Rita and Victor Costanzi

Rita Costanzi, harpist extraordinaire, and Victor Costanzi, violinist extraordinaire, invited Dulce and me to their Bronx apartment building for a special concert. The concert was a Christmas show and sing-a-long for their fellow apartment dwellers and was presented in the foyer of their building.

Both Rita and Victor are former members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and both decided to move to NYC a few years ago. Vancouver was the obvious loser. Victor and Rita are both outsize personalities and musicians. Rita was twice winner of the American Harp Society's National Competition and recipient of the Lily Laskine award for the most outstanding harp recital. Victor performs with a long list of groups both here and in New Jersey.


Rita is also an actress. From Rita's website http://www.ritacostanzi.com/about_rita.shtml : Adding a new dimension to her performance art, Rita Costanzi astounds audiences with the three monodramas written especially for her. The Westcoast Music Awards nominated her solo Classical CD, Of Fields and Forests for “Best Classical Album”. Vancouver Television introduced her in its series Pacific Profiles featuring prominent and unique individuals living in Vancouver and CBC Radio’s Tapestry devoted a documentary to her work playing for the terminally ill. Her fourth and most recent CD, Song of the Stars, an album of Celtic music for contemplation and healing, received a Five Star rating from CBC Radio’s Sound Advice. Her latestcomposition, Beneath Her Heart, for Women’s Choir, Children’s Choir andNarrator,was premiered by Vancouver’s Elektra Women’s Choir in April, 2008.




How do I know Rita and Victor? Along with the obvious downside, there are certain benefits to being a composer. I have written 5 pieces for the harp, two of which have been recorded by Judy Loman, another extraordinary harpist. Correct me if I am wrong - I believe that I am the only composer in history to have written not 1 but 2 works for harp and string quartet:

The Moon in the Labyrinth:
Mvt. 3 : http://pwusk.powweb.com/voiceafire/MP3_3/MoonLab3.mp3

The Lyre of Orpheus
Mvt. 3 : http://pwusk.powweb.com/voiceafire/MP3_3/Lyre3.mp3

Comments from harpists? Vancouver?

The Austrian Cultural Forum

Here's another interesting place to make your NY debut, The Austrian Cultural Forum.

http://www.acfny.org/

Here's what Wikopedia says:

Concerts and performances are presented either in the in-house auditorium or at various venues in New York. Outside performances are organized in cooperation with American partner institutions, and have included concerts at Carnegie Hall and Judson Memorial Church.

Among other events, Moving Patterns, an electronic music festival first staged in spring 2005, introduces Austrian electronic and experimental musicians in the USA and is considered an important contribution to the electronica scene. The ACF regularly screens films on Austrian subjects or by Austrian filmmakers as part of a year-round series and also shows films in special screenings in the context of other events organized by the Cultural Forum. Activities of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York also include a variety of podium discussions, readings, and book presentations.

I went to hear a concert given by the Argento Group  http://www.argentomusic.org/about.html

This concert supposedly featured music influenced by Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. 

The music, except for a piece by Schoenberg and another by Luigi Nono, was all by living and mostly local composers. Nono's piece featured contra-bass flute.

The players were fantastic, less so the music. I had thought the 12 tone system was good and dead.

Americas Society and Continuum

So you're looking for a place to perform in NYC? Easy enough. But what about drumming up an audience? Not so easy.

If you have an interesting program to present, you might try the Americas Society at 680 Park Ave..
On Monday Dulce and I attended a concert at the Americas Society http://as.americas-society.org/page.php?k=AboutAS. The concert featured Continuum http://www.continuum-ensemble-ny.org/, the well-known NY new music group, in a program of Canadian music: the likes of R. Murray-Schafer, John Weinzweig, Ann Southam, Diana McIntosh, Giles Tremblay, and Claude Vivier. Not exactly household names here in NY, and yet the concert was well-attended - about 60 people. Note that the Americas Society room is expandable. I would guess that it could seat about 120 people in its expanded version.

The Continuum performers gave terrific, committed performances. After the concert there was a meet-the-performer reception. I was able to touch base with Continuum's directors, Joel Sachs and Cheryl Seltzer.
I also met Continuum's excellent harpist, Bridget Kibbey.

