ok, then, Jesus Christ Superstar was flippin’ awesome. that’s the best show i’ve seen in New York. almost everything about it clicked, even if Judas sometimes took the low road on vocals, and Jesus, too. Judas also didn’t quite look like the Judas we all have in mind when we are familiar with that show, but he did all right.
i get sentimental about that show because i played a small part in it for a high school production. i still pretty well have the show memorized, and the faces of the people i knew who played the parts in that school production still rise up any time i hear the songs. nothing else by Andrew Lloyd Webber does anything for me except induce annoyance. i saw Cats in 1986 when i was here to audition for Juilliard. in those days i was easily impressed, for i thought the show was spectacular. seeing it again years later after moving to New York i found it disappointing, and bland. it may have been the 17 years in production that drained the life out of it, but i don’t think so. the show was just nothing.
anyway, that’s the negative. i loved pretty well everything about the production at the Neil Simon theater, and the standing ovation would seem to validate my sense of things.
in my enthusiasm for that show i hurried home and bought a ticket to the first concert i could find at the first concert hall i could think of. so i wound up in a nosebleed seat at Carnegie Hall to see the Boston Symphony. I was most interested in the Ravel Piano Concerto, but I vowed to stay for as much of Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique as I could. That’s not a great work to me, though the 4th Movement (March to the Scaffold) has some great sound. I left after the 4th movement. that 5th movement is so bad.
i should read that Berlioz autobiography. i hear it’s quite amazing. maybe it would spark an interest in his music for me.
the pianist was also quite good.
the amazing thing about that hall is the acoustics. that’s not a new revelation, but it was interesting how a violin playing a quintuple-pianissimo harmonic note could be heard so clearly to me, sitting all the way at the back of the hall in almost the very last row.
but there is a flipside to that. the acoustincs do not just benefit the performers. theaudience takes the stagem too. every sniffle and snort from an audience member 200 rows away is amplified, too. and last night some poor kid let his cell phone blast off with some beeping noises, this right at the quietest point of the middle movement of the Berlioz. the ushers turned their eagle eyes to him like they were about to line up a firing squad, but i don’t think they actually could determine whose phone had gone off. there were no casualties.
the point being, in a Claes Oldenbergian way, the sounds of the theater mix with the sound on stage moreso at Carnegie than at other halls. Oldenberg used to say that when he went to a movie or show he was as likely to find himself staring at the exit signs or listening to the whisperings of others in the audience as he was to pay attention to the performance. i’m the same way. to me the dynamic of coughs and guffaws against the solo pianist against the chirping of the cell phones is all part of hte experience of being there versus being at home and listening to an LP record.
…..
today i wrote. i was unexpectedly inspired to finish off a piece i’ve had in mind since December. so i did it. it takes so long ti write good text. so much time evaporates. or does it? does the time propagate? was i procreating with time by filling it with industry and textual exertions? did the time disappear, or was it an investment instead?