Oops, I Don't Know Where I Am

A brief, late entry on "Music Monday."

Britney Spears brought her spectacle to San Jose last night. I would say "concert," except, as the review in the Mercury News reports, Britney did precious little singing. And judging from that photograph, apparently Margaret Cho was one of her backup dancers, which would indeed be a spectacle. Not to mention the dancing midgets--seriously.

Britney is on tour to promote the Circus CD and, interestingly enough, she actually seems to be... promoting it--as opposed to touring based on her greatest hits:

To Spears' credit, the 27-year-old mother of two has left her teeny-bopper roots behind. This is no nostalgia act. Though the two CDs she recorded as a teen are among the biggest sellers of all time, only "... Baby One More Time" from that era made the cut here.

That means that instead of charming teen trifles like "Oops — I Did It Again" we got a lot of dark, erotically charged 21st-century dance music like "Hot as Ice" and "Get Naked." (In this context, "If U Seek Amy," Spears' cheekily naughty current single, came across as a pop gem.) So if you only knew Spears' music from the radio, there wasn't a lot to sing along with.

I think that's a surprising and not unadmirable approach; however, if I had paid $150 to see Britney last night, I would have expected to hear some of my old favorites.

My favorite part of the Mercury News review? This gem (remember: this show is in San Jose):

On this night, it was 40 minutes into the set — the same set she moved her lips to at every other tour stop — before Spears finally addressed the crowd, with this heartfelt sentiment: "Sacramento, how are you doing?!"

Oh girl... I would have paid $75 for that line alone.

"The Dyke Who Will Give It To You"

Bienvenue à "Music Monday" here at Fosco Lives!

On Friday night, Fosco and Oz saw the Amy Ray show at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz. Amy is the butch-er half of the Indigo Girls, probably the most important band for Fosco in college. During those college years (think early to mid-nineties), the Indigo Girls were especially popular (particularly within Fosco's specific peer group at Harvard). And this popularity led inevitably to the one essential question that Fosco debated numerous times: who is your favorite Indigo Girl (and what does that say about you)?

At the time, Fosco was a solid Emily Saliers partisan. Fosco preferred her prettier songs, her smoother voice, her gentleness. Amy, in contrast, wrote raucous tracks (like "Chickenman"), had a rougher voice, and just seemed too... prickly (of course, in person and in concert, they were both equally gracious). If you think this commitment was trivial at the time, then you've forgotten what college was like. During freshman year, Fosco was actually told by the (female) object of his affection that their relationship couldn't last because she loved Amy and Fosco loved Emily. Of course, the object of Fosco's affection was right about the relationship, although it wasn't Indigo incompatibility that doomed it (rather, it had something to do with Fosco's interest in sex with men). Regardless, Fosco's preference for Emily was an important part of his musical identity for many years after.

But it turns out that one's favorite Indigo Girl is not as stable as one's sexual orientation, because at some point in his late twenties, Fosco came to appreciate and to prefer Amy Ray. Most of this has been due to her three solo albums:

Stag (2001): At first, Fosco didn't quite know what to make of this CD. It was a lot more raw and a lot darker than her Indigo Girls work; it was also much more like rock than folk. And he was turned off by songs like "Johnny Rottentail" and song titles like "Hey Castrator." But when he returned to it several years later, he was surprised to discover some totally excellent songs like "Measure Of Me" and, believe it or not, "Hey Castrator" (a really good song if you can overlook the title). From "Measure Of Me":

The boy he thinks I'm damaged goods.
I know he does and I guess he should.
I dress like him, I take him down.
He gets embarrassed when his friends come around.

I want to take him to the show,
I'm crossing over what you know.
Is it the boy you need in me,
or the girl that you could be?

Amy has something of an obsession with high school; however, this is the kind of truth about high school that very few singers tell. This is queer high school, baby!

