STOOKEY'S PREMIERE: A RISQUÉ  AFFAIR                                               
                                                        By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Nov. 16, 2008
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 35
          OAKLAND---A full moon shone overhead. A balmy night in November. What better setting for a love-&-sex  story in the symphony hall?
            The unlikely premiere piece “Zipperz,” an all-Bay-Area production, presented an immensely clever “zippered” libretto by Dan Harder dominated by the overlapping interjections of the two hip young lovers. Before one can finish a sentence, the other smitten lover chimes in, sometimes finishing the thought, sometimes diverging, sometimes talking over one another, sometimes ending in duet. This “zippered” construction---a novel approach, quite rare in music-theater---was used to marvelous effect within the score by Nathaniel Stookey, 38, tracing the first encounter, the first kiss, the first flash of magnetic attraction, the inevitable consequence, and the doubts and exuberances that follow. Much of it is in comic-strip thought balloons, not  conversation.
            The 39-minute piece in five scenes  worked very well when heard at its inaugural Nov. 14. Its jazzy, Broadway-musical connotations suggest the singers should best link up with a small stage band with trap set in a rearranged score, instead of with the far larger and costlier Oakland East Bay Symphony. Stookey’s score is syncopated, in the musical milieu where  Leonard Bernstein thrived like nowhere else. It makes for a charming, witty entertainment suitable for pops concerts, where people accept microphones on the vocalists, without skimping on the sensual side of relationships. The amplification too definitely needs more work; people at both the front and back of the hall all complained about inability catch much of the witty wordage too choice to miss, even when projected in semi-spoken style.
            The hit of this piece was singer Eisa Davis, a pert interpreter with the frame of a fashion model and a delivery reflecting her musical-comedy side. Both she and the boyfriend (Manoel Felciano) could have profited from more rehearsal time, which could free them from being locked so tightly to score-reading.
            This world premiere serving as keystone to open the 20th season of the OEBS  energized and entertained the crowd at the Paramount Theater, who had little concept of just what the Stookey-Harder “soaPOPera” would offer.
            Music Director Michael Morgan must love Prokoviev’s “Romeo Juliet,” whose excerpts (from Suites Nos. 1 and 2) he led again, just three weeks after similar duty at the Oakland Ballet. But on stage, the music of R&J is a grand  and glorious thing of enlarged dimensions---there is no way you can squeeze six contrabasses, among others, into the pit for ballet.
            And Morgan lit into the neoromantic score with passion and flamboyance, clearly in a music he adores as much as we balletomanes. He grasps the score, shakes it, energizes it---and conveys it admirably.  With the “Death of Tybalt,” for instance, it’s not just Tybalt, it’s the whole world crashing down resoundingly around the future of R&J, who are then doomed, both as lovers and as living beings.  At the other extreme, the tender, moving divided cello section in the “Friar Lawrence” segment made this whole assemblage sound like a first-class ensemble. I relish the solos on saxophone (David Henderson), rarely encountered in the classics except in French music. Other notable solos: Concertmaster Zhao Wei and principal cellist Daniel Reiter.
            The concert opened with a throw-away, perfect for those of us with an attention span of two seconds or less: The quixotically shifting “Jazz Symphony” (1927)  by George Antheil, spotlighted the effective trumpet trio of Williams Harvey, Leonard Ott and Owen Miyoshi. Of course it’s a dreadful piece, but it’s fun, and lasts only eight minutes. Fortunately, thanks to the Prokoviev, there was at least one composer who really knew how to orchestrate.    
            MUSIC NOTES---The African-American community, too rarely found at most symphony concerts, turns out impressively in the agreeably mixed OEBS audience, in good part because of Morgan, who is himself black (as is Davis as well). Other orchestras would do well to study the Oakland model in order to attract fast-growing minorities who are too often absent from subscription concerts, so that orchestras can serve the entire community, not just fragments thereof. 
            Oakland East Bay Symphony, Michael Morgan, music director, in Antheil, Stookey, Prokoviev. Paramount Theater, Oakland. For info: (510) 625-8497, or go online. 

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2008
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           Paul Hertelendy 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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