Sax in the City

WHEN DAVE BRUBECK disbanded his very successful quartet in 1967, saxophone star Paul Desmond had spent sixteen years with the ensemble, achieving million-seller status with the album that featured his composition “Take Five” and acquiring a reputation as a witty, thoughtful player who seemed to know every song and solo ever recorded.

Brubeck was heading in a different direction; Desmond decided to take it easy for a while. “Desmond vacationed briefly in the Caribbean,” writes Doug Ramsey. “Back in New York, he took retirement with reasonable seriousness. Eventually, though, he succumbed to the blandishments of the Cantarino family, whose celebrated Half Note club had recently moved ... to 54th Street in New York’s midtown.” Part of the lure was the fact that Desmond lived a block away. This gig also featured guitarist Jim Hall, an old friend, with whom Desmond made a series of celebrated recordings in the early 1960s for RCA.

They were issued by Mosaic Records in 1987, in long since sold-out LP and CD sets, and have seen light of day on other labels since. They’re worth having both for the music itself, putting together a pair of cool players who interact like twins, and as a baseline from which to appreciate Mosaic’s latest contribution to the Desmond canon: The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings.

Summer Serenade

From the Musical Vault Dept.: During the peak of my concert-review years, I enjoyed many visits to the various spaces in habited by L’Ensemble, a group run by soprano Ida Faiella and vioinist Barry Finclair, with a fairly regular group of other instrumentalists rounding out each program. The one reviewed below also feaured double-bassist Jon Deak, whose B.B. Wolf was issued on a recording (“Symphonic Tales”) last year on the Naxos label.

                                                                                       

AMONG THE BEAUTIFUL HILLS OF CAMBRIDGE, in the midst of farm country, an old red barn is the summer home of L'Ensemble, a group that divides its time between here and Manhattan.

Jon Deak

It’s like a Peter DeVries set-up: You could imagine the locals, chores done, deciding to go on over to the barn ‘n hear some Shostakovich. But DeVries would be startled: this group has avid local support, and draws an audience from the Capital District as well as wetsern Massachusetts and Vermont. From the inventiveness of a program played last weekend – and the skill with which it was played – this support is well justified.

The centerpiece was a newly-written work by Jon Deak, principal double bass with the New York Philharmonic, titled ‘”Owl in Love’” and based on a Haitian children’s tale. As the composer himself explained, the story is a cross between “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Ugly Duckling;” the owl of the title falls in love with a girl named Rose Marie (Haitians, like the inhabitants of Bloom County, have no trouble mixing humans and beasts in their stories), but the owl must first come to terms with his perceived ugliness.

The piece is scored for soprano, double bass, flute, and string quartet, but the instrumentalists are called upon for much more than merely playing. Not only must the instruments imitate the animal world -- the players must do so, too. The soprano, while giving the narration in English, uses a variety of languages all invented by Deak to represent the principal characters. It sounds much more complicated than it looks and sounds, and this was the result both of the talent of the performers and the wit of the piece.

Berlioz Discovered

I CAME LATE to the Berlioz controversy by coming early to his music. Specifically, to his “Symphonie fantastique,” introduced in a high-school music class but giving off more sparks and surprises than classroom study could cover. How could this wild-eyed tribute to unrequited, blighted love not appeal to a love-starved teen? “Harold in Italy” followed – a found LP of Primrose and Koussevitzky, with side-two fillers of magical moments from “The Damnation of Faust.” So by the time I learned that Berlioz was often derided and his music critically abjured, I could only conclude that these effete music critics were out of their minds.

David Cairns is nicer about those people. He doesn’t tire of reminding us of those wrong-headed views, but he and we are in the pleasant position of seeing the fatuity of such pronouncements. He offers no scorn. In his new essay collection Discovering Berlioz, Cairns quotes a 1949 music-history book: “Musicians suffer ... from the slapdash nature of [Berlioz’s] writing, the clumsiness of his style and his incoherent and chaotic methods of composition.” As Cairns puts it, “The old received idea of Berlioz as subverter of artistic law and order continues to arouse feelings of insecurity.” It’s not Berlioz’s fault; nor should it be. There’s a stuffy parlor in the Academy, the denizens of which panic at the approach of revolutionary ideas.

