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Best Of record reviews Writing Other Places

Best of 2018: Recorded Music

Tyshawn Sorey at Big Ears Festival 2018

As is tradition, I submitted my top records of the year to Agit Reader. I wrote about my #1 and the site’s #9 – Pillars by Tyshawn Sorey, a new benchmark for mixing contemporary classical/new music and improvisation, in this post: http://agitreader.com/wp2/the-agit-reader-top-10-of-2018/

The full top 10 of mine and their other writers are at this link: http://agitreader.com/wp2/staff-picks-for-the-best-albums-of-2018/

My 11-20:

11. IDLES, Joy as an Act of Resistance
12. Lea Bertucci, Metal Aether (reviewed for Agit Reader)
13. Jlin, Autobiography

14. Sons of Kemet, Your Queen is a Reptile
15. Neko Case, Hell-On
16. Brian Fallon, Sleepwalkers

17. Cecille McLorin Salvant, The Window
18. Motel Mirrors, In the Meantime (Half of the singing-songwriting core of this band, John Paul Keith, also put out an exquisite solo record, Heart Shaped Shadow whose songs dotted every time I had people over to dance, but this was the one that kept me up at night)
19. JD Allen, Love Stone
20. US Girls, In a Poem Unlimited

Categories
Best Of

Best Of 2017: Live Music

“The bandleader is indicative
of nothing or everything

Depending on the day.”
-Gabrielle Calvocoressi, “In the Darkness of the House of Pleasure”

I’m pretty sure live music was the first of these lists I started 15+ years ago (any friends going back to the email list days or early LiveJournal, feel free to correct). It’s been a guiding light. It’s how I’ve met most of my dearest friends and made many of my fondest memories. Even as I grow old and share the frustration with some trappings, I’m still invigorated by a great show. Nothing else gives me that instantaneous body-and-soul charge.

I saw around 130 shows this year. After a hard, hard deliberation – getting it down from 35 was more difficult than previous years – here are twenty still gnawing at me. Rather than ranking, they’re presented in chronological order. In Columbus, unless otherwise specified.

  • Dirtbombs and Soledad Brothers (The Magic Stick, Detroit, 12/31/16) – Rock-and-roll motherfucking church. Maybe the greatest rock band of my adult life – and still my favorite outlet for the prodigious craft and imagination of Mick Collins – came back to their hometown to prove they can take the crown any time they want it. From the first crunch of their take on Mitch Ryder’s “Motor City Baby” this only let off the throttle long enough so we could feel the sweat on our skin and catch the fire in each other’s eyes. Soledad Brothers reminded me how much I dug them too with raunchy, swinging sweetness.
  • Sinkane (The Basement, 02/22/17) – Columbus expat Ahmed Gallab, Sinkane, just gets better. This six-piece version plus horns was an ecstatic trip through his beguiling new record Life and Livin’ It with a couple rearranged classics. Chants like “We all gonna be all right!” (from “U’Huh”) and wry observations like “Telephone”, welded to ornate and liquid melodies and deep grooves. Glad-you’re-alive music.
  • Still Dreaming (Wexner Center, 03/29/17) – Chuck Helm’s valedictory season at the Wex didn’t miss a single step in his jazz game. All 6 shows could have justifiably hit my top 20. This new quartet from Joshua Redman played and wrestled with the rock-solid melodies and mystery of his father Dewey Redman’s group Old and New Dreams and new work using that as a jumping off point. Four mammoth players in the service of the kind of pure dialogue jazz does better than any kind of music. Sparks flew between Redman’s sax and Ron Miles’ brass as they shot screams through with sweetness and shadowed bravura with a wishful baleful edge. All in the deep pocket of one of the best rhythm sections alive, Scott Colley and Brian Blade.
  • 75 Dollar Bill and Sue Garner (Ace of Cups, 04/04/17) – 75 Dollar Bill is a perennial favorite. It’s heartening to see this Che Chen and Rick Brown project breaking through to broader appeal. Their set dissected the irreducible DNA of music, leaning into the gorgeous impossibility of separating melody from rhythm. The opening set from Sue Garner was a reminder of the malleable nature of song. Her artful miniatures like ice stabbing into the listener’s heart and melting into a glowing, shifting, enriching light.
  • Wadada Leo Smith Great Lakes Quartet (The Stone, NYC, 04/23/17) – One of the absolute masters reminding us how great he is. Brand new compositions that felt like the quaking, painful renewal of a mighty earth. The quaking, flame-kissed rhythm section of Mark Helias and Marcus Gilmore, Jonathon Haffner’s lustrous alto sax, and Smith’s singular trumpet tone ripped into this material. An artist just getting better and better.
  • LA Witch (Berlin, NYC, 04/25/17) – There’s something magical about seeing a band come to the next level right in front of your eyes and Berlin is an intimate venue that lends itself to those moments. LA Witch destroyed me on a weeknight with sticky, growling songs that felt like Wanda Jackson’s vocals over heavy shoegaze with just enough girl-group swing and garage punch to keep the floor bouncing.
  • Kris Kristofferson (Southern Theater, 05/17/17) – Watching this lovely victory lap of one of the great American writers revisit songs I never thought I’d hear live, I found myself thinking of John Berger’s writing about the poet Nazim Hikmet and Juan Muñoz. That sense that the greatest dream we can carry in this age is fraternity, of carrying hope in our teeth. It’s all there. And I might have cried like a moron.
  • Vijay Iyer Sextet (Wexner Center, 05/20/17) – This was a tribute to Chuck Helm’s cultivation of relationships. Columbus had the pleasure of watching Iyer evolve into one of the strongest conceptions in American music This sextet, underpinned by longtime collaborator Stephan Crump on bass and Justin Brown on drums, added heavier flavors of New Orleans funk and second-line into these sparkling compositions. The front line flanked steady foil Steve Lehman with Mark Shim and god-almighty Graham Haynes with Iyer at its beating heart. A flood of images and ideas that rewarded constant, dedicated attention while still being some of the most accessible music I heard all year.
  • Sarah Shook and the Disarmers (Ace of Cups, 07/20/17) – Sarah Shook and her cracking band sum up everything good about raw Americana right now. Shit-kicking dance beats underscore Shook’s characters grappling with connection and try to find a place in the world on songs like “Nothin’ Feels Right Like Doin’ Wrong”. All delivered in Shook’s intense twang, stylized but not doing an impression of any specific model. What Sekou Sundiata used to call “dance and stand still” music.
  • Priests (Ace of Cups, 07/21/17) –  Priests’ new material on 2017’s Nothing Feels Natural they were touring here was several steps beyond and this show was every single thing I want in a rock band. They kept the energy and ferocity of their early hardcore days but opened it up to other textures. One of my favorite rhythm sections working today, Taylor Mulitz on bass and Daniele Daniele on drums, danced through slinky rhythms that reminded me of the Cure, blended the Clash with krautrock and go-go, and ripped into classicist, raging punk rock, all with giddy ease. They presented a perfect backdrop for GL Jaguar’s immediately recognizable guitar and Katie Alice Greer’s sharp lyrics and intense, riveting presence.
  • Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus (Ace of Cups, 07/25/17) – This show on Anne’s birthday was a better victory lap than I could have ever dared hope from an artist who meant more to me than almost any other. Lunch, in remarkable voice and wielding her volcanic presence, led us through a retrospective set of all highlights. Backed by a crack band with Child Abuse-frontman Tim Dahl on bass and Bob Bert on drums and perfect guitar foil Weasel Walter. This wasn’t nostalgia, and it wasn’t pandering to who we used to be, it was a reckoning. It was a reminder of what still lives in those songs.
  • Greg Cartwright (Cafe Bourbon Street, 07/31/17) – One of my favorite songwriters working today, revisiting a tiny room with an old friend, Andy Robertson, and even sticking around to spin records? An evening I couldn’t believe I was lucky enough to be with my friends for. A fascinating look at continuity and evolution in someone’s writing, the way work done 10 years ago takes on new textures, reflected in the light of more recent songs. A new song with lyrics “I think the devil works in a pharmacy…” that might have set a new bar for the brand of heartbreak his work owns. His set at GonerFest was also exquisite, but this was a perfect Monday night.
  • Coathangers (Ace of Cups, 08/02/17) – They were also great in a larger venue in Brooklyn in the Spring; I have a hard time believing the Coathangers ever have a bad set these days. Fist-pumping rock-and-roll with shout-along lyrics and pure, glowing adrenaline.
  • Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express (Natalie’s, 08/03/17) – Chuck Prophet is a true historian of the music who distills everything he’s learned into songs that sound like no one other than Chuck Prophet. Preoccupied with death and fighting stagnation, as on “Bobby Fuller Died for Your Sins” and “It’s Been a Bad Year for Rock and Roll,” and my favorite, the tribute to Suicide’s Alan Vega, “In the Mausoleum.” This show made me think about rock-and-roll and its ritualistic ability to move beyond the adolescent, the creation myth also talking to us about burying our dead.
  • Sheer Mag and Flesh World (Ace of Cups, 09/12/17) – Over the last couple years, the world’s come around to realizing the self-evident fact that Sheer Mag are the best live rock-and-roll band touring. This trip, supporting their phenomenal new record, Need to Feel Your Love, felt like a victory lap and an open road. Their blend of Thin Lizzy twinned guitar riffing; crisp, stomping rhythms and post-hardcore singing from one of the greatest lead singers working, Tina Halladay, is an irresistible combination. Anyone who claims to like rock-and-roll and doesn’t love this band? I’ve got nothing for you. Up and comers Flesh World also blew me away here, extra impressive when the headliner took my head off.
  • Khruangbin and Chicano Batman (A&R Bar, 10/03/17) – Chicano Batman’s sweetly fuzzy psych-Delfonics blending with Khruangbin’s majestic low-rider R&B reconfigured as Thai lounge music. I wish there’d been more room to dance, but I was gobsmacked to see this many young people – and people I didn’t know – loving this kind of music.
  • The Bad Plus Bill Frisell (Lincoln Theater, 10/08/17) – This astonishing set brought together a group that helped define the Wexner Center’s jazz aesthetic under the great Chuck Helm and a titan who he helped give that shine to in his days at the Walker. It was everything good about both of their approaches. This paid tribute to The Bad Plus’ first iteration’s dogged determination to delve into whatever they were investigating – Ornette Coleman or Stravinsky or Milton Babbit or Sabbath – and come out feeling like themselves. And it was a fresh pair of eyes on Frisell’s fertile ’85-95 quartet as his writing came into its own but with the tools of everything he’s learned since in its execution. You could come in off the street not knowing anything about either artist or this oevure or you could come in having gorged yourself on it in High School/college and this was a knockout punch either way. Thank you, Chuck Helm. (For a little bonus, check out Helm’s writing about this pairing for co-commissioning body The Walker Art Museum, one of the best pieces ever written about TBP.)
  • Jon Langford’s Four Lost Souls (Hogan House, 10/13/17) – Jon Langford’s voice gets sharper and clearer with every passing year. This new project designed for two other voices with his, Tawny Newsome and Bethany Thomas, with lead guitarist and harmony vocalist John Szmanski, was another take on the dark and joyous heart of America. It was a balm to be in a great-sounding and well-appointed basement (seriously, try to hit a Hogan House show, they’re fantastic hosts) with other listeners, basking in the flame of these songs on an unseasonable warm fall afternoon. Feeling like we’re all receiving “A message from the heart of the world.”
  • Man Forever (Double Happiness, 10/14/17) – This is the kind of show too big for our fantastic gallery/diy spaces but many rock clubs – with the aid of Jen Powers and Fred Pfening here, who should not be ignored – wouldn’t have booked. Kid Millions’ Man Forever was avant-garde technique and forms – played gorgeously by a band that included members of Tigue – comingled with samba and go-go and heavy, swinging rock. An electric dance-party baptism.
  • Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds (Double Happiness, 10/23/17) – If you asked me what’s good about rock? What’s good about live music? It’s all right in this show. A co-bill with NYC DJ Jonathan Toubin for Halloween had Congo’s quicksilver band in full costume going through a series of songs that touched on the holiday and songs that just reminded us all how good it felt to dance with like-minded people. Boundless joy and magic and love.
  • Mountain Goats (Newport, 11/09/17) –The Mountain Goats have grown into their show as a show, they were one of the most comfortable bands I’ve ever seen on the Newport stage. Their new record, Goths, about growing older and the way structures that once empowered us and showed us a bigger world close in around us, was a perfect spine for this subtle, intimate-in-surprising- ways show that felt like it drew us all in. My favorite icepick-in-the-heart line of all year, from “Andrew Eldritch is Moving Back to Leeds”, got extra juice from singer John Darnielle leaning over his fender rhodes and twisting the corkscrew just a little with “There will be goodbyes by dozens. You get to practice being brave.” Like that pain is a gift. Because, somehow, it kind of is.

