Saturday, May 19, 2012

Beth Morrison–Cutting Through the Old and Stuffy with Fresh New Sounds and Imagery

BETH MORRISON’S WEBSITE

The future of music is clear and bright with a visionary producer like Beth Morrison as a part of the landscape. Beth is a true dreamer, but her dreams take root and presenters respond in kind. Maybe some in other parts of the country have not yet caught on, but, she has no trepidation about where she wishes to go once she locks onto an idea. After seeing and hearing Darcy James Argue’s Brooklyn Babylon at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=3061, I was completely hooked! Everything from the music, to the playing and the visuals were stunning and engaging. Darcy himself has created music that swings, while keeping the ear freshly tuned in. It seemed for a number of years that “Jazz” to use the term loosely, somewhere in a landscape of progressive, free improvised jazz and hard-bop, the musical landscape of this true American art form was headed in a stale, circuitous direction. Darcy is wiping the slate clean and merging composition and swing and the big band sound with a sense of intensity and humor and simply, great orchestration.

Beth spearheaded David T Little’s opera Soldier Songs, and the result was a moving blend of deep, beneath the skin, moody, unmentionable thoughts of a soldier returning from the fog of war. http://davidtlittle.com/projects/soldier-songs/ Described as an evening-length multimedia event from composer David T. Little that combines elements of theater, opera, rock-infused-concert music, and animation to explore the perceptions versus the realities of the Soldier, the exploration of loss and exploitation of innocence, and the difficulty of expressing the truth of war. Music can be easily co-opted to serve a political or ideological message or it can equally be a vehicle for reflection, engagement, and emotional connection, as is seen in this gripping music-theatre work.

Now she is onto a new opera by Missy Mizzoli, (I cannot even begin to list all that she has done and is doing, go to Beth’s website to discover this for yourself). Missy Mazzoli: Song from the Uproar—The Lives & Deaths Of Isabelle Eberhardt. http://www.thekitchen.org/event/296/0/1/ My sense is it too will find a life beyond its five sold out nights at NYC’s The Kitchen, and bring a resounding feeling of clarity and, for some, no doubt, perplexing feelings of how does this all come together.

In the end, one has to ask, why so much of this has to take root in New York City, and why so many places in the rest of the world need to be prodded to engage in a dialogue of, why is this not happening in my hall on a regular basis and why won’t people from 16 to 60 come without any sense of doubt that they will be awakened to a new world of image and sound.

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