Nina

Here's a peek -- shot during a very casual rehearsal -- at what'll be on tap when Malcolm Kogut and I bring our cabaret show to Steamer No. 10 Theatre (500 Western Ave., Albany, NY) at 7 PM on New Year's Eve.

Good Sports

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s nice to report that Maggie’s Café and Sports Grill is still going strong. It’s not a place I’d visit regularly – I have trouble when so many TV screens surround me – but I paid a pleasant visit a decade ago, as the report below attests.

                                                                                             

AS THE COWBOYS AND THE PACKERS TOOK to the field, a roar went up from the throng. “I can’t believe how many people are here tonight,” said Maggie Smith, whose eponymous café recently reopened, after a ten-month hiatus, as a sports pub. “This is my busiest night in a long time!”

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Formerly an Italian restaurant, Maggie’s suffered a fire last November – “Just as I was about to do all my Christmas parties,” she laments – and had to undergo extensive renovations. During this period, she decided to change the style of the place.

“People don’t want to pay too much for food,” she reasons. “Not with gas prices and other expenses being what they are.” And so she changed the layout, the look, the menu. All pretense of fanciness was dropped, pub fare moved to the fore, and TVs went in. Lots of them. Eighteen jumbo-sized high-definition screens, surrounding you with a numbing area of visuals and sound, typically tuned to any number of simultaneous sporting events.

Staying on Your Toes

From the Vault Dept.: This year, the Albany Berkshire Ballet gave its 43rd annual tour of “The Nutcracker,” which played at The Egg in Albany on Dec. 9 and had performances as far afield as Pittsfield and Springfield, Mass., and Burlington, Vermont. Here’s my review of what came to Proctors in Schenectady 30 years ago.

                                                                                    

ISN'T IT ASTONISHING how far-fetched a plot can be and still convey a spirit of Christmas? “The Nutcracker” is downright absurd, wandering as it does through fantasy into sci-fi, going from simple anthropomorphism into a snowbound ethnic pageant.

A more recent "Nutcracker" photo
from Albany Berkshire Ballet

Yet there’s magic in the ballet yet, as was evidenced by the Berkshire Ballet’s production yesterday afternoon (and evening) at Proctor’s Theatre. Princes and queens, fairies and angels and a swarm of children took to the stage to present the tale of the little girl who saves her Christmas nutcracker from destruction by a horde of angry mice – and is rewarded by a trip to the Kingdom of Sweets.

Ashley White danced the part of young Clara for the matinee with laudable grace; she played the part of the holiday-happy kid with no affectation, and did the most difficult part – watching the Act Two progression of fancy dances – with perfect aplomb.

The Magic Baton

ARTURO TOSCANINI WAS BORN IN 1867, and this sesquicentennial year has been marked by events that include a significant new biography by Harvey Sachs, a number of reissues of Toscanini recordings, and a tribute by conductor Steven Richman and the Harmonie Ensemble/New York.

Given Toscanini’s significant reputation on the podium – and its recorded evidence – this was a rather brazen action. Richman has his own praiseworthy recording legacy, with repertory ranging from Gershwin and Grofé to Stravinsky and Copland; “Toscanini 150th Anniversary” (Bridge Records) features some of Toscanini’s less-frequently programmed works, all of them in the pops-concert realm.

The point of it is not to re-create Toscanini performances, and there really is no need to compare. Richman and the Harmonie Ensemble do excellent work here. And the game of comparison is throttled from the start, because the disc starts off with Verdi’s “Aida” overture, which isn’t what you typically hear in front of that opera. As Sachs’s liner notes point out, Verdi discarded this overture in favor of the originally written prelude that endures as the opening, but Toscanini was able to recreate this unpublished work from memory for a single performance – 14 years after a study session of a score lent by Verdi’s heirs. Not surprisingly, it’s a stirring work, and I can’t help but think of Toscanini as I hear the forceful attacks and exciting dynamic contrasts Richman achieves. So much for not comparing!