And, because festivals are not going away, we should celebrate what’s still good about them. My favorite 20 sets, mixed up, from my favorite festivals throughout the year. Again, all are in Columbus unless otherwise specified.

  1. Antibalas (Black Swamp Music Festival, Bowling Green, 09/09/17)
  2. ESG (West Fest, Chicago, 07/07/17)
  3. Golden Pelicans (Cheap Heat, 04/14/17 and GonerFest, Memphis, 09/30/17)
  4. Los Nastys (RuidoFest Afterparty, Chicago, 07/07/17)
  5. Screaming Females (Sick Weekend, 03/23/17)
  6. Magic Factory (GonerFest, Memphis, 09/29/17)
  7. Sweet Knives (GonerFest, Memphis, 09/28/17)
  8. Molly Burch (Sick Weekend, 03/24/17)
  9. Watu Utongo (Villagefest, 06/10/17)
  10. 1-800-Band (Sick Weekend, 03/25/17)
  11. Dana (Sick Weekend, 03/25/17 and Cheap Heat 04/15/17)
  12. The Echo Ohs (GonerFest, Memphis, 09/30/17)
  13. Bloodbags (GonerFest, Memphis, 09/28/17)
  14. Danny and the Darleans (Cheap Heat, 04/15/17)
  15. Bobby Selvaggio’s Red Rhinoceros (Rubber City Jazz and Blues Festival, 08/26/17)

 

 

Categories
Best Of

Best Of 2017 – Visual Art

“That is, all time
Reduces to no special time. No one
Alludes to the change; to do so might
Involve calling attention to oneself
Which would augment the dread of not getting out
Before having seen the whole collection
(Except for the sculptures in the basement:
They are where they belong).
Our time gets to be veiled, compromised
By the portrait’s will to endure. It hints at
Our own, which we were hoping to keep hidden.
We don’t need paintings or
Doggerel written by mature poets when
The explosion is so precise, so fine.
Is there any point even in acknowledging
The existence of all that? Does it
Exist? ”
-John Ashbery, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”

Visual art is a key part of my cultural diet. One I’ve come to a little later. Even when I’m with someone at a gallery and discussing what we’re seeing, there’s a particular being-alone with a piece that lends itself to introspection and takes me to the same places as poetry.

That said, there are exhibits I gleaned the most pleasure from sitting around talking about after the fact – this year’s Whitney Biennial, for instance. I wouldn’t trade the hour dissecting it with Anne at the Corner Bistro or the hour talking about it with Tutti Jackson and Jeff Regensburger at Ace of Cups for anything, but those conversations and negotiations stuck with me long after any aesthetic charge.

These are the opposite, these 15 shows nagged at me and wouldn’t let me go.Trying to add in some photographs – what has a picture doesn’t correlate to liking it more than other work, but I’m far more likely to experiment with snapping a picture in an empty gallery than a full museum where I might be in somebody’s way. Unless noted, everything here is in Columbus.

