OAKLAND'S DOWNTOWN REVIVAL
                                              By D. Rane Danubian
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of April 20-27, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 93
          OAKLAND---Suddenly there’s a vitality in downtown Oakland entertainment, which for so long bordered on the nonexistent. True, tere’s still rampant vacant retail space. But the newly refurbished Fox Theatre is pulling in suburban crowds, night after night. Meantime  two blocks away, the considerably larger 2,992-seat Paramount Theatre (another pre-Depression movie palace) consistently pulls in some 2500 loyalists a night for the Oakland East Bay Symphony concerts.
            Music Director Michael Morgan is something of a Merlin, with a homey, humorous introduction for all the OEBS concerts. Undeniably, having a black music director makes a difference demographically---the symphony finds a fifth of its audience is African-American, four times the national average. And the orchestra has some black players as well, which puts them in the forefront of integrated symphonic ensembles.
            The April 17 concert’s “Spring” theme was shot down with the cancellation of “The Rite of Spring” replaced by another of Stravinsky’s brilliant ballet scores, “Petrouchka,” for budgetary reasons. Perhaps because of resultant limited rehearsal time, the orchestra did not show at its best, but a sterling exception was principal  William Harvey, producing the stirring trumpet solos throughout. Concertmaster Zhao Wei also contributed with reliable fervor.
            Forty-year-old Mark Lane Weiser’s scenes from “The Story of Tocatta (sic) and Fugue” for string orchestra is a benign reminiscence of a time without world wars, A-bombs, terrorists and major recessions. Distilled down from a film score, the USC professor produced a langorous piece in British-pastoral style, ranging over a seven-note lyric theme in the lower strings, then a pizzicato toe-tapper, a touch of Glassy minimalism, a subtle passacaglia, and ultimately a wild ride on broken chords yo-yoing over all four strings, all squeezed into nine minutes.
            Rimsky-Korsakov had time on his hands. He wrote leisurely pageant operas. In his “Russian Easter Overture” (1888), there are pauses, as though he were a church organist making registration changes, pulling and pushing stops. And, having hit on a choice melody,  he repeats himself ad infinitum. But it’s a splashy piece, with a lot of brass that plays much too loudly, and it fits the “spring” theme to a T.
            Morgan led the orchestra with confidence, but only occasional excitement.
            The concert concluded with Sara Buechner in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
            Oakland East Bay Symphony, Michael Morgan music director, at the Paramount Theatre, Oakland, March 17. For info: (800) 745-3000, or go online. www.oebs.org

        ©D. Rane Danubian 2009
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        D. Rane Danubian has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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