "God Give Me Strength" and came back to encore with "I Still Have That Other Girl."
Spending most of the evening vocalizing with a microphone with a cord a la Sinatra, Costello picked up the guitar again for his classic "Alison,"
then closed out with an a cappella take on his Kurt Weill-like "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4" that included a little singalong.
Yet audiences always expect — and get — the utmost from Costello. From pop to punk to rock to classical, he's an artist whose brainy, heartfelt songs survive, and benefit from, being stretched and reinterpreted.
E-mail Leslie Katz at lkatz@angnewspapers.com or call (925) 416-4839.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/0 ... ello_.html
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Elvis Costello and the symphony: Can they play "Pump It Up"?
AEI editor, 01:33 PM in Concerts, Music
By Richard Scheinin, Mercury News
You wait and wait for months. Elvis Costello is coming! Costello_1 With an orchestra!
They're going to play his new symphonic work! The one he recorded with Michael
Tilson Thomas! Plus, they're going to play a bunch of his songs, Elvis and the
San Francisco Symphony TOGETHER!
Well, the concert has come and gone. It happened Monday night at
Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. And as much as you have to
love Elvis for his smile, his smarts, his good cheer and his chutzpah … the way
he's always testing and stretching himself, an admirable thing … the concert
was, in the end, not terrific. Actually, it was pretty underwhelming.
I felt almost guilty not enjoying a concert that almost everyone
else in the sold-out hall clearly was so ready to enjoy. Elvis' fans
love him, and he is easy to love, most obviously because of that voice of his,
which only has ripened through the decades.
You think of the way he stretches his art and then of the way he
stretches his voice … leaning up, up, up into those rubber band-tight high
notes, which he never misses … and suspect there's more than a metaphorical
connection.
Certainly, the man's aim is true. He loves jazz. He loves symphonic music.
Deeply. But do we have to love his public demonstrations of love for those
worlds? I have mixed feelings about this.
One of the first things Costello told the audience Monday was about his last
visit to Davies, when he and his friend Tom Waits attended a performance of
Olivier Messiaen's ""Turangalila'' Symphony. This is a good thing for
Costello's audience to hear; the man is into Messiaen. Costello even told the
audience that it should come back to Davies: Attending symphonic concerts ""is
something you should do all the time,'' he suggested in a non-lecturey way.
But then came the San Francisco Symphony's performance of Costello's
Suite from ""Il Sogno,'' and I'm not sure it offered much of a
gateway to symphonic first-timers.
Costello wrote ""Il Sogno'' (""The Dream'') for an Italian ballet
company's adaptation of Shakespeare's ""A Midsummer Night's Dream.''
The 200-page score was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by
Tilson Thomas, in 2002, and the performance was issued on the Deutsche
Grammophon label in 2004.
Tilson Thomas coached Costello a bit, helping him to strengthen what he'd
written. But this is Costello's work. And it's a very good recording, about an
hour long, with great atmospherics and real spirit; you can hear
Costello's love of Debussy's refinement and Stravinsky's puckishness. There are
halfway decent jazz solos and lots of good melodies, which feel very Elvis-like
yet somehow different, because of the context, the way they keep rising up out
of the symphonic stew.
Monday's performance was supposed to be of a shortened 45-minute
""Suite'' culled from the larger work; it wound up being a 30-minute reduction
of the reduction, and it wasn't very good. The orchestra was sloppy: cracked
notes in the brass, tepid saxophone solos, rhythmic incohesion, all-around
sleepiness. The strings could have mustered a lot more luster; they played with
little polish or punch.
It didn't sound like the San Francisco Symphony. Whether the problem was a
lack of rehearsal time or a lack of communication between the players and
conductor Alan Broadbent, better known as a jazz pianist, the result was a
snooze of a ""dream.'' (Tilson Thomas, where were you?) In its boiled down and
underperformed condition, the piece didn't seem to offer a lot, either; lots of
riffs and faux jazz and a few decent tunes, but nothing to write home about.
Well, that was the first half of the show.
