Trouble in Tahiti or Wherever You May Be

A friend of mine likes, “good news/bad news” jokes. He asked me once if I knew the good news and bad news about opera. He continued, “the good news about opera is you usually get your money’s worth because operas are incredibly long. And the bad news – operas are incredibly long!”

I thought of him recently, and his joke that does not apply to Leonard Bernstein’s opera, Trouble in Tahiti. This one-act opera’s running time is about 45 minutes. Perhaps for this reason it is seldom performed. Written in 1952, this opera depicts suburbia of the time, “Happily married, sweet little son…up-to-date kitchen, washing machine, colorful bathrooms and Life magazine, and a little white house in Brookline…Suburbia.” Just seven years after the end of the Second World War, funded in part by the GI Bill of Rights, suburbia had become a Garden of Eden for many families. And compared to the recent memories of World War II, the fighting and death abroad, the rationing at home, everyone’s life on hold till the war ended, suburbia certainly was Eden for many an American family.

The Next Theatre Company, Evanston, IL [http://www.nexttheatre.org] figured out an innovative way to bring Trouble in Tahiti to their audience. This opera has become the first act in the world premiere of The American Dream Songbook, described by artistic director Jason Loewith as “our hybrid world premiere music-theatre event.” After the conclusion of Trouble in Tahiti, the audience returns after the intermission for a second act titled, “The American Dream Revue” which consists of five contemporary songs written by Kevin O’Donnell, Michael John LaChiusa, Michael Mahler, Michael Friedman, and Josh Schmidt. Act One, which is Trouble in Tahiti, reveals an inner life of suburbia that doesn’t match its outer image. Act Two, “The American Dream Revue” sings songs of present day American Dreams. It left me wondering if this generation might not have any more luck in finding genuine happiness in their many and varied lifestyles than their parents or grandparents did in suburbia some sixty years ago.

The children and grandchildren of 1950s suburbia have other dreams. Many have repudiated suburban lifestyle, searching for other manifestations of Eden, through diverse careers, gentrified urban

neighborhoods and/or back to the land rural retreats to name just a few. How will these epiphanies of the American Dream look to people in another 50 years? What might our children and grandchildren’s dreams look like in 2058, and how successfully might their dreams take shape? And who will be the composers who capture these dreams in their music?

Music helps us to explore, communicate, and reflect upon each generation’s version of the American Dream. Music also often reminds us that each generation finds different and differing manifestations of their dreams, including the ever elusive American Dream. Leonard Bernstein’s short opera, Trouble in Tahiti does these things exceptional well on its own. Contextualized in The American Dream Songbook, it becomes even more focused for us today who still search for a Garden of Eden in our midst.

The American Dream Songbook runs until March 22, 2008 at the Next Theatre in Evanston, IL.

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A Whole New Mind

“Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age” is Daniel H. Pink’s subtitle of his book titled, A Whole New Mind (NY: Riverhead Books, 2005). What we are moving away from – the Information Age – is a world focused on logical, linear, computer-like capabilities. What we are moving towards – the Conceptual Age – is a world focused on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities. This book is yet another of the many books that have heralded an ongoing “paradigm shift” in our midst.

So what else is new?

The newness of A Whole New Mind, at least for lovers of music, is the author’s listing of “Symphony” as one of the six essential aptitudes – what he terms “the six senses” – that will increasingly facilitate professional success and personal satisfaction. Pink’s other five senses are Design, Story, Empathy, Play, and Meaning.

Chapter Six, “Symphony” (pp. 125-141) details this sense. “Symphony, as I call this aptitude, is the ability to put together the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair.” The author believes that symphonic thinking is best modeled by “composers and conductors whose jobs involve corralling a diverse group of notes, instruments, and performers and producing a unified and pleasing sound.”

Following each chapter devoted to one of Pink’s six senses, is a section titled, “Portfolio.” These sections have specific activities and exercises to help develop each sense. In the Portfolio section for Symphony, the author suggests listening to symphonies (no surprise here) and recommends five: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mozart’s Symphony No. 35, Mahler’s 4th Symphony in G. Major, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 in G Major. He also suggests, among other books, William Benson’s Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture.

How we go about educating our young people in the midst of this paradigm shift so many writers have documented is a challenging question for all schools today. How we go about re-educating ourselves as out of school adults who also live, move, and have our existence in this paradigm shifting world is yet another challenging question.

A Whole New Mind with its emphasis on Symphony as one of the six basic skills necessary to thrive in the world of today and tomorrow is more music to our ears.

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Amahl and the Night Visitors Revisited

The 20^th century has produced an incredible array of holiday resources, some pretty bizarre. Remember flocked trees, some orange or lavender? Remember stainless-steel Christmas trees? Then there was a reindeer named Rudolph, who permanently nosed his way into Christmas.