Cairns has championed the Berlioz revolution through a definitive edition (in Cairns’s translation) of the composer’s Memoirs, and a definitive two-volume biography that manages to be both academically thorough and a compelling, can’t-put-it-down account of Berlioz’s tumultuous life. (Berlioz was not allowed to marry his fiancée until he’d won the Prix de Rome, a prize that forced him to spend three years in Italy, during which time she threw him over. (The sequence in which Berlioz, in drag, sneaks out of that country in order to shoot the woman, her mother, and himself is full of hilarious mishap and could have played on the stage of the Opéra-Comique.)

Indian Summer

From the Food Vault Dept.: When I moved to Schenectady in 1980, a restaurant near Mohawk Mall (now Mohawk Commons) was the only Indian eatery in the area. But the Maharajah had a staff schism, and, in 1982, a group of them opened the Sitar, a couple of miles east on Central Avenue. That restaurant was very successful for a long, long time, but finally packed it in during the summer of 2016. Here’s my 30-year-old review of the place, followed by my account of a 1986 visit.

                                                                                   

ALTHOUGH WE LAST CHECKED IN WITH SITAR in print four years ago, Susan and I usually get out to this Indian restaurant a couple of times a year. But it still had been a while. There's a new addition in back, an airy, glass-topped room that gave us all of last Saturday's daylight and none of the rain that spattered intermittently.

But the menu hasn’t changed. It doesn’t vary much, which is part of the restaurant’s success. Thanks to the careful guidance of owner Adi Irani, a delicious and accessible selection of items remains the mainstay. Nothing is too spicy, but it all reflects the very different seasoning style of the various types of Indian cookery.

And the star of the show still is the large Tandoori oven, a clay oven in a room fronted with a picture window for patron display. There a specially-trained chef wields breads and skewers of meat for the high-heat cooking that renders an item especially juicy.

With such high expectations, then, you can understand if we’re especially critical. We didn’t come away from the dinner disappointed: just concerned.

Clarion Call

YOUR VIEW OF THE EARTH may be immediately subverted by this book: most of it takes place in Australia, where the seasons are inverted and the land is often desert. But this turns out to be an excellent location from which to contemplate the renewal of the land.

Charles Massy went from being what’s considered a “traditional” farmer – applying chemicals while chasing after scarce water – to one who looked to the land itself for clues about its restoration. In his long, detailed, excellently written book, Massy takes us through various processes of regeneration. He lays the groundwork at the book’s beginning: “When a healthy agriculture puts more long-lasting carbon into the soil while minimising the loss of such carbon, this in turn has a major impact on the water cycle and its crucial role in thermoregulation (i.e., climate control) of our planet.”

And it’s not just the condition of the land that he considers. It’s also human health, which is being sapped, he explains, by four factors: the fat-rich modern diet, its nutritional scarcity, its cancerous assimilation of glyphosate, and the cumulative effect upon genetics. “What makes this quartet of factors so deadly is that we are genetically hard-wired to live off our natural environment ... while we can’t change this genetic wiring, we can change our landscapes, and thus the food and water that they supply.”

Australia’s landscape has been evolving for nearly four billion years, the last forty million (or so) of which was as an independent continent-country, and became home to its own unique biodiversity. All of which changed after 1788, when Britons arrived with their own brand of domesticated agriculture, completely unsuited to the antipodean landscape. “It was a clash between a modernising, dominating Mechanical mind and an adaptive, ancient Organic mind.” Destruction of the land and its native inhabitants went hand in hand.

What’s New Is Old Again

From the Musical Vault Dept.: While combing the files for Monday’s post, I came across this review, written a couple of weeks later. I have no surviving appointment books from 1985, so my autobiography will have to be assembled from reviews like these. At least you know where I was and what I heard!

                                                                                              

ASTON MAGNA, A MUSICAL GROUP that takes its name from the estate in Great Barrington, Mass. in which its first performances took place, makes a specialty of recreating the circumstances under which the composer might have heard his music.

Aston Magna, Great Barrington, Mass.

This involves the use of historical or historically-styled instruments and a keen study of ancient performance practices, and can be particularly appropriate to a composer like J.S. Bach, whose music has gone through two and a half centuries of various stylings. Sunday afternoon, the audience at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, Mass., was treated to a varied and innovative all-Bach program which demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of such historically-minded playing.

The five works on the program offered a commendable contrast. The opening piece, a concerto for oboe d’amore and strings, was reconstructed from Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in A, BWV 1055. That’s a practice Bach himself was fond of: transcribing his works, especially concertos, for different solo instruments; the oboe d’amore set the historical mood. Soloist Stephen Hammer made the difficult part sound easy, and was backed by an ensemble of four string players and harpsichord.

