RSSHome > Sound and sight
“Classical Mystery Tour” and WSO - all you need is the (Beatles) music
SLIDE SHOW
American composer and band leader Duke Ellington famously said there are only two kinds of music, good music and the other kind, and Thursday night’s Beatles tribute with the Classical Mystery Tour and the Waco Symphony Orchestra had plenty of the former.
But then, it’s hard to argue with a show that had a nearly full Waco Hall on its feet and dancing — well, waving arms and torsos — to an encore of “Twist and Shout,” even if that was one of the evening’s rare songs that the Beatles didn’t write.
The Beatles tribute band Classical Mystery Tour — Tony Kishman as Paul McCartney, Jim Owen as John Lennon, John Brosnan as George Harrison and Chris Camilleri as Ringo Starr — cruised through two hours of nearly pitch-perfect renditions of the British pop-rock band’s greatest hits.
Close behind was the Waco Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Stephen Heyde, who set the evening’s light-hearted tone by conducting an opening Beatles medley in a “mop-top” wig.
“Mop-top” — there’s a phrase that dates this Baby Boomer in the Age of Swiffer.
Skimming through the Beatles timeline in Mark Whitney’s program notes, I found this intriguing factoid: The band’s last live concert was in San Francisco in August, 1966 - which means it’s highly unlikely anyone in the hall Thursday night had ever seen a Beatles concert in person to compare.
With no light show, choreography or long, extended band jams — my, how rock concerts have changed over four decades — the foursome Classical Mystery Tour relied on spot-on recreations of Beatles songs, from harmonies, close-enough British accents, tight instrumentation and orchestral arrangements that replicated studio orchestrations, only louder and live.
The WSO not only handled their arrangement’s swelling string lines and numerous brass parts — kudos to the piccolo trumpet solo on “Penny Lane,” and my apologies for not having the player’s name at hand - but members even added the audience noises and applause heard on several Sgt. Pepper’s tracks.
The concert offered 20 Beatles hits — 26 if one counts the orchestral medley kicking off the show — plus McCartney’s “Live and Let Die,” Lennon’s “Imagine” and Phil Medley/Bert Russell’s “Twist and Shout.”
Classic stuff, all: “She Loves You,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Yesterday” (nice acoustic solo by Kishman), “All You Need Is Love,” “Something,” “Hey Jude,” “A Little Help From My Friends,” “Ob-la Di, Ob-la Da,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Carry That Weight,” “Long and Winding Road,” “Magical Mystery Tour,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Got To Get You Into My Life” and more, but you get the point.
In the end, it was all about the music, that music. More than 40 years after the Beatles enchanted their Baby Boomer peers, their songs still can move audiences old and young.
Though Owen/Lennon quipped, “if you remember the ’60s, you’re probably in your 60s” early in the concert, that 60s crowd likely was thinking “I told you so” as they watched a younger generation enjoying a Beatles concert that never existed.
If Lennon and Harrison were still alive, would we be seeing a Beatles reunion tour today? Would they be playing Vegas? Or Branson? That’s a sobering thought, although the ability of the Rolling Stones and McCartney to pull off solid, credible tours even now makes one believe that it wouldn’t have been an embarrassment.
What we have now is the music - good music - and perhaps that’s enough.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Music
Waco connections in fall ‘Texas Music’ magazine
The latest issue of Texas Music magazine profiles a couple of musicians with Waco connections in connection with their new CDs.
Writer Holly George-Warren talks to Tokio resident and Old School country honky-tonker James Hand about his new CD, Shadow on the Ground, on Rounder Records. It’s the follow-up to his 2006 CD The Truth Will Set You Free, which shows Hand’s knack for writing tight, classic country songs as well as his ability to deliver them as Hank would. Shadow has Lloyd Maines and Ray Benson, two of the state’s topnotch producers, returning as producers, and fans who found Truth whetted their appetite for more Hand will find more food with Shadow.
Former Waco resident Walt Wilkins is the second musician getting ink in Texas Music, with a review of his new CD Vigil. It’s a quieter, more introspective album than his Diamonds in the Sun with his band the Mystiqueros and one with a backstory: When a fan gave him the money needed to record a new CD as he wanted, Wilkins chose to reciprocate the favor and donate the album’s proceeds to the Longevity Foundation, which targets premature aging diseases in children.