Stompin’ at the Savoy

From the Recent Past Dept.: Here’s a recent look at the current occupant of a key Lark Street space that helps give Albany what little reputation for hipness it might enjoy.

                                                                                        

IT WAS A TRIP BACK IN TIME, but with more of a hipster look. My wife and I visited the year-old Savoy Taproom on Albany’s Lark Street one weeknight last week, for which we parked in the nearby park and strolled the neighborhood where our decades-ago courtship took place. And once again we threaded our way past the busy bar to the dining-room entryway, where we were seated at one of the dozen tables that ring the small room.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

It’s the old Justin’s all over again. Yet it isn’t. As co-owner Jason Pierce explained, one of his goals “was to create an atmosphere in which people of all ages and from all walks of life could come in and enjoy a drink and conversation and music and have a plain old good time.”

He partnered with Lark Street Business Improvement District chairman Dan Atkins to open the place. Atkins has been in the restaurant business all his life: “I used to be general manager of the Brown Derby, and I’ve been in kitchens since I was nine.” He echoes Pierce’s thought, saying, “You can come in in work boots or in your suit – there’s something for everybody. We get a nice, diverse crowd, and brunch has done well – we get a lot of families. We had to buy highchairs, which is something we’d never thought of, but we were happy to do that.”

Sing Hallelujah!

Where Was I Again? Dept.: Not far from this piece in my files was another holiday event I took in three decades ago. And how much less misanthropic I sound here than in this recently written screed!

                                                                                           

WE GET SO ACCUSTOMED to Proctor’s Theatre as the sort of area uncle of show business, introducing us to talented friends, that it’s a surprise to be reminded of the theater’s own production ability.

Allen Mills

A few times a year, almost shyly, the theater sponsors its own show, but its Christmas bash tops them all. And this year, the fourth such, it topped anything that has come before. We could get used to this sort of thing.

“The Christmas Show” – they dropped the “Old-Fashioned” from the name this year – brings together a roster of local talent that covers most of the entertainment bases. There’s the Mighty Wurlitzer, of course, under the deft hands of Allen Mills; but add to that a couple of choruses, dancers galore, and scenery and effects aplenty.

Under the direction of Maria Bryce, this edition of what ought to be an annual event at least until the second coming took the best of what we saw a year ago and improved it. Making full use of the stage certainly helps. As if to flex their muscles right at the start, the crew gave us a village street complete with the Mohawk Valley Chorus, overcoated and scarved, singing “White Christmas” under a snowfall.

Winter Lights

IT’S BRUTALLY COLD TODAY, with a wind that crisps the edges of the cold air and chases it up your trousers. I’m in a coffeeshop – a food co-op, actually – working in the pleasant coffee-consumption area even as my ankles grow numb. The front doors are whistling. When customers enter, they’re hunched and red-faced, gripping their collars. A light snowfall blows at a forty-five degree angle.

Such weather works alongside the commercial pressures of holiday ads and music to never let us forget that Christmas approaches. There may have been a time when this holiday offered a pleasant distraction from the weather’s changes; now it seems to be an additional burden.

I recently acquired a $20 laser gadget that shines a merry dance of green and red pinpoint lights against whatever you wish to thus illuminate. Having long wished to drape Christmas lights over a large pine tree that adjoins my house, but lacking the resources to bring in a cherry-picker to facilitate the task, I aimed the gadget at the tree and was rewarded with a light show somewhat approaching the result I desired. It delights my wife. Can’t ask for more.

Mankind Was My Business

Where Was I? Dept.: Looking back thirty years, I was reviewing my butt off. Here’s one example, one of the many productions of this piece I’ve seen, which doesn’t count the productions I’ve been in, including several teen years playing Marley’s Ghost, lifting my characterization wholesale from Michael Hordern. Matt Kamprath made a career out of playing Scrooge – the accompanying photo is very recent.

                                                                                        

THE NEBRASKA THEATRE CARAVAN’S highly literate version of “A Christmas Carol” filled the house at Proctor’s Theatre Thursday night as the saga of stingy Scrooge was given a Currier & Ives look and a top-notch performance.