  1. Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Unknown Notebooks (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland) – Basquiat is an artist perpetually extending the limits of what we know and how we understand. Just when I believe I’ve gone to that well more than enough times, I’m lucky enough to see a show or some scholarship that explodes those parameters. This was the best example in recent memory. His young notebooks as a nascent flowering of his work’s complicated relationship to text and typography, every few steps my hair stood on end.
  2. Various Artists, Gray Matters (Wexner Center for the Arts) – This shot across the bow from the Wex’s new Senior Curator Michael Goodson beguiled and staggered me. The varieties of gray gave the galleries an uncanny calm, drawing the audience into the kaleidoscopic approaches and perspectives. I made it to this almost 10 times and still didn’t get my fill. Suzanne McClelland’s Rank (Billionaires) resonated the Mike Ladd lyric “We are the size of constellations in the path of wrathful idiots” in my head whenever I wandered through it. Mickalene Thomas’ “Hair Portrait (20)” used her signature rhinestones to look at black glamor and black women in the world. Roni Horn’s “Opposites of White” like two looking pools but with concrete and glass. So much to see and breathe in and grapple with.
  3. Various Artists, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-1985 (Brooklyn Museum, NYC) – The Brooklyn Museum has one of the most engaging, challenging programs of any of the New York institutions. This exposed me to artists I should have known, and I didn’t, along with favorites of mine like Carrie Mae Weems. The strain of revolutionary work in this fraught period in American history was intoxicating, from Dingda McCammon’s totemic mixed-media myth-making to Emma Amos’ work on paper which put the interrogation of the image in the foreground… every medium represented and not in the way you’d necessarily expect. Ephemera from collectives like the Weusi provided context and connective tissue between the diverse artists.
  4. Alice Neel, Alice Neel, Uptown (David Zwirner, NYC) – I knew Alice Neel’s work pretty well but this collection of her time living uptown in New York burned cataracts off my eyes. An equanimity marks Neel’s work here. We feel her real desire to understand everyone she’s painting, from a “random” person down the street to more famous subjects like Alice Childress. My high off the clear-eyed and razor-edged empathy here lasted the rest of this (terrific) New York trip.
  5. Carmen Herrera, Line of Sight (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Columbus is lucky to have gotten this first exhibition of Herrera’s in 20 years right after the Whitney. This is the perfect example of someone drilling ever deeper into a language and, by the same token, language itself. Precarious and impossibly strong, how much can you say with two colors and how much can you hide? Exquisite.
  6. Hope Gangloff, S/T (Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC) – My favorite new painter. This exhibition caught my eye from the street and grabbed me by the collar. An intense desire to know her subjects that resonated with the Alice Neel mentioned above but with a perpetual-motion jangle in tune with today. Colors at play reminded me of Seurat but also the Hernandez Brothers. I loved the use of blurring. In the painting shown here, there’s a tattoo not indistinct because it doesn’t matter but drawn in the blur redolent of memory.IMG_20170421_140444.jpg
  7. Various Artists, Making Space: Women Artists and Post-War Abstraction (Museum of Modern Art, NYC) – This was the big-ticket, bursting at the seams show MoMA does better than any museum I’ve ever visited. A glimpse into the depth and breadth of that amazing collection, featuring work not hung often enough. Big, bold work by Joan Mitchell and Lee Bontecou, more austere abstractions from Agnes Martin. This was an embarrassment of riches there would never be enough time for.
  8. Honore Sharrer, A Dangerous Woman (Columbus Museum of Art) – My favorite show at the revitalized Columbus Museum of Art since the new wing opened a couple years ago, and there have been doozies. This was a remarkable look at one of the great American surrealist painters who was not on my radar at all. If this touring show comes anywhere near you, please check it out.
  9. Nina Chanel Abney, Seized the Imagination (Jack Shainman Gallery, NYC) –  This show was a tightly clenched fist and an explosion. Pop art and street art iconography in riveting compositions. I couldn’t get enough of these paintings. The fuck-you our time needs, not blunted or weakened, but with a formal rigor that lent itself to diving deep and fighting to unpack it.IMG_20171109_132750.jpg
  10. Josephine Halvorson, As I Went Walking (Sikkema Jenkins, NYC) – Josephine Halvorson’s paintings remind me of Annie Baker’s plays in her attention to perfect details and dedication to turning up the realism until its surreal nature won’t be ignored. This walk her new work guided us on was full of the dread, strangeness, and wonder we should all stay in touch with. This magical, horrifying world.IMG_20171109_142249.jpg
  11. Jane Hammond, Search Light (Galerie Lelong, NYC) – Jane Hammond’s work was new to me and this gallery show blew me away. These mystical, terrifying encaustics highlighted the magic and the secret languages laid over seemingly mundane, everyday events.IMG_20170421_134508.jpg
  12. Suzanne Silver, Codes and Contingences (Beeler Gallery) – I wish I could have shown this gallery exhibit to every genre writer of my acquaintance. It summed up the fevered mind, the paranoid state, that might be the only sane approach to the current moment. The intense, desperation to control in the meticulously cataloged pieces removed from the ever sparser gallery? So much to unpack but everything suffused with sensation.IMG_20171208_144057.jpg
  13. Richard Serra, Sculpture and Drawings (David Zwirner, NYC) – Any time I get to see new Richard Serra, it’s a good month/year for me. His work is like a sauna for the soul; I feel myself sweating out toxins and anxieties buried down deep. A holy, purifying thing.IMG_20171109_132011.jpg
  14. Various Artists, Visions of India (Pizzuti Collection) – The Pizzuti Collection grows into itself and finds its niche in the Columbus market. This look at contemporary Indian art featured well-known-in-the-US blue-chip artists like Anish Kapoor and Vibha Galhorta alongside stunning work from people unknown to me like Sheila Makhijani and Jitish Kallat. I could have gone to this three more times and not absorbed it all.IMG_20170923_122438.jpg
  15. Roxy Paine, Seronin Reuptake Inhibitor (Beeler Gallery) – Back on the feelings of dread, these empty, perfect-until-you-notice-the-perspective dioramas behind glass pounded the breath right out of my lungs.
Categories
Best Of

Best Of 2017 – Theatre/Dance/Opera

“…the river that goes
nowhere, that has survived the
astonishments and will never
venture close to that heat again, is
cool here, looking up at what,
looking back down, how is it
possible the world still exists, as it
begins to take form there, in the not
being, there is once then there is the
big vocabulary, loosed, like
a jay’s song thrown down when the
bird goes away”
-Jorie Graham, “Mother’s Hands Drawing Me”

This was a rough year for me personally and those choppy waters were dwarfed by the world on fire outside my window. The big positive was finally getting sick of years of attrition and making my world smaller through meanness and casual cruelty and disregard for other people’s feelings and numbing myself instead of feeling.

With some stumbles, I aggressively committed to therapy and tried other tools to try to get back in touch with the me who genuinely likes things. I won’t know until retrospect if I was successful. I hope being open about it – here and elsewhere – helps me stick with it. These exercises in looking-back are key to that: it’s an astonishing reminder of how much great stuff I’m lucky enough to experience every year. I talk about theatre as being the form of art most closely aligned with empathy for me: it’s impossible to ignore other living, breathing people on stage creating this feedback loop between artist and audience.

In the actual (ostensible) topic of this blog, Columbus theatre seemed to rebound after last year’s lull (with the huge exception last year of the August Wilson Festival that was the tide lifting all boats). Available Light, MadLab, Red Herring and CATCO mounted seasons that rank with their best work, The Wexner Center in Chuck Helm’s valedictory season imported the finest work from NYC and elsewhere, OSU and Otterbein continue to be fountains that refresh and replenish our cultural lives as well as the overall theatrical world. I still bemoan no new companies, no wildly new intensity, but in a year that included maybe my strongest theatrical trip to New York, Columbus brought work on our stages that went toe to toe with everything I saw in the Apple.

Everything in Columbus unless stated otherwise. If I reviewed it elsewhere, there’s a link to the original review.