Wilkins and his Mystiqueros, incidentally, will be in town Nov. 21 to do a concert as part of the Historic Waco Foundation’s Talk of the Town fundraiser series.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Music
Intriguing Paul Baker-Robert Wilson piece
For his many Waco fans, here are some funeral/memorial services details. The funeral service will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 5 at Presbyterian Church of Gonzales, 414 St. Louis St., Gonzales (830-672-3521).
Closer to Waco, there’s also a memorial service at the Dallas Children’s Theatre at 2 p.m. Dec. 7. I’ll pass on any details of that as they firm up.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: On Stage
Pioneering dramatist Paul Baker dies of pneumonia
Had an email in my in-box this morning alerting me that dramatist Paul Baker died Sunday at a Dallas hospital from complications from pneumonia. He was 98.
Baker and his innovative ideas about theater and arts education had a huge impact on theater in Texas and beyond. He built Baylor Theatre into a program with national reputation, helped design the Waco Civic Theatre and created the Dallas Theater Center. Baker joined the theater program at Trinity University after quitting Baylor University in 1962 due to President Abner McCall’s shutting down his production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” over issues of profanity and subject matter.
There’s more on Baker and his life at www.bakeridea.org. Dallas Morning News theater critic Lawson Taitte has a piece on Baker’s impact on Dallas theater.
A strong strand of Baker students, and students of his students, runs through Waco’s various theater offerings and arts programs, a tribute to how a dynamic teacher can change a life.
We’ll have a short story in tomorrow’s Waco Tribune-Herald (here), but thought I’d get word out to Baker’s many Waco fans.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: On Stage
WCT’s ‘Woman in Black’ raises goosebumps
The Waco Civic Theatre’s production of Stephen Mallatratt’s “The Woman in Black” comes as a nice antidote to the shock and gore that presently dominate scary stories in pop culture: It induces chills and goosebumps largely through storytelling, through suggestion and imagination.
These basics prove enough to spook the audience - a welcome reminder that the art of ghost stories isn’t dead.
It’s also somewhat refreshing to see two actors carry a play largely on their shoulders. In this case, it’s Clifton Grasham-Reeves and Bill Mears, who spin a creepy tale about London solicitor Mr. Kipps (Mears) and his attempt to rid himself of a haunting that has tormented his life.
Kipps hires an actor (Grasham-Reeves) to help him tell the story and the actor convinces him to enact it, with himself as the young Kipps and the older attorney playing the other people in the attorney’s tale.
What follows is a nifty, theatrical ghost story, with the two actors portraying the characters and setting the scene - an isolated, gloomy house with a mysterious locked room and surrounded by treacherous marshes and sudden, choking fogs.
Director James Johnson III’s production is low-tech and surprisingly effective, aided in large part by Dave Verdery’s recorded soundscape evoking horse-drawn carts, city streets, whistling winds and a sinister thumping and dragging.
Laura Walton’s set of a Victorian theater stage adds some eerie touches such as ragged sheets flapping in the air, a few candlelabra and some floor gargoyles to the theater’s prop clutter, but it’s Kat Coleman’s lighting that does the most to set the atmosphere.
A scene toward the end with flashing lights to indicate a character’s agitated mental state comes off as somewhat hokey (a fault lying with the theater’s limited lighting system), but it’s a rare misstep. Coleman’s strategic use of shadows - the back corners of the stage that may or may not have a black-shrouded ghost passing through - gives “The Woman in Black” much of its creepiness.
Mears and Grasham-Reeves work well together, Mears’ older, haunted characters contrasting with Grasham-Reeves’ energetic actor and increasingly concerned young Kipps. The latter’s energy, in fact, propels the story up to an ending spiked with multiple twists. Their English accents seem to shift throughout the play, but it’s a minor distraction.
The WCT’s “The Woman in Black” is good for a shiver or two, an entertaining ghost story for those who haven’t lost their appetite for those tales about what happens in the dark when the wind blows, when the fog rolls in and when unexplainable thumps, groans and a child’s cries populate an empty house.