Sweet Spring is Our Time

From the Musical Vault Dept.: Can it really be that the most compelling view of musical performances now is in the rear-view mirror? I’m feeling more poignantly charged than ever as I sift through my youthful opinions – not that that makes said juvenalia the more worthwhile. Let’s go back some 35 years . . .

                                                                                

WHILE MUCH OF THE AREA is just beginning the cultural summer shift, in Columbia County the Spencertown Academy Society already is well into a summer season which, like their seasons past, offers superior chamber music performances by superior artists, many of whom live in or around that beautiful area.

David Deveau

Saturday evening’s recital by pianist David Deveau certainly maintained those high standards. He chose a program which began with a sonata by Haydn (in F Major, H. XVI:23) which dutifully served its purpose: Deveau’s technique was demonstrated with an accessible piece of music.

The two most striking characteristics of his playing also came through in this sonata, those being a masterful ability to bring forth varying moods and shifts of color from the keyboard and, on the minus side, a tendency to rush the fast passages at the expense of a savory articulation of the notes. The second movement of the Haydn sonata was particularly notable in its very baroque, Bach-like flavor, and Deveau gave a lovely baroque voice to it.

In striking contrast to the Haydn were the Debussy selections that followed, three “Estampes,” two of which were written to ape foreign musical stylings. “Pagodes” is a Debussy tour of an Oriental scene, with an unmistakeable French flavor to the Eastern sonorities; “Soiree dans Grenade” sounded very Albeniz-like.

The Stuff of Sondheim

From the Theater Vault Dept.: We’re going back 35 years here, re-visiting my piece about the Sondheim Melody Dilemma. With no Sondheim show on a nearby stage at that moment, I seized upon the cable-access showing of “A Little Night Music” to inspire this rant.

                                                                          

There’s not a tune you can hum.
There’s not a tune you go bum-bum-bum-di-dum.
You need a tune you can bum-bum-bum-di-dum –
Give me a melody!

Why can’t you throw ‘em a crumb?
What’s wrong with letting ‘em tap their toes a bit?
I’ll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit –
Give me a melody!

– Stephen Sondheim, “Merrily We Roll Along”

Elizabeth Taylor in "A Little Night Music"

STEPHEN SONDHEIM IS FOND OF decrying his naïvete as a fledgling lyricist working on his first Broadway show, which happened to be “West Side Story.” In the song “I Feel Pretty,” Maria sings the line, “It’s alarming how charming I feel.” “Right there,” says Sondheim, “you get the feeling that Noël Coward just walked into the room, where there’s supposed to be a Puerto Rican immigrant.”

With his most recent show, “Sunday in the Park with George,” taking the Pulitzer Prize (rarely does a musical achieve that honor), it’s interesting to note how far Sondheim has come since 1957 – and how he’s now perceived by theatergoers.

Re-Thinking the Kitchen

“FOR US IT'S BEEN about asking ourselves, how can we still show hospitality at such a weird time and place in our industry, when our traditional means of showing care and attention have been taken away from us?” So muses Jinah Kim, the owner of and unstoppable force behind Sunhee’s Farm and Kitchen, the Troy-based Korean restaurant that we profiled here.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

“Like every other New York restaurant, we’re restricted to takeout and delivery right now,” she says. “For our business it hasn’t been that bad. You hear about fine-dining restaurants that are being hit from 50 to 75 percent; for us, it’s closer to 30 to 50 percent. So it was easy to transition into that kind of a quick-service model.”

Kim opened Sunhee’s Farm and Kitchen on May 15, 2016, fulfilling a long-held dream – although it wasn’t, at first, of a restaurant: “I was thinking along the lines of a café or a farm, which then turned into the idea of a gathering place that would start out as a restaurant and evolve into a space where people would feel comfortable, and a place that could be a learning environment.”

To that end, she has been offering classes for immigrants, teaching English and computer skills among other subjects – but everything changed in March. “I think back to that initial week when the NBA suspended its season and things were getting really serious – and we were waiting in anticipation of what was going to happen next.” She describes a sense of vacillation between keeping the business open to continue an income stream, “but also to be able to take care of our staff and think of the well-being of our community.”

"A" is for Excellence

VIOLINIST LARA ST. JOHN’S RECORDINGS include works by John Corigliano and Matthew Hindson, a collection of folk tunes and improvisations from eastern Europe, and a pair of improbable yet uplifting CDs as part of Polkastra, an ensemble that merrily re-channels a variety of songs, classical included, into two-four time.

