I caught Anthony Giardina’s City of Conversation at Horizon Theatre yesterday evening and I have to say that it is the prefect venue for a show like this. The play takes place entirely in a living room and the positioning of seating around two ‘walls’ made for an intimate, almost voyeuristic view into the lives of this Georgetown family.
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Corian Ellisor gets a lot of easy laughs from his audience in BAES (Beauty and Entertainment System), his latest mixed-modal performance piece that I saw this evening at 7 Stages. I spent most of the hour smiling and laughing as his satirical look at the role and impact of beauty took us backstage at a beauty pageant.
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This evening’s Sonic Generator concert at Museum of Contemporary Art GA focused pretty heavily on solo work. Each of the five musicians present performed by themselves — albeit accompanied by recorded soundtracks or, in one case, a computer — and only came together to play as an ensemble in the last piece. Noticeable was the lack of percussion, with Tom Sherwood absent. Even though I have been to contemporary music concerts without it, Sonic Generator and Chamber Cartel have been the two most prolific producers of contemporary and experimental music in town and they have both programmed heavily for percussion, which seems to have caused me to associate the instrument group with the subgenre.
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I was pleased to hear Joseph Young — the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s assistant conductor and the director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra — conduct an excellent program of music this evening with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. I think that this may have been the first time that I have had the chance to see him live to really hear what he can do and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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This week hasn’t been for me. I mentioned to my hair stylist this morning as I was getting a haircut that if this evening’s concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra wasn’t very good then I’d be fine with it because so little else this week has been. Expectations are certainly not everything, but they do have quite an impact. As Lothar Zagrosek began conducting Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture, I found my negative attitude quickly shifting. The piece begins soft and sweet with a wonderfully rich undertone. Take a medjool date, slice it lengthwise to remove the seed and then spread a very thin layer of a decent peanut butter across the inside and the taste will have all of the color and body of the beginning of this piece when it is done well. Zagrosek, who was conducting without a score, brought out every subtle thing that I could want out of the piece.
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