The WCT production continues its two-weekend run with performances at 7:30 tonight (Saturday, Oct. 24) and Friday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 1, and a special Masquerade Ball performance at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 31.
Tickets cost $13 for adults, $10 for senior adults and students, $25 for the Masquerade Ball. Call 776-1591 for information.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: On Stage
Art movie alert: Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism,’ Chris Rock’s ‘Good Hair’ opening Friday
They’re not really art films, but smaller ones likely to be lost in the shuffle among larger films opening Friday.
Some of you were wondering if Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story would ever make it to Waco. The answer is yes, Friday.
And Chris Rock’s amusing - and informative - look at black hair culture, Good Hair, arrives here as well.
If you’re finally burned out on the Saw franchise - No. 6 opens Friday, too - you might check these others out (my pick: Good Hair)
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Movies
Local ‘Cowboy & Lucky’ - um, well …
You can’t watch Red C Entertainment’s made-in-Waco feature Cowboy & Lucky, which debuted last night at the Waco Hippodrome Theatre, and not appreciate the work that went into it, the short time frame of its production and its microbudget.
To turn out a 90-minute action film for the big screen in a matter of about six months, largely using volunteer talent and labor, and with a budget under $200,000 is an achievement, no matter how you slice and dice it. Props to producer/actor Chris Cox (Lucky) and director/actor Russell Clay for pulling off all that. And props for pulling an opening night audience of around 700 people on a rainy Wednesday night.
That said, ‘Cowboy & Lucky’ the movie comes off pretty rough as a viewing experience as occasional problems with sound, camera angles and scene framing interfere with the story the movie’s trying to tell. Not that the story is all that strong - it seems more like a string of action/drug movie cliches than a coherent narrative - but some visual clarity can go a long way when a script or acting stumbles.
Cowboy and Lucky, the characters, are brothers who take over their late father’s private investigation business. The movie’s premise has Loretta Dunn (Nikki Donley, who’s not bad) as a Jackson City investigator trying to break a local drug ring run by vicious boss Dan Carlisle (Brad Holbrook). To the chagrin of her boss Ray (Joel Taylor), for reasons that pan out later, she uses sources outside the police department to infiltrate the ring, namely, Cowboy and Lucky.
Action and occasional comedy, largely from the easy-going Cowboy (and Clay shows a genuine on-screen affability that serves the film well), ensue as our heroes work their way to a confrontation with The Man.
There are rival drug dealers, super-sized toughs, traitors, female hit-men, a silent Hispanic killer, an airboat, shoot-outs in junk car lots, a young child held hostage, fight scenes and - well, there you have it.
The film’s script, though cliched and with a minimum of backstory, largely avoids the dialogue groaners often found in low-budget films, although I did hoot at, “Cops and murder are like lipstick and stilettos for a woman.”
Miking problems made a few scenes sound like they were recorded in coffee cans and gunfire often sounded thin and shallow; in one case, a character was shot but no gun shot was heard.
Fight and chase scenes suffered by not having a wider-angle establishing shot to give viewers a sense of where the characters were headed or where the hazards were. Conflicting camera angles sometimes led to confusing edits.
A slight video jitter plagued some footage in Wednesday night’s screening, but that may have been a projection issue rather than a filming one.
A lot of the fun came in watching cameos by Waco radio personalities Zack Owen, Jim Cody and Beth Richards and young performer Kaley Caperton as well as the Waco locations used in filming.
All in all, Cowboy & Lucky was a workable starting point for the Red C crew, which hopes to produce two to three films a year.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Movies
BU professor’s prize-winning poetry gets published
Woof - a week without a post. Sorry for the absence, but stories on Kermit Oliver and BU Homecoming week ate my lunch over that time.
It’s taken me some time to get to this as a result, but Baylor University English professor William V. Davis’s book of poetry Landscape and Journey, winner of the 9th annual New Criterion Poetry Prize earlier this year, will be published Nov. 6.
The New Criterion publishes poetry that considers traditional meter and form and is a player in the New Formalism movement within the art. It has awarded an annual $3,000 prize for outstanding work since 2009.