Her newest recording, “Key of A,” pairs sonatas by Beethoven and Franck, which would seem to be much too staid for her – until you reach track two, the second movement of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata.” It’s a theme and variations, each section marked with a repeat. But those repeats don’t go as marked: the second iterations feature variations on the variations, usually with trickier technical challenges for both violin and piano.

“That’s basically how it would have been done in Beethoven’s time,” St. John says with a laugh. “He wrote this for himself and for Bridgetower, who by all accounts was totally insane – so they would never have done a variation exactly the same way twice.”

History notes that George Bridgetower – a Polish-born, Afro-European violinist – was indeed an impulsive fellow. Forced to read from the sonata’s manuscript over Beethoven’s shoulder during its 1803 premiere, Bridgetower made some improvised alterations that delighted the composer. That they later had a falling-out had more to do with a woman than with music, and that’s why the composer changed the work’s dedicatee to the stuffy Archduke Rudolphe Kreutzer, who dismissed the sonata as too difficult and never played it.

Whose Garden Was This?

From the Computer Vault Dept.: Back in the heady days of late-’90s tech growth, I wrote for a number of computer magazines, among them the nascent Yahoo! Internet Life, which was intended to serve as a guide to the nascent World Wide Web. Here’s one of my pieces, written early in the magazine’s life. (Here’s its cousin.) It seems appropriate, with garden-planting season at hand – but let’s see how many of the sites recommended below still exist!

                                                                                

A POT OF DIRT, a little sunlight, a regular sprinkling of water – you’ve got yourself a garden. Whether you’re doing it for food or simply to admire, a garden puts you in touch with an inspiring cycle of growth and regeneration. Voltaire and Joni Mitchell both emphasized the need to enjoy quality gardening time, which at the very least is a nice diversion from the workaday world. Thanks to the many Internet gardening sites, you can at the very least wander through a virtual Eden, but the photos and how-to pieces should inspire even the most reclusive apartment-dweller to hang another houseplant in the window. The best sites combine good inline images and helpful information, and there’s a growing network of suppliers and fellow gardeners waiting to guide you--or at least sell you some seedlings and gardening gear.

The Best

The New York Botanical Garden (still here). [* * * ½] is about as close as you can get to nature without actually stepping outdoors. The handsome site promotes a garden complex located in a New York City borough, and therefore exhorts you to become a member and participate in Botanical Garden events. But those are only introductory stops on a lengthy ramble that takes you through such famous floriculture sites as the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, where you’ll be reminded of the old history of rose-giving (“a full-blown rose placed over two rose buds meant ‘we must be secret’”). Take a look at Daffodil Hill for some awesome photos and helpful cultivation tips, then continue the tour through collections of daylilies, herbs, and even an arborvitae maze for kids. Most of the pages are illustrated with beautiful photos that look even better in their accompanying larger versions.

Double-Barreled Drama

From the Theatrical Vault Dept., or, Look Who We Had in Town! Sometimes there are legitimately surprising surprises to be found in my dusty archives. Take this advance I wrote in 1984 for a visit by the British American Drama Academy with a pair of plays in repertory. “Game of Thrones” star David Rintoul headlined the cast – and I regret that I wasn’t able to see the shows in question. I regret, too, that I had no interview to go on, so I did an admirable, show-offish job of treading water.

                                                                                           

“I PRAY YOU ALL, tell me what they deserve that do conspire my death with devilish plots of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail’d upon my body with their hellish charms! Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Men should be what they seem. Macbeth shall sleep no more! I have lived long enough!”

David Rintoul, pre-GOT

So declares “Sir,” the aged actor in Ronald Harwood’s play “The Dresser.” This upsets his dresser, Norman, who remonstrates him: “Now look what you’ve gone and done ... go out, go out, you’ve quoted the Scots tragedy.”

“Did l? Macb –  ? Oh, Christ!”

Whereupon Sir is forced to leave the dressing room, turn around three times, knock before re-entering and swear. (“Pisspots.”)

When Peter O’Toole mounted a version of the Scots tragedy at the Old Vic a few years back, it was beset with mishap and fared poorly. Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” the shortest of that author’s dramas, is said to carry a curse as well as the usual share of difficulties inherent in any Shakespeare play; perhaps that’s part of its appeal.

Sequestration Two-Step

I rise at nine, or maybe ten –
There’s nothing really pressing;
I spend an hour deciding when
It’s worth the trouble dressing.