  1. Sunday in the Park With George, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine (St. James Theater, NYC) – There wasn’t much chance the best performance I’ve ever seen of my favorite musical of all time wouldn’t top this list. Director Sarna Lapine refined her approach to this play since her fine mounting at our own Short North Stage. The questions about why we make art and how we damage people around are sharper this time out and everything hums with a fresh intensity. Part of that feeling springs from the marvelous performances of Jake Gyllenhaal and especially Annaleigh Ashford. Much comes from the fact that this is the first production I’ve seen to make the contemporary act as strong as the Seurat act; even the chromolume doesn’t come off jokey. This was everything Broadway can and should be.
  2. Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu (Steppenwolf, Chicago) – This was every single thing I want out of theatre: a searing new voice; brilliant acting by Jon Michael Hill, Julian Parker, and Ryan Hallahan; and direction, from Dayna Taymor that gripped me by the throat and held tight. A riff on Waiting for Godot with liberal sprinklings of the Book of Exodus that didn’t require knowledge of either of those primary sources. A textbook case for using genre tools and historical references to make something undeniably about now. The cri de coeur we need that knows the value of a scalpel and a machete in ripping the skin off the oppression and dehumanization of our age. I don’t think I heard muffled sobs or riotous applause as fervent as I did at this matinee.
  3. Hand to God by Robert Askins (Short North Stage) – One of the funniest comedies to hit Broadway in years came to the Short North Stage and destroyed. Edward Carignan’s razor-sharp direction and effective use of the chimerical Green Room space created a backdrop to bring to life one of the Columbus performances for the ages: Danny Turek as meek, troubled Sunday School student Jason and his possessed puppet Tyrone. Turek’s dazzling, scabrous virtuosity meets its match in energy and intent by phenomenal performances from Kate Lingnofski, Jonathan Putnam, Barbara Weetman, and Chad Goodwin. All my Top 5 made me cry at least once, this one made me cry because I was laughing so hard. Review at Columbus Underground.
  4. Sweat by Lynn Nottage (Studio 54, NYC) – The criticisms that Sweat was a little too pat and a little too clean, too constructed are valid. But I didn’t care one whit while engrossed in this new-classic social drama. Nottage understands how people talk and she understands how that kind of little bar works. Heartbreaking performances from Michelle Wilson, Johanna Day, Will Pullen, and Khris Davis echoed behind my eyes for months after seeing this.
  5. Angels in America by Tony Kushner (Short North Stage) – My favorite play of the last thirty years, maybe my favorite play full-stop got an amazing production of both its parts from Short North Stage to close their 16-17 season. Directed by Edward Carignan and JJ Parkey with collaborative help from Dayton’s Zoot Puppet Theater. The heartbreak at the heart of the world is sometimes best expressed with fabulism and this raw, dirty, kaleidoscopic ride left me staggering down High Street and babbling at the stars. Reviews at Columbus Underground: Part 1 and Part 2.
  6. You Got Older by Claire Barron (Available Light) – Available Light presented an Off-Broadway play I liked when I saw it a few years ago in New York and improved on that production in subtle but key ways. Elena Perantoni gave one of the strongest performances I saw all year as Mae and her rapport with Verne Hendrick as her father glowed with all the weirdness and warmth of life, distilled. Icing on the cake comes from excellent performances from Eleni Papaleonardos, Kasey Meininger, and David Glover as Mae’s siblings, Danny Turek as her would-be love interest, and especially John Connor as the phantasmic cowboy in her fevered dreams. As I said at the time, Acacia Duncan’s direction “doesn’t let anyone off any easier than the material does, but everything is treated with a generosity and deference we should all envy.” Review at Columbus Underground.
  7. The Antipodes by Annie Baker (Signature Theatre, NYC) – If you want to see someone who just gets better every time out of the gate? Annie fucking Baker. This takes her hyperrealism-with-the-color-knob-turned-up-to-bleed-weirdness to another level. A workplace comedy rife with creepiness and dread – what do these people do again? – and intimations of the end of the world outside the walls. Lila Neugenbauer has the perfect sensibility for this work I could have seen 100 times and still be unpacking. Intense heart and humor without for one second slipping into sap or cliché. Astonishing performances from Josh Hamilton, Josh Charles, and especially Will Patton as the manager and Nicole Rodenburg as the one actually running this circus.
  8. In a Rhythm by Bebe Miller (Bebe Miller Group presented by the Wexner Center for the Arts) – Every single thing I love about contemporary dance done in a way so accessible that anyone would “get it.” By the end of this delicious 75-minute roller coaster, connections between Nelly, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace, and Leonard Cohen and Steve Reich, were not only reasonable but impossible to ignore. The wonder and the danger in trusting our bodies. Hail, hail Bebe Miller and her ensemble. Review at Columbus Underground.
  9. Samara by Richard Maxwell (Soho Rep, NYC) – Similar to the Miller, this was Maxwell at the height of his powers and a director, Sarah Benson, who pushes him and the cast out to the edge. A buddy comedy-tragedy on the fringes of the end of the world, wryly narrated by Steve Earle (who also provided spooky, dissonant music). People talk in epigrams about smaller and larger apocalypses and the crushing weight of the world but it all ends with dancing. If we can find it, there’s always redemptive dancing.
  10. Fun Home, music by Jeanine Tesori, lyrics and book by Lisa Kron, adapted from Alison Bechdel. Bechedel’s autobiographical masterpiece got a perfect adaptation from Kron and Tesori and CATCO’s masterful production. Steven Anderson’s perfect direction brought the best out of this ideal cast, led by Meg Odell, Cari Meixner, and Sydney MacGilvray as the Alisons in varying ages, all grappling with her troubled father played by Peter Matthew Smith. I blubbered like an idiot here. Along with Hand to God, this is the thing I recommended to the widest range of people. Review at Columbus Underground.
  11. Bootleg Radio by Jennifer Schlueter and Matt Slaybaugh (Available Light). This new work, written and directed by Schlueter and Slaybaugh from a magpie’s nest of allusions, found notes and other work. Forged in the fire of this magnificent ensemble with especially good work from Elena Perantoni, Amanda Loch, David Glover, and Todd Eckert (who also provided choreography) this was a complicated paean to hope and connection. Available Light at their best when we need a reminder that “Maybe hope is other people.” Review at Columbus Underground.
  12. Top Girls by Caryl Churchill (Otterbein University). Otterbein gave us a new production, directed by Lenny Leibowitz of this acerbic British modern masterpiece that proved how much biting truth Churchill’s play still musters. Kara Jobe, Daria Reedus, and Isabel Billinghurst gave performances that made me see characters I thought I knew well in a brand new light. Review at Columbus Underground.
  13. Six by Idris Goodwin (Actors Theatre’s Professional Training Company, Louisville). Goodwin’s new play luckily overlapped with a work trip to Louisville and this short, site-specific performance was pure magic.
  14. Corpus Christi by Terence McNally (Evolution Theatre Company with CATCO). Evolution produced a lot of strong work this year but this magical co-production with CATCO of McNally’s transplanting of the Christ myth to the Texas coast he grew up along took the cake. Every performance here was nuanced and lovely, with special attention to James Harper’s Simon Peter, Davion Brown’s John the Baptist, David Vargo’s Matthew, and JT Walker’s Judas. In my review I said “[Director Joe] Bishara takes thirteen of the strongest actors in town and turns them loose on material that could, in lesser hands, feel coarse, too easy or cheap. The symbiosis between actors and director of tight control and letting a moment breathe makes this charming play soar.” Review at Columbus Underground.
  15. Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking by Gus Edwards (PAST Productions). The best example I saw all year of the way theatre can imply a whole life, or two, in just a few scenes and the way it gives us a look at an entire world, came in PAST Productions’ majestic slow-burn take, directed beautifully by Patricia Wallace-Winbush, on Gus Edwards’ Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking. As the eponymous guys, Tony Roseboro and Truman Winbush, Jr., find every once of nuance, getting big laughs without having to reach for them and a deep understanding of how people can still find the good in one another even as we do terrible things. Review at Columbus Underground.
Categories
Best Of

Best of 2015: Live Music

“Every good thing we dared in winter
arrives by springtime: a whipporwill
among the pines, a colony of memories
like muscadine on a vine double-thick
as a boy’s arm, redemption reaching
into its roots before an afterthought
steals back the sweetness. Something
lost in the rearview mirror shifts,
& here we are again on the dance floor
at the Silver Shadow; the boys & girls
reeling out to the edge of fingertips.”
-Yusef Komunyakaa, “Always a Way”

I felt a little bit like I was stuck in neutral for big chunks of this year. Had a hard time getting out to see as much music as I would’ve liked. Part of that was balancing the demands of freelance writing and a day job that kicked up a gear but a lot of it was that devil ennui. My mission for next year is to work a little harder to get out, and especially try harder to take a chance on things. The rewards are worth it.

That said, I still saw over 100 shows in some of my favorite cities and – one of the best parts of doing this review ever year – I’m reminded of how exceptionally good so much of it was. I’ve been very lucky in very many respects – I just need to get better at reminding myself of that. Rambling thoughts about the scene follow the list. Left off Big Ears Festival in Knoxville and Hopscotch in Raleigh because I could have filled the list just with sets from both of those. I saw more great music in those combined six days than most people do all year – plus ate amazing food, drank beers that don’t come up here and saw great friends.

Like everything else, all shows are in Columbus unless otherwise mentioned.

