Saturday, August 15, 2020

bluegrass VOICE, cabaret style

Most of the recital, "Songs That Celebrate Art and Our World", was offered in black and white.
I very much liked that, as that medium allowed the details on her dress to dazzle.
It looked to be brocade, with a velvety embossing, and the high-low style was like my wedding dress (from thirty years ago).
The songstress: Emily Yocum Black.
The place: the Carson Center for the Performing Arts, Paducah, Kentucky.
She was accompanied by Cindy Miller on piano.
The bulk of the recital was right here, on this stage, with the singer facing the rear of the stage, not the empty chairs and loges.
I found that comforting, as it was reminiscent of the cabaret performances at the Lucas Theatre, with the audience sitting on the stage and looking outward.
Once I drew that correlation, the empty seats became 'normal'.
Plus, I was sure her husband was in the on-stage audience, quietly cheering her on.
(smile)

I very much liked that she loved this place where she lived and wanted to share some of its delights with us.
She did that by sometimes interspersing "something different" between the songs.
This time, she provided the backstory for "Gretchen am Spinnrade", a girl with a spinning wheel, missing her love, Faust.
And where did she read it?
Outside The National Quilt Museum, of course!

Another time, she was reading (reading), reading (reading), reading by the river!
(See that joke I worked in with a bit of Tina Turner?)
The song, "Youkali", was a tango in a French play titled "Marie Galante"... with music by Kurt Weill.
I recognized his name from the third episode of svf-8, the "lonely street" song - nice!
This song was about a soul looking for a place of solace...
ah, yes, another wistful paean!
(smile)

About mid-show, she introduced us to Brittany Martin, a fellow student of The VOICE Experience and resident of Paducah.
They performed one song, "How Can I Keep From Singing", and my favorite part was hearing them perform it as a round.
That was so sweetly done!
I'm glad they had their virtual alligators to keep their commitment to social distancing intact.
(smile!)
I'm glad this episode will be reprised at 11 AM tomorrow, as there are several songs I'd like to hear again.
In particular, the four from Jeff Blumenkrantz interest me.
Like Kurt Weill, I am unfamiliar with his works, which may just mean that my horizons need re-broadening.
I appreciate her choice of "Departure" as her final number -
well-played, Emily, well-played!
(smile!)

5 comments:

faustina said...

I'm so glad I watched again!
I had completely missed the little duet about Paducah!
SOOOOO delightful!

faustina said...

Another note: Schubert wrote the lament of Gretchen for her absent love when he was just 17 years old.
He may have been regarded as very much a man back in his day, but his hormones would still have been those of a teenager.
That certainly explains all the angst in this beautiful song!

faustina said...

"Youkali" - the first song of the recital that was in COLOR.
The song was about wishing for something that didn't exist, for "the land of our desires, the land when you quit all your troubles... hope for the heart of humans, it is in our night like a clearing, it is the star we follow, Youkali!"

Still reminds me of the point in "The Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy lands in that foreign land and the film switches to full-tilt boogie color.

Then again, maybe it's just that they forgot to return to black and white after the in-color duet with her friend, Brittany.
I think those may be Brittany's earrings that Emily is wearing for the recital at the theatre.
If so... what a nice touch, to have a reminder of their friendship to keep her company there!
(smile!)

faustina said...

About that duet: I'm glad they were careful to face forward, not face each other, while their mouths were open.

The breath, including virus-laden spittle, can travel THIRTY FEET during the vigorous activity of singing -
THIRTY FEET.

Nicely, done, y'all.

faustina said...

Perhaps this is the reason for that gorgeous golden dress!
She needed that for her "Love Is Not All", which was Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet, set to music by Jeff Blumenkrantz, and performed in the last song set of Emily's recital.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edna-st-vincent-millay#tab-poems

"... Millay began to go on reading tours in the 1920s... and for many in her audiences her appearances were memorable. Ralph McGill recalled in The South and the Southerner the striking impression Millay made during a performance in Nashville:
“She wore the first shimmering gold-metal cloth dress I’d ever seen and she was, to me, one of the most fey and beautiful persons I’d ever met.”
When she read at the University of Chicago in late 1928, she had much the same effect on George Dillon. Dillon was the man who inspired the love sonnets of the 1931 collection Fatal Interview. If Millay and Dillon’s affair conformed to the pattern of Fatal Interview, it probably flourished during 1929 and early 1930 and then diminished, but continued sporadically."

Here, as a treat, is the poet herself reading that same poem.
Wow!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvgDAOG8W6c