Davis, Baylor’s writer-in-residence, uses trips - actual ones in Texas or Wales as well as imaginary ones - as the starting point for many of his poems in Landscape and Journey. It’s only his third book of poetry, joining One Way to Reconstruct the Scene (1980) and Winter Light (1990), but he makes them all count: One Way won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.
As someone drawn to yet flummoxed by form when I try my hand at something as straight-forward as a sonnet, I tip my hat to a poet who appreciates the discipline of form.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: books
HOT Fair announces Heartland’s Got Talent winners
Singer and guitarist Brett Hendrix walked off with the top $2,500 prize in this year’s Heartland’s Got Talent competition at the Heart O’ Texas Fair and Rodeo. Splitting most of the remainder of the prize money were second place winner ($1,250) Skye Todaro, a dancer, and third place winner ($750), singer Latoria Montgomery.
The remaining $500 will go to the People’s Choice winner, which you, humble reader, can vote on yourself by going to www.hotfair.com after 5 p.m. today, Oct. 14.
Monday’s top 5 finalists were Hendrix, Montgomery, David Saucedo, Holly Tucker and Crystal Chambers. Tuesday’s top 5 were Todaro, Blackland Prairie, Trannie Stevens, Elite Wranglers and Royce Montgomery.
Approximately 70 people entered the Heartland’s Got Talent contest this summer with auditions narrowing the field to Monday and Tuesday’s competitors. Shulanda Curry, Ashley Canuteson and Charlie Burch judged contestants on stage presence, technique, entertainment value and creativity.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment |
Last night’s ‘Laramie Project’ - comments?
A scheduling problem kept me from last night’s reading of “The Laramie Project: The Epilogue” at the Waco Hippodrome Theatre, one of more than 100 nationwide participating in a simultaneous production of the work.
It marked the anniversary of the beating death of U. of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard, killed after a robbery in part because he was gay.
Any feedback from someone who saw last night’s collaborative reading sponsored by the Hippodrome and the Waco Civic Theatre?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
BU’s ‘Chaperone’ - last show leaves you wanting more
Baylor Theatre’s production of “The Drowsy Chaperone” ended this weekend to sold-out houses, which, were it a commercial theater rather than an educational one, might be a hint to bring it back for more.
I didn’t get to see the show until the final performance Saturday night, but I’m glad I made it: It’s always a joy to see a smart play clicking on all cylinders, and the Lisa Denman-directed “Chaperone” was humming its final night. A final performance is something a reviewer usually misses, preferring an opening night or early-in-the-run show. And, of course, with many performances under a company’s belt, the last show is often the best one.
I saw the national tour that stopped last spring at the Waco Hippodrome - one of that theater’s best shows of the 2008-9 season (“Sweeney Todd” the other) - and Baylor’s production demonstrated how well-written the musical is.
In a nutshell, a Man in Chair (John Ruegsegger) puts the album of a favorite musical (the fictitious 1928 work “The Drowsy Chaperone”) on his turntable and it comes to life in his small, plain apartment. It’s a prime example of a frothy 1920s stage comedy, replete with stereotyped comic characters and played by a cast with equally stereotypical back stories.
Broadway actress Janet Van De Graaff (Danielle Hawthorne) prepares for her wedding to oil heir and charming smiler Robert Martin (Adam Garst) at the estate of the ditsy Mrs. Tottendale (Jenny King).
Broadway producer Feldzeig (Price Christian) wants to foil the wedding so his profitable “Follies” in which she stars will continue, a fate that two pun-happy, dancing thugs (Stephen Hersack and Joshua Gonzales) want to ensure for their boss, a major investor in the show. Best man George (Andrew Dilday) tries to keep the whole thing running.
Attached to Feldzeig is a cackling, empty-headed chorus girl named Kitty (Rachel Brown) hoping for a big break while supposedly shadowing Van De Graaff is her tippling chaperone (Toni Portacci), played by a scene-stealing grand dame of the stage. Aldolpho (Brandon Woolley), a flamboyant, self-promoting Latin gigolo with a tendency of stretching the smallest of phrases into dramatic monologues, is supposed to seduce Van De Graaff and ruin her wedding plans, but he ends up with the chaperone by mistake - one of several mistaken identities that fuel the foolishness onstage.
