REVIEW: “Free Coffee & Doughnuts, Songs Of The Great Depression(s) 1929 / 2010”

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LIVE SHOW REVIEW – show runs Monday & Tuesday, December 13 & 14, 2010
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To read the COMPLETE current edition of the Guide, and all the extensive event listings, go to
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http://acousticamericana.blogspot.com/2010/12/acoustic-americana-music-guide-dec-14.html
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Tied to the Tracks
ACOUSTIC AMERICANA
MUSIC GUIDE
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DECEMBER 14, 2010
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REVIEW: “FREE COFFEE & DOUGHNUTS: SONGS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION(S) 1929-2010”
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Hit anyone with too many consecutive surprises and they go numb. Present something unrelated to its title and obvious expectations feel misrepresented – to the point of disillusionment and resentment. Especially where accomplished musicians are involved.
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The musicians scheduled to be on stage were not the only prominent names at Monday night’s performance. Opening night brought an audience notably populated with prominent musicians from across L.A.’s music scene, some with gold records and plenty of honors and recognitions.
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It seemed so magnetic, such a promising concept. The ‘20s and ‘30s were filled with wonderful music – that era brought heartfelt blues evoking the sense of so many good things gone, of progress toward dreams irretrievably lost, music heard in some regions even as lively and inspiring melodies that defied the harsh realities of life in the Great Depression were on the radio. The ’30s were a time of clever, hooky lyrics that brought smiles and were sung by all, with tunes whistled and hummed in factory and field and soup kitchen line and hobo jungle. With enough of the same uncertainties again present in the wake of record-setting home mortgage foreclosures and joblessness in 2010, a musical comparison of the times makes sense. The era that began with the October, 1929 stock market crash and extended through the 1930s was a time when America lost and found itself, when newly-elected President Franklin Roosevelt declared in his inaugural speech, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” And today we long for leaders to bring such clarity and inspiration and reassurance.
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But if you expect those themes in the new production, “FREE COFFEE & DOUGHNUTS - SONGS FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION(S), 1929 / 2010” – as you reasonably would, given the advertised theme and its use of a black-and-white photo of a 1930s bread line – be aware that’s not what this is. If you expect Tuesday night’s 8 pm concert at the Neighborhood Unitarian Church in Pasadena to be filled with music from the era of the Great Depression, or New Folk that updates it, you’re in not for simply a surprise, but a genre-defying, jarring incongruity.
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The show runs two nights, Monday and tonight (Tuesday), December 13 & 14. The Guide was there Monday evening, when the performance was being recorded for an upcoming CD. Tuesday’s show will be recorded for a DVD video release. More on that in a moment. First, you need to know what to expect before you go.
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The production’s cast earned it an early “Show of the Week” pick in the Guide, even though there was no way of knowing, in advance, what we would hear. It seemed warranted at the time. The concert features, as advertised, 1960s Grammy-winner IAN WHITCOMB, then a British Invasion rocker, now a ukulele and accordion-playing preservationist of ’20s music and composer of that style. It features virtuoso crossover pianist BRYAN PEZZONE. Three versions of L.A. ‘s talented WHAT’S NEXT ENSEMBLE with JOHN STULTZ take part, and when its largest expression takes the stage – a ten-member mini-orchestra – they are directed and conducted by VIMBAYI KAZIBONI. Renowned neoclassical guitarist MICHAEL KUDIRKA and flautist TARA SCHWAB – a true technician of the flute – both take part, individually and together. Somehow, the two are presented in the guise of the IMAGINARY FOLK DUO, though the name is wholly inappropriate. Belarus pianist YEVGENIY MILYAVSKIY presents new compositions.
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Nearly the entire evening consists of new works by composers PATRICIO DA SILVA and JENNIFER LOGAN. The show is pricey, considering its title of “Free Coffee & Doughnuts” (the former was available, but not the latter) with tickets running $35 & $27.