Amid awful manifestations of Christmas are other awe-filled representations of this holiday. My personal favorite is Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” This one-act opera in English was commissioned by NBC in 1951 to be aired over the young technology named television. It is the story of an overnight stay by the Magi at Amahl and his mother’s home as they follow the star toward Christ’s birthplace. These Magi, far from plaster figurines found in many crib scenes, are wonderfully human, delightfully eccentric, and faithfully driven people. Amahl, the young crippled boy, is a bit of a space cadet, a daydreamer. His single-parent mother, exhausted from work, has little enthusiasm for her son’s imaginative thoughts. What a great crew of humanity to birth and berth a messiah.

Back in 1951 television transmission was black and white, and confined to a TV screen in most people’s homes no larger than 14 inches. Such was the venue for my first encounter with “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” It intrigued me then, and now, more than 50 years later, this deceptively simple opera still mesmerizes me.

Menotti’s exploration into the birth of Christ is a great example of midrash, a term less familiar to Christians than to Jews who developed this unique form of storytelling.

Midrashic stories enhance biblical stories, imaginatively filling in blank spaces, expanding on underdeveloped of missing events, or casting them in a contemporary situation or language. Midrash explores biblical stories, not through analysis, but through imagination. Menotti is a master at midrash.

It’s been a while since “Amahl and the Night Visitors” has appeared on television, but live performances of Menotti’s opera happen during the Christmas season. I was fortunate to see the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra’s production of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” recently in Skokie, Illinois. This production transformed the black and white, small screen, original TV version into a colorful, full-stage, live performance. Once again, I was transfixed by Menotti’s miraculous music and story.

Trash your memories of flocked and stainless-steel trees. Silence the song about a red-nosed reindeer. Reread Matthew and Luke’s birth of Christ stories. Listen to Menotti’s midrashic Christmas story known as “Amahl and the Night Visitors.”

Merry Christmas.

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Musical Microtrend

The book, Microtrends by Mark J. Penn (New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group USA, 2007) offers a fascinating glimpse into “the small forces behind tomorrow’s big changes.” The author is best known for identifying a group of women he named, “Soccer Moms” who were critical swing voters in the 1996 presidential election.

The author defines a microtrend as “an intense identity group, that is growing, which has needs and wants unmet by the current crop of companies, marketers, policymakers, and others who would influence society’s behavior.” One microtrend Mark J. Penn identifies is the “Neo-Classicals.” He claims that “classical music is growing in popularity, not shrinking. And in the coming years, we should expect it to grow even more.” He points to the fact that in the 2000-1 season, concert tickets were up 10% from a decade earlier. In one city, even though season subscribers dropped 5%, single ticket sales increased by 46%. Likewise, the total number of classical music performances in the United States in the year 2000 grew 10% from the previous year, and increased 45% from ten years earlier. “Most industries would call that growth.”

The news gets even better: the number of students majoring in music is up by half since 1992; classical music is more popular through the Internet than in stores; half of www.classicalarchives.com subscribers are under 50 years of age; the number of Americans 55 years or older, a staple of classical music enthusiasts, will double in the next 25 years.There are other big encouraging signs and statistics for the future of classical music in this little section in Microtrends (pp. 285-288).

This microtrend is music to our ears!

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Call Me The Seeker

Because of his surname, I recently noticed a book titled, Call Me The Seeker edited by Michael J. Gilmour. He is no known relation to me. It was, however, the subtitle, “Listening to Religion in Popular Music” that caught my attention. The book is a series of sixteen articles divided into three parts: (1) Religious Sources behind Popular Music; (2) Religious Themes in Popular Music; and (3) Religion and Popular Music’s Audiences. In his introduction, Michael Gilmour writes, “…we share the conviction that spirituality is widely represented in popular music. Songwriters engage religions and their texts and explore grand theological questions, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not.” Well said, Mr. Gilmour. But it strikes me that the word “popular” could be substituted with the word, “classical;” the word, “Songwriters” could be substituted with the word, “composers,” and the sentence would be equally true. Michael Gilmour, in addition to editing this book, wrote one of the essays titled, “The Prophet Jeremiah, Aung San Suu Kyi, and U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind: On Listening to Bono’s Jeremiad .” The reference to Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and a leading figure in the current fight for democracy in Myanmar (the former Burma), is particularly poignant today given the recent crackdown in that country. In some circles, the prophet Jeremiah today might be the lesser known of these two! Michael Gilmour argues “…that the relationship of these two clues – the biblical prophet Jeremiah, and this modern-day political “prophet” and social activist – is significant for understanding All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

Music, whether popular or classical, is essentially a spiritual activity and expression. Some songwriters and composers do a better job expressing and communicating their spiritualities than others. Some audiences do a better job hearing and receiving artists’ spiritualities than others. Clearly, Michael J. Gilmour and his colleagues have heard and relate to the spiritual expressions of popular music.

I call them the seekers!

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