Prom (2005): Fosco listened to this CD at the behest of Todd, and it immediately became one of Fosco's favorite CDs of that year. It's Amy's most extended meditation on high school. Fosco still listens to several tracks regularly (like the perfect teenage anthem "Put It Out For Good" and the surprisingly moving "Rural Faggot"). "Put It Out For Good" has an infectious rhythm, as well as this impossibly catchy stanza:

The stadium lights were breaking through the bleachers
I spent all day pushing tissue roses into chicken wire
Hey S.G.A., I’m an overachiever of the wrong persuasion
A pep rally kid, a new gender nation with a new desire

The compression of meaning in those lines is really amazing.

Didn't It Feel Kinder (2009): Amy's third solo album is more polished in some ways, and even more guitar heavy. Her songwriting remains relentlessly autobiographical and often political. There are some powerful tunes here, although the lyrics aren't always up to her earlier standards. For pure "rock out with your socks out" fun, you can't go wrong with "Bus Bus." And "Out On The Farm" is easily one of the most beautiful songs she's ever written.

The show at the Rio turned out to be a really good showcase for Amy's music. The Rio is a strange venue--it's a former movie theater, and it retains the rippled velvet curtains on the walls and the gently sloping theater rows. The seats are excellently comfy, though. The sound is good, but the lighting is terrible (all of Fosco's pictures turned out badly). The crowd was a good size (approx. 150) and the vibe was something like "lesbian speed dating." Fosco and Oz were the only gay male couple there; however, Fosco has always been secretly lesbian-identified, so he felt right at home.

Amy looked good. She was snazzy in black jeans with a black shirt and gray tie (with a shiny tie clip). She's touring with a rocking band, especially guitarist Kaia Wilson (who is also a member of the lesbian punk band The Butchies). Oz was particularly impressed with Kaia's guitar-work (he may have a little guitar-crush on her, actually). The drummer is also from The Butchies and she has a particularly theatrical style (Fosco notes this because he is now, thanks to Rock Band, and expert)--probably because she sits too low behind the kit.

Some highlights of the show:

• Amy joined the opening act Arizona for a spot-on "Out On The Farm." The lead singer of Arizona nailed the harmony.
  
• Amy jokingly played the intro bars of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" when she joined Arizona on stage.
  
• A great mix of Amy's three CDs: at least three songs from each. She also played for ninety minutes!
  
• Kaia's guitar strap broke during "Sober Girl" and she played most of the song trying to balance on one leg (while the other held up her guitar). She rocked, of course.
  
• "Bus Bus" broke immediately into "Blender" for a seriously punk rock combination.
  
• Amy broke a string on "SLC Radio" and while she was restringing, Kaia and the drummer did a great cover (by audience request) of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger." Seriously.
  
• A fan yelled out "Rodeo" and Amy picked up her acoustic guitar and said "Okay." It was one of the most powerful songs of the evening (Oz liked it particularly).
  
• Fosco finally got to hear "Put It Out For Good" live!
  
• "Who Sold The Gun" is a much better song live than on the new CD.
  
• The performance of "Rural Faggot" was really powerful. Fosco actually got a little teary during the last verse:
  

  I know you want to know the truth
  And I’m the dyke who will give it to you.
  By this time next year
  you’ll know you’re queer
  It’ll all be okay
  It’ll all be clear
  And you’ll run away from home
  But not to be alone
  And you’ll go down to the city
  Where the boys are pretty

• Encore: a long jam version of "Laramie." Absolutely searing.
  

On the whole, this was a really satisfying show. Even Oz enjoyed it (and he tends not to like the whole "women songwriters with guitars" thing). Fosco's transition to an Amy fan is now complete.

Or was it?

You may remember last week, when Fosco posted a camera-phone photo of Patti Smith in his review of her concert. Look familiar?


Fosco will be the first to admit that he lacks the camera equipment and motor skills of, say, Herb Ritts or John Mackey (seriously, have you seen his camera work?). Looking at the above picture, it occurs to Fosco that you (Dear Reader!) have only Fosco's word that the blurry figure is indeed Patti Smith.

Who/what else could it be?

• Lindsay Lohan
  
• Eddie Vedder
  
• Johnny Storm, the Human Torch
  
• a solid gold idol of Baal
  
• Patty Smyth
  
• Our Lord and Savior, Jesus H. Christ
  
• Hannah Montana
  
• an Edwardian fairy

Go Rimbaud!

