More information on Jay's Performances
with Orchestras - Click Here
Music and storytelling are time-bound arts with some shared elements;
introductory and linking material, suspense, repetition and variation,
climaxes and so forth.
So it shouldn't be surprising when they get together in a mutually
enhancing way, as they did twice Sunday afternoon when the Indianapolis
Symphony Orchestra's Family Series opened at the Circle Theatre.
Jay O'Callahan, a lanky Massachusetts storyteller, was the afternoon's
featured performer, with his original adaptation of Peer Gynt stories
to go with Edward Greig's suite of the same name.
With a voice that encompassed booming heights of emotion and nearly
whispered depths of mystery, O'Callahan spun his tales with interludes
by the orchestra of four movements of Grieg's music, one of them
repeated at the end.
Caught at the 2 o'clock concert, O'Callahan displayed remarkable
timing and a sense of theater that went beyond the way he used his
speaking voice to his gestures and postures. The physical aspects
of his art were just as spare and packed with meaning as his eloquent
text.
The orchestra accompanied its storytelling guest with complementary
picturesqueness under the baton of William Henry Curry. In particular,
the string sections captured the opposite moods of Anitra's Dance
and Ase's Death with spirit and discipline.
When O'Callahan wasn't on stage, the drop in excitement was palpable.
The warhorse from Lohengrin was saddled and ridden with mastery
as well as vigor, but The Sorcerer's Apprentice was given a cool,
balanced appraisal. This was an Apprentice with both feet on the
ground.
Where Curry's straightforwardness perhaps sold the music short was
in two movements of the Berlioz symphony - March to the Scaffold
and Dream of a Witches' Sabbath.
The March sounded especially restrained. Such a detail as deliciously
grisly as the "plunk, plunk" that traditionally signals the moment
the protagonist is dispatched was simply glossed over. And Dream
of a Witches' Sabbath was almost as free from murk and dread as
if it were a kind of 19th century Jukebox Saturday Night.
Despite notes in the printed program, the lack of a spoken introduction
to the two excerpts was regrettable.
Curry might have provided as helpful a guide to the music as he
had before the performance of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. At least
that would have brought a rather plain performance closer to the
zest of narrative art as demonstrated by O'Callahan.
Top
of Page
|
