Brion's Song

Just caught up with this marvelous LA Weekly piece on composer/arranger/polymath Jon Brion. The writer, John Payne, is a little too in love with his subject, and with himself, but what gems of insight. To wit:

I would not call what a lot of people do songs; there are a lot of things I would call performance pieces—it’s this guitar part with this drum part equals this performance piece. Led Zeppelin didn’t write songs; those are performance pieces, the lyrics and melody are almost secondary. You don’t wanna hear anybody else do it; you want to hear those particular people playing that arrangement, and you want to hear that recording of it, you don’t even want to hear the live version.

Exactly! And, along the same lines:

I find the attitude of rock musicians over the past 20 years kind of funny...the whole I’m-a-rebel stance. The truth of the matter is, most rock bands are classical musicians and they don’t know it. Because it’s ‘This song starts with this drumbeat, at this time; halfway through, the guitar comes in, playing this part, with all down strokes on the fifth, with a clean sound; at this point you turn on your distortion and you play the barre chord, and then it’s muted at this point...’ And every time they play the song, it’s the same thing. That’s classical music!

Someone needs to write a rock-pop update of Alec Wilder's seminal American Popular Song. I think Brion might be the man to do it.

Tony Tone

I thought I left L.A. to get away from awards shows. And I still think Daniel Okrent had it right. Still, it's today's news, and though I know you can get this info about 500 other places, here for the record are this year's Tony noms. (I'm pulling for Purple and History Boys from this lot, if you must know.)

Best Play
The History Boys
Author: Alan Bennett

The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Author: Martin McDonagh

Rabbit Hole
Author: David Lindsay-Abaire

Shining City
Author: Conor McPherson

Best Musical
The Color Purple
The Drowsy Chaperone
Jersey Boys
The Wedding Singer

Best Book of a Musical
The Color Purple
Marsha Norman

The Drowsy Chaperone
Bob Martin and Don McKellar

Jersey Boys
Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice

The Wedding Singer
Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics)
The Color Purple
Music & Lyrics: Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, Stephen Bray

The Drowsy Chaperone
Music & Lyrics: Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison

The Wedding Singer
Music: Matthew Sklar
Lyrics: Chad Beguelin

The Woman in White
Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics: David Zippel

Best Revival of a Play
Awake and Sing!
The Constant Wife
Edward Albee's Seascape
Faith Healer

Best Revival of a Musical
The Pajama Game
Sweeney Todd
The Threepenny Opera

Best Direction of a Play
Nicholas Hytner, The History Boys
Wilson Milam, The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Bartlett Sher, Awake and Sing!
Daniel Sullivan, Rabbit Hole

Best Direction of a Musical
John Doyle, Sweeney Todd
Kathleen Marshall, The Pajama Game
Des McAnuff, Jersey Boys
Casey Nicholaw, The Drowsy Chaperone

Best Choreography
Rob Ashford, The Wedding Singer
Donald Byrd, The Color Purple
Kathleen Marshall, The Pajama Game
Casey Nicholaw, The Drowsy Chaperone

Best Orchestrations
Larry Blank, The Drowsy Chaperone
Dick Lieb and Danny Troob, The Pajama Game
Steve Orich, Jersey Boys
Sarah Travis, Sweeney Todd

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play
Ralph Fiennes, Faith Healer
Richard Griffiths, The History Boys
Zeljko Ivanek, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
Oliver Platt, Shining City
David Wilmot, The Lieutenant of Inishmore

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play
Kate Burton, The Constant Wife
Judy Kaye, Souvenir
Lisa Kron, Well
Cynthia Nixon, Rabbit Hole
Lynn Redgrave, The Constant Wife

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical
Michael Cerveris, Sweeney Todd
Harry Connick Jr., The Pajama Game
Stephen Lynch, The Wedding Singer
Bob Martin, The Drowsy Chaperone
John Lloyd Young, Jersey Boys

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical
Sutton Foster, The Drowsy Chaperone
LaChanze, The Color Purple
Patti LuPone, Sweeney Todd
Kelli O'Hara, The Pajama Game
Chita Rivera, Chita Rivera: The Dancer�s Life

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play
Samuel Barnett, The History Boys
Domhnall Gleeson, The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Ian McDiarmid, Faith Healer
Mark Ruffalo, Awake and Sing!
Pablo Schreiber, Awake and Sing!

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play
Tyne Daly, Rabbit Hole
Frances de la Tour, The History Boys
Jayne Houdyshell, Well
Alison Pill, The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Zoe Wanamaker, Awake and Sing!

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical
Danny Burstein, The Drowsy Chaperone
Jim Dale, The Threepenny Opera
Brandon Victor Dixon, The Color Purple
Manoel Felciano, Sweeney Todd
Christian Hoff, Jersey Boys

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical
Carolee Carmello, Lestat
Felicia P. Fields, The Color Purple
Megan Lawrence, The Pajama Game
Beth Leavel, The Drowsy Chaperone
Elisabeth Withers-Mendes, The Color Purple

Best Scenic Design of a Play
John Lee Beatty, Rabbit Hole
Bob Crowley, The History Boys
Santo Loquasto, Three Days of Rain
Michael Yeargan, Awake and Sing!

