Live Music: “Candide” at the Hollywood Bowl

By Don Heckman

Thursday was Leonard Bernstein night at the Hollywood Bowl – a concert performance of his too rarely heard operetta, Candide. With Bramwell Tovey conducting a musical congregation that included the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and an impressive line up of singers, the potential for a memorable evening seemed high.  And it didn’t take long for the potential to become reality.

At the time of its creation, Candide was expected to be Bernstein’s breakthrough theatre work of the mid-‘50s.  Based on a novella by Voltaire, created in the company of Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Richard Wilbur and others, underscored by a political subtext inspired by the right wing witch hunts of the period, it seemed to have all the pieces in the right place for a Broadway hit.  But maybe it had too many pieces.  Opening in December of 1956, it closed in less than three months.  Within a year, the arrival of West Side Story refocused Bernstein, and his audience, in a very different direction.

Since then, the operetta has been morphed through a variety of different versions, not always with Bernstein’s participation in the production.  But the interpretation performed on this night was his, reassembled in the late ‘80s with the aid of John Mauceri (former director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra), into an adaptation presumably reflecting Bernstein’s final desires.

Leonard Bernstein

It was easy – especially in this dynamic performance — to understand why he was pleased with it.  The libretto has always had intentionally bizarre passages of dramatic absurdity: Cunegonde’s repeated loss of her virginity, the utterly casual leaps from one part of the world to another, the repeated examples of convenient coincidence.  But in this version, narrated with Gilbert & Sullivan panache by baritone Richard Suart (who also sang the roles of Pangloss and Martin), the absurdities became the sources of one hilarious moment after another.

Ultimately, however, it was Bernstein’s music that made it all come together.  And one could argue that Candide includes the most colorful, diverse collection of elements, styles, genres, rhythms and harmonies of all his works – including West Side Story, even though there are passages in both works that recall aspects of the other.

And, lacking sets, staging, allowing only occasional gestural interaction between the singers, this performance nonetheless blossomed to life from the first notes of the overture, via Bernstein’s mesmerizing score and the interpretive intensity of the support provided by Tovey, the orchestra and the choir.

The singers responded brilliantly.  “Glitter and Be Gay,” perhaps the best known song, is technically difficult but filled with immense potential for the right singer.  And soprano Anna Christy was the right singer, her vocal virtuosity fully matched by her physical charms.  Tenor Alek Shrader, portraying Candide, brought a believable tenderness to the role, his soaring voice especially convincing with the subtleties of his final song, “Nothing More Than This.”   Suart, superbly handling his difficult assignment of narration, acting and singing, kept the wildly twisting story arc alive.  And mezzo Frederica von Stade, the cast’s operatic superstar, brought power, projection and atmospheric believability to the shifting character of Old Lady.

The only less than delightful aspect of this extraordinary event was the awareness that it was a one night performance only.  Having surged back to life in such extraordinary fashion, Candide deserves a longer run – even without sets or staging.

Photo courtesy of CBS

Live Music: Herbie Hancock Seven Decades: The Birthday Celebration at the Hollywood Bowl

By Don Heckman

Herbie Hancock celebrated his 70th birthday Wednesday night with a stage full of musicians eager to share in the festivities, as well as a near capacity crowd of equally enthusiastic listeners spread across the far limits of the Hollywood Bowl.

That’s a bigger event than most of us can hope for at our anniversary milestones.  And it was certifiable evidence that Hancock’s efforts to spread his career beyond the territories of jazz in which he spent his younger years have met with the sort of success that is rare in the jazz world.  A high visibility jazz figure for decades, he has become, in the past few decades, an entertainment world icon, as well.

Underscoring that beyond-boundaries status, the happy birthday program was divided into two parts.  The first featured Hancock in a stellar jazz setting, performing with long-time musical companion Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, bassist Esperanza Spalding, drummer Jack DeJohnette and – for one number – electric bassist Nathan East. The second  half focused upon material from his recently released CD, The Imagine Project – described by Hancock as an effort to reach toward world peace through music.

Herbie Hancock

The jazz segment — in which selections ranged from the opening piece, Shorter’s “Footprints,” to Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage” “Eye of the Hurricane” and “Canteloupe Island” — was state of the art, without breaking any new boundaries. Despite their differences in style, the epigrammatic approach Shorter’s been applying to his improvisations in recent years nonetheless seemed to find common ground with Blanchard’s more mainstream-oriented method.

