(Mūzikas nams Daile, 29 December 2019)
Mielavs is a musician---a city musician, perhaps, for he treats music as a complex emergent phenomenon, a collaborative effort, akin to a city quarter, that cannot be planned and mastered by each participant in isolation. Mielavs's voice is just one of several instruments in the band, and is more for it.
He loathes repeating himself. It must be that he has not figured out life yet. He wants it to continue.
The first of the three new songs he sang will become a hit.
31 December 2019
Baltā Pasaka
(Latvijas Nacionālais teātris, 21 December 2019)
Even before the curtain rises, one can recognise the pianist---the percussionist. Each note has a life of its own, slightly displaced in time and clearly articulated. It is this recognition of the individuality of each note note that makes their union an emergent experience. The notes collaborate because they want to, not because they have been straightjacketed into submission by rules or technology.
Raimonds Pauls is a jazz musician. Jazz is a pursuit of happiness through freedom and conversation.
Even before the curtain rises, one can recognise the pianist---the percussionist. Each note has a life of its own, slightly displaced in time and clearly articulated. It is this recognition of the individuality of each note note that makes their union an emergent experience. The notes collaborate because they want to, not because they have been straightjacketed into submission by rules or technology.
Raimonds Pauls is a jazz musician. Jazz is a pursuit of happiness through freedom and conversation.
18 December 2019
“Trīs Draugi”
(Latvijas Nacionālā Opera un Balets, 18 December 2019)
The ballet lacks mathematics. It is literal. All the dramatic heavy lifting is supposed to have been accomplished by Erich Maria Remarque as remembered by audience members. To reference the appropriate pages in the eponymous novel, the choreographer resorts to pantomime, singing, grunting, laughing, and wailing---only not to trust the dancers to support a stand-alone narrative with their dancing, and rightly so. “Trīs Draugi” is appropriate for the People’s Theatre in an authoritarian republic much smaller and less artistically accomplished than the one that has put it on.
The ballet lacks mathematics. It is literal. All the dramatic heavy lifting is supposed to have been accomplished by Erich Maria Remarque as remembered by audience members. To reference the appropriate pages in the eponymous novel, the choreographer resorts to pantomime, singing, grunting, laughing, and wailing---only not to trust the dancers to support a stand-alone narrative with their dancing, and rightly so. “Trīs Draugi” is appropriate for the People’s Theatre in an authoritarian republic much smaller and less artistically accomplished than the one that has put it on.
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