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Save for pianist BRYAN PEZZONE presenting a welcome medley of authentic Depression-era anthems partway through, the program’s series of new works in the first half, before the intermission, can be classified in two categories:
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a) modernistic post-classical ragged-time new compositions, performed with technical precision by various musicians – each piece evoking tension until the audience, collectively numbed by their multitude, finds they evoke nothing at all;
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b) composer JENNIFER LOGAN’s pre-recorded pieces, each presented in a totally darkened room. The concert opener is experimental new age electronica with sparse incongruous lyrics wholly unrelated to the program’s namesake theme. Her other included works were not as easy to comprehend.
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Alternating with Logan’s recordings, the first half continues with the lights on and live performances of tempo-shifting ragged-time melodies (not to be confused with ragtime). What all of it has in common – save the single medley of ’20s and ’30s tunes – is a uniform spirit of unease, characterized by adroit musicians presenting precise compositions built around internal clashes, all inappropriate to the indicated theme. The first half ends with BRYAN PEZZONE’s return to the grand piano, where, at Monday’s performance, he took an awkwardly lengthy break of total silence partway through, his head down and eyes closed. It appeared even he had no idea where things were going with this.
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Conversations overheard during intermission expressed a shared sense that it was a bewildering evening. Asked for our comment, we opined that it was a daring presentation. There seemed to be a universal expectation that, the first half done, Grammy-winner IAN WHITCOMB would redeem the night with something more akin to the expectations engendered by the title.
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Instead, the second half begins with a quartet of young string players on violin, viola, and cello. They perform another of DA SILVA’s new creations, leave the stage, then return with a featured clarinet player. The latter promptly seated himself at the back of their horseshoe formation, where he was immediately made anonymous from the neck up by an array of music stands loaded with a four-foot line of sheet music.
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After another empty stage, ten young musicians take their places to accompany guitarist MICHAEL KUDIRKA, with VIMBAYI KAZIBONI conducting more tense and precise themes. Here, things begin to sound more nominally classical, despite the full drum kit.
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The second half does avoid, for the most part, the repertoire of clichés of the first, wherein most everything was rife with extractible bits suitable for Japanese animé remakes of Road Runner cartoons.
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At last, IAN WHITCOMB takes the stage to present authentic music of the Great Depression era. The orchestra, led by conductor KAZIBONI, provides instrumental backing that thrills Whitcomb, who, as he says, “usually performs this music with much simpler accompaniment.” Finally comes “Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” and a precious few other 1930s songs, both known and obscure. Indeed, it begins the 20 minutes – out of the two-plus hours – that are the concession to what the audience had expected, and desperately hoped to hear, all evening.
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WHITCOMB next performs one of his ’20s-style originals on accordion with pianist PEZZONE, providing four minutes of what most audience members expected the “new compositions” would be.
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PATRICIO DA SILVA and his compositions are probably appreciated in other contexts, and some of this material may get exposure in whatever those other contexts may be. The same is probably true of the music of JENNIFER LOGAN, though the multiple appearances of her recordings in blackened rooms were nocturnal emissions that were not simply incongruous, but inscrutable and annoying. Did either of these composers write anything expressly for this production? Nothing from either is remotely germane to the theme. Indeed, this production, given its title and promotion, is misrepresentation.
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The avowed theme simply remained unexplored. No new takes on anything like Woody Guthrie’s “Do-Re-Mi,” or Pink Floyd’s “Money,” or anything expounding on greed, or newfound poverty, or have-and-have-nots, or struggle to keep dreams and hopes alive, to shine a light to a better future.
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It’s difficult to imagine why a CD and DVD are being made. One wonders who might be the target audience to buy it. New age music fans generally want things that facilitate meditative moods – not a compendium of themes of tension. Fans of ’20s and ’30s music will simply find far too little of that here. Classical fans will find most of this far too experimental. Some individual pieces from the concert might fit another scenario, somewhere – perhaps in the video game market. But the idea that this collection of new compositions has any possible validity as “Music of the Great Depressions” is absurd – unless you invoke one of the dictionary’s other meanings of the word “depression.”
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Entire contents copyright (c) © 2010, Larry Wines. All rights reserved.
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