Embracing Terpsichore with the Canton Symphony Orchestra

Embracing Terpsichore with the Canton Symphony Orchestra

By Tom Wachunas

 

    In Classical mythology, Terpsichore, the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, is the Muse of Dance. On November 21, she was present at Umstattdt Performing Arts Hall, in all her poetic vivacity, for a magnificent performance by the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO).

    Commemorating the 25^th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the CSO partnered with Dancing Wheels Company & School for two of the works on the program. Dancing Wheels was founded in 1980 by Mary Verdi-Fletcher, the first professional wheelchair dancer in the U.S. Her company integrates the talents of dancers with and without disabilities, and is considered one of the premier arts and disabilities organizations in the U.S. today.

   In his opening remarks about the program, Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann explained that the theme of the evening, “Walls of Glass,” was a metaphor for the societal obstacles and prejudices faced by the physically disabled. He assured us that we were “…in for a very emotional ride.”

    Indeed, beginning with the Adagietto movement for harp and strings, from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, the orchestra was wholly gripping – as it was throughout the entire program - in its emotive power. Strings seemed to weave a velveteen tapestry threaded through with brilliant shimmering from the harp. This most beautiful of wordless love songs is replete with heartrending crescendos and suspended moments of both joyous and bittersweet sighing. It was an altogether arresting backdrop for the dancers as they moved about the stage in front of the orchestra.

    The dance was choreographed by Bobby Wesner, co-founder and artistic director of Neos Dance Theatre. His movement design combines balletic grace and formality with a distinctly modern sensuality. The upright dancers - in duet, trio, or quartet configurations – were mesmerizing as they executed breathtaking lifts and sinewy leaps. Meanwhile, the dancers in wheelchairs seemed to simultaneously float on air and glide magically along the stage with their stand-up partners. They were a poignant reminder that dance is as much a matter of moving the human spirit as it is one of unfettered feet. And like the harp in the music score, they were an impassioned embodiment of wistful yearnings and warm embraces.

    Wesner’s choreography for the thrilling second work on the program exuded the same sense of fervent connectivity between wheelchair and stand-up dancers, though with even more emotional impact. This was the world premiere of Symphony llll, Lightfall, by American composer Stephen Melillo. Scored for full orchestra, the work is in three movements and was commissioned by Gerhardt Zimmermann for this occasion.

    The thematic scope of Lightfall is well-captured in Melillo’s words, “In Dedication to: Those who forever choose to look up and embrace the wonder-filled Universe and the Joy of Life.” It is a marvelous object lesson in blending Romantic classicism with contemporary, even cinematic sensibilities. From the brassy chaos and thunder of the first movement, the haunting lyricism of the second, and through to the triumphal optimism of the finale, there is a kinship in Melillo’s writing to Mahler’s penchant for fusing the sublime with the banal, the ethereal with the mundane.

    Additionally, Melillo’s robust invocation of victory over adversity was an especially appropriate fit with the themes of cathartic love and apotheosis so powerfully articulated in the evening’s final selection, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. Here was the CSO at its electrifying best.

    Interestingly though, for all of the compelling aural artistry provided by the orchestra during this most riveting offering in recent memory, what lingers is the image of the dancers at the end of Lightfall. As they stood at the foot of the stage, they mimed running their hands across a vast pane of glass, feeling their way, as it were, toward an opening. They found it - a window on the fiery, indefatigable soul of Terpsichore.

Insiteful Collaborations

Insiteful Collaborations

By Tom Wachunas

 

 EXHIBIT: TRANSLATIONS presents PAPER, ROCK, SCISSORS: The Art of War,  Cyrus Custom Framing, 2645 Cleveland Ave. NW, THROUGH NOVEMBER 28    330.452.9787   www.cyruscustom.com 

    Of all the ideas for a group show offered by Translations curator Craig Joseph across the past several years, this one, called “Paper, Rock, Scissors: The Art of War,” is in his words, “…one of our wildest concepts yet.” I couldn’t agree more, and I would add that it’s one of the most enchanting, too, in the grandest sense of the word. So to continue, I’ll first give you Craig Joseph’s initial media release (the exhibit has been up since October’s First Friday):

   “We got together with five of our favorite artists - painters Steve Ehret and Kat Francis, and sculptors Gail Trunick, Kelly Rae, and Breanna Boulton. Together we brainstormed fifteen different environments - for example an abandoned carnival, a trailer park, a meadow, a train yard, etc. Together Steve and Kat have painted fifteen large and gorgeous landscape paintings - 2'x 4' and 3' x 5'. Then, our sculptor ladies were handed the task of building people or creatures or beings that would inhabit these environments. The catch? One of them would build and incorporate paper, one would build and incorporate natural materials, and one would build and incorporate metal. And the final result is fifteen scenes of sorts, with the creatures doing battle on little shelves with the landscape paintings as backdrops. You, the audience, will get to decide who wins: paper, rock, or scissors.”