Throw in a butler (Matt Tolbert) played by a former vaudevillian and an aviatrix named, of course, Trix (Sarah Smith) and the fun lies in watching the play unfold while the Man in Chair annotates the action.
The singing is solid (particularly Portacci, Smith, Hawthorne, King and Garst); Meredith Sutton’s choreography well-designed and executed (Garst and Dilday in “Cold Feets” a genuine treat, with “Toledo Surprise” and “Show Off” on the company-full-out end of the scale); and the comedy at turns over the top and sophisticated (Woolley on the former, Ruegsegger and Portacci the latter and Hersack/Gonzales, King/Tolbert and Hawthorne/Garst in the middle).
The Baylor production shone throughout: William Sherry’s clever, efficient set design with rotating entrances and a folding bed; Sally Lynn Askins’ spot-on costuming; JoJo Percy’s smart, yet unobtrusive lighting; Melissa Johnson’s musical direction and the jazz combo led by conductor Alex Parker.
“The Drowsy Chaperone” offered the sort of crowd-pleasing humor and light comedy that commercial theaters would love to stage on a regular basis. Baylor’s the first collegiate theater to win the musical’s performance rights and it lives up to that distinction; however, it programs its seasons for a different purpose and likely won’t bring this back.
Time to look for the album and a man in a chair to play it for us, I guess.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: On Stage
BU’s ‘Chaperone,’ MCC’s ‘Baby’ head into last weekend
Waco’s two collegiate theater programs head into their final weekend for their season-openers and if you haven’t seen Baylor Theatre’s “The Drowsy Chaperone” yet, well, you probably won’t: The musical’s remaining performances are sold out.
Family commitments impinged on my theater-going time last weekend and I didn’t get to see the Baylor show (though I’m thinking of trying to land a SRO ticket). Word of mouth on it is pretty high; if you have tickets, count yourself lucky.
I did get to see McLennan Theatre’s “Baby the Musical” on Saturday night and found myself pleasantly surprised, thanks to engaging performances by the six principal actors.
The David Shire-Richard Maltby musical follows three couples as pregnancy - or the effort to become pregnant - alters their relationships. Despite the title, it’s more about grown-ups than cute infants.
The three couples must navigate their own sets of challenges. College students Danny (Eddie Moralez) and Lizzie (Ashley Meade) have to negotiate commitment and separation. Nick (Lance Wiethorn) and Pam (Molly Hutchinson) find sex-by-the-book as prescribed by an infertility specialist a recipe for killing romance; and. Empty nesters Alan (Ty Nystrom) and Arlene (Julie Woodley) see dreams of knowing each other outside of parenting complicated by a return to it.
Director/choreographer Jerry MacLauchlin and music director Karen Albrecht did a smart job of casting the six actors at “Baby’s” core, so much so that one wonders why Shire, Maltby and Sybille Pearson (who wrote the musical’s book) didn’t shrink the piece to a more intimate level.
It’s not that “Baby’s” larger company and expanded orchestra are bad; they just feel extraneous. One would rather spend more time getting to know the main three couples better. A scaled-down show with a pop-rock combo in the smaller confines of MCC’s Fine Arts Center would have been ideal.
With a pitch-perfect sense of body movement and stage presence plus a winsome voice, Meade led the pack as the actor one wanted more of, though the chemistry and good humor shared by Hutchison and Wiethorn, plus their singing, made them appealing as well.
Moralez showed a fresh charm in his role as a young rock musician/father-to-be, though his light tenor voice seem to fade with fatigue as the musical progressed. Woodley and Nystrom also were effective, playing a couple twice their actual ages, but their roles lacked a snap and energy found in the other couples.
Meade’s comic number “The Ladies Singing Their Song,” on how a baby bump proves a magnet to total strangers eager to share their pregnancy experiences, was a highlight as well as the three female principals’ “I Want It All” and Hutchison’s and Wiethorn’s sweet resolve not to forsake romance, “With You.”
The principals’ vocals show good grounding and preparation under Albrecht’s direction, though occasional miking problems and vocal fatigue made volume a periodic problem.
Projected backgrounds - including several shots of sperm and egg - and lighting did much to dress a largely minimalist set while costumer Kathleen Cochran’s perceptive use of color gave a visual cohesion to the company’s contemporary dress.
