September 14, 2006
To those who like to keep up with me, I'm sorry things have been slow on this site as of late. The good news is that my personal life is resettling (I am now happily ensconced on the north shore of Oakland's Lake Merritt) and that I've actually been getting a lot of writing done. The catch is that you can't see any of it yet. I've finished four short stories lately, and embarked on a longer project which I refuse to jinx by speaking much about, but which seems to have tremendous emotional energy. The important thing is that I see my writing improving hugely--and perhaps I'll be able to share some of what I've been working on someday.
In the meantime, the dance season is finally lurching ahead, and people are beginning to ask me for recommendations. I haven't seen anything spectacular in dance yet (you'll be seeing plenty of my dance reviews in the Chronicle over the coming months), but during this lull I was absolutely astonished by the Kronos Quartet's latest program at the Herbst Theater last Monday. My astute companion Allan Ulrich reviewed it for Britain's Financial Times:
"Five years to the day after the US first confronted its own vulnerability, the Kronos Quartet has begun its new season with a unique remembrance of that horrifying moment. Music, we already knew, stirs the memory, comforts and transcends the mundane. It can also express the inexpressible. Now this perennially daring artistic organisation has asked us to consider through the string quartet medium the world as a single community, riven by shared anxieties.
Awakening: A Musical Meditation on the Fifth Anniversary of 9/11 ingeniously weaves 13 works from 12 countries into an unbroken, 100- minute sequence that alarms, terrifies, soothes and ultimately proposes a measure of hope. The Kronos journeys from traditional Muslim prayer calls (adroitly transcribed) to the solace of Aulis Sallinen’s Winter Was Hard (assisted by an ethereal children’s choir) and the premiere of a rescoring for strings of Vladimir Martynov’s spiritually drenched Beatitudes."
Unfortunately you have to be a subscriber to read the full review, and my non-music-critic report is far less sophisticated than Allan's: In short, the Martynov moved me to tears.
Also unfortunately, Michael Gordon's "The Sad Park," the piece I liked the least, is the one work from this program Kronos seems to be taking on the road. But for what it's worth, Martynov's music has also cropped up recently in the work of Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton, in the elegiac closing piece she created for the Baryshnikov Arts Center tour. His music--and Barton's dance--are both gorgeous.
Stay tuned for dance reviews in the Chronicle--and some dance writing elsewhere--beginning next week.
Posted by Rachel at September 14, 2006 09:38 PM
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