  1. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Real Enemies (written by Argue and Isaac Butler), 11/18/15 (BAM Harvey Theater, Brooklyn) – By this time, pretty much any year I get to see Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society – along with Guillermo Klein Y Los Guachos and Orrin Evans’ Captain Black, one of the few wildly new big bands swinging for the fences – seems assured of a spot on this list. Argue’s writing is that strong and his team of players is a finely tuned machine. But even I didn’t expect this to wow me the way it did. A look at corrosive paranoia, and the very real roots of it, the way history will leave scars on all of us. This collaboration with writer Butler was the most successful multimedia work I saw this year and the music with some narration and fragmented video that broke my heart. As good as the other elements were, the music never ceded its primacy: from Ligeti-recalling wind quintets to intricate ’80s cocaine R&B to expansive works playing with country-inflected styling to the kind of propulsive, noir-drenched snapshots the band excels at, this was a dazzling tour of the dark corners, shattered windows, and dread-soaked cul de sacs of the last fifty years.
  2. NOTS and Raw Pony, 08/15/15 (Dude Locker) – For their 7″ release, Raw Pony, rapidly cementing their status as one of the most exciting bands in town, brought in Memphis’ NOTS cresting the wave of deserved praise for their self-titled debut, in my favorite double bill of the whole year. Boiling-over deep grooves, scuzz-caked guitars, clipped but anthemic harmonies, this was everything I wanted from rock and roll to an attentive, enthusiastic crowd on a gorgeous summer night.
  3. Robbie Fulks, 10/09/15 (Natalie’s Coal-Fired Pizza) – There’s some (I think) deserved gushing about Natalie’s in the round-up below but what I might have loved them most for this year was bringing Robbie Fulks back to town for the first time since Little Brothers (a private wedding gig notwithstanding). Fulks might be alt.country’s Balzac, training a razor-sharp eye on the intersection between classes and ways in which classes never get to intersect and boiling that down to the catchiest roots music you’ve ever heard. Bringing an acoustic quartet that orbited around violinist Shad Cobb, bassist Todd Phillips (founding member of the David Grisman Quintet) and a terrific young mandolin player whose name I can’t seem to find anywhere, this was one of the best, leanest sets I’ve seen in almost 15 years of seeing Fulks live. A consummate performer who will make you laugh and cry at indignity and rightly rage against shame and complacency.
  4. Brett Burleson Quartet, 01/09/15 (Dick’s Den) – One of our finest guitarists and bandleaders, Burleson’s annual shows around his birthday are an oasis in the middle of winter. Because of the punishing cold, this year’s felt like an oasis for lots of people – it was the most crowded I remember and people came to party. His working quartet – saxophonist Eddie Bayard, bassist Roger Hines, and drummer Ryan Jewell – are a well-oiled machine and they worked intricate, complex material around a set full of long pieces that got an entire bar dancing to jazz that was never dumbed down, never pandering. One of those nights where having to squeeze through rows of people to get a drink felt like a blessing and the inch of sweat-condensation on the windows felt well-earned.
  5. Maria Schneider with the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, 05/02/15 (Southern Theater) – I don’t see as much of the CJO as I should because – much like the Columbus Symphony – the repertoire usually isn’t to my taste. But bringing in the finest big band composer and conductor working today, Maria Schneider, shined light on what an amazing collection of musicians Columbus is lucky to boast and how lucky we are to have a leader like Byron Stripling in town. This was 90 minutes of exquisitely deployed color and rapturous tension that’s still echoing in my head.
  6. Secret Keeper, 06/15/15 (Natalie’s Coal-Fired Pizza) – Mary Halvorson’s my favorite guitarist working these days, full-stop, and this duo with bassist Stephan Crump (who also appears on this list with the Vijay Iyer Trio) was full of intriguing, complex music that invited the audience to try, just try, to unpack it. Full of spidery melodies tearing and reshaping themselves, cubist looks at small gestures from every angle, hard flamenco over dry-wind arco playing, songs that feel like lava coalescing into earth. This was everything.
  7. Six String Drag, 04/03/15 (Natalie’s Coal-Fired Pizza) – The resurrected Six String Drag, one of alt.country’s brightest lights when that kind of thing mattered, felt and sounded better than ever. Kenny Roby’s lead vocals and rhythm guitar still perfectly mesh with bassist Rob Keller in harmonies that could rival the Everly Brothers and a band that balances raunch and delicacy like the best rock and roll. As honest and heart-wrenching as your first love and as weighted with memory and portent as growing old, to a beat that begs you to dance, their live performance of “Kingdom of Getting it Wrong” might have been my favorite five minutes of music all year.
  8. Antibalas with Guests, 11/18/15 (Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn) – I hadn’t checked in with the US’s reigning afrobeat kings in a while but something had to be good to make an impression after having my brain massaged by Darcy James Argue and they more than rose to the challenge. This final night of their Brooklyn Bowl residency found them without their usual lead singer so we were treated to a set heavier with raunch instrumentals, rarities and awesome guest singers including Quantic (leading the band on a righteous cumbia), Sarh Nguajah (from Broadway’s Fela!), and soul legend Lee Fields. If you didn’t dance until you were sore to this you should have your pulse checked.
  9. Elysian Fields, 11/14/15 (The Owl, Brooklyn) – One of my favorite bands in a 20th anniversary residency. We caught them on the night they were doing Afterlife with Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow backed by Rob Jost, Glenn Patscha, and Max Johnson with an assist by Max Moston. Their textured, noir-pop made for an emotional, moving show in the wake of the Paris attack with the band’s deep ties to the city of light and a packed room in their new venue, The Owl, in Prospect-Lefferts that didn’t have its liquor license yet but the heady emotions (and strong tea) were more than transporting enough.
  10. Deaf Wish with Unholy 2, 10/07/15 (Double Happiness) – Australia’s finest noise-punk band have morphed into one of the best live rock bands I’ve ever seen over a few years of constant touring. This appearance at Double Happiness was a grimy victory lap, loud and almost unhinged, and righteous. Perfect support by Unholy 2 who are going through another chrysalis period and coming out as a more three-dimensional band with interesting samples and a deeper line in syncopation.
  11. Shamir, 11/16/15 (Bowery Ballroom, Manhattan) – Shamir, R&B wunderkind, proving the hype is more than deserved. A killer small band with a woman playing the best Bernie Worrell-style pop funk keys I’ve heard in a long time, a man who was a phenomenal drummer, and a female backing singer playing with gender roles and distortion. This was an epic, sexy, raunchy dance party across sticky floors.
  12. The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, 10/20/15 (Wexner Center) – As good as straight-ahead jazz gets in the best-sounding room in town. Adding the x-factor of Joshua Redman’s burnished, warm tone and his melodic writing helped push the Bad Plus into orbit with particularly fine performances out of drummer Dave King. A night that sets the bar high for anyone wanting to push the boundaries of and dig deeper into genre at the same time.
  13. Haynes Boys, 06/26/15 (Ace of Cups) – This Comfest bill – Haynes Boys, TJSA, and Poets of Heresy was geared toward a crowd a little older than I am but those were all some of the first local bands I saw when I was in High School and the Haynes Boys were the first local band I loved all the way. That too-young melancholy is given extra ballast to steer from the years that have gone past. These songs that try to make sense of that time as you leave your 20s and you realize some of your friends are sick, some of your friends are dying or already dead, where sometimes the world has a patina like a nicotine-stained encaustic, punch twice as hard now lyrics of disappointment like “I knew things were getting bad when I started to count on one of the blackouts you might have,” and “She drives me to work in the morning, I wash her dishes at night.” Catharsis never heals as long as you want it to but once in a while an hour’s enough to get you to the next place.
  14. Vijay Iyer Trio, 04/16/15 (Wexner Center) – Iyer made maybe his best trio record this year and that’s saying something. This set with Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums encompassed everything from Thelonious Monk to a kaleidoscopic, gorgeously shuddering tribute to techno pioneer Robert Hood. Big tent, pulsing, quick witted jazz not hemmed in by any boundaries whatsoever.
  15. Sleater-Kinney with Waxahatchee, 12/05/15 (Newport Music Hall) – There’s something eminently satisfying when a band you loved so much as a teenager and into your early 20s reform and deliver on every ounce of promise and memory. The backdrop looked like skin being shed or a slow-mo explosion behind the three players and the blistering almost two hour set felt like burning indifference off all our eyes. Fierce, wild joy.
  16. Dave Douglas Quintet, 11/19/15 (Jazz Standard, Manhattan) – Douglas’ newer quintet finally hit a level of comfort where I no longer miss the old quintet at all. I was lucky enough to catch the first set of this victory lap at the Jazz Standard toward the end of the touring cycle for their beautiful new record, Brazen Heart, and it was everything I want straightforward jazz to be. Sexy and warm with an ease that never slipped into taking anything for granted. Douglas and tenor player Irabagon have a sense of harmony that bursts through the rafters and the rapport through the rhythm section of Matt Mitchell on piano, Linda Oh on bass and Rudy Royston on drums was like five undeniable heartbeats at once. Sublime.
  17. Mountain Goats, 04/22/15 (Wexner Center) – Mountain Goats keep making great records with Darnielle’s uncommon empathy and bone-deep understanding of Blake’s world in a grain of sand. The record they were touring this cycle, Beat The Champ, might be the best Mountain Goats record yet and the selections they did this time, from the mood-piece “Luna” to the easy mourning of “Animal Mask” through unlikely sing-along “Foreign Object” meshed perfectly into a brilliantly chosen setlist. The juxtaposition of songs had an arc and a swell right through a cathartic finish about why people make art, why the desire to put your mark on the world is universal, and how that ties in with a need for community with set closer “Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1” through the anthemic encore of “Legend of Chavo Guerrero,” “This Year,” and “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton.”
  18. Snakeoil, 05/09/15 (Constellation, Chicago) – In a great Chicago trip full of awesome friends, terrific food, good theatre, and great music, this was the cherry on the cake. Tim Berne’s riveting chamber-jazz quintet with thorny, twisting lines woven between his alto and Oscar Noriega’s clarinet over a shifting bedrock of Matt Mitchell’s piano and Ches Smith’s drums and percussion, lit up and shadowed by Ryan Ferreira’s guitar was like nothing else I heard all year.
  19. Orgone, 08/27/15 (Woodlands Tavern) – West Coast funk band Orgone returned to Columbus to a pretty decent crowd this time who came to get down and in the five or so years since they last graced our stages they’ve only grown in power and confidence. After a great opening set by Chicago’s lean and mean funk outfit The Heard, Orgone came out with a set heavier on vocals but still a rich clinic in rhythm and power in one of the best live music bars for dancing like a moron.
  20. Weyes Blood, 01/15/15 (Cafe Bourbon Street) – Weyes Blood went with a more streamlined, song-focused approach this time, almost more Joni Mitchell and Eric Andersen. The songs were so beautiful and her approach was so immediate, within three songs I didn’t miss some of the wildness that’s been stripped away. In a room I’ve seen swallow fragility with bar noise and nervous energy, she held us all in the palm of her hand and knew exactly when to twist the knife.

 

Across the Columbus scene, 2015 felt like a year of minor changes, regrouping, retrenching. The big thing in my little corner of town is Jeff Kleinman left Ace of Cups, somebody I personally like and consider a friend who booked some fantastic edgy bands that might otherwise never have come here. It’s good for Jeff to focus on his band, Nervosas, who made one of my favorite records this year, plus that kind of a move always brings new energy and new ideas. Into that steps Bobby Miller who booked great shows all around town when I was in college and has kept his hand in the game over the years with the Slum-B-Q, Megacity Music Marathon, and most recently 4th and 4th Fest. I can’t wait to see what Miller does with the infrastructure of Ace. A similar move at Cafe Bourbon Street with Kevin Failure stepping down to only book one-offs and local musician and artist Albert Gray taking the reins – it’s almost entirely to Kevin’s credit that Bobo reclaimed its crown as the bar for rock on the fringes and Gray’s taste means that shows no sign of abating soon.