The second half was better, but not enough better. Costello wore a
tuxedo and, roaming the stage, microphone in hand, came across as very much the
crooner. A natural emcee-banterer, he joked that all he was missing was his
martini.
At times, punching out an emotion-choked high note, he brought Tony Bennett
to mind. He was joined by Steve Nieve, his long-time pianist, and, again, the
orchestra, performing a potpourri of Costello tunes in a variety of full-scale
arrangements, including ones by himself, Bill Frisell and Vince Mendoza.
Here's a problem. I confess to being stuck on Costello's early
records: ""This Year's Model,'' ""My Aim is True,'' ""Get Happy.'' They were
smart, but they still rocked raucously; they were filled with elation. By ""
Imperial Bedroom'' … and that was a long time ago … Costello was getting
ponderous.
And maybe that's what was wrong Monday; the songs and their delivery
were a little ponderous. There was ""Speak Darkly, My Angel,'' an art
song Costello wrote for the mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. The best thing
about it at the concert was Costello's funny spoken introduction: ""It's about
a woman of a certain age and desperation who finds herself on the Riviera … and
is considering pushing her young lover out the window.''
Likewise, ""She Handed Me a Mirror,'' commissioned by the Royal
Danish Opera in Copenhagen, began with a sing-song melody, evolved into
something oddly contoured with Costello driving up to another high note, and
felt, overall, dirge-like.
Again, the banter preceding the song was best: Inspired by the life of Hans
Christian Andersen, he explained, ""Mirror'' is about ""a misfit man in love
with an unattainable woman.'' Something about the story line, joked Costello
(who is married to the lanky sexpot jazz singer Diana Krall), appealed to him.
He's really a charming guy. But as for the songs, the best ones
backed off from the artsy end of things. ""Veronica,'' with just Costello on
guitar and Nieve on piano, was a pretty good rocker. ""My Flame Burns Blue,''
Costello's setting of Billy Strayhorn's ""Blood Count,'' couldn't miss, because
the tune's too good to mess up. (Mary Fettig had a nice feature on alto sax).
And ""Alison'' … oh, come on! It's from ""My Aim is True.''
But you know what was best? A couple of tunes from ""Painted from Memory,''
Costello's collaboration with Burt Bacharach from a few years back. He sang ""
God Give Me Strength'' and ""I Still Have that Other Girl,'' and their ornate,
suburban soul were the perfect fit for Costello's husky throb. He is a romantic
at heart, and here, finally, was real romance.
-
sweetest punch
- Posts: 5997
- Joined: Sat Apr 03, 2004 5:49 am
- Location: Belgium
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercuryn ... 212121.htm
There is a slide show with seven pfoto's with this article!
There is a slide show with seven pfoto's with this article!
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... HV0E91.DTL
San Francisco Chronicle
Elvis Costello, erstwhile rocker, is a genre bender at Davies. Chronicle photo by Chris Stewart
Costello croons while the Symphony swings
- Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Elvis Costello looks strangely at home in a tuxedo.
Posing jauntily at the front of the stage in Davies Symphony Hall on Monday night, with the San Francisco Symphony arrayed behind him, the brilliant rock songsmith turned musical omnivore gave his best impression of a finger-popping jazz stylist.
The one thing missing was a martini glass -- and that, as he pointed out to the appreciative audience, was only because he'd quit drinking.
Monday's concert, which opened with excerpts from Costello's recent ballet score "Il Sogno," was merely the latest chapter in his apparent campaign to put his mark on every available musical genre, from punk and country to classical and jazz.
He can do it, too. From the moment he burst onto the music scene in 1977 as a purveyor of particularly sophisticated new wave music, Costello was always a classicist in the broadest sense. We just didn't know it yet.
The intervening years have made it clear, though, and in his latest incarnation as a soigne balladeer, Costello has fused his taste for intricate, emotionally fraught lyrics with a tender melodic vein. It suits him down to the ground.
The second half of the program, with Alan Broadbent conducting the Symphony and Costello's longtime collaborator Steve Nieve contributing jangly piano accompaniments, drew together an array of new material and old standards rethought (many of the songs are documented on his new Deutsche Grammophon release, "My Flame Burns Blue").