Is this information helpful?

Creating buzz in NYC

Dulce, my Portuguese/Canadian wife, finally received her US Visa, after what seemed like an endless time in limbo (which the Catholics say no longer exists). I drove my rented Mazda 5 SUV to Toronto through snow, sleet, rain, and fog and picked her up along with the 2 cats and our remaning earthly possessions. Then with the 2 drugged cats, we drove through a blizzard back to NYC, at one point getting stuck in a snow bank.
Here is a close-up of Dulce as we crossed the George Washington Bridge, in the dark with traffic whizzing on all sides, into NYC.

And, later, here is Dulce, happy, at Columbus Circle all decked out for Christmas.

Dulce is helping me create a "buzz" for my upcoming show at Symphony Space, The Art of Love. http://www.youtube.com/user/voiceafire#p/u/4/a6H3G1oTnX8"Creating buzz" is the assignment given me by renowned Canadian arts manager Andrew Kwan http://www.andrewkwanartists.com/About_Us/about_us.html . How to do it? Sitting over a coffee and reading the NY Times at Cosi, our favorite Manhattan coffee spot, an idea came to me.

Start with the New York Times Arts Section. The Art of Love is both a musical performance, a theater piece, and a multi-media show incorporating a film by Ron Hurwitz: http://www.youtube.com/user/voiceafire#p/u/30/JxxSs6QpplM. Therefore, check out the music critics, the theater critics, and the film critics writing reviews in the NY Times. For Tuesday, December 7 these were:
Ben Brantley, theater
John Pareles, music
James R. Oestreich, music
Daniel J. Wakin, music
Alan Kozinn, music
Anthony Tommasini, music
Larry Rohter, film
Patrick Healy, theater
David Rooney, theater
Our next task is to write some terrific press releases about The Art of Love, and to the get these off to the above critiics. How? That's our next problem.

Ideas?

Merkin Hall and Kaufman Center

Joseph Campbell, the late great expert on mythology, said this, speaking of our choices in life, "All paths lead to the same place (death). So, given a choice, follow your bliss." Saturday night, I may have witnessed an example of this at a concert at the Kaufman Center/Merkin Hall/ Ann Goodman Recital Hall. I use the word may because there is a second interpretation of what was going on and maybe even a third.

A pianist/composer named Maria Morris was giving a solo recital called "The Prelude Project." I arrived somewhat early and so I was able to read some program notes - I had no idea who Maria Morris was. It seems Maria Morris is someone with a PhD. in Education who teaches at Georgia Southern University.
She is also a pianist, but gave up the piano twenty years ago because of an injury. Now miraculously recovered, at the age of 50 she has not only returned to the piano but has taken up composing. Of her Preludes: " these Preludes have been composed in a postmodern score with few time signatures, no staves, and the musical notes are written as letters."

Interpretation 1: She is someone who is following Joseph Campbell's dictum. She is following her bliss. Why not? We're all going to die anyway.

Interpretation 2: She is a foolish woman following some sort of foolish dream. There were all of 6 or 7 people in the audience. Who were they?

Interpretation 3: She has scheduled and paid for a concert in New York in order to improve on her academic credentials. Maybe she's not yet a full professor. Too cynical? It happens.

Thing is, perhaps it's only fools or villains who are really blissful. As for me, I'm heavy into following my bliss - or is it my passion - at the moment. I really passionately believe in the music I've written and in the point of view I have adopted with Voice Afire Pocket Opera and Cabaret. www.voiceafire.com

But then so does Maria Morris, and I didn't even stay to hear her play. Other allusions in the program to her Christian views and education were just to much for me to take. What's more the Preludes were to be played continuously, and there would be no escape once she had started. I left before she started.

Regarding Merkin Hall.  http://kaufman-center.org/ It's just around the corner from Juilliard and Lincoln Center. The Big Hall rents for something like $2000 but by the time you add extras allow about $4000. Don't know how much the Ann Goodman Recital Hall rents for. But don't do it! It's little more than a glorified classroom with a piano at one end. It's probably cheap, and then you can tell your academic committee that you played in NY.  They will never know that only 6 or 7 people showed up.