    Remember? Paper wraps rock, rock breaks scissors, scissors cut paper. Here then, an old children’s game has morphed into 15 ambitious tableaux. Each work includes a trio of cleverly constructed resident characters. I say “characters” only because these works have a particularly theatrical sensibility, as if they could be set designs for an elaborate stage production featuring some sort of confrontation or aggression among the denizens of a given environment.

    Those environments are represented through exquisitely executed oil-on-panel paintings. More fascinating is the fact that while these luscious backdrops are collaborative configurations, they’re visually seamless. This is to say that in any given painting there’s no ostensible break in style or technique across the picture plane. Which artist contributed what aspects? That would be my direct question to the painters, Steve Ehret and Kat Francis, when I see them at the artists talkback scheduled for Monday, Nov. 16 at 7:00 p.m. in the gallery. I include here a link to the public invitation: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1516004268712710/    

    In each of these scenarios, the “battle” on the shelf placed just below the painting isn’t necessarily a graphic illustration of a conflict in progress, though sometimes that much is implied. The iconography tends instead to be somewhat elliptical in that regard, and seems to symbolize confrontations that could be in the past, present, or yet to come.

    Four of the five artists here are women, including the three sculptors: Gail Trunick, Kelly Rae, and Breanna Boulton. Their manipulations of diverse substances are remarkably inventive. The elemental physicality of their pieces reminds me that efficacious representations of war, whether metaphorical or literal, are not the strict purview of men alone. While there are some objects we might regard as relatively whimsical or delicate in their conveyance of a “feminine” perspective, in most of the pieces, it is an aggressive and powerfully poetic spirit that abides in their earthen materiality.    

    Conceptually, the integration of the women’s sculptures with the painted backdrops is often an intriguing exercise in what one could call aesthetic alchemy. The juxtaposition of 3D and 2D iconography can transform the immediately apparent content of the 2D backdrops into alternative realities. For example, viewed by itself, the painting for Factory is a convincing depiction of modern industrial architecture. But the accompanying sculptures are eerie evocations of Dark Age weaponry or torture devices, imbuing the painting with the suggestion of a medieval fortress. Similarly, while the painting in Forest is sublimely expressive of sylvan fecundity, the sculptures provide a nearly mythological dimension that re-contextualizes the forest into a wholly numinous, magical place.      

    To continue the analogy to stage production, while the artists have engineered the sites wherein various actions can occur, as well as the cast of players to carry them out, YOU, the viewer, are ultimately the playwright. In that capacity, you get to construct the narrative. It’s a subtle take on interactive art. Not simply a passive observer, you’re a collaborator in completing the meaning of the work.

    But in determining the victor in any specific battle, beware. In this context, paper may well survive an attack by scissors, rock might be too fragile to crush scissors, and scissors rendered impotent against paper. Art wars can be unpredictable that way.

    PHOTOS, from top: Forest; Arctic Circle; Tribal Village; Factory; Abandoned Amusement Park (detail)

Macabre Magnificence from the Canton Symphony Orchestra

Macabre Magnificence from the Canton Symphony Orchestra

By Tom Wachunas

 

     Conjuring the spirit of Halloween for just one more night, the November 1 program by the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO), under the enchanted baton (or magic wand?) of Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann, was frightfully delicious. Not that I favor socializing in the netherworld, but from beginning to end, the evening was a magnificent dance with the devil.

    And what better way to set the tone for these noir proceedings than Modest Mussorgsky’s sprawling Night On Bald Mountain? In what the composer had once called a “wicked prank” in 1867, the brass and percussion evoked the forces of thunder and lightning as the strings recalled frenzied, biting winds swirling around a haunted mountaintop. The orchestra delivered the music with such a sense of raw, strident urgency that this terribly familiar work (included in Disney’s 1940 animated classic, Fantasia) sounded startlingly new.

    If night terrors can be said to have a humorous face, Malcom Arnold’s rarely performed Tam O’Shanter amply fit the bill. The music was drawn from Scottish poet Robert Burns’ epic story of a hapless but jolly drunkard, Tam from the town of Shanter, riding home atop his trusty mare, Meg, on a stormy night after drinking at the pub. When he stops to peek inside an abandoned church, he beholds a ghastly orgy of witches and demons dancing to Scottish jigs and reels. Eyeing a young witch clad only in a revealing undergarment called a “cutty-sark,” he lets out a loud and lascivious cry of delight that prompts the hellish celebrants to give furious chase.

   The thoroughly Scottish-flavored score is a pastiche of often comical aural devices. The orchestra seemed to be possessed by a delightfully naughty spirit as it immersed us in evocative textures, at times in convincing imitations of a bagpipe chorus. Amid stormy bursts from brass and percussion, bassoons lumbered along like the inebriated Tam, and solo trombone hilariously voiced his drunken salutation, “Weel done, cutty-sark!” Well done indeed.