In the sheets
there was a man
dancing around
to the simple
Rock & roll
song

Fosco saw Patti Smith in concert last night. That's right: the legendary Patti Smith. She's a prophetic poet. She's a rock goddess. She's a shaman. She's the godmother of punk. She's an ecstatic visionary. She's #47 of the 100 Rock and Roll Immortals as identified by Rolling Stone (below Bruce Springsteen, but above Elton John).

It was amazing.

She played the Catalyst in downtown Santa Cruz, which is a much better club than it looks from the street. The club holds 800; I'd say there were 600 there (how does Patti Smith not sell out this show?) The crowd was totally Santa Cruz: aging hippies with hash pipes, packs of graying lesbians, the painfully sincere. Oh, and Fosco's academic advisor was dancing right in front of the stage. And further back in the scrum, Fosco sighted both the current and former directors of UCSC's Center for Cultural Studies. Nothing like the presence of some academic heavyweights to make a newish grad student feel self-conscious.

But it didn't matter once the show started. Fosco was about 20 feet from the stage. Patti Smith looks great. She's sixty this year, and has some lines and some gray; but even so, her eyes are compelling and her smile winning. She was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a t-shirt with a peace sign and "LOVE" written on it, and a cool black blazer with flared cuffs (Fosco wasn't quite close enough to see the label when she took it off). Her hair is long--well past her shoulders--and a bit frizzy. She may be older, but she's still unmistakably the woman in the famous Robert Mapplethorpe album photograph from "Horses" (below).Damn, that's a good picture. Here's a not good picture, taken by me last night:When she's dancing, she does these wonderful hand gestures.

She seemed extremely friendly and down-to-earth. When she came on stage and between the first four or five songs, she walked to the corners of the stage and waved to the crowd with both hands. She reached down to shake hands with the people in front.

As the show went on, she seemed to lose a bit of her equanimity (and who can blame her--crowds are always so annoying). At one point, she confronted a bleached blonde lesbian in the front who was videotaping her with her camera: "Get that fucking camera out of my face." After the song, she elaborated: "If you're going to take a fucking picture, take a picture. But don't make a fucking documentary film. I fucking hate that." Hear hear!

And, in response to some women in the front who kept trying to have a loud shouting conversation with her between songs: "You must be from New Jersey like me, because people from New Jersey can't shut the fuck up."

Here's another bad picture:

Between songs, she told great stories in her charismatically laconic way:

• about her day in Santa Cruz and how she and the band went to beach and how she saw an attractive girl in a bikini doing a seal call. It reminded her of something out of H.P. Lovecraft.
  
• how the girl who sold her pizza earlier in the day warned her not to order the anchovies because they had been in the freezer way too long. (She dedicated "Redondo Beach" to her.)
  
• how she used to watch Television at CBGB.
  
• how she ended up making out with a seal near a muffler shop in Santa Cruz (actually, this may have been more of a vision than an actual story).
  
• about one of her favorite shows when she was growing up which featured a Buddhist bunyip.
  
• how she browsed a great Santa Cruz bookstore earlier in the day (almost certainly Logos) and bought another copy of William S. Burroughs's Interzone, even though she owns six copies at home. But she wants to read it while she's on the road...
  
• how her father once turned off a television when Frank Sinatra missed a note and how that made her "break out in a cold sweat."
  
• and about how much she misses Jerry Garcia.

And the music? She played for almost 2.5 hours. Fosco stood near the front for the first hour, but then got tired and hot (and tired of having pot smoke blown in his face) and moved farther back. For that reason, the first part of the setlist below isn't really in order (note-taking so close to the stage is difficult):

• Dancing Barefoot
  
• Redondo Beach (the order gets iffy after this one)
  
• Are You Experienced? Jimi Hendrix, of course. (with a kickass clarinet solo!)
  
• Summer Cannibals
  
• We Three (was GORGEOUS tonight)
  
• Within You Without You (George Harrison).
  
