Some People Get It

This seems appropriate for the morning after than nasty little man in the White House lied his way through the State of the Union address. Apparently, there's this thing called "Broadway Roulette" -- you pay a fee and they pick a show for you at random. Here's a letter one mother sent to the cast of Kinky Boots about her experience with her daughter:

Orchestrator Stephen Oremus, who won a Tony Award for his work on the hit musical Kinky Boots, shared a letter the cast received from a grateful mother and it is truly inspiring. Oremus posted the letter on his Instagram account.

The mom tells the cast about her cautious trip to see the musical with her 10 year-old daughter and her worries about whether or not it was appropriate for her age. As she quickly found out, the show is quite suitable – and needed – for audiences of all ages.

“For the next few hours my child was mesmerized,” the mother wrote. “As the cast sang the final number I had tears streaming down my face. Not only was this an appropriate show for my daughter, it was the BEST show for my daughter to see.”

“In a world where kids are bullied every day, the message of your show is to celebrate what makes us different and unique. I cannot imagine a better message to send to my daughter than one of acceptance and tolerance.”

Click through to read the whole letter -- it funny and heartwarming.

Reviews in Brief: Harry Partch’s “Delusion of the Fury”

It hardly seems fair to do a brief review of Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury, so rather than calling it a review, I’m just going to make it a heads up, in the hope it’s something you’ll want to check out. It’s a theatrical piece – some have called it a “play,” but that doesn’t really fit. It’s dramatic, yes, but it’s more like a circus than anything else I can think of – motion, sound, spectacle, all in one package.

The music itself is Partch’s own microtonal composition, played on instruments of his own design and manufacture. It is, to put it bluntly, more than a little otherworldly, but I think that’s the point. It’s highly percussive, and not what we normally think of as melodic, although there are certainly melodies that thread their way through the piece. It’s very hard to describe. If you happen to be watching the performance, it’s totally absorbing. If you’re just listening (which I happen to be doing right now), it’s also totally absorbing, but in a very different way. You can just let your imagination wander through this music, but you will be guided, more or less: there are images here, although I can’t quite pin them down as references – I did say “otherworldly,” and I think that’s the best characterization I can come up with.

I do remember, years ago, seeing Partch and his ensemble in performance. It was quite an experience – something I suspect that would be closer to a medieval festival than anything else I can think of. There was that sort of ad hoc quality to it, although you know the performers had been thoroughly rehearsed. The instruments themselves became part stage set, part props, and part actors in their own right.

Jut to give you some of the flavor, here’s the opening, “Exordium.”

You can find the whole thing on YouTube.

(A footnote: yes, the title does have a specific meaning in relation to the work itself: it’s about anger and reconciliation.)

Culture Break: Kodo, "Dadan"

Kodo is one of the more exciting groups I've ever seen in performance. This will give you an idea why:

I reviewed both their last album, Akatsuki, and their last appearance in Chicago in 2011 on their "One Earth" tour, at Sleeping Hedgehog.