They included a posthumous collaboration with Billy Strayhorn, in which Costello fitted new lyrics to compositions by the late jazz master -- "Hora Decubitis" -- a similar co-creation with Charles Mingus was unfortunately left off the set list -- and a pair of songs written with Burt Bacharach.
Costello also reached into his earlier cross-genre projects, including "The Birds Will Still Be Singing" from "The Juliet Letters," his 1993 song cycle with string quartet, and the songs he wrote more recently for the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter.
The predominant mood tended to be slow and torchy; a few more up-tempo numbers might have enlivened the proceedings a bit. But the combination of lush orchestration and Costello's distinctive vocal style, at once abrasive and tender, made for a number of especially poignant offerings.
Just as he did in his rock days, Costello put his vocal limitations to expressive use. The strained top notes and the vocal meandering that often precedes his settling on a particular pitch emerge as tokens of emotional urgency or a broken heart or whatever the song may call for.
And like all great music, Costello's work proves capable of endless reinvention and reinterpretation. The high point of Monday's show was a new version of "Watching the Detectives," redone to mirror the brassy, Henry Mancini-esque soundtrack that might have accompanied the TV cop show invoked by the song's lyrics and graced by dynamic solos from saxophonist Mary Fettig and trumpeter Glenn Fischthal.
Other old favorites resurfaced as well. "Almost Blue," the smoky ballad that remains one of Costello's most hauntingly perfect creations, sounded as wrenching as ever, and "Alison" responded nicely to the orchestral backing.
"Il Sogno," written for a treatment of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by the Italian dance company Aterballetto, is a flashy, entertaining collection of illustrative segments that don't stand entirely well on their own. The recent recording, with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, puts a zippy sheen on the music that allows its pleasures -- punchy melodies and a number of piquant instrumental combinations -- to come to the fore.
But to judge from Monday's awkward performances, the Symphony members seemed to be sight-reading, and Broadbent's stiff, fussy conducting didn't help hold things together. The result was a few splendid moments separated by long stretches.
E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com.
San Francisco Chronicle
Elvis Costello, erstwhile rocker, is a genre bender at Davies. Chronicle photo by Chris Stewart
Costello croons while the Symphony swings
- Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Elvis Costello looks strangely at home in a tuxedo.
Posing jauntily at the front of the stage in Davies Symphony Hall on Monday night, with the San Francisco Symphony arrayed behind him, the brilliant rock songsmith turned musical omnivore gave his best impression of a finger-popping jazz stylist.
The one thing missing was a martini glass -- and that, as he pointed out to the appreciative audience, was only because he'd quit drinking.
Monday's concert, which opened with excerpts from Costello's recent ballet score "Il Sogno," was merely the latest chapter in his apparent campaign to put his mark on every available musical genre, from punk and country to classical and jazz.
He can do it, too. From the moment he burst onto the music scene in 1977 as a purveyor of particularly sophisticated new wave music, Costello was always a classicist in the broadest sense. We just didn't know it yet.
The intervening years have made it clear, though, and in his latest incarnation as a soigne balladeer, Costello has fused his taste for intricate, emotionally fraught lyrics with a tender melodic vein. It suits him down to the ground.
The second half of the program, with Alan Broadbent conducting the Symphony and Costello's longtime collaborator Steve Nieve contributing jangly piano accompaniments, drew together an array of new material and old standards rethought (many of the songs are documented on his new Deutsche Grammophon release, "My Flame Burns Blue").
They included a posthumous collaboration with Billy Strayhorn, in which Costello fitted new lyrics to compositions by the late jazz master -- "Hora Decubitis" -- a similar co-creation with Charles Mingus was unfortunately left off the set list -- and a pair of songs written with Burt Bacharach.
Costello also reached into his earlier cross-genre projects, including "The Birds Will Still Be Singing" from "The Juliet Letters," his 1993 song cycle with string quartet, and the songs he wrote more recently for the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter.
The predominant mood tended to be slow and torchy; a few more up-tempo numbers might have enlivened the proceedings a bit. But the combination of lush orchestration and Costello's distinctive vocal style, at once abrasive and tender, made for a number of especially poignant offerings.