• Ain't It Strange
  
• Beneath the Southern Cross
  
• some other song I can't recall...

The second half of the show...

• a song performed by her lead guitarist Lenny Kaye.
  
• White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane.
  
• Because the Night
  
• Soul Kitchen, The Doors.
  
• Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana. This is a great cover, check it out on her cover album Twelve.
  
• Gloria. My favorite moment of the concert? When Patti sang: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not miiiiiine."

And the encore:

• Perfect Day, Lou Reed. She changed one of the lines to "Shakespeare and anchovies and Santa Cruz--What fun!" Then she traded singing "you just keep me hanging on" with the audience. It was pretty powerful.
  
• Not Fade Away, Buddy Holly. Dedicated to Jerry Garcia.
  
• Babelogue-Rock and Roll N*****. It was impressive, especially when Patti demanded that we form our own political party and that we refuse to buy the "shit" that corporate American keeps trying to sell us. I was a little disappointed she didn't speak my favorite line: "I spare the child and spoil the rod. I have not sold myself to God." But it still rocked.

Oh yeah, and then Patti Smith ripped the strings off her guitar.

She RAWKS! See her if you can, my friends. Oh, and check out her very cool website. What other rock legend would have a tribute to Victorian essayist Thomas de Quincey? Shweet.

Alex Ross Reviews Fosco's Winter Plans

Although Santa/Satan failed to put hunky music critic Alex Ross in Fosco's stocking (despite Fosco's request), Fosco did have the pleasure (over the last month or so) of Ross's New Yorker reviews of both of the opera premieres that Fosco plans to attend this winter.

At the beginning of December, Ross reviewed the Vienna premiere of John Adams's new opera A Flowering Tree. (Fosco is going to see the US premiere in San Francisco in March.) This is exciting as, according to Ross's review,

the score is opulent, dreamlike, fiercely lyrical, at times shadowy and strange—unlike anything that the fifty-nine-year-old composer has written.

This sounds perfect, as Adams is Fosco's favorite contemporary composer and this opera seems to place him at the height of his powers. Look for Fosco's review in March.

Approaching sooner (i.e., in three weeks) is a Fosco trip to NYC to see the would-be blockbuster The First Emperor at the Met. How could Fosco (and his sister, Maggie Tulliver) resist taking a trip to New York to see this production? Music by superstar composer Tan Dun. Libretto by National Book Award-winner Ha Jin. Directed by Zhang Yimou, director of the films Hero and House of Flying Daggers. And singing the lead? Oh, just Placido Domingo (who is approaching retirement from the stage). How can this opera not be brilliant?

Well, it turns out that it isn't. According to Sexy Alex-y's review, some of the music is fascinating:

A Peking opera singer invokes the forces of yin and yang in a wailing chant. The chorus shouts, claps, slaps, and stomps. A zheng, or twenty-one-string zither, is savagely strummed; ceramic pots are struck with sticks. A variously blaring, trilling, rustling, and rumbling mass of sound rises up from the orchestra. Across the front of the stage, twelve drummers beat on drums with stones and knock the stones together. It adds up to a strictly organized thunder—and perhaps the most far-out music that has ever been heard at the Met.

But, alas, some of the music is not quite as thrilling:

long stretches of conversation are set to nondescript, tootling music of the kind that plays in movies when naughty pets or children are on the loose.

Ouch.

What else does my dear Alex have to say about the production? The libretto?: "inept." The production?: "misconceived." Placido Domingo?: "to have a Spanish tenor pretending to be Chinese while singing awkwardly in English stretched plausibility to the breaking point." Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Of course, Fosco is still excited about the trip. And still excited about seeing the opera--after all, maybe Alex is wrong... And even if the opera really is a disaster, it should still be fun to see. Watch for Fosco's review at the end of January.

Happy Anniversary!

Fosco Lives! has been around now for exactly six months. As Fosco is a homosexual and therefore unable to be trusted with that most sacred of bonds (i.e., marriage), he isn't quite sure of the appropriate etiquette for celebrating a six month anniversary. Is fellatio involved? I sure hope so.