“Baby” lacks the big dance sequences seen in several of McLennan Theatre’s past musical productions, but MacLauchlin keeps the larger ensemble numbers from becoming static through simple, but effective movement.
The musical’s a sweet entertainment that couples should appreciate - maybe more so than families with small kids - and continues its run with performances at 7:30 tonight through Saturday (Oct. 8-10). Call 299-8200 for ticket information.
P.S. — For the last few years, my reviews of local theater and symphony have been online due to time deadlines and space limitations in print. As we shift from having our Internet presence shaped by former parent company Cox Newspapers to one that we largely will do ourselves, we’re looking at some changes online, including the progression in upcoming months to some sort of pay model.
I want to provide local entertainment coverage of value online and would like to know if you, the reader, finds it useful. I do a lot of this on my own time and am willing to continue doing so because I enjoy it and think it helps the Waco arts community. Do these reviews add value to our online presence? Or should we shift our coverage resources elsewhere?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: On Stage
Thoughts on Nick Klaras
Waco restaurant owner Nick Klaras died Sunday from leukemia and the news has saddened many of us who’ve lived in Waco for some time. Mike Copeland’s story captures some of the personality that Nick shared with those who brushed shoulders with him over the years and readers’ comments are amplifying that.
Nick and his wife Luanne have always exemplified, to me, how the arts enrich and deepen one’s life. Nick didn’t pursue his high school drumming into a career, but it led to a lifelong love of jazz and music, and a skill he pursued, informally, for many years. Luanne studied under theater icon Paul Baker at Baylor University and lives what Baker preached in his “Integration of Abilities” philosophy: how the arts give us opportunities to learn through our senses, thus expanding our perception and understanding of life and the world. In short, the arts teach us much about being human.
Nick lived that sort of rich life and it showed in how he ran his restaurant (good food and attention to customers), his support of the arts in Waco and his practice of music for its inherent enjoyment. He made Waco a better place and of all the fitting memorials that could be done for him, one certainly would be the encouragement of more people like him, who see more in the arts than a career choice or a revenue stream.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Music, Visual arts
The future of arts journalism?
The newspaper crisis of the last few years has affected arts coverage for cities across the country. Just as music and art teachers are often the first to go when a school district suffers budgetary problems, arts journalists (theater, movies, TV, music, visual arts, books, dance, architecture, etc.) often get cut first when newsroom staffing gets slashed.
For arts organizations who have relied on mass media to get the word out on their projects and offerings or who use them to help educate a public, the loss of coverage has many wondering about the future of arts journalism.
I’m one of the lucky ones, supported as I have been at the Trib for many years, but I find myself frequently wondering if I’m becoming an anachronism in covering things like local theater, concerts, art exhibits and museum shows, when more and more people seem to prefer movies, television and celebrity news. In a world of instant, soundbite commentary, and oceans of it available online, do we need critics any more? I like to think so whenever I read shallow or ill-reasoned articles or blog posts, but I think I’m in the minority.
To prod some thinking about the future, the USC Annenberg School of Communications is sponsoring a National Summit on Arts Journalism today, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. CDT. It’s online and live, with plenty of ways to observe and comment. Here’s a window to watch a live stream; there’s also a Twitter hashtag: #artsj09.
I was a fellow in the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater that USC Annenberg helped run and there are some smart, fine, fun people in that program.
Drop in for a quick look or follow up on the summit’s Web site.
Either way, I’m curious what you, the reader, thinks. What should arts coverage in Waco look like for the future? What are we missing? Is it even needed at all?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment |
New exhibit opens at downtown Croft Art Gallery
Had a brief mention in Thursday’s Access Waco about this, but didn’t get the art worked in.
The Croft Art Gallery in downtown Waco opens “Seeds and Pods,” a new exhibit this week of works, several in marble, by Central Texas sculptor T.J. Mabrey. She’ll be on hand at tonight’s opening reception, held from 6 to 9 p.m. at the gallery, 712 Austin Ave.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Visual arts
Hippodrome films for Oct - Rocky Horror returns, with Risen
OK, Rocky Horror fans - it’s baaaack. The Rocky Horror Picture Show screening, complete with live something-or-other from Austin’s Queerios, rocked the Hippodrome enough last October that the theater’s bringing it back.