A couple new (and new-ish) venues on the South end and near West side give reason to have additional hope for those new ideas and established ideas finally getting a chance to fly. Visual art collective MINT, on Jenkins St south of Greenlawn, have taken up the mantle of Skylab, Firexit, and BLD Warehouse which was much missed with booking a lot of interesting techno, noise (including heavy hitters like Wolf Eyes) and even free jazz. Kyle Sowash, hardest working man in Columbus rock, partnered with Justin Hemminger and independent rock radio CD1025 to turn their instudio live space Big Room into the fully operational Big Room Bar with a cool bar repurposed from the Veterans Memorial stage imprinted with bands that played that storied hall, good sound, and a vibe that pleasantly reminds me of an old VFW. Sowash is already using that stability of a home base to book the the cream of the more established local rock and touring heavy hitters like Helado Negro and Kelly Hogan. People living south of I-70 who want to hear some music now have a few options to complement the fully-come-into-its-own Double Happiness. Strongwater, in resurgent Franklinton, books interesting rock into its packed schedule of parties, receptions, etc. The Walrus on the south edge of Downtown is still feeling out its identity but they’ve got a terrific stage in a beautiful bar; I’ve heard some great jazz there and singer-songwriters like Matt Munhall and Talisha Holmes have packed people in.

On the roots spectrum, Rumba Cafe’s ownership change late last year booked less I’m personally interested in but when my path led me there it’s still one of my favorite rooms and there’s already stuff on the 2016 books I’m salivating over. Woodlands’ empire grew into the satellite rooms and they cemented themselves as a force to be reckoned with, well-staffed bars that are comfortable to hang out in with great sound and a firm booking identity.

Natalie’s continued to grow and thrive. It tied with the Wexner Center for the most shows to appear on my Top 20, with three, and there were another half-dozen in strong consideration. I got a little good-natured grief for my referring to them as “City Winery with some Midwestern ‘aw shucks,'” but I stand by that – they found a way to translate Dorf’s model to bring in a new audience that might not have seen live music in years and without alienating the core, and they did it with humility, hard work, and confidence. They also support the scene to a pretty great degree, I’ve seen their owners at other shows this year more often than I’ve seen owners/bookers outside their own bar (with the exception of the aforementioned Kyle Sowash). They’re a rare venue that does everything right – the food isn’t an afterthought, I start to crave that pizza if I haven’t had it in a few weeks, the cocktails are approachable and balanced, the staff is top-notch, and sound is always fantastic. Their relationship with Alec Wightman’s Zeppelin continued to bear fruit with countless sold-out shows and even more in the pipeline for ’16 as did their work with veteran Bruce Nutt. But what’s key is the way Natalie’s uses those outside bookers to complement their aesthetic, they use it to build instead of using it as a crutch. There was a well-heeled threat from Notes in the Brewery District which opened with a booking policy that struck several people I talked to, and myself, as Natalie’s South but without the good will, the skillful negotiation of the press, the depth of its bench, or its relationships with national booking agents. I’m rooting for Notes, I think this town could support another adult venue with a slightly more buttoned-up demeanor but the way they did it out of the gate honestly didn’t make me rush to go there.

Brothers Drake might have been the success story of the year with great music finding a bigger audience than they would have elsewhere in town because booker April Kulcsar understands the symbiosis between the bar’s audience and the kind of music they can be open to – I saw big crowds getting down to things as diverse as Chicago’s scrappy afrobeat up-and-comers Gramps the Vamp, Detroit’s riotous funk ensemble Third Coast Kings, and NYC torch-song rockabilly Miss Tess and the Talkbacks. Plus, bands that crystalized in part at BD like Angela Perley and the Howlin’ Moons and Playing to Vapors are rocking bigger stages and sending ripples through the national touring communities.

Wexner Center focused its booking with the strongest slate of jazz I can remember and almost no ephemeral blog-rock, as evidenced by tying with Natalie’s for most shows on this top 20. I can’t wait for the jazz shows in Winter and Spring, plus the first Yo La Tengo trip to town for a set of their own music in years (Little Brothers? The Factory?) and whatever else they bring.

So what I’m trying to say is, keep your ear to the ground. Go see some shit, Columbus. The bounty is rich and the cornucopia overflows.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Best of 2015: Theatre/Opera/Dance

“Sometimes
they grip each other with a cry
expand into lamentations
become mist on the windows of dead houses
crystallize into chips of grief on dead lips
attach themselves to a fallen star
dig their hole in nothingness
breathe our strayed souls

Words are rocky tears
the keys to first doors
they grumble in caverns
lend their ruckus to storms
their silence to bread that’s ovened alive.”

-Venus Khoury-Ghata, Les Mots (trans. Marilyn Hacker)

 

Notes on the overall scene are after the list. Where I reviewed something for another outlet, I’ve attached a link. Unless otherwise specified, everything is in Columbus.