Or perhaps a brief post about the tiny (yet non-zero) impact that Fosco Lives! has had on the blogosphere in the last six months. How about that?

Most Popular Post: the all-time most popular post on Fosco Lives! is Fosco's meditation on Playboy's "Girls of the Big 12" pictorial. Read it here. Why has it been so popular? Several reasons:

• Composer John Mackey linked to it from his blog and recommended it to his numerous loyal readers.
  
• For a month after the publication of that Playboy issue, it got a hit a day from .edu domains in Texas and Oklahoma searching for "Playboy" and "Girls of the Big 12."
  
• At least once a week, this post gets a hit from someone searching for Tasia Bauman (NSFW). Clearly, websurfers want to see more naked cowgirls (or at least this one). It's fun to watch the domains from which these searches are conducted: the US State Department (could it have been lesbian Condi?), gillette.com, and (interestingly) quakeroats.com. Do you think Quaker is looking to replace spokesgrampa Wilford Brimley with some sort of nude rodeo? Signs point to yes.
  
• Even now, aat least once a day, this post gets a hit from someone who is searching Google for the phrase "shaved pubes." The strange thing is that, much of the time, the searcher actually clicks through to this post and reads at least a portion of it. Most of these searches come from foreign domains, which maybe sort of explains it. But, I have to ask: is it really so hard to find shaved pubes on the internet? Isn't there an easier way than to route through this page? I love the traffic and all, but jeez... Who doesn't know where to find shaved pubes online? Ten-year-olds?

Best Press: Fosco's post on Gay American and former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey (yes, that is his official portrait above). Read it here. The day that McGreevey's tell-all book came out (snicker), AOL Cityguide featured a link to Fosco's post on both its "North Jersey" and "Washington DC" pages. See screen cap below:



That "Sexy Back?" link takes you right to moi. Well, I thought it was cool.

Most Validating: Fosco's review of a Diamanda Galas concert in Santa Cruz (which you can read here). The review got picked up by the official Diamanda Galas website and is prominently featured in the Press page on that site. Now if only I can get Matthew Barney to read some of my reviews of his work...

Hungriest Readers: for several weeks last summer, Fosco was eating at San Francisco restaurants recommended by perpetually chirpy chefette Rachael Ray. Read Fosco's reviews of Chow and Bocadillos. Fosco's reviews were included in the weekly "RR Roundup" conducted by the surprisingly charming blog Everything Rachael Ray. For those two weeks, Fosco got an interesting mix of new readers and he enjoyed the chance to scandalize Rachael Ray lovers with references to Lindsay Lohan's vagina.

That's probably enough self-congratulation for now, so allow me to say "Thank You" to all of you who read Fosco Lives! You have made the first six months a hoot and I look forward to the next six.

The hantologie of Diamanda Galas, OR Cabaret in the Underworld

Fosco is a secret Goth. Sure, he doesn't participate sartorially in the movement, preferring khakis and button-down oxford shirts. However, he does frequently wear eyeliner. And, whenever he takes of those "which high school clique would you belong to" quizzes, he ends up as Goth (with Emo Kid a close second). (Strangely enough, Fosco was not a member of either clique when he actually was in high school, but these cliques were merely incipient back then.)

Perhaps Fosco's advisor Jody can sense his hidden gothness, as she suggested yesterday that he cut out of his evening class early in order to see Goth chanteuse Diamanda Galas in Santa Cruz last night. Although Fosco knew almost nothing about Diamanda Galas, he was willing to go for several reasons:

• the title of the show was "Guilty Guilty Guilty," which is really an irresistible title. How can that be bad?
  
• it was described as a "program of tragic and homicidal love songs and death songs." How can that be bad?
  
• he had actual faculty permission to leave class early to attend a concert. How can that be bad?

Before you think that I'm setting you up for some ironic reversal, let me make it clear: the concert was PHENOMENAL. Now let me tell you about it.