Matt Kamprath as Scrooge and Sarah Kloster as the
Ghost of Christmas Past | Photo by Christian Robertson

Charles Jones’s adaptation made generous use of the Dickens original as we moved from street to countinghouse to bedchamber; the familiar lines of the opening narrative were given to some of the merchants of the town even as they set a holiday mood with traditional songs of the season, songs like “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Wassail.”

The few pieces of set turned or were flown to create scene after scene; combined with authentically detailed costumes and an imaginative lighting design, there was a film-like feel to the flow of action, very appropriate to this dreamlike story.

Matt Kamprath played Scrooge with a good portion of wit sprinkled over the nastiness, enough to make us believe that the man truly was redeemable. Short of stature, with a nasal Lionel Barrymore voice, he pranced around in nightshirt and cap with the energy of a dozen Gilbert & Sullivan patter song men.

The Cursive Curse

IT WAS A BIRTHDAY GREETING for my wife, many years ago. A gift, lavishly wrapped (for me, the introduction of scotch tape into the wrapping process makes it lavish), with a handwritten letter detailing my adoration. “I love the present!” she cried, tearing the paper off the whatever-it-was. “And a letter!” She peered hopefully at the page, then lowered it. “But I can’t read it.”

The author with his Smith-Corona, c. 1975

Not many can make sense of my scrawl, which isn’t surprising: I never learned to write. In other respects, I was a precocious little bastard, a fluent enough reader by kindergarten that I was invited to read to the other kids at the end of the day while the teacher cleaned up. In first grade, when we were split into learning-to-read groups, I was given one of them to instruct. Needless to say, my classmates despised me.

We are speaking of a time in the dim, pre-computer past, when a number-two pencil was a needed companion and the taking of classroom notes required not only a written approximation of the teacher’s talk but also a sequence of margin-busting doodles, visiting ever-greater horrors upon the cruelly rendered teacher as that talk droned on and on.

During the opening weeks of second grade, it was decided to skip me to third. Friendless as I was, I hoped for a fresh chance with these fresh faces – but I was an interloper. In the long run, I was ruined both socially and academically, and it started with penmanship.

Yates of Heaven

From the Food Vault Dept.: Thirty years ago I decided to pack it in as a restaurant reviewer. I’d done it for two years and the grind had worn me down. I took a two-year respite and was begged to resume – which I would do for another quarter-century. That’s a lot of pasta. Here’s my penultimate piece before that break, visiting an eatery that won a great reputation, closed after a couple of years, re-opened briefly as The Pasta Factory, and then gave way to an intermittent succession of bars, more suited to the neighborhood. As sometimes happened in my reviews, I tried a different approach, the intended whimsy of which now seems to me pretentious.

                                                                                               

COME ALONG AND BE MY DATE for dinner: we’re going to Yates Street in Albany, a restaurant that has as its name its own address, and I’d like you to take a look at what makes this place so special.

Its location, on an out-of-the-way but attractive street, reminds you of the little gems of restaurants tucked away on the side streets of New York, London, Montreal. But it isn’t on a street of restaurants: there’s a laundromat nearby, and the inevitable Price Chopper.

Inside you’ll see first of all the old, long bar, a big mahogany affair installed around the turn of the century by a local brewery. Beyond it, the dining room, its walls lined with dark wainscotting that meets, halfway up, the cream-colored tin that also covers the ceiling.

There’s the look of an old saloon about it: appropriate to a place that once served the men who ruled Albany. About four years ago the building was bought by partners Linda Leyden-Bernal and Ken Linden, who turned it into a top-notch restaurant – something Albany always canuse – that, despite favorable reviews from as far away as Manhattan, still could attract a few more clients.

Love Is in the Air

WHAT’S MOST ENDEARING about the story that gives us “She Loves Me” is its improbability. We need to see two lonely people despise one another even as they pine for an idealized version that the other represents through correspondence. It’s a musical with a Christmas theme, and as holiday entertainment, it’s more probable than seeing a succession of ghosts show up – and less overdone.