It’s scheduled for midnight, Oct. 30, and will be the second film of the evening, following the bred-in-Waco zombie film Risen, which will be shown at 7 p.m. That makes it - together, now Rocky fans - a ‘double feature picture show.’
October’s a busy month for the Hippodrome’s picture screen. The theater’s Fall Film series has two offerings:
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Oct. 2 The Pink Panther, Oct. 16 (the Peter Sellers original)
Local filmmakers Red C Entertainment will debut its Cowboy & Lucky: The Movie Oct. 21-25. There’s the Oct. 30 double feature and - tentatively - a midnighter of The Exorcist on Oct. 31.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Movies
Larry Carlton, T’Birds, Patsy Cline - feedback, fans?
OK, after a Thursday night Waco Symphony concert, Friday night Waco High homecoming and Saturday soccer/birthday stuff with my now-8-year-old, there wasn’t much left in me for a Saturday night show. (Also got jumped by two loose dobermans while walking my dog early Thursday morning, but that’s another story.)
There were some good ones, though: jazz guitarist Larry Carlton at the Bosque River Stage, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Austin’s W.C. Clark at the Hog Creek Icehouse and “A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline” at the Waco Hippodrome Theatre. (Yes, there was a Baylor football game in town, too).
I’ve read some glowing praise about the Carlton concert in my Facebook feed and was curious about the other Saturday night offerings. Any comments to share with readers?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
WSO opens season with warmth, basics
The Waco Symphony Orchestra opened its 2009-10 season Thursday night with a program short on flash and frills, but solid in good music-making, anchored by pianist Nikolaas Kende’s warm performance of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1.
The tall, slender Kende, a young Belgian pianist making his American debut, brought out the emotion and meaning of the Brahms concerto, his broad hands rolling out swelling arpeggios and parallel octaves up and down the keyboard.
Kende handled the concerto’s moments of technical virtuosity and pyrotechnics - the rousing opening passages of the third movement come to mind - but brought out the piece’s heart and tempered passion. One could almost imagine a young Brahms at the keyboard doing precisely the same thing: more intent on communicating his piece more than dazzling listeners with his performance.
The darker, dramatic concerto showed off the orchestra, led by Music Director Stephen Heyde, as well. The string section gave muscle to Brahms’ building crescendos, a volume that seemed to be missing in the Beethoven Symphony No. 8 that ended the program’s first half, and horn player Kim Rooney supplied a nice duet with Kende’s piano.
The orchestra started the concert with an energetic reading of Mendelssohn’s “The Hebrides Overture,” the work’s movement in strings and woodwinds suggesting the motion of waves and swooping flocks of birds contrasted with the dark calm of a cave (the overture carries a subtitle of “Fingal’s Cave.”)
Woodwinds and horns shone on the Beethoven symphony, a light-footed work with an accented pulse that surfaced repeatedly. Bassoonists Bill Lewis and Joseph Gastler, hornists Jeffrey Powers and Janet Nye and clarinetist Richard Shanley contributed smooth solos and duets.
The orchestra seemed to come together as a whole in the symphony’s third movement, but a blended sound proved elusive with higher brass and horns often overriding the considerably larger string section. (The instrumentation for Thursday’s concert, incidentally, didn’t have lower brass players and tympanist Todd Meehan the sole percussionist.)
That lack of a blend may have been due to location rather than musicians’ shortcoming: I was running late and took a side seat in Waco Hall’s balcony rather than main floor to minimize disruption for other concert-goers. Normally, the balcony offers a better instrumental mix, but sometimes the balcony gets a more direct blast of brass that those listening on the main floor. That might have been what I experienced.
Anyone for a new orchestral hall in this town, one without the spotty acoustics of Waco Hall? One given free to the community, so taxpayers can’t vote it down?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Music
Even Stephen King fears for pop culture’s future
In a nutshell, King wonders if current trends in book publishing (cheaper e-books leading to cuts in editors and other guardians of quality), rock radio (advertising on all but right-wing talk radio in the toilet), movies (noisy, brainless movies make buckets of money; smart, smaller ones get pushed aside) and network television (more advertising fleeing) will add up to an irrevocable loss of intelligent, quality pop culture.