Diamanda entered the auditorium from the back and walked spotlit down the aisle to the stage where she took her seat at a piano enveloped in fog. She certainly makes an entrance. She was dressed in black, of course, looking a bit like a less-purposefully sexy Elvira. For her first song, the curtain behind the piano was lit deep funeral-home blue, with a red spot on the piano. The opening chords were funereal (and there was some electronic distortion added to the sound). This was all great fun, of course, as Fosco likes a good spectacle. But then she opened her mouth...

And THE VOICE came out.

That's actually a direct quote from Fosco's notes (he was taking notes for you, my pretties). Right in the middle of the page, after his descriptions of the show so far, Fosco suddenly writes: "THE VOICE."

Her voice is not like anything you have heard (at least on this side of the grave). She opened with "My World Is Empty Without You," a track that is available live in iTunes (should you desire to hear it). You can get a sense of THE VOICE from it, but you have to imagine hearing it in person. This is not a pleasant voice, rather, it COMMANDS. It seems it can do almost anything, actually. Over the course of the program, she yowled, she whispered, she howled, she screeched, and she did some kind of thing where, like the throat singers of Tuva she produced two notes at once. According to one of the press clippings available on her website:

Galás plays the piano like driving rain slapping on concrete, and she sings like a demon going to war, a Valkyrie scatting, a lizard queen seeking revenge for the dead… Galás is profound, rigorous, vocally unlimited, terrifying and utterly compelling.

That sounds about right.

The program was almost entirely covers (as far as I can tell), but I would be surprised if the ordinary listener could recognize most of them. She did a version of "Autumn Leaves" (at least I think it was "Autumn Leaves") that can only be described as Evil. There were several songs in French (one of them supposedly an Edith Piaf cover--imagine that, if you can) and one in Spanish (I think, although it could have been Italian). The final encore was the bone-chilling "Let My People Go," which haunted me for the rest of the night.

It is no accident that I used the verb "haunt" here. I would like to suggest, in a Derridean moment, that there is a "hauntology" (or hantologie in French) at work in Diamanda Galas. She reminds us of what is not there in these songs (and in music in general). This is music that acknowledges the power of ghosts, of the dead--and, perhaps, channels those spectres into actual appearance.

As I struggled throughout the concert to figure out how to describe her, I finally settled on this metaphor: Diamanda Galas is what Cabaret is like in the Underworld. By the "Underworld," I mean the Greek Underworld (specifically, probably the Asphodel Meadows) where normal souls are not rewarded with Heaven or punished with torment, but rather mill about in a less-pleasant version of life on earth, haunted by memories of their life on earth and desirous of news of the living. This is what Diamanda Galas evokes for me. And I hope she is in The Underworld when I get there.

The other question that I kept thinking was this: does David Lynch know about her? And, if so, why hasn't she appeared in one of his movies yet?

Blomstedtiana, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Joshua Bell.

As you well know, Fosco is a lover of the contemporary classical music. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't enjoy a bit of the more traditional repertoire every so often--especially if that means Mahler, Wagner, or, perhaps, a performance led by one of his favorite conductors.

And one of those conductors would be Herbert Blomstedt (or, judging from the photo to the left, you can just call him George F. Will). I think Herbert Blomstedt is brilliant. I got to know him through his recordings with the San Francisco Symphony in the late 80s and early 90s. I consider three of these discs to be the absolute definitive recording of the work:

• Mahler: Symphony No. 2
  
• Orff: Carmina Burana
  
• Sibelius: Symphony No. 2
  

Not to mention his excellent Nielsen cycle and his excellent Hindemith. With my love affair with Blomstedt's recordings, imagine how excited I was in 1997 (or was it 98?) to see him conduct the SF Symphony in a Brahms/Berwald program. I loved that concert... and so, of course, I couldn't resist getting tickets to the SFS last weekend to see Blomstedt conduct Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Nielsen Symphony No. 5.

A "Beethoven Violin Concerto" + "Scandinavian Symphony" program actually suggests to me a digression, as I saw essentially the same program last October in Minneapolis. I was in town for a conference and was strolling down the Nicollet Mall (brrr... that city is COLD) when I passed Orchestra Hall and noticed the Minnesota Orchestra program for that evening featured the Beethoven Violin Concerto (with Christian Tetzlaff) and Sibelius Symphony No. 4.