Comments?

Don Carlos at the Met

It pays sometimes to have friends in high places, in this case Bob Sutherland, Principal Librarian at the Metropolitan Opera. Met tickets are notoriously expensive. But for some productions the Met issues tickets to their staff for a dress rehearsal. This was the case for Verdi's Don Carlos. Bob Sutherland, my old biking buddy and commissioner of several of my compositions, came up with 2 tickets for Don Carlos. So my wife, Dulce, and I saw Don Carlos at the Met - for free.

The previous evening the 3 of us - Bob, myself, and Dulce - had gone out to dinner at Pau, a Portuguese restaurant in Greewich Village, purporting to have Portuguese Fado music - but not that evening, unfortunately. Bob - a dear friend and an extremely knowledgeable opera fan - and I got into a heated discussion. Perhaps I was annoyed at the lack of Fado music, so I asked Bob, "Why does no-one perform the operas of Alberto Ginastera?" Bob's answer, "It's because they don't work." "What!!" I exclaimed. "And what about all those other operas that the Met never does?" Bob, "The Met does the operas that work - for instance, the operas of Verdi (I'm paraphrasing and simplifying)."

Well, Bob, and anyone else who's listening, Dulce and I left Don Carlos at the first intermission. Reason: Don Carlos no longer works. Let me explain. The libretto for Don Carlos was adapted from a play by Schiller.  I don't know the original play, but the Italian adaptation is a melodrama of the 19th Century variety. 19th Century melodrama was  a plague on theatre - finally stamped out by Henrik Ibsen. Melodrama is defined by mono dimensional characters who gesticulate in an overraught, stylized manner. Think early silent movies.

Verdi, for whose skill and professionalism I have nothing but awed admiration, thought of himself above all else as a dramatist. His operas are about enhancing the drama itself. In the case of the Italian Don Carlos drama, it no longer work because the drama itself no longer works. No one would go to see the thing merely to hear it spoken. They go because of the music, and because of the singing, and because it is by Verdi. I figure that would have really enraged Giuseppi Verdi, the dramatist.

It would have also enraged him that opera singers mangle vowels incessantly. They do this in order to produce what they think is a more beautiful sound. Think of a person trying to speak with no tongue. Even the most fluent Italian speaker (Dulce speaks Italian) can't understand more than one word in a hundred. But then of course, who cares about the drama, and who cares about what Verdi had in mind. And who cares if the opera no longer works as drama. We are there only to bathe in melifluous vocal crooning.

Myself, I'm trying something different. If you've a mind check out my pocket opera version of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. It works as drama.
http://www.youtube.com/user/voiceafire#p/a/u/2/9jbhpovMlB8

On the other hand, if Dulce hadn't been there, I would have stayed for the whole opera, just to get a lesson from Verdi in rhythmic pacing and in using the orchestra to support the voice.

Comments?

ISPA International Society for the Performing Arts

More than one person has recommended I attend the ISPA Conference being held in NYC this January. Most recently, Ann Summers, with whom Voice afire is collaborating. http://sumarts.com/

From the ISPA website: http://www.ispa.org/
ISPA is a network of over 350 individuals, organizations and institutions from more than 40 countries around the world.  Members include some of the world's most significant presenting organizations, independent artists, performing arts organizations, artist managers, cultural policy groups, foundations, consultants, and many others who share the desire to advance the field of the performing arts on a global scale.

ISPA conferences are held around the world.
Host cities have included Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Paris, Vienna, London, Toronto, Birmingham, Jerusalem, Stockholm, Vancouver, Berlin, Sydney, Lucerne, Singapore, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Durban and São Paulo.


• New York 2011 ISPA Congress on January 11-13, 2011 in New York, NY, United States
• Toronto 2011 ISPA Congress on June 15-18, 2011 in Toronto, ON, Canada

ISPA does something called a pitch session. Very interesting. Here's a link to a pitch session:

http://www.ispa.org/resources/artsexchange/254-newworksnowpitchaviary

Any collaborators out there?

Ray
rays@interlog.com
www.voiceafire.com