  1. Glory of the World by Charles L. Mee (Humana Festival, Louisville, KY) – Had a glorious day and night in Louisville with some dear friends on the way to Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival and the detour was mostly for the premier of this new Mee play, a riotous tribute to the naturalist Thomas Merton on his centennial. Glory of the World, gorgeously directed by Les Waters, uses the raw-flesh ambiguity of perception, the way we see what we’re looking for, and the way a person at the top of their game can embody all these things to different people. It’s a paean to male friendship, and the messy, beautiful complications of living in the world, full of joy and memory and mourning. The best thing I saw with a food fight and a fist fight on stage. NYC pals, BAM is presenting this staging in January right after APAP, if you can make it don’t miss it.
  2. the theatre is a blank page by Ann Hamilton and Anne Bogart (SITI Company presented by Wexner Center for the Arts) – This was the first adaptation of Virginia Woolf (To The Lighthouse) I’ve ever seen that captured everything I love about Woolf and gave me the same finger-in-a-light-socket sensation as reading her work. Threaded through by Rena Cherlouche Fogel’s narration, this guided tour through the guts of Mershon Auditorium was also a guided tour through the bones of theatre, a look at why making art matters and what makes it stick its nails in your heart. Both the most sensual, erotic evening I spent in a theater all year and something that reduced me to mouth-breathing, stumbling, childlike joy. Review at Columbus Underground.
  3. Don Quixote: A Pilgrimage by Jen Schlueter adapted from Miguel de Cervantes (Available Light) – As I chewed over the year, Jen Schlueter’s brilliant adaptation of Quixote with perfect direction by Matt Slaybaugh summed up everything I love about Available Light. An adaptation that recreates the pleasure of a text without being intimidated by it or trying to just retell the events in a way that elevates instead of diminishing the classic. It vibrates with the kind of whimsical seriousness that needed a cast this uniformly strong. Elena Perantoni dazzled doing double duty as a backpacker and as Rocinante, Sancho Panza’s donkey [the first draft of this misnamed Sancho’s companion], a very funny foil to Drew Eberly’s Panza. Her interplay with the very strong David Glover mirrored and echoed Eberly and Kim Garrison Hopcraft’s retired couple. But the core and the spine of this was Acacia Duncan’s heartbreaking character trying to reconnect with her father; without ever stating it, she gives us a look at the power of art to provide a roadmap and a toolbox to healing and the way stories change with the road you stumble down.
  4. Sweat Baby Sweat by Jan Martens (Wexner Center for the Arts) – In a more literal way than the Hamilton/Bogart, this was one of the most erotic things I’ve ever seen on a stage. Two dancers, a man and a woman, grapple with the arc of a relationship, almost never leaving contact with one another’s skin. As a physical act, the torturous, delicate, drenched slowness was astonishing, the lack of momentum as positions shift seemed to defy gravity. As bodies, seeing the occasional strain,the clenching of an ass, the tightening of a back, that sweat glistening over these two perfect people was heart-stopping. Got a little tense in my seat – in the good way – just writing this paragraph. His Dog Days Are Over was also stunning and encompassed more of the world but this played in my dreams over and over.
  5. A Little Night Music by Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim (Short North Stage) – Maybe my favorite Sondheim done better than I’ve ever seen it, this production directed by Michael Licata opened a very promising main-stage season at Short North Stage. It understands the way confined motions of a waltz echo the desperate search for love and the way that search tries to navigate our own neuroses, hangups, fuck-ups, lies and shame, with even a Pyrrhic victory being better than nothing. The cast is marvelous with standouts being Mark Harmon as Frederik, Marya Spring as Desiree and Kate Lingnofski, who damn near walks away with the whole show, as the Countess.  Review at Columbus Underground.
  6. The Grown-Up by Jordan Harrison (Available Light) – Available Light cemented their keen ear to the vibrations of the larger world of theatre this year with two productions (the other appears later). Jordan Harrison was the toast of NYC theatre with his new play Marjorie Prime almost simultaneously with AVLT bringing his recent work, The Grown-Up to open the 2015-2016 season in an exquisite production directed by Eleni Papaleonardos suffused with glowing wonder. Fragmented time-slippage follows Rudy Frias (as Actor A) through his life with family, lovers, co-workers played by the same handful of brilliant actors (standouts include Jordan Fehr and Michelle Schroeder) in a lean, cohesive look at how quickly life goes, how similar the people and circumstances we surround ourselves with are, and how easily lessons are learned and forgotten. Review at Columbus Underground.
  7. Henry IV by William Shakespeare (Donmar Warehouse presented by St Ann’s Warehouse, NYC) – I missed Donmar’s previous all-female Julius Caesar so there was no chance I was going to miss this, much less miss my first chance to go to the new St Ann’s Warehouse (which is a marvelous improvement in every way, maybe the best theatre space in New York). Phylida Lloyd’s direction of this look at female prisoners staging, and finding echoes for their own lives, in an edit of the two Henry IV parts, had some issues – largely in the edit that cut a little too close to the bone getting down to two hours – but left my jaw on the floor again and again. Jade Anouka’s Hotspur is the best rendition of the character I’ve ever seen, someone who can freeze your blood with her eyes even in the back row. Sophie Stanton’s Falstaff is a fascinating, hilarious, deeply sad take on possibly my favorite character in all of Shakespeare. And Claire Dunne’s Prince Hal is a beacon of intense charisma and menace you can’t take your eyes off.
  8. Lost Girls by John Pollono (MCC, NYC) – Pollono’s play, masterfully directed by Jo Bonney, plays with a surface-simple thriller premise where a missing girl brings up the uneasy détente between a divorced couple (a terrific Piper Perabo and Ebon Moss-Bachrach). As it flips back and forth to a hotel room off the interstate with a high school couple running away (a crackling Lizzy DeClement and Josh Green) the tension draws tighter and tighter, leavened with the kind of sharp one-liners that only characters who know each other that well could land. This is a textbook case in a play that transported me out of myself and literally had tears springing to my eyes after an hour and a half with a twist that’s perfectly set up but still made me gasp. A masterclass in how to love your characters and let that love come through to an audience.
  9. Thrill Me by Stephen Dolginoff (Short North Stage) – As good as the wide-canvas musicals were at Short North Stage, I was most heartened at how they turned the Green Room side-space into a showcase for the kind of smaller, edgier musicals that, with a couple of exceptions (like Red Herring’s sumptuous take on Romance/Romance) don’t get any play in Columbus. My favorite of the lot was Dolginoff’s sexy and vicious Thrill Me. Edward Carignan (maybe SNS’s MVP of the year) directed this with an eye on paranoia and claustrophobia. Evan Hoffman’s Richard Loeb was a performance as sharp as a stiletto you should see coming but don’t and Luke Stewart’s heartbroken, desperate Nathan Leopold is a defining study in the corrosive quality of bad love. Review at Columbus Underground.
  10. Standing on Ceremony by Various (OSU Theatre Department) – In a fascinating touch, OSU Theatre decided to perform this anthology of short plays by some of our finest writers (including Neil Labute, Jordan Harrison, Wendy MacLeod, and Jose Rivera) about gay marriage on a lower budget meant to mimic storefront theatre and using the entirety of Drake Union instead of proscenium stages. A beautiful, sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking, look at love and language directed by Jen Schlueter and Karie Miller, it was full of performances that belied their youth with standouts including Amanda Loch, Chorsie Calbert IV, and especially Bryan Arnold who broke me in the Moises Kaufman section. Review at Columbus Underground.
  11. The Christians by Lucas Hnath (Available Light) –  This is the other play I alluded to earlier about AVLT’s unerring sense in other people’s work of what’s new and what’s coming next. Lucas Hnath’s submersion into the murky depths of faith had an acclaimed run at Playwrights Horizons this fall after premiering at Humana last year, including feature articles in the New York Times, and it was given a perfect production here directed by Acacia Duncan. Underneath gorgeous semi-abstract projections standing in for the megachurch, The Christians featured heartbreaking performances from Matt Hermes as Pastor Paul and Jordan Fehr as Associate Pastor Joshua, at the heart of the schism of this church and with excellent supporting work from Ian Short, Michelle Schroeder, and especially Whitney Thomas Eads as the people caught in the middle, the real-world casualties of an idea being made real. Review at Columbus Underground.
  12. [title of show] by Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen (CATCO) – In a similar move to Short North Stage, CATCO experimented this year with the smaller Studio Three for cabaret style performances that, to my mind, were largely successful. My favorite was the Bell/Bowen meta-theatrical [title of show] about why we make art and the roadblocks we run afoul of as we go on. Joe Bishara’s direction used the smaller space beautifully well and the combination of the four actors – Elisabeth Zimmerman, Bradley Johnson, Annie Huckaba and Jonathan Collura (who also dazzled in Peter and the Starcatcher) – meshed perfectly. Even with a too-long second act there was joy on that stage to spare that hung over me all day. Review at Columbus Underground.
  13. The Object Lesson by Geoff Sobelle (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Sobelle’s one-man show was a look at memory, the way we let objects stand in for feelings and the way they conjure those feelings, set in a a huge room bedecked with boxes and boxes he hilariously and conspicuously unpacked. Scenes loop around on one another in hilarious and moving ways with the best use of audience participation I saw all year. Review at Columbus Underground.
  14. In Old Age by Mfonsio Udofia (Page 73, NYC) – Page 73 is one of my favorite sources for brand new plays in NYC and I was lucky my November trip overlapped with a reading of my favorite new (to me) voice all year in a little rehearsal studio in Chelsea. In Old Age is about the purging of old demons and not letting them hang over us, as much as anyone ever can, brilliantly played out by one woman and one man. I’m sorry to say I misplaced the program sometime between then and now but this is a play and two actors you’ll be hearing about in the future.
  15. Clowntime is Over by Joseph E Green (MadLab) – A cracked-mirror Christ analogue in the persona of a sad, drunk clown Max (a fantastic Andy Batt), Clowntime follows his adventure with his two funny animal sidekicks, Susie the Bunny (Shana Kramer) and Tidy the Llama (Chad Hewitt) on the day when Max realizes the audience – God? – is no longer watching. Slapstick and one-liners and pathos on a twisted mobius strip of daily routine, this was my favorite piece MadLab staged all year and the “guest appearance” of Stephen Woosley’s Paco the Mouse might have been the hardest I laughed. Review at Columbus Underground.

I could have easily gone with a shorter epigram, Leonard Cohen’s “God bless the continuous stutter of the word being made into flesh,” and almost gotten what I wanted to say. But the Khoury-Ghata came way closer to what I felt and what I went looking for this year. Theatre has a different grip on me than other art forms and, in a dark year like I alluded to in the visual art best of, its command of the physical and its dominion over time was a balm.

This was my first year as a freelance contributor for Columbus Underground. I’m grateful for the opportunity and hope, in some small way, I added to the conversation in town. What I’d ask of you as readers: if you see blind spots, let me know. I’m not going to like everything and I can’t see everything – I saw over 60 shows across four cities this year – but I want to shine light on corners I, and maybe local media as a whole, haven’t done a good job with yet. If you have a show I should know about, please email me at the contact information above.

The theatre scene in town feels like it’s at an interesting juncture, one of stability and flux. The new breed companies evolved into something akin to the establishment. Available Light celebrated its 10th year by changing their structure, bringing in Eleni Papaleonardos as fellow Artistic Director alongside founder Matt Slaybaugh, a decision which is already bearing fruit and I’m very excited to see the results of across the season. At MadLab, once the city’s enfant terrible, celebrating their 20th anniversary, longtime artistic director Andy Batt (whose podcast is already shaping up as essential listening for anyone taking the temperature of Columbus theatre) handed the reins to writer/director/actor Jim Azelvandre at a time they’re making some of riskiest, most exciting work I can remember. Shadowbox took some big risks this year with their massive Japanese collaboration The Tenshu (adapted from Kyoka Izumi) and while the play wasn’t a home-run it’s the kind of experiment I hope we see more of, along with their conceptual Pink Floyd history, Which One’s Pink? which I didn’t see but heard raves about. Warehouse Theatre made their return with a mix of edgy classics (including a great take on Lonergan’s This is Our Youth) and more contemporary work like Rajiv Joseph. Imagine had to relocate mid-season to the Northland Performing Arts Center and, while the Wall Street situation is depressing for several reasons, I’m excited to see what they do there and very excited to not sit on a barstool for a two-plus hour show.

In the recognized establishment there’s also some tectonic shifting. CATCO has a season loaded with new, interesting work, recently off the New York stage – accusations about playing it safe might still be apt but their higher production values are staging terrific plays no one else is doing and they look a lot more like the CATCO I knew and loved when I got introduced to theatre by old friend Doug Smith. Actors Theatre lost their Artistic Director and guiding light John Kuhn and found their season beseiged by some of the worst summer weather in a while but they came back swinging and made us all proud (and put on a great Richard III in the middle of a strong season).

I’ve had a few conversations lately about the lack of young, exciting companies making the last generation irrelevant – or at least making them work harder. I see a lot of promise in the college work in this town; Otterbein always stuns me and OSU (with their main stage productions and their fascinating Lab Series) is the strongest I ever remember it being, if a few of those folks stuck around town and made work it’d be a huge boon to this town. There are a few glimmers in that direction, most promising so far is Hollie Klem’s Haberdasher Theatre whose first production didn’t wow me but was one of the freshest voices I’ve seen in town in a while. To mangle Morton Feldman, show me that blank book, youngsters – astonish us and force us to astonish you.

