WMV Music Web Log

Mack the Knife is up on the mp3 section of the website. This was from a performance of cabaret songs at a downtown DC restaurant, Busboys and Poets. I've got to say I like this music, but most of the audience did not. Someone said it sounded like we hadn't rehearsed, because we were not together - I have a hunch it was Charley's complex rhythms in Mack, which we pretty much nailed. People had a lot of gripes! But Lisa Null sent us this love note:

Hi:

I was there with my friend Martha. I was the woman at a table in the middle of the room with a crutch and a lot of loud cheers. It sounds as if you are soliciting feedback.

Let me start off by saying how much I loved the evening-- the ambience, the informality, the chance to interact with musicians at the end. Whatever technical problems occurred, they did not interfere with that wonderful experience. Also, the second act, after intermission, was markedly better from the first. The singing-- I am oriented to singers as a performing singer myself, as is Martha-- really took off. I think, in large measure this was because your sound problems were solved, the lid was lowered on the piano, and the balance between voice and brass was more finely calibrated. I could hear the words at last! But I also think something else was happening-- the musicians could hear each other so they no longer played in an atomized way. Once the sound problems were resolved, synergy occurred.

I have a feel for this sort of music as it comes from the world of my stepmother, a holocaust survivor, and we grew up with it in our household. In the original Threepenny Opera recordings, Hanns Eisler recordings from this period, the Blue Angel film, and the Comedian Harmonists' recordings their seems to be a blended,cool precision with extraordinary matching of tone, even though the the notes in and of themselves suggest a more raucous approach. I might have liked to see more of the cool blend, as it foregrounds the vocals. I come to this music with classical training but a career in traditional folk music (clubs, pubsl cabarets, festivals, and now house concerts). This may bias me towards sculpting the words for a natural setting.

A music critic would describe the overall tone as smoky and indeed my friend Martha joked about how strange it was to see the performance without the smoke from dozens of cigarettes. She went so far as to suggest dry ice as a suitable alternative!

I am not used to seeing an operatic singer performing this material and feel she did her very best best when simply pouring forth emotion in that lovely voice of hers ("The Sailor's Tango," the Carmen excerpt) rather than molding it around the verbal subtleties of the world-weary, predatorily seductive female stereotype persistent in these songs. She "got" just the right approach for those marvelous compositions of Charley Gerard.

I'm not sure how these reactions of mine jibe with your experiences of the sound or the performance. It's my habit, for good or ill, to dissect what I hear as if I were the performer myself. I used to teach American Musical Life for years at Georgetown which compounds my analytical excesses. None of that, however, interferes with my loving the music or the joy of the experience itself. It matters less that the evening was successful in every aspect than that a highly intelligent group of competent artists pushed the edge and gave this rich complex trove of music their best shot. That's what I always thought chamber music was, in part. Experiment.

This night was a real winner for me and I look forward to others. I cannot come often as I am deeply involved with the Folk Music Society of Greater Washington. We put on many, many concerts and events too. But my interests extend well beyond folk music and your presenting a variety of challenging chamber music in convivial settings make it hard to resist!

With deepest gratitude,

Lisa
Elisabeth Higgins Null

Karren Alenier reviewed the show for Scene4.com:

Is cabaret music ugly? Should it be unpleasant? These were questions raised by Washington Musica Viva's Sex Appeal program that took place on June 18, 2008, at DC's Busboys and Poets. The Dresser stands scratching her head because, generally speaking, she enjoys the clever but raunchy turns of this kind of music.

The program included songs by cabaret greats: Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Friedrich Hollaender. It also included new cabaret music by sax man composer Charley Gerard based on the lyrics of Judith Weinstock. The musical ensemble included: Clea Nemetz, mezzo; Charley Gerard, composer arranger, alto saxophone; John Jensen, trombone; John O'Brien, banjo; and Carl Banner, piano. Featured were three songs by Hollaender: "Sex Appeal," "Take it off Petronella," and "Falling in Love Again," the song from The Blue Angel made famous by Marlene Dietrich. While the Dresser grooved on the moves and throaty voice of Clea Nemetz, the musical accompaniment seemed thin (not ugly) and spiritless. The Dresser was told that Busboys, for whatever reason, didn't allow the musicians time for a sound check and so musical balance didn't happen.

Perhaps this is unfair, but in the Dresser's experience the touchstone for cabaret is The Three Penny Opera by Kurt Weill with libretto by Bertolt Brecht. And yes, the WMV program included "Mack the Knife," the most well known song from The Three Penny Opera and no, Clea Nemetz sounded nothing like Lotte Lenya or Ute Lemper. Nemetz was squeaky clean sexy in her English and interesting to watch, but she didn't have that German cabaret edge with the guttural rolls of the Rs and that insane vibrato that causes audience to scoot up on their seat and wonder what this singer would be like in bed. Oops, the Dresser can't help it if the raunch slips out. And yes, the Dresser likes a squonky sax and 'bone with the strumming of the banjo and the beating of the ivories but she really missed a bass to ground the overall sound.

The second half of the program featured mostly original songs by Gerard and Weinstock. The Dresser's favorite was "I Hate My Ex" but in truth this piece sounded like contemporary opera and not cabaret. So the Dresser thinks Charley Gerard and Carl Banner should put their heads back together and do up another program like The Weary Blues, which was a smash hit at Busboys.