I set the coffee up last night,
And eggs and toast await;
But all that shit is down a flight:
I’ll be a little late.

The outfit I took off last night
I’ll wear again today,
And expedite the odor fight
With shots of Febreze spray.

I’m at my desk to meet my doom
(It happens every day)
As fifteen other folk on Zoom
Find nothing new to say.

Those noontime beers are so sublime,
By one, the pain’s diminished.
By three it’s dry-martini time;
By five, the bottle’s finished.

Terpsichorean Duo

From the Dance Vault Dept.: It’s easy to see what I was doing one weekend in April 1986: attending dance concerts. I reviewed two of them in the same issue of the Schenectady Gazette, I retain pleasant memories of the experiences, and I offer them below.

                                                                                    

PETER MAXWELL’S “BALLROOM DANCE THEATRE” is a show in the form of a series of dances for partners, the sort of thing linked to the name of Arthur Murray.

Peter Maxwell and partner

The performance yesterday afternoon in the Egg at the Empire State Plaza, Albany, was one of the first few this new company has given. It’s an original concept for a full-length show, it has moments of sheer wonder, and it ought to get better and better as the concept evolves.

At its best, it shows a company of four couples smoothly displaying the different aspects of a particular dance.

The tango sequence in the third act was the high point of the piece, bringing together excellent dance, attractive costumes, good music, and just enough characterization to carry through the six tango numbers.

Maxwell choreographed the bulk of the dances, with assistance both inside and out of the company. The individual couples boast long experience as partners and it shows in the dance; the challenge, then, must be to work out the method in which the dancers perform outside of their usual units.

Motion Sickness

From the Food Vault Dept.: Harkening back to the days of luxury travel . . . well, this isn’t quite it. It’s what passed for dining on Amtrak’s Montrealer in 1986, although it’s still a damn sight better than what’s offered now. Or will be, when it makes sense once again to travel by train.

                                                                                     

“OVERNIGHT TRIPS ARE WHAT train travel is all about,” I assured my wife as we planned our vacation. “You get your bedroom – for a price – and best of all, you get to eat in the dining car.”

Amtrak's "Le Pub," c. 1973

My pleasant memories came from a series of trips I took between New York and Chicago many years ago. I waxed reminiscent. “The tables have thick white cloths on them. Fresh flowers in a heavy metal vase. All of the dinner service has a great sturdiness to resist the motion of the train.

“There’s a kitchen at one end of the car, and the meal is cooked fresh, served by waiters who have been in the business for years. The closest thing to that is the feel of Hattie’s Chicken Shack in Saratoga.

“And you order on a little slip that’s placed on the table with your menu. No verbal orders. Oh, I know the choices have dwindled down to three or four and I’m sure that microwave ovens have crept into those kitchens, but still, there’s nothing like dining on sautéed filet of sole as the plains of Ohio sweep by.”

Rainy Days and Mondays

I JUST WATCHED the most forbidden movie in America. Or so it seems. Dropped by Amazon Studios and picked up by no other U.S.-serving distributor, it opened in Poland and has since garnered a respectable box-office return throughout the rest of the world. “A Rainy Day in New York” is a light comedy, skillfully executed, starring big-name stars. But it was written and directed by Woody Allen, whose name has become anathema in certain circles.

Selena Gomez and Timothée Chalamet

Unfortunately, this essay has to be as much about the Allen controversy as about the movie itself. Well; it doesn’t have to, but enough (more than enough!) ignorant bile has been spewed on the topic that I’m compelled to offer a voice of reason in rebuttal.

Let’s start with the movie. It’s the story of a romantic weekend in Manhattan beset by mishap and misadventure, chief among the former the steady titular rain. Ashleigh Enright (Elle Fanning) is a student at Yardley College, a Vassar-like liberal-arts institution. She has just secured an interview with elusive film director Roland Pollard (Liev Schreiber), which means a trip to Manhattan. This is great news to her boyfriend, Gatsby Welles (Timothée Chalamet), who grew up in that city and is eager to give Ashleigh a personal tour. All he has to do is avoid his parents, because he begged out of the lavish annual party his well-heeled mother gives.

The Opportune Overthrow of Humpty Dumpty

Guest Blogger Dept.: We welcome the return of virtuoso versifier Guy Wetmore Carryl, and another of his lively creations from Mother Goose for Grown-Ups. Remind you of anyone?