I’m choosing excitement over worry, though don’t be surprised if the latter still creeps in. And I’m putting my money where my mouth is with tickets I’ve already purchased to Under the Radar and Prototype in NYC. I hope you do the same.

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Best of 2015: Visual Art

“God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day –
I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window.
Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer
fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee.
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.”
-Agha Shahid Ali, “Tonight”

This year was so soaked enough in death you almost had to wring it out. There was a lot to be sick over. Personally: the other Grandfather, a dear friend Valerie, friends’ parents and lovers and best friends. And that’s all before the camera pulls back to look at the larger world – the larger world where terror hit closer to home than usual, people gunned down going to a show or the recent vandalism and suicide at the Wexner Center causing the After Picasso show to close early. That, of course, speaks to privilege because for much of the world death is never as far away as it, luckily, is for me, and my grey year doesn’t even move the needle on a larger scale.

For me, visual art has always been linked with the act of memory and the act of bearing witness. Its permanence (and in some cases, its deliberate eschewing of that permanence) gives it some of its meditative quality. My heart breaks for anyone there when the event happened in December and anyone who might have been there and, of course, the person who chose that place to end it. Even before the most recent event, the art that drew me to it, that made me want to tell somebody, that made me want to argue with it and wrestle with it, played right into the preoccupation with death I didn’t consciously realize I had this year. But more than that, it was a balm. It was fuck it, this matters. It was this is still standing. It was fight to remember. It’s a reminder to keep trying.

As with all of my Year End summations, everything is in Columbus unless stated otherwise.

  1. Doris Salcedo, s/t (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago) – On a grey, unseasonably cold day in Chicago in the middle of a great trip, this Colombian artist made me feel like someone was standing on my chest in a room full of knives. From the opening piece, Plegaria Muda, with its wooden tables the audience has to squeeze between and growths of vegetation coming out of the tables like a field of gravestones but still shot through with fragile life, on, this took my breath away. Sculptures using silk and human hair, abandoned doors concrete. It was a death mask for the world and a shrine, apocalyptic and very, very beautiful.
  2. Alberto Burri, The Trauma of Painting (Guggenheim, NYC) – This was the kind of show that left me kicking myself I didn’t know Burri’s artwork better beforehand. It gave me the same feeling as Giuseppe Ungaretti’s poetry, though his poet countryman is an earlier war, with its use of the surreal to crack open your chest and its fantasies about shipwrecks instead of the way you see you friends die. Molten plastic, welded metal leaving the seams obvious enough they look like blisters, burlap sacks as an indictment of capitalism. Everywhere I turned my mouth got dry and tears came to my eyes.
  3. Jack Whitten, Five Decades of Painting (Wexner Center for the Arts) – There’s been a lot of talk about the Wexner not having a permanent curator in a while (they still have curator-at-large Bill Horrigan) but I have to say they’ve done a great job working around those limitations this year. This Jack Whitten retrospective showed a singular voice working through, challenging, and recombining every interesting art trend of the 20th century and stripping away what didn’t apply to what he wanted to say. My favorite pieces were the portraits/tributes that combined painting and mosaic and found objects in a way that made blood hot in my veins, especially the tribute to Amiri Baraka (a flawed, complicated guiding light for me, always). Memory writ appropriately large.
  4. Elaine de Kooning, Portraits (National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC) – Knowing Elaine de Kooning’s work more by reputation (and a couple examples at MoMA), this series of portraits was revelatory. Obviously, especially for being at the National Portrait Gallery, this retrospective moved in tighter and tighter circles toward the famous JFK portrait but that gleams with sunlight and the way a beautiful sunny day throws the greens and yellows of the garden you’re in all around, fracturing what you see and what you can’t quite make out. These, all of them, are full of mystery and secrets and magic that gets closer, you think, to who the people being depicted were than maybe they’d ever shown.
  5. Shirin Neshat, Facing History (Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC) – I’ve been a fan of Neshat’s work for a long time so this retrospective was like gorging myself on something almost too rich to consume. The way she grasps the macro elements of history, history’s pain and the way it disfigures people with the twinned fires of love and hate but also it’s beauty, and the way she understands people is a marvel. Gorgeous works you can get lost in, a lot to say about the way the world gets created with our creation of language (this theme also resonated with me in several things on my theatre list coming soon). This was a series of varying punches that left me staggered.
  6. Walid Raad, s/t (Museum of Modern Art, NYC) – Walid Raad’s collections of photographs, videos, sculpture and fictional histories, gobsmacked me and left me babbling. It made me think a lot about the horrific situations in Lebanon over the years and how someone around my age would have processed that, and, weirdly, it made me think of the recent controversy in science fiction. This is a brilliant example of how fictionalizing and fabulism (for the latter, Raad’s “merged” sculptures from the middle east transported to the Louvre) can been tools (scalpels or daggers or stilettos or garrotes) to slice into your heart. And an example of how many stories those tools can be good for telling with emotional maturity and an eye to how big and fantastic (and sometimes fantastically horrible) the world really is.
  7. Various Artists, Sitter: Portraiture in Contemporary Photography (CCAD Contemporary Arts Space) – The CCAD space has been killing it the last few years and this year, with this (before the renovation) and the work after the renovation to create a better flow for the galleries has made it a force to be reckoned with for modern art in Columbus. This group show of 27 photographers really dug deep into what portraiture means now and was full of alive, striking, political, rich, sexy, intense work.
  8. Pablo Picasso, Picasso Sculpture (Museum of Modern Art, NYC) – I’m on the record as not being the biggest Picasso fan. All credit to his craft and his influence but most of his work I just don’t love. This was an exception. Seeing this many of his sculptures together had a delirious, vertiginous effect that actually made me want to go deeper and stay longer and talk about it more. This was also, by far, the best arranged and curated exhibit I saw, Ann Temkin and Anne Umland made this arrangement of sculpture both feel excavated and timeless and flow in a way that felt intensely personal and real.
  9. Catherine Opie, Portraits and Landscapes (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Opie, long a favorite of mine (who also had work in Sitter), took a step into something almost resembling Renaissance painting with her photographs here. These rich, dark portraits of her social circle, often naked or half naked but with expressions and clean lines that summoned a deep distance encouraged me to look again and again. Just as intriguing are the blurred-almost-to-abstraction landscapes that break up the intensity of the gazes like a note of sensual dissonance. She’s not here to comment on the souls of these people and she’s not here to pass any judgment. There are no easy answers, no pat summations, in this body of her work and we’re richer having it.
  10. Charles Atlas, The Waning of Justice (CCAD Contemporary Arts Space) – Atlas is another perennial for me but this doomsday clock over gorgeous landscapes and abstract concepts leading into a room where the larger-than-life figure of Lady Bunny gave a moving, hilarious monologue across a whole wall that periodically dropped out to silence was astonishing. Concern with a disappearing world turned into an aching dance.
  11. Various, Open This End: Contemporary Art from the Collection of Brian Byrne (OSU Urban Arts Space) – In general I agree with the concerns about single-collector exhibitions. That said, my understanding was this was already donated to its final destination and I was blown away by this collection of art that wasn’t just blue-chip but was also violent, intense, irreverent and wise. The curation was really stunning with pictures about race facing off against each other, corners about death. This wasn’t easily digestible and with all the big names it didn’t make concessions to being palatable and we were all the better for it.
  12. Archibald Motley, Jazz-Age Modernist (Whitney Museum, NYC) – Motley’s fascinating mix seems to obviously point toward Thomas Hart Benton, Hopper, and Toulouse-Lautrec. What I saw most was Chagall, with an assured willingness to discard any piece of a tradition he didn’t need and use exactly what of it he wanted. But his work’s in no way derivative, it shimmers and vibrates with an electricity that’s all his own and these portraits and large scenes got better and better seeing in a large group. Any fine artist working with the black experience, especially in those days, is to be considered seriously but beyond those serious concerns this was sensual, intense work, looking at an era as it started to tip over.
  13. Anonymous, Mingering Mike’s Supersonic Greatest Hits (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) – As with most good things I see, this was a suggestion of A., and it was astonishing. If you grew up a record nerd and a comic book nerd like me, this was an extra delight. Using the medium of painted record covers and show fliers, this fictional universe the artist known only as Mingering Mike created where the same songwriting credits popped up again and again and various musicians played with other groups fit together and was just off enough to have an interesting tension. Similarly to the Walid Raad, this secret history pointed toward an unknown pain with notes vaguely intimating draft dodging and the work drying up after the pardon when the artist could find a job, the characters going away when they aren’t needed anymore.
  14. Louise Fishman, s/t (Cheim and Read Gallery, NYC) – This selection of paintings was the best thing I saw in a long day wandering around Chelsea. Vibrant and full of sensuous dissonance, like a landscape run through a distortion pedal on these big canvases.
  15. Various, Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present (Wexner Center for the Arts) – This exhibit that came to the Wex after a run at Boston’s ICA opened my eyes to a whole new medium in a way that doesn’t happen much anymore. I marveled at seeing the way textile work embraces and pulls against easy connotations of domesticity and explodes into something political and angry, totemic and erotic; seeing the way it enfolds history and points toward the future. I visited this maybe a dozen times and I could have done a dozen more.