Maya Beiser’s Elsewhere at BAM (A Review)

Maya Beiser and Helga Davis performing in Elsewhere at BAM (Photo courtesy of Rebecca Greenfield)

Beth Morrison Projects
presents
ELSEWHERE
A Cello Opera conceived by Maya Beiser and Robert Woodruff
Maya Beiser, cello
Helga Davis, vocals
Music by Missy Mazzoli, Eve Beglarian, and Michael Gordon
Words by Henri Michaux and Erin Cressida Wilson
Choreography by Brook Notary
Film by Peter Nigrini
Brooklyn Academy of Music, NYC
Saturday, October 20, 2012

Written by Jeremy Shatan

The “story” of Lot’s wife – no more than a sentence in Genesis – is like a tea bag. Add the boiling water of imagination and emotion and it can expand into a fascinating and complex brew. This is precisely what Maya Beiser and her collaborators have done in “Salt”, the stunning third section of her “CelloOpera,” Elsewhere, which finished its four-night run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last Saturday. With music by Missy Mazzoli and words by Erin Cressida Wilson, the unnamed wife of Lot, who was turned into a pillar of salt in punishment for looking back on Sodom, becomes a stand-in for the suffering of women across centuries and cultures – painful torments that often seem to take place “elsewhere.”

Wilson’s lyrics turn Lot’s wife into a three-dimensional character, a woman locked in a brutal marriage (and by the end of the piece, in jail) who is forced to give up her home and looks back, not in anger or curiosity, but because she recalled “The first painting