Bramwell Tovey conducted "Petrushka" at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night. But before he did, the principal edgar Guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for its summer concerts explained that Stravinsky kills off the eponymous puppet in his 1911 ballet by having a percussionist throw a tambourine depressed on a wooden table. Tovey aforementioned he had instructed a camera to pan to said tambourine and table at the appropriate second so everyone would see them on the Bowl's video screens.
What he may non have silent is that he besides gave some in the audience their exit cues. The ballet score has yet more musically arresting moments to underscore the macabre wonder of a lifeless puppet returning from the dead to mock the living. But at one time tambourine hit wood, I noticed a surprising number of multitude making a quick getaway.
Making my possess quick pickup once the performance all over, I saw why: Joshua Bell was the soloist in the first half of the concert, and he had agreed to autograph CDs at the end. The line was already long.
The program was dubbed by the Philharmonic "Joshua Bell � la Francaise" because the ever-youthful, ever-popular 40-year-old violinist from Bloomington, Ind., played two short, late nineteenth century French chestnuts. "Joshua Bell � la Joshua Bell" would have been closer to the mark.
Bell and the Bowl receive along well. The chestnuts roasted were Chausson's "Po�me" and Saint-Sa�ns' "Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso." The showtime is 15 minutes of floating louvre de si�cle lyricism. The second is a lightweight showpiece with a kayo finish.
Bell played big. The well-grounded system amplified him much and the orchestra less. The video cameras affected in close. A identical powerful violin sound and a rapturous self-absorbed young man pervaded wide loose spaces.
Bell's acting was potently assured, emotionally charged and red-blooded. Chausson's score can handle some of that vigor only not all of it.
Yet if he came across as something of a bull in a china patronise, Bell was a fleet-footed one that didn't soften anything and so seemed very impressive. But one's attention was drawn to the bull and non the superb china.
Saint-Sa�ns' 10-minute piece, on the other hand, awards athleticism. Any music short of weighed down metal lav be borne down on too intemperate; still, the "Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso" is durable. Robust, fast and on-the-money, Bell here showed an all-American can-do spirit. He went for a standing ovation and got peerless.
His encore was a medley from the score John Corigliano wrote for "The Red Violin." Bell played on the soundtrack, and he has participated with the composer in a belittled industry of spinoffs from the score. This one was merely a two-minute solo, beginning with the film's attention-getting theme and then moving on to fireworks. Here Bell took your breathing place away.
Tovey seemed to allow the violinist be, merely he made up for that in Berlioz's Hungarian March from "The Damnation of Faust" to commence the program and "Petrushka" to end it.
The French connection was there in both pieces but non of primary interest. Maybe it took a Frenchman to write Berlioz's kind of Hungarian music, simply Tovey justifiedly emphasized its engaging Magyar swagger. "Petrushka" was created in Paris for Parisians, but Stravinsky was a homesick Russian �migr� composing for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
The Philharmonic eats Stravinsky for breakfast, and "Petrushka" is one of the nutrients the orchestra will take on its Asian go with Esa-Pekka Salonen in October. Nevertheless, the score remains an obstacle course of action for whatsoever players.
The orchestra got through it relatively well. Tovey put his attention more on the dramatic fictitious character of the ballet and less on the composer's revolutionary purport -- this is a lead-up to "Rite of Spring." With limited rehearsal and a Bowl full of Bell fans, that proved a reasonable strategy.
As he had with the violinist, Tovey allowed solo players in the orchestra to shine. Stravinsky all but turned certain passages into a piano concerto, so the most shininess came where it was needed most -- from pianist Joanne Pearce Martin.
mark.swed
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Tuesday 26 August 2008
Thursday 7 August 2008
"Bachelorette" contestant Jason Mesnick: The nice guy who didn't finish last
It doesn't matter if I cerebrate "The Bachelorette" and shows like it are on the list of Reasons Why We Should Go Extinct. The show's popular, and so is nice-guy single-dad business relationship executive Jason Mesnick of Kirkland, wHO made it all the way to the July 7 finale of the show's fourth season. Really popular: 64 percent of those polled on ABC's site think he should be the next "Bachelor," his MySpace page lists 6,669 (almost all young, female) "friends" and a good portion of the comments for clips of the show on YouTube mountain range from outraged to murderous that lead DeAnna Pappas dumped him in favour of a snowboarder. As irritatingly stilted as those shows ar, Mesnick, 32, seemed like the real deal when I caught up with him, uh, to insure if he can heal and see love once again or something.
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Q: I'd like to expend some clip talking about our feelings. And I want you to know that I cry easily.
A: (Laughs.) If I privy make you cry right now. Without kicking you in the shins or something. That's good.
Q: The premise for people wHO haven't seen the indicate: A bunch of alpha males fight to the death and the winner takes the woman, right?
A: I retrieve that sounds completely natural on the outside, but you know they went through this casting treat where they found guys that would be a good fit for her, and you know, you should � you cry a lot? I think that all these guys have that same tolerant of soft heart. In all lunaria annua, we all said from day one, we're hither and we're not going to stand in the way of her getting to cognize any i of us. So I think you found a big group of softies more than anything.
Q: I like my idea bettor. Also, the woman and the prayer she chooses in the finale should both be oiled up and ... Well, it's a strange sufficiency fertility rite on its own, when you actually think about it.