    Concluding the evening’s first half was Totentanz (Dance of Death), a symphonic poem for piano and orchestra by Franz Liszt. The work is a masterpiece of virtuosic keyboard writing, built around a thematic core of variations on Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), the Gregorian plainchant associated with the Mass for the Dead. Guest pianist Spencer Meyer was something of a force of nature here, passionately articulating the relentless percussive thrust of the music. Imagine the orchestra as a darkly colored canvas stretched taut. As it depicted the dancing of ghosts and the haunted clattering of dry bones, it held its own quite well against Meyers’ pounding glissandos and breathtaking arpeggios, all executed with the fiery panache of a painter wielding a broad brush of enchanted colors.

    A relatively more lyrical, though equally diabolical character was threaded through the following selection, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre. Here, the composer cast solo violin as the fiddle-playing devil. The harmonic dissonance in the violin music is the result of intentionally tuning down the top string a half step to enhance its ominous presence. In this role, CSO Acting Concertmaster, Hanna Landrum, adopted an oddly quiet energy. Yet, ironically enough, it was the palpable gentleness of her touch that made the devil’s tune all the more eerie.

    During the evening’s final work, Liszt’s Mephistopheles, the third movement of A Faust Symphony, the music twists and writhes in a grotesque revelation of the devil’s relentlessly taunting nature. But with the entry of a male choir in the “Chorus Mysticus,” an ethereal light seems to cut through the darkness. The Canton Symphony Men’s Chorus, under the direction of Dr. Britt Cooper, rendered this drama of apotheosis with wondrous sonority. And the crystalline voice of tenor Timothy Culver soared in a powerful embodiment of majestic and mystical solemnity.    

   As if to add an exclamation point to an already electrifying encounter, Maestro Zimmermann surprised us all by leading the ensemble in a rousing encore - Charles Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette. Alfred Hitchcock would have surely approved.

 PHOTOS: (top) Pianist Spencer Meyer; (bottom) Tenor Timothy Culver

   www.cantonsymphony.org

Wizards of Odd

Wizards of Odd

By Tom Wachunas 

    In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration.  - Aaron Siskind

EXHIBIT: IKON IMAGES – The Illustration Gallery, 221 5^th Street NW, downtown Canton, 330.904.1377, www.ikonimagesgallery.com

Hours: Wed. – Sat. 12p.m. to 6p.m.

   With Canton’s newest art venue, Ikon Images (which opened in August), owner Rhonda Seaman has provided the Arts District’s most quintessential example of form following function when it comes to art galleries. It’s a remarkably handsome chamber – bright and large (65’ x 15’), with lots of unobstructed wall space and architectural elegance, right down (or up) to its vintage tin tile ceiling. So call me a traditionalist, but this is, as a purely physical environment for exhibiting art, everything a gallery should be.

   Ikon Images is devoted to showing the paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures of internationally accomplished artists in the realm of fantasy illustration. As a formal designation, Fantasy Illustration has come to denote a very specific yet eclectic iconography, embracing everything from fairy tales and ancient mythologies to sci-fi epics and horror stories. Call it the celebration and commodification of the odd and eerie. So it seems only appropriate that I’ve been writing my comments on Halloween night.

    For starters, I highly recommend clicking on Ikon’s web link posted above to get an introduction to the gallery’s featured artists, though certainly not as a satisfying substitute for visiting the gallery in person. To do so is to encounter a magical collection of works that are wholly captivating if for no other reason than their exquisite precision of execution. Additionally, you can click on the “The World of Illustration” tab at the top of Ikon’s web page for a useful overview of the term and its historic applications. 

    Thanks in large part to mind-bending developments in digital animation technology over the past few decades, the Fantasy genre has substantially advanced to become a major entertainment component of our consumerist culture. What was once a relatively specialized niche of artistic practice has morphed into an elaborately appointed castle, so to speak.

    That said, permit me to wax confessional. I admit to a complicated if not polemical appreciation of the genre, particularly as it is practiced in the art of painting. My ambivalence is grounded in my sense that contemporary 2D illustration has become something of an impotent subset of true fine art painting. Some may find that distinction to be an elitist one. So be it.

   Within this bazaar of the bizarre there is a curious pastiche of historic painting influences. It’s as if the ghosts of Gothic drama, Baroque theatricality, Rococo whimsicality, and Neoclassical heroism have been processed, distilled and otherwise compressed into pristine pictorial episodes of a hyper-realistic nature. As I mentioned above, it’s true that in terms of mechanical technique, there is much to praise. All of the artists demonstrate, to varying degrees, astonishing drafting skills and design sensibilities. But their precious exactitude of rendering gives their surfaces the detached, photographic look of animated film stills. After a while, this formulaic sameness tends to sap their power as discrete painted objects, and undermine their potential for making any truly remarkable intellectual or emotional impact.

    In this context, I miss the ghosts of Goya and Delacroix.

    PHOTOS, from top: We Are Lost, by Raoul Vitale; Bone Image, by Travis Lewis; An Offering, by Ania Mohrbacher; Descent of the Centaur, by Soutchay Soungpradith; Lubber, the Pine Sprite Elder, by Kevin Buntin