Marc de la Concha, Julia Burrows, Michael McCorry Rose,
and David Girard in theREP's "She Loves Me."

As theRep’s December offering, it couldn’t be better – as a choice and as a production. It’s old enough to be fresh, and timeless enough to be up-to-the-minute.

It’s a ‘30s story (a play, in fact) that became a ‘60s musical – although it also spawned three motion pictures. It fell naturally into the hands of director Ernst Lubitsch, a German refugee, whose 1940 film “The Shop around the Corner” took the wistfulness of Miklós László’s play into the unique Lubitsch world of romantic longing and sexual sophistication.

Come, They Told Me

THANKSGIVING SEEMS MORE AND MORE subsumed into the Christmas frenzy, if the displays of lights in my neighborhood are any sign. Not all waited until Friday to flip the switch, although the blow-up Santas didn’t start billowing until this week.

Artie Shaw

Visually startling though some of these buildings and lawns may be, they don’t provoke anything approaching the trauma that hits me when the Christmas Muzak comes to town. It used to ease into our ears, with one such song only once in a while as December began. Thirty-some years ago I worked for an AM daytimer, a low-watt radio station that played big bands and jazz, and the general manager gave me a formula for slipstreaming in the holiday juice: “First week of the month, one song out of every four. Second week: double that. Don’t make it all Christmas music till a week before.”

Would that were still the case. From gas station to coffee shop to shopping mall, we’ll be hearing the angels on high non-stop from now. Perhaps this has helped fuel my Christmas retreat, as my wife and I haven’t bought (or stolen) a tree these past couple of years, and we celebrated last Christmas in the Jewish style, with dinner at a Chinese restaurant, which we plan to do again in a scant few weeks.

Let me harken (or herald) some previous thoughts on the matter: There’s this piece, a fuller look at my relationship with the end-of-year music, and this piece, in which I found more to gripe on pretty much the same topic. You’re welcome to listen to whatever you wish, but I prefer to exercise choice and attention. Which probably means I’ll be spending the holiday with the likes of Artie Shaw.

Delhi Meet

SOMETHING (FOR US) COMPLETELY DIFFERENT was the watch cry as this year's Thanksgiving planning commenced, and somebody (my daughter, I'm sure) came up with the idea of Indian fare -- a few of the classic Punjabi dishes we know from Indian restaurants. We turned some late-season tomatoes into a terrific chutney, and we were off. I found seasonings like asafoetida and fenugreek leaves in local Indian-food stores, and soon we were wringing panir out of curdled milk and coloring basmati rice for the right biryani look. The only item I purchased were the papdum. Thanks to a recent acquisition of chafing dishes, we presented it as a buffet, breaking the theme only for dessert. Menu below. And here are links to 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and all the menus before then.

Among Your Souvenirs

From the Theatrical Vault Dept.: Some of us simply worship Florence Foster Jenkins, and have done so since long before the movie came along – and even before Stephen Temperley’s play hit Broadway. It was a relief, when seeing it there, to note that her legend was well respected, and I was delighted to see the same degree of respect in the production that played earlier this year in Catskill and Fort Salem, two small New York towns where theater is a luxury.

                                                                                                 

Perhaps it was a more genteel time back in the ‘30s and ‘40s. The salon audiences for whom Florence Foster Jenkins performed stifled their laughter and applauded their support. They were a patrician bunch. Cole Porter never missed her Ritz ballroom concerts.

Jay Kerr and Alison Davy | Photo by John Sowle

The consensus is that Mme. Jenkins was wildly deluded, her lack of musical awareness probably aggravated by the syphilis she contracted as a teen. Thanks to a comfortable inheritance, she became a society dowager and indulged her passion for music with a voice so dreadful that those who heard her live swore that the handful of recordings she left behind barely do justice to the awfulness of the experience.

Stephen Temperley’s “Souvenir” is subtitled “A Fantasia,” and the playwright uses the facts of the woman’s life to imagine what might have driven her to inflict her unique performing style upon her friends – and, eventually, to a gloriously sold-out night at Carnegie Hall.