Best Scenic Design of a Musical
John Lee Beatty, The Color Purple
David Gallo, The Drowsy Chaperone
Derek McLane, The Pajama Game
Klara Zieglerova, Jersey Boys

Best Costume Design of a Play
Michael Krass, The Constant Wife
Santo Loquasto, A Touch of the Poet
Catherine Zuber, Awake and Sing!
Catherine Zuber, Edward Albee�s Seascape

Best Costume Design of a Musical
Gregg Barnes, The Drowsy Chaperone
Susan Hilferty, Lestat
Martin Pakledinaz, The Pajama Game
Paul TazeWell, The Color Purple

Best Lighting Design of a Play
Christopher Akerlind, Awake and Sing!
Paul Gallo, Three Days of Rain
Mark Henderson, Faith Healer
Mark Henderson, The History Boys

Best Lighting Design of a Musical
Ken Billington and Brian Monahan, The Drowsy Chaperone
HoWell Binkley, Jersey Boys
Natasha Katz, Tarzan
Brian MacDevitt, The Color Purple

Special Tony Award
Sarah Jones for Bridge & Tunnel

Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre
Harold Prince

Regional Theatre Tony Award
Intiman Theatre, Seattle, WA

Cue the Strings

One of the rewards of following an artist for a lifetime—"career" seems too small a word—is that you begin to feel you know the inside of his or her brain. I'm not talking about scary, personal, Mark David Chapman-like identification; nor do I mean quite the same thing as the definition of great literature given by Alan Bennett's History Boys ("The best moments in reading," the teacher Hector tells young Posner, "are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and peculiar to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come and taken yours.") What I'm getting at is an intimate sense of the way they create, of their taste, of the way they hear or see the world, of their voice. That's as true of painters as it is of playwrights. And it's exactly how I've felt about Elvis Costello for as long as I've been a fan of his work: that I could hear him thinking by listening to his music. Or perhaps his music has helped to shape my thinking. In any case, whether on record or live I can often feel where he's going, what his choices are, what he might do with a vocal embellishment or a modulation or a rhyme, in a way I can't with any other artist.

What can go missing from this kind of symbiosis with an artist, though, is the element of surprise. Which is why I've been mostly gratified since Elvis has gone classical, first with the Brodsky Quartet, then with Anna Sofie Von Otter; if pop and jazz can be said to have classical masters, then you'd have to count his collaborations with Burt Bacharach and the Mingus Orchestra. These efforts haven't just freed him from the pop-song verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus format he can write in his sleep; they've liberated him to the point where he's practically created his own genre—the rock 'n' roll art song, you might call it, though that sounds dangerously like Yes or The Who (fine artists in their own rights, but not what I mean). Or perhaps it could be called neo-classical pop from an era that never was.

These were some of my thoughts after seeing him last week with the Brooklyn Philharmonic at BAM. I'm not a fan of the suite from his Midsummer ballet, Il Sogno (though I enjoyed it when it actually accompanied the ballet); it seems very much like a student effort, and the Brooklyn Phil didn't muster much enthusiasm for its foursquare pastiche. But the way he used the orchestra on arrangements of his own material, from "God Give Me Strength" to some of the lachrymose love songs from the album North, or on an old standard like "Watching the Detectives," proved invigorating, not least to his own range as a performer. I'm impressed by the degree to which he still gives his all to every lyric. And, with a voice that sounded a bit ragged and strained, it took some stones to step away from the mike for an unamplified rendition of the dark, bittersweet waltz "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4," then lead the audience in the song's twisted "la la la" refrain, which spans a major seventh—not exactly "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." The pleasure of following a brain like Costello's is that it's big and complicated, and—dare I say it—so is his heart.

A Quote for the Day

Road kill has its seasons
Just like anything
It's possums in the autumn
And it's farm cats in the spring

Tom Waits, "Murder in the Red Barn"

Minority Report

Most folks seem to love the Encores!' season closer, Of Thee I Sing. While I yield to no one in my admiration for the Gershwin brothers, who with Dubose Heyward wrote one of the great scores of all time in Porgy and Bess, this seems like pretty weak tea, though it's nicely served. My review here.

Another Brick in the Fourth Wall

Ken Bloom notices that actors are directly addressing the audience more these days.

Overheard at Angus

Since relocating to New York, I haven't quite found a theater hangout as definitive L.A.'s Evidence Room. The Zipper Theatre is certainly on the right track: funky bar, gritty space into which you're encouraged to take your drink, comfy seats repurposed from vans and buses (great idea), and Ars Nova seems to have a pretty cool scene going, as well.

But thanks to former Pasadena Playhouse macher Jayson Raitt, who moved to NY about a month after I did, I've discovered Angus, which is Broadway's post-show hangout of choice. Any night of the week, you won't not see at least someone you recognize there. Last night a gaggle of History Boys were hanging out in the smoking courtyard, girls all over them, like the rock stars they are.

You can also pick up a fair amount of juicy theater gossip. Here's a choice bit I heard last night: The lumbering Shuler Hensley, who plays Tarzan's reluctant adoptive father, the gorilla Kerchak (what is he, a Polish gorilla?), was supposed to deliver a moving speech (SPOILER ALERT) after he's shot by the evil white man. Hensley's reported retort: "I won a Tony. I'm not saying those words." And so there Kerchak lies, lookin' oh so peaceful and serene.