But the most engaging moments of the jazz segment took place during the passages in which Hancock, Spalding and DeJohnette played together, essentially as a piano trio.  Each seemed both challenged and stimulated by the other, with the youthful Spalding the touchstone sparking her older companions into ever more intriguing musical areas.  In this setting, Hancock was the adventurous, improvisationally probing artist jazz fans have known and loved since his early years with Miles Davis in the ‘60s.

The program’s second half was a different matter.  Beginning with The New Standard in the mid-‘90s and climaxing (thus far) with 2008’s Grammy Album of the Year winner, River, Hancock has continually widened his creative perspectives to encompass pop songs and pop musicians.  With The Imagine Project he’s spread the net even wider, including international musicians and recording in world wide locations.

Given the breadth of the album and its participants, Hancock could only manage a broad sampling of its selections.  But it was an impressive sampling, nonetheless: India.Arie and Kristina Train singing a passionate – if a bit edgy — rendering of “Imagine”; Zakir Hussain, Niladri Kumar and Wayne Shorter performing “The Song Goes On” (apparently with a pre-recorded vocal track by South Indian singer K.S. Chithra); a crowd pleasing “La Tierra” by Colombian vocal star, Juanes; Lisa Hannigan singing “The Times They Are A-Changin’”; the Debbie Allen Dancers cavorting to Tinariwen’s track of  ‘Tatamant/Tilay”; and Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks romping through “Space Captain.”

Where was the birthday boy in the midst of all this action?  Keeping busy, moving from his rich-sounding Fazioli to a synth, to an over the shoulder slung keyboard, adding his unique touch to the eclectic array of sounds and rhythms.  Combined with his work in the opening set, it was an extraordinary display of creative versatility.  Five years past the traditional retirement age, Herbie Hancock just keeps getting better.

Photo by Tony Gieske.

Live Music: Karen Lovely at Vibrato Grill Jazz…etc.

By Don Heckman

Karen Lovely.  Yes, it’s a real name, and don’t forget it.  She may not have very high visibility yet.  But if there’s any justice (which is always questionable, of course) she’ll soon be achieving a stronger presence on the music world viewscreen.

Lovely’s performance at Vibrato Grill Jazz…etc. Tuesday night was one of the most unexpected pleasures of recent memory.  Oregon-based, she arrived with little advance notice, backed by a four piece band that interacted with almost symbiotic musical togetherness, enthusiastically riding the surging crests of her passionate interpretations of the blues.

And not just the blues.  Although almost everything she sang was rooted in various combinations of blues changes, the program of songs – mostly written by Dennis Walker and Alan Mirikitani – ranged through an expansive array of emotions.  Lovely’s voice, moving with ease from darkly intimate intensity to earthshaking high passion, brought each tune to life, finding both the inner heart and the expressive story within songs ranging from the shadowy “Still the Rain” to the classic drive of “I’ve Had Enough” and “Knock Knock.”

Karen Lovely

Lovely’s style begins from sources within such classic blues singers as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.  And, like Janis Joplin before her, she has translated those influences into an utterly gripping contemporary style of her own.

Her set, which ran non-stop for nearly two hours, was superbly supported by a band that could do no wrong.  Pianist Michael Vannice also doubled on tenor saxophone with a gutsy drive recalling the blues vitality of the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts of the ‘40s.  Guitarist Leonard Griffie stepped up with solid backing, as well as soloing to counter Lovely’s far-ranging excursions.  And the rhythm team of bassist Bobby D and drummer Teri Coté added an irresistibly propulsive engine of rhythm to the proceedings.

They were joined on a final few tunes by the dynamic tenor saxophone playing of Albert Wing, veteran of gigs with Frank Zappa and Larry Carlton, among others.  Soaring through the high harmonics of his instrument, Wing countered Lovely’s singing with his own compelling, blues-driven instrumental vocalizations.

But ultimately, it was Lovely who claimed and deserved the spotlight, maintaining her high performance level from beginning to end.  And if there was any tiny flaw in her set, it was the need to balance her stunning musicality with a bit more spoken interaction with her listeners.  It would have been good, for example,  to have her tell us something about the composers and the backgrounds of some of the tunes she sang.  But that’s a minor carp in the broader context of what Lovely had to offer in the spellbinding adventure of each of her interpretations.

Leaving Vibrato, driving down Beverly Glen, a tune came to mind, directly inspired – despite its stylistic differences – by what I’d just heard.  The tune was Cole Porter’s “It’s De-Lovely,” and it’s not a blues.  But both the name and the lyrics – “It’s de-lightful, it’s de-licious, it’s delovely” – apply perfectly to the singing of Karen Lovely.  Remember the name.

Photo by Tony Gieske.