Floor It! The New 56K Modems

From the Tech Vault Dept.: Strictly for those who enjoy the intersection of technology and nostalgia, here’s my comprehensive look at the then-blazing 56K modem technology. It ran on CNet’s site in 1997, complete with appropriate graphics – none of which I retained. So it’s all the drier in the form below.

                                                                                               

THEY KEPT TELLING US it couldn’t get faster. Each time, something faster happened. For several years, modem speeds regularly doubled. When we reached 28.8 kilobits per second, however, we were told that was it. Nevertheless, a year ago the rate crept up to 33.6K (but just try to find many ISPs at that speed). And once again we were told that was it: analog phone lines had hit their limit. The only thing faster is digital, but ISDN lines are expensive and hard to get.

Now, suddenly, we have 56.6K modems. For ease of marketing, they’re referred to as 56K modems, although U.S. Robotics, a company with massive modem market share, terms its brand X2, while Rockwell, the firm that makes the modem chipsets for the majority of other modem companies, calls theirs K56flex. Thanks to these modems, Web pages are now flying onto screens at breathtaking speed – over plain old phone lines. But the two implementations of 56K technology, while based on similar principles, are incompatible. And it’s likely that the standard eventually ratified by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) won’t be exactly one or the other. In its long history of ratifying transmission standards, the ITU has never simply adopted a single company’s proposal, so it’s not expected to happen this time – this time being around mid-1998.

Up in Flames

From the Food Vault Dept.: The life expectancy of most restaurants is brutally brief. Sakura, a hibachi steakhouse that I reviewed a decade ago, hung on for only a couple of years. It was replaced, early in 2010, by Ala Shanghai, an excellent eatery that continues to persevere.

                                                                                              

HIBACHI DINNERS – also known as teppanyake – are a cross-cultural phenomenon, making them about as authentically Japanese as many another ethnic-restaurant mainstay. But if that’s the dinner you’re looking for, you’re probably not worried about authenticity. Let that therefore not be an issue.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

It’s dinner and a show rolled into one, and, goofy as it seems as a concept, it’s no end of fun when the knives flash and the spatula spins. I’m sure you know the way it works. Start with a meat. At Sakura, your choices include chicken ($16), shrimp ($19), two grades of steak ($19 or $21), lobster ($26) and an economical veggie array ($14). Not to mention higher-priced combos ($21 to $36).

You’re sitting, of course, at a large table with a griddle in the middle. Possibly you’re seated with several strangers – it’s a communal kind of meal. A bowl of hot, easygoing miso soup starts you off, bits of tofu and scallion texturizing the broth.

An iceberg salad topped with ginger dressing follows, a dressing my daughter is so nuts about that I’m still trying to replicate it at home.

Then the show begins.

Shadow of the Rainbow

From the Vault Dept.: For no studied reason, except that this piece of mine appeared in Metroland almost exactly 21 years ago, here’s a look at the kind of musical premiere that used to be more common in the Capital Region.

                                                                                         

ALTHOUGH THE IDEA OF A REQUIEM, composed for full orchestra and chorus, is very old-fashioned, ideas of death and dying, grief and conciliation remain very current. While writing “In the Shadow of the Rainbow,” composer Timothy Luby found a compelling link. “As a singer, I was familiar with most of the major Requiems,” he says. “But I’d never studied the text before from a larger, literary standpoint.”

Timothy Luby | Photo by Martin Benjamin

The traditional Requiem Mass follows the sequence of prayers from a burial service, although Luby, like many other composers, took some liberties with the texts. He’s a traditionalist at heart, however, and was pleased to discover a reassuring aspect of the Requiem as he prepared his text. “The sequence of prayers follows the sequence of the grieving procedure. The five stages of a dying person’s grief, as described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – which also can be seen as sanctification. You find this mirrored perfectly in the text of the typical Requiem.”

