I’ve been trying to go to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series for a while, and I especially wanted to see Dawn Upshaw’s soldout, acclaimed performance of Oswaldo Golijov’s song cycle “Ayre” last spring. I finally made it last Monday for the 10th anniversary season opener, and I have been kicking myself for waiting this long. I think MusicNow is one of those precious gems that make Chicago truly an indisputable world-class cultural community - it promotes new work by exceptional musical artists performed by the acclaimed CSO members, makes these performances available to a wider range of audiences by pricing tickets at a reasonable level (who can beat 20 bucks for the symphony, 15 if you have the TimeOut Chicago discount), and provides a channel for social interaction among the audience members after the concert with its beer-and-pizza reception (think a really cultured frat party where people are talking about the Nietzschean undertones of Philip Glass’s oeuvre instead of say college basketball).
I don’t profess to be an educated classical music aficionado who can dissect the artistic impact of the four pieces played Monday night and say something interesting or substantial, so I leave that to Marc Geelhoed’s blog Deceptively Simple. I can only talk impressionistically, about the feelings, thoughts, and emotions that the music created for me. I thought the first piece by MusicNow host and curator, Mark-Anthony Turnage, called “Eulogy” was beautifully played but a little too stark and uninvolving. The second piece by Derek Johnson, called “Frozen Light”, had a soaring quality which the CSO musicians matched in bombast and breathlessness, but I thought the whole performance was a little too breathless (I felt like I was in a hot air balloon which continued to rise up and up with no hope of levelling at all). I loved the third piece by 19 year old composer Mark Simpson, called “Sextet”, which brimmed with youth, confidence, and a kind of self-possession but without any hint of smugness (think Scarlett Johansson in “Lost in Translation”…). The most awaited piece of the night was the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s“Step Team”, a MusicNow commission, and he did not disappoint. I thought the piece was very successful in evoking stepping, which according to Wikipedia is “a form of percussive dance in which the participant’s entire body is used as an instrument to produce complex rhythms and sounds through a mixture of footsteps, spoken word, and hand claps.” But in addition to that evocation (and you could almost see dancers materializing at certain points of the piece), I loved the fact that there was a softness and graciousness to it all, which I believe are qualities inherent in any dance movement.
It was a terrific night at the Harris (it beat watching “Dancing with the Stars”!), regardless of the fact that Golijov, who was co-hosting the performance with Turnage, great artist that he is, was mostly unintelligible, spewing some mixed-up business about egg faces, Mondrian, Stravinski, melody invading the space, Turnage’s old age, etc. etc. (which made me wonder whether there either was a bong in the house, or aliens have been selectively invading human bodies at the theatre). What blew me away was the fact that Muhly at 26 and Simpson at 19, had created amazingly complex musical pieces (when I was 26, I think I was…uhmmm… just watching “Will and Grace” religiously!). I was so thrilled that the Harris was filled to almost capacity on a Monday night, and the reception afterwards was a good opportunity to mingle and share opinions (which I wasn’t sure many people seized. As my friends observed, the reception was a little “cliquey”…thank goodness, the pizza and beer didn’t run out!). I was especially heartened by the fact that there were so many young faces in the crowd, enthusiastically applauding. There’s a fascinating comment in the program from Mark Simpson which says “It annoys me so much that classical music is pigeonholed as something aristocratic and uptight, snobby, and above itself. Ultimately things will have to change, because once the current group of concertgoers is dead, no one will be listening”. With MusicNow firmly in the fabric of our city’s cultural life, I think there is less danger of that in Chicago than anywhere else.
Kris Vire, who normally writes about theatre in TimeOutChicago, has a well-written blog post on his experience at MusicNow. I think he tackles really important themes around the need for educating audiences on the artistic vocabulary of the art form, a great discussion piece for another time. Read his blog here.
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