Just as he did in his rock days, Costello put his vocal limitations to expressive use. The strained top notes and the vocal meandering that often precedes his settling on a particular pitch emerge as tokens of emotional urgency or a broken heart or whatever the song may call for.
And like all great music, Costello's work proves capable of endless reinvention and reinterpretation. The high point of Monday's show was a new version of "Watching the Detectives," redone to mirror the brassy, Henry Mancini-esque soundtrack that might have accompanied the TV cop show invoked by the song's lyrics and graced by dynamic solos from saxophonist Mary Fettig and trumpeter Glenn Fischthal.
Other old favorites resurfaced as well. "Almost Blue," the smoky ballad that remains one of Costello's most hauntingly perfect creations, sounded as wrenching as ever, and "Alison" responded nicely to the orchestral backing.
"Il Sogno," written for a treatment of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by the Italian dance company Aterballetto, is a flashy, entertaining collection of illustrative segments that don't stand entirely well on their own. The recent recording, with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, puts a zippy sheen on the music that allows its pleasures -- punchy melodies and a number of piquant instrumental combinations -- to come to the fore.
But to judge from Monday's awkward performances, the Symphony members seemed to be sight-reading, and Broadbent's stiff, fussy conducting didn't help hold things together. The result was a few splendid moments separated by long stretches.
E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com.
This preview artcle was spoted by Rosy on listerv -
http://www.sanfran.com/archives/view_story/1261/
Pop goes the symphony
For one memorable night, the indefinable Elvis Costello hits town with a long symphonic work, and all we can say is, Roll over, Beethoven.
By Marc Weingarten
For most right-thinking music fans, crossbreeding rock with classical music is the worst kind of genetic engineering. Too many rock stars with Costco-large egos and highbrow delusions of grandeur have attempted to stretch creatively by composing large-scale symphonic work—a notion born of the same hubristic impulse that leads second-rate soap opera stars into thinking they could really nail Ibsen if given half a chance.
Just pick your way through the trash bin and behold the gauzy pretension of Billy Joel's fake Chopin piano concertos (as performed by Richard Joo) on his appropriately titled CD Fantasies and Delusions (2001), which mimics classical tropes with little imagination: Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio (1991), an overblown melodrama in which McCartney's sentimental instincts turn orchestral music into soap-operatic gruel; and Pink Floyd alumnus Roger Water's Ça Ira (2005), a musical that makes Andrew Lloyd Webber's work sound nuanced and understated.
It's unclear whether these otherwise gifted composers "went classical" out of some artistic yearning or simply because they felt the need to show off by mastering the most complex of musical forms. One thing's for certain: no matter how hard they may have tried, the end result still sounds like something a rock and roller would come up with. The pseudoclassical pieces tend to have clamorous, amplified music thrown into all the wrong places and count on a string section to glass over any deficiencies.
As a child of progressive rock, though, I've always been drawn to the idea of lashing rock and classical music together. Ever since I heard Procol Harum's album Live in Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra in the early '70s, as well as Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Wagnerian experiments with classical music, I've held out hope that some rocker somewhere, would not simply embellish rock compisotions with string arrangements (a staple of prog rock), but would write something seamless.
Is it any wonder that it was Elvis Costello, rock's most protean songwriter, who finally figured it out? His large-scale orchestral composition, Il Sogno (The Dream), which the San Francisco Symphony performs this month, is an ambitious and fully realized classical work, a generous, subtle, and spirited opus. Listen to the 2004 recording of Il Sogno as interpreted by Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra, and it's quickly apparent that Costello isn't another slumming rock star.
But then, few rock artists have shown Costello's artistic intelligence, his capacity to absorb musical idioms and then create something new. Even early in his career, it seemed rock just couldn't contain him or completely satisfy him. His first album, 1977's My Aim Is True, audaciously roamed across the musical map; Costello's songs moved from the jittery, raggae-tinged "Watching the Detectives" to the tender ballad "Allison" as if such versatility were the most natural thing in the world. His subsequent, three albums flashed gleaming pop, Motown soul, and snarling, cynical punk rock, as refracted through Costello's whip-smart wordplay.