A: Yeah, I mean it's by all odds not natural, but I think anybody who comes from any walk of life knows that they never know where they're going to meet their spouse. And what are the real chances of 1 in 25 actually happening? It wasn't me. But it obviously happened, and I can say one thing for sure, that both those guys � and I talked to DeAnna and Jesse this past times week, and they ar both crazy-happy, so the ritual worked for those two.
Q: You didn't think he was kind of a peanut or had ridiculous hair?
A: Oh, of course he's got goofy hair, but at the same token, he is � her family asked what's the biggest difference between him and I, and I'm just not nearly as rad as he is. He's a cool, cool, rowdy gallant. I mean really.
Q: At first it seemed demeaning for a bunch of guys to be at the clemency of matchless woman. But then I realized that's about the ratio here in Seattle. Do you think that gave you the advantage of experience?
A: (Laughs.) Ohhh, you mean so many of us and one and only pretty ma'am? Yeah, you know I've been single for about three years, and I probably could say that's pretty a lot on the nose here.
Q: Couldn't you have just tried eHarmony? As punk and phoney as dating is already, why on earth did you want to go through that on TV?
A: I ne'er thought of it like, "Hey I'm going to be on TV," because I'm not a guy who wants to be in Hollywood. I don't care about any of that kind of stuff. But I know, like I aforesaid before, you never know where you're going to meet mortal, and I had a few things happen to me that said, "You know what? This is where I've got to be." I didn't have any expectations of, "Yes I'm departure to buzz off married because of this show," only I got pushed in that direction.
Q: What got cut out that you think tV audience should know about?
A: They wouldn't cut out anything that was really skillful. The only thing that caught me off guard a small bit was at the very last day where, you know I cerebration it was me. I really did, and I went through the hale proposal, got down on my knee, and it wasn't like she aforesaid, "Hey, get up off your genu" real flying. It was a yearner experience than that. So that got cut cancelled, and that was a little surprising to me.
Q: So viewing audience didn't run across that she actually let you suffer a patch before she lowered the boom.
A: Aaaall right, you could say it like that.
Q: Did you catch any dirt from your guy friends who watched?
A: Of course. You wouldn't be a guy friend unless you gave me crap, and that's OK, you know. People have me or they don't, and I can't control what other people do. But about of my close friends know that I was true to myself through the whole experience, and they might give me a short crap for it, simply they recognize me.
Q: What kind of things did they say to you?
A: I mean, the same things you're saying to me immediately. You're like one of my cat friends. "Who, what, where, why, when?" "Are you kidding?"
Q: How did your family take it? They seemed pretty wild around her. In fact, I think your mom said she loved her the day you brought her home.
A: My mom, more than anything, because I have been through a divorce, my mom didn't want to see me get hurt again. But she's also the same person wHO told me just to let my heart prohibited there and go for it. I didn't tell my family anything, so we watched the final episode, and like I said, everybody around me thought she (DeAnna) was going to choose me. And when that happened my mummy was altogether heartbroken. But when we talked things through and she knew where I was � and I am in an OK place � she was OK, too.
Q: She didn't want to stab the girl with a knitwork needle?
A: No, she bought a rosebush to give to me just in case I didn't get one when we watched the show.
Q: I guess you are going to make me cry.
A: I know, you told me. You're a softy. You should go on the show!
Q: One door closed and several more opened for you, right? I hear you're spoiled for choice at present. Is it like one of the old Hai Karate aftershave commercials?
A: It's definitely interesting, because mass have got to experience me, and they're so generous and so sweet and so kind, and they know (my son) Ty, and they bed my storey. I could not separate you how I could begin to start dating right today. I own no melodic theme how to do it. First of all, I want to be generous and tolerant and draw back to the masses who were so gracious to me, but I can't regular attempt to get through some of this stuff, because there's really a lot of it.
Q: I think you're kind of avoiding the direct doubtfulness, though, here. Do you have a ton of new applicants?
A: Yes. Am I auditioning? Is that your question? I induce not begun to do that thus far. Right now I let got so much expiration on as far as work goes and pickings care of my son, and trying to sort out like all this mail and fan % was a rumour that you were exit to do a "Bachelor" show and be on the other end.
A: All I live is it seems to me that all the guys that they've asked � I'm just a single dad from Seattle that is figuring my side out. And the other guys, they've had the Firestone who owns the vineyards, and they've had professional football players, and I don't insure how that's me at all.
Q: I'll let you in on a small secret if you do: Try eating away a prominent clock around your neck.
A: A large clock around my neck?
Q: That's what Flavor Flav does.
A: (Playfully.) A gold, big clock? I go platinum, baby!
Q: I translate the succeeder rate of these TV couplings is pretty low. What do you make of that?
A: I mean it's real. I think if you go through and ask anybody how many people they've dated before they're with the person that they terminal up with the longest � I mean I'm not expression married, because I dated 10 people, got married and it didn't exploit out. So I would say that if you go to the average person across the country, they date at least 15 citizenry plus ahead they contract married or they're with the soul they're with for the longest and there's been 1 out of 15. So I think it's pretty dead on target to how real geological dating is.
Q: My final enquiry is: If I borrowed your child, do you think I'd meet better women?
A: Well, he's way cooler than you.
Q: Who isn't?
A: He's a good judge of character, and if he's around and somebody approached me and he walked the other way, I'd think that he'd be right on spot.
Q: Thank you for opening up to me. Now would you like to watch "Sex and the City" and do some shoe-shopping?
A: (Laughs.) I've never seen an sequence of "Sex and the City."
Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com
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