As I had recently read Alex Ross on the Minnesota Orchestra and their hot new conductor, Osmo Vanska, and
as my greatest dream in the world is to someday become Mrs. Alex Ross, and
as Vanska is considered to be an expert on Sibelius, and
as I lurve Sibelius 4...
I had to get a ticket.

Strangely enough, the revelation of the evening was the Beethoven: Tetzlaff was exceptional and, though I had never paid much attention to the piece before, I came away with a strong affection for it. I was a bit disappointed with the Sibelius: Vanska's tempi were too slow and the piece lacked focus. It felt draggy and dull. And Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall is a TERRIBLE space. Do not buy a balcony/tier seat there under any circumstances.

So it strikes me as a bit of an odd coincidence that again this October I saw essentially the same program (but, luckily, someplace warmer and sunnier... and with a better concert hall).

Let's talk about that concert hall: Davies Symphony Hall. I think there are good reasons to like Davies. The first is that it cuts a graceful profile from street level: (Note the chunk of Henry Moore sculpture in the lower lefthand corner.)

The second best reason to like Davies is that, even if (like Fosco) you are a Second Tier ticket holder (yikes! poor people!), the Second Tier hallway actually contains the best features of the building: the two open-air semi-circular balconies. The views of the city (and City Hall) are spectacular: And luckily, Sunday was the perfect day weather-wise to spend some time on the balconies, enjoying the air.

[N.B.: guess who got a camera phone last week...]

As I already mentioned, I was in the Second Tier. And not just any part of the Second Tier, but the... last row.

Here was my view of the stage:

It might look far away, but it wasn't really. For one thing, Fosco is farsighted. For another, it's music for chrissakes. And, for another, Fosco has a neat pair of opera glasses.

Oh yeah, do you want to hear about the concert now?

The soloist for the Beethoven was Joshua Bell who is, as you can see in the photo at right, super hunky. In the past, Fosco has been suspicious of Josh Bell's musical credentials for several reasons: 1) He is super-hunky (which makes one wonder if he is the product of label marketing to middle-aged women, a la Josh Groban) and 2) he occasionally releases CDs with names like "Romance of the Violin." On the other hand, he did record Corigliano's music for The Red Violin and an interesting recording of the Maw Violin Concerto. So I'd been conflicted...

It turns out that Joshua Bell is really good. His tone is lovely, although perhaps a little too sweet. As a special treat, Bell composed his own cadenzas for the piece and they were quite interesting. His cadenzas were extremely allusive, quoting Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 (and probably some other works that Fosco didn't recognize). This was an excellent performance.

And the Nielsen? To tell the truth, Fosco has had a great deal of trouble liking this symphony. As much as he likes Blomstedt's recordings, this is one symphony on disc that leaves him cold. The live performance changed this response only a little. The orchestra was in full force and sounding great, but the symphony still didn't compel me. I am torn between blaming this on the work itself or on Blomstedt. The one exception: the last few minutes were arresting. At the final moment, Blomstedt brought the orchestra to the point (because it's sure not a resolution that is achieved) and it was energizing. I would have loved for this moment to be able to go on for a long time.

Some general thoughts on the orchestra itself. The strings are excellent, the brass is powerful and authoritative, but something is not quite right with the winds. Throughout both works, the winds really stood out from the sound of the rest of the orchestra--there was almost no integration. I found this really distracting and bit puzzling, as the wind performers of the SFS may be the most distinguised group in the orchestra (at least judging them as soloists on recordings). I don't recall this problem the last time I saw the SFS (which was five years ago), so I don't know what to make of it.

On the way out, Fosco couldn't help but notice MTT's assigned parking space was occupied. Was he really there on a Sunday afternoon when he wasn't conducting? And in case you were wondering, it was some kind of Chrysler (though not a current model). If I were MTT, know what my ride would be? A rickshaw pulled by a shirtless Jeremy Bloom.