So deft is Costello at shape shifting that he quickly sheds whatever labels critics bestow on him. Early on, while he was being embraced by first-generation punk rockers as their Dylan, he released Almost Blue, which covered songs by country singers George Jones and Merle Haggard, among others—not necessarily a cool thing to do in 1981. Five years later, Costello offered up King of America, which drew from American roots music. In 1998, he collaborated with composer Burt Bacharach ("Walk on By," "The Look of Love") on Painted from Memory, an album that expertly echoed Bacharach's great baroque pop of the '60s. His recent album The Delivery Man was recorded in Oxford, Mississippi, and featured guest singers including Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris.
So it's no surprise that Costello has had a long interest in classical music, going back to 1993's The Juliet Letters, an experiment in art song with Britain's Brodsky Quartet. More recently, he's written chamber music for Britain's Composer's Ensemble and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, as well as lieder for Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sophie von Otter. There's always been a touch of the aesthete in Costello—even at his most ferocious, he's never sacrificed craftsmanship for attitude.
In 2000 the Italian dance company Aterballetto commissioned Costello to write the music for its full-length ballet adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. According to the liner notes on the London Symphony Orchestra recording, Costello approached the task the old-fashioned way, writing his own musical notation with a pencil. That's important, because it means that Costello set his ideas straight onto paper without intervening transcribers or arrangers.
As befits Shakespeare's magical fable, Il Sogno has a dreamy quality, a woozy lushness that evokes sprites dancing in some verdant dreamscape of the imagination. It is unabashedly romantic and gorgeous; no squonky dissonance or 12-tone exercises here. The lush strings and billowing horns seem to inhale and exhale like a Victorian-era bellows, emitting a gentle sound broken by interludes that bring to mind Stravinsky's music from Petrushka. As with that ballet, you can imagine both children and parents enjoying Il Sogno.
Predictably, Costello's palette is large. One can discern elements of romantic composers like Sibelius during the lovers' sections, the dark tonal colors of Mahler when things get dramatic, Gershwin's sensual, swaggering jazz in moments of joyous uplift. Costello has paid close attention to dramatic structure; his piece reflects the push and pull of the story. It's the same vivid story-telling we've come to expect from him. He's just using a large orchestra instead of lyrics to do it.
And Costello weaves in his rock music elements with care. In act 2, when Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen, argue over the child each wants to possess, Costello, with the aid of jazz drummer Peter Erskine, throws in a 4/4 beat and a two-note figure reminiscent of Lieber and Stoller's "On Broadway." Other passages echo Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, which makes parts of the ballet "pop" in the pre-Elvis Presley sense. But Costello doesn't rely on his greatest songwriting strength—brilliant composition of melodies rooted in rock and roll—to get him through tricky passages or transitions. This is first and foremost a classical piece. Everything he does is in the service of the genre.
On Il Sogno, Costello pulls off the classical move with grace and aplomb, but let's hope it doesn't lead to a rash of similar experiments from other rock stars. If Elvis Costello has proven anything in his long and prolific career, it's that he is truly sui generis. He just might be the only rock and roller who could write something like this. That baton cna't be handed off to just anyone.
http://www.sanfran.com/archives/view_story/1261/
Pop goes the symphony
For one memorable night, the indefinable Elvis Costello hits town with a long symphonic work, and all we can say is, Roll over, Beethoven.
By Marc Weingarten
For most right-thinking music fans, crossbreeding rock with classical music is the worst kind of genetic engineering. Too many rock stars with Costco-large egos and highbrow delusions of grandeur have attempted to stretch creatively by composing large-scale symphonic work—a notion born of the same hubristic impulse that leads second-rate soap opera stars into thinking they could really nail Ibsen if given half a chance.