“When cr*p drives out class, our tastes grow coarser and the life of the imagination grows smaller,’ he concludes. “And when the good stuff’s gone? It ain’t coming back, son. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
I’ve wondered similar things for several years, but misgivings from King, whose horror novels and other writings have shaped a small part of pop culture over the last three decades, caught my attention.
I think about the loss of pop quality whenever I see yet another formulaic film that audiences boost to box office success; a movie that’s not bad, but not good, either, and one whose resolution comes with all the surprise of the sun rising in the east.
I think about it when my desk gets covered with self-published books dotted with errors that a sharp fifth-grader could spot.
I think about it whenever I have to leave the living room while my family is watching television because I’ve reached my limit in watching the production techniques employed - short, fast cuts; fake suspense caused through teasing an ending; interminable chatter on a reality or game show before one gets to the winners in the final minutes.
I think about it when listening to music radio and finding most of the songs use the same rhythm as they plow the same lyrical terrain.
On the other hand, I have to point out that King is writing at the tail end of summer, a dumping ground for film, a slack time for publishing and television. April may be the cruelest month, but in pop culture, August qualifies.
While King despairs at a lack of quality in the ocean that is pop culture, I’m usually pleasantly surprised to find bits of it still floating around. That’s why we once had critics, to point us to that, though now Facebook friends and Tweeps are doing most of that pointing.
Smart, well-read high schoolers, college students and twentysomethings are still around and as long as they’re around, I don’t think quality will die in pop culture. We may, however, have to ask them to befriend us on Facebook and point us there.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment |
Hi-def ‘Wizard of Oz’ tonight at Hollywood Jewel
This slipped under our radar, but in addition to the high definition Blu-Ray release of The Wizard of Oz this week, there’s a digital screening of the classic film via theatrical simulcast at 7 tonight (Wednesday) at Hollywood Jewel 16. Tickets cost $10.
(a confession here: I saw the 50th anniversary release, a remastered film print, in 1989 and was mildly disappointed. I guess I was anticipating a widescreen Technicolor release, but the image projected on the screen was closer to square than rectangular and although the colors were saturated, it wasn’t like I was suffering retinal overload. So much for the hype then.)
It’s the 70th anniversary of the beloved film fantasy, which also means it’s the 70th anniversary of all those other great films of 1939 - Gone With The Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Ninotchka, Dark Victory, Gunga Din, The Women and The Roaring Twenties, to name the usual suspects.
That got me wondering about films released in other years ending in 9 and - well, the result’s in Friday’s Multimedia section.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Movies
David Crowder Band’s ‘Church Music’ No. 3 on iTunes
Wow. Nice way to make a splash, guys. And over church music, no less …
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Music
Latest comments
Thank goodness for Paul Baker.
... read the full comment by Win Emmons | Comment on Pioneering dramatist Paul Baker dies of pneumonia Read Pioneering dramatist Paul Baker dies of pneumonia
Carl is right! Show was very good. Great job by Mears and Reeves: pot full of lines! Think I’ll go again Saturday night for the Masquerade Ball: buffet, show, and dancing in costume to music by Sandusky. Who says there’s nothing to do in Waco?!!
... read the full comment by Theatre Buff | Comment on WCT's 'Woman in Black' raises goosebumps Read WCT's 'Woman in Black' raises goosebumps
Michael Moore is right in many ways, but equally wrong in many ways. Not much else to say about that.
... read the full comment by Chris | Comment on Art movie alert: Michael Moore's 'Capitalism,' Chris Rock's 'Good Hair' opening Friday Read Art movie alert: Michael Moore's 'Capitalism,' Chris Rock's 'Good Hair' opening Friday
KDF: I’ll agree with you that Moore’s general format of “hey look what happens when I act like a jerk” format is over the top (and annoying). I also agree that bowling for columbine was full of things that were deceptive.
“Capitalism:
... read the full comment by David | Comment on Art movie alert: Michael Moore's 'Capitalism,' Chris Rock's 'Good Hair' opening Friday Read Art movie alert: Michael Moore's 'Capitalism,' Chris Rock's 'Good Hair' opening Friday