Luby’s Requiem was commissioned in 1991 by Dr. Rudy Nydegger in memory of his father, Vernon Nydegger, a musician whose last few months of life were eased by Hospice care. As a founding board member of Capital District Hospice, Rudy Nydegger also wanted to draw attention to the benefits of Hospice, so the world premiere – which takes place at 8 PM Sat., Nov. 16 at the Troy Music Hall – will benefit Schenectady’s Capital District Hospice and St. Peter’s Hospice of Albany.

Great Vibrations

AS THE KING’S SINGERS eased into the end of Billy Joel’s “Lullabye,” the sonority of the shifting chords produced one of those silent audience reactions that every performer hopes for: a sense of transformation touched with a sense of awe. Six men comprise the ensemble, as has been the case for the group’s half-century of existence. The personnel has changed over the years, but slowly, slipstreaming in those replacement members to keep the sound the same.

The King's Singers | Photo by Marco Borggreve

The performance Tuesday evening at Proctors in Schenectady was a welcome return for the group, last seen here in 2010. They’re not a house-filler, which is a shame, but some intermission eavesdropping suggested that many in the audience were themselves ensemble singers and longtime fans.

A programming style has evolved over the years, placing sacred works and commissions towards the beginning, then moving into madrigals and the more popular stuff. With a just-released 3-CD set celebrating the group’s 50th anniversary to promote, most of the selections were drawn from that playlist, starting with “The Founder’s Prayer,” a decades-old setting (by Henry Ley) of a centuries-old text (by Henry VI). The closing “amen” had a slight raggedy moment in synchronizing that second syllable, and that was the last such problem I picked up as the concert moved elegantly on.

Prokofiev and a Premiere

IN ORDER TO COMMISSION THE DISCOVERY of P.D.Q. Bach’s “Concerto for Simply Grand Piano and Orchestra,” pianist Jeffrey Biegel enlisted sixteen ensembles from around the world to accompany him – and one of those stops was in Troy last Saturday, where the Empire State Youth Orchestra joined him for the work’s New York premiere.

The music of P.D.Q. Bach, thoughtfully discovered by composer Peter Schickele since the early 1960s, has been a reliable antidote to the stuffy conventions of classical-music concertgoing, and gave rise, for a few of those decades, to holiday-season concerts in Manhattan as well as performances elsewhere where the entire event was suffused with laughs. Does the music work as well when free of that context? It does, although it took a little while to loosen this particular audience – but we’ll return to that point.

This was the opening concert of music director Helen Cha-Pyo’s final season with the orchestra, a 15-year run that has maintained the vital tradition of grooming students to be the music-lovers of tomorrow, whether continuing as music professionals or not. The P.D.Q. Bach concerto was a challenging confection that shared a program with a pair of warhorses, but let’s look at the premiere piece first.

Seoul Food

From the Food Vault Dept.: In the twelve months since the piece below ran, Sunhee’s in Troy has continued to gain an enthusiastic following while owner Jinah Kim maintains an important presence in the growing Troy restaurant scene.

                                                                                                    

JINAH KIM’S OBSESSION with helping fellow immigrants began at an early age. She grew up in Latham, transplanted from her native Korea at the age of three. “I watched the struggle my parents went through,” she says. “As I grew up, I learned what was happening in North Korea, with people there fleeing or being forced to migrate, and the more I heard the more I realized I needed to learn more – and the more I wanted to dedicate myself to helping people.”

Jinah Kim | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

She has turned her sense of social responsibility to a project that only seems to make more and more sense as you examine it: a restaurant that also serves to help area immigrants.

Sunhee’s is a casually appointed space that serves an array of popular Korean items. Order at the counter, where employees are eager to help you make your choice, and the food tray is delivered to your table.

Among the rice bowl items are beef-based bulgogi ($13) and the popular bibimbap ($10), made with fiddleheads, spinach, turnips, bean sprouts, and mushrooms. A Korean New Year’s soup ($12) features dumplings and egg strips, and a spicy soft tofu stew ($11) also sports garlic and green squash. Vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options abound.