                                                                                 

UPON A WALL OF MEDIUM HEIGHT

Drawing by Peter Newell

Bombastically sat
A boastful boy, and he was quite
Unreasonably fat:
And what aroused a most intense
Disgust in passers-by
Was his abnormal impudence
In hailing them with “Hi!”
While by his kicks he loosened bricks
The girls to terrify.

When thus for half an hour or more
He’d played his idle tricks,
And wounded something like a score
Of people with the bricks,
A man who kept a fuel shop
Across from where he sat
Remarked: “Well, this has 
   got to stop.”
Then, snatching up his hat,
And sallying out, began to shout:
“Look here! Come down from that!”

The Devil You Say

From the Vault Dept.: O, how I took for granted the tours that came through the nearby towns! Even before the performing arts ground to a halt, the greater Albany, NY, area stopped welcoming tours of anything but pop-culture highlights, with a few chamber-music and jazz concerts tucked into cultural hidey-holes. Perhaps I should have been less grumpy about this “Faust,” but I’m going to say that the Devil made me do it.

                                                                                       

THERE’S ALWAYS A TANG OF DEVILISHNESS about self-indulgent pleasure, and no legend better serves that sense than that of Faust and his bargain with Mephistopheles.

Charles Gounod

The New York City Opera National Company appeared at Proctor’s Saturday night with a production of Charles Gounod’s opera of the legend according to Goethe in an exciting performance that just fell short of the kind of excellence we’ve grown to expect from this group.

That’s the problem with setting standards so high – anything less than perfect becomes a disappointment. But there certainly was no lack of talent or innovation. The sets, by Peter Dean Beck, suggested Gounod’s obsession with Catholicism by using a vast, vaulted corridor to serve with various backdrops as tavern, garden, and prison.

The cast was headed by Keith Olsen as Faust and Randi Marrazzo as Marguerite, the woman he loves and spurns. They have the youthful good looks that you miss in some of the more seasoned stars, but neither had the riveting presence that leads to stardom. Craig Heath Nirn, as  Mephistopheles, has a wonderfully evil presence and rich, deep voice, but he didn’t seem always to be in control of his singing.

Transfigured Concert

Remember Live Music? Dept.: I’ve long been in love with Pamela Frank, both as a violinist (she, not I) and on a fundamentally carnal level. But the two intertwine, in my fevered sensibility, so thoroughly that I have muted this passion for many years. I’m telling you about it now because we’re all too sequestered for it to make a damn bit of difference. Here’s my account of a memorable performance from many seasons ago.

                                                                                                 

Pamela Frank

THE OPENING EVENT of the Union College Concert Series is always a rewarding experience, and those who remained to enjoy Arnold Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night” were treated to a spectacular performance by a string sextet clearly enjoying one another’s musical company.

Those who bolted at intermission missed the concert’s highlight. They also showed an unfortunate ignorance of where the piece falls in Schoenberg’s creative life. They’re tempting the gods to consign them to an afterlife of Richard Clayderman music.

The friends violinist Pamela Frank assembled are top-flight players who, as far as I can tell, don’t perform together regularly, although a light web search yields any number of connections among them (not least the connubial connection of Frank and violinist Alexander Simionescu). But the concert proved that a like-minded ensemble of risk-takers can generate plenty of performance excitement.

Uptown, Downtown Gets Down

Remember Live Performance? Dept.: One of the most compelling shows presented at Albany’s Capital Rep nearly a decade ago was Leslie Uggams’s two-week appearance in her solo show “Uptown, Downtown.” I had the chance to meet her after the performance I saw, and she was just as lively and fascinating – and downright nice – as she seemed to be on stage. Here’s what I wrote.

                                                                                 

WHEN ALL EIGHT PIECES OF THE BAND are wailing as Leslie Uggams gives a powerhouse treatment to “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” you can’t help but be impressed by all that energy. It’s a great sound, reminding us of the majesty of jazz-inflected music and song.

Amy Sussman/Invision/AP

But Uggams’s own instrument is mutli-hued, and there’s just as much energy in the delicacy of the Goffin-King anthem “Up on the Roof” – but this one is delivered as a wistful ballad with only the affecting guitar work of Steve Bargonetti behind it, and it’s one of the show’s most magical moments.

“Uptown, Downtown” came to Capital Rep for a two-week stay, and I wouldn’t let this one get past you. A remarkable singer-actress pays tribute to her long career (she started performing while still in single digits), framed by the contrast between her uptown (Washington Heights) childhood and her eventual (downtown) Broadway career.