Just pick your way through the trash bin and behold the gauzy pretension of Billy Joel's fake Chopin piano concertos (as performed by Richard Joo) on his appropriately titled CD Fantasies and Delusions (2001), which mimics classical tropes with little imagination: Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio (1991), an overblown melodrama in which McCartney's sentimental instincts turn orchestral music into soap-operatic gruel; and Pink Floyd alumnus Roger Water's Ça Ira (2005), a musical that makes Andrew Lloyd Webber's work sound nuanced and understated.
It's unclear whether these otherwise gifted composers "went classical" out of some artistic yearning or simply because they felt the need to show off by mastering the most complex of musical forms. One thing's for certain: no matter how hard they may have tried, the end result still sounds like something a rock and roller would come up with. The pseudoclassical pieces tend to have clamorous, amplified music thrown into all the wrong places and count on a string section to glass over any deficiencies.
As a child of progressive rock, though, I've always been drawn to the idea of lashing rock and classical music together. Ever since I heard Procol Harum's album Live in Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra in the early '70s, as well as Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Wagnerian experiments with classical music, I've held out hope that some rocker somewhere, would not simply embellish rock compisotions with string arrangements (a staple of prog rock), but would write something seamless.
Is it any wonder that it was Elvis Costello, rock's most protean songwriter, who finally figured it out? His large-scale orchestral composition, Il Sogno (The Dream), which the San Francisco Symphony performs this month, is an ambitious and fully realized classical work, a generous, subtle, and spirited opus. Listen to the 2004 recording of Il Sogno as interpreted by Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra, and it's quickly apparent that Costello isn't another slumming rock star.
But then, few rock artists have shown Costello's artistic intelligence, his capacity to absorb musical idioms and then create something new. Even early in his career, it seemed rock just couldn't contain him or completely satisfy him. His first album, 1977's My Aim Is True, audaciously roamed across the musical map; Costello's songs moved from the jittery, raggae-tinged "Watching the Detectives" to the tender ballad "Allison" as if such versatility were the most natural thing in the world. His subsequent, three albums flashed gleaming pop, Motown soul, and snarling, cynical punk rock, as refracted through Costello's whip-smart wordplay.
So deft is Costello at shape shifting that he quickly sheds whatever labels critics bestow on him. Early on, while he was being embraced by first-generation punk rockers as their Dylan, he released Almost Blue, which covered songs by country singers George Jones and Merle Haggard, among others—not necessarily a cool thing to do in 1981. Five years later, Costello offered up King of America, which drew from American roots music. In 1998, he collaborated with composer Burt Bacharach ("Walk on By," "The Look of Love") on Painted from Memory, an album that expertly echoed Bacharach's great baroque pop of the '60s. His recent album The Delivery Man was recorded in Oxford, Mississippi, and featured guest singers including Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris.
So it's no surprise that Costello has had a long interest in classical music, going back to 1993's The Juliet Letters, an experiment in art song with Britain's Brodsky Quartet. More recently, he's written chamber music for Britain's Composer's Ensemble and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, as well as lieder for Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sophie von Otter. There's always been a touch of the aesthete in Costello—even at his most ferocious, he's never sacrificed craftsmanship for attitude.
In 2000 the Italian dance company Aterballetto commissioned Costello to write the music for its full-length ballet adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. According to the liner notes on the London Symphony Orchestra recording, Costello approached the task the old-fashioned way, writing his own musical notation with a pencil. That's important, because it means that Costello set his ideas straight onto paper without intervening transcribers or arrangers.
As befits Shakespeare's magical fable, Il Sogno has a dreamy quality, a woozy lushness that evokes sprites dancing in some verdant dreamscape of the imagination. It is unabashedly romantic and gorgeous; no squonky dissonance or 12-tone exercises here. The lush strings and billowing horns seem to inhale and exhale like a Victorian-era bellows, emitting a gentle sound broken by interludes that bring to mind Stravinsky's music from Petrushka. As with that ballet, you can imagine both children and parents enjoying Il Sogno.
Predictably, Costello's palette is large. One can discern elements of romantic composers like Sibelius during the lovers' sections, the dark tonal colors of Mahler when things get dramatic, Gershwin's sensual, swaggering jazz in moments of joyous uplift. Costello has paid close attention to dramatic structure; his piece reflects the push and pull of the story. It's the same vivid story-telling we've come to expect from him. He's just using a large orchestra instead of lyrics to do it.
And Costello weaves in his rock music elements with care. In act 2, when Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen, argue over the child each wants to possess, Costello, with the aid of jazz drummer Peter Erskine, throws in a 4/4 beat and a two-note figure reminiscent of Lieber and Stoller's "On Broadway." Other passages echo Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, which makes parts of the ballet "pop" in the pre-Elvis Presley sense. But Costello doesn't rely on his greatest songwriting strength—brilliant composition of melodies rooted in rock and roll—to get him through tricky passages or transitions. This is first and foremost a classical piece. Everything he does is in the service of the genre.
On Il Sogno, Costello pulls off the classical move with grace and aplomb, but let's hope it doesn't lead to a rash of similar experiments from other rock stars. If Elvis Costello has proven anything in his long and prolific career, it's that he is truly sui generis. He just might be the only rock and roller who could write something like this. That baton cna't be handed off to just anyone.
http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/cultofmac/ ... id=1447395
Posted by cultofmac
Wednesday, 29 March 2006
Elvis Costello Unplugged
The old missus and I went to see Elvis Costello at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall a couple of nights ago. It was an odd performance.
In the first half, the Symphony performed Costello's first full-length orchestral work, Il Sogno, while Costello sat listening in the audience.
In the second half, Costello took the stage to sing a selection of downbeat, brainy tunes, mixing classical with jazz and not much pop. Backed by the San Francisco symphony, Costello's loungey songs were dour, yet he was very droll between. He's obviously a musical genius, but it's like reading late Anthony Burgess -- a lot of work and not much fun.
I've never been a Costello fan, and towards the end I was willing it to be over, but his last piece came so close to being one of the greatest concert moments I've ever experienced, it nearly salvaged what came before. But the audience ruined it.
For the last song, Costello dispensed with his microphone, and the effect of his unamplified voice in that large auditorium was astonishing and magical. Everyone craned forward to hear, and the hushed atmosphere raised the hairs on my neck. As the song reached its climax, Costello tried to get the audience to join him singing the last bars, a "hum, de hum" refrain repeated three or four times.
The first time the audience hesitated, and the second time it almost caught. It was a fantastic moment -- hundreds of people so nearly raising the roof with a lovely vocal. But unfortunately it faltered, and after a third failed attempt Costello gave up, turning instead to the orchestra to raise a rumpus.
It was a great shame, and a little depressing. He came so close, but the stuffy old octogenarians wrecked it. I wonder if he had better luck at other venues?
Posted by cultofmac
Wednesday, 29 March 2006
Elvis Costello Unplugged
The old missus and I went to see Elvis Costello at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall a couple of nights ago. It was an odd performance.
In the first half, the Symphony performed Costello's first full-length orchestral work, Il Sogno, while Costello sat listening in the audience.
In the second half, Costello took the stage to sing a selection of downbeat, brainy tunes, mixing classical with jazz and not much pop. Backed by the San Francisco symphony, Costello's loungey songs were dour, yet he was very droll between. He's obviously a musical genius, but it's like reading late Anthony Burgess -- a lot of work and not much fun.
I've never been a Costello fan, and towards the end I was willing it to be over, but his last piece came so close to being one of the greatest concert moments I've ever experienced, it nearly salvaged what came before. But the audience ruined it.
For the last song, Costello dispensed with his microphone, and the effect of his unamplified voice in that large auditorium was astonishing and magical. Everyone craned forward to hear, and the hushed atmosphere raised the hairs on my neck. As the song reached its climax, Costello tried to get the audience to join him singing the last bars, a "hum, de hum" refrain repeated three or four times.
The first time the audience hesitated, and the second time it almost caught. It was a fantastic moment -- hundreds of people so nearly raising the roof with a lovely vocal. But unfortunately it faltered, and after a third failed attempt Costello gave up, turning instead to the orchestra to raise a rumpus.
It was a great shame, and a little depressing. He came so close, but the stuffy old octogenarians wrecked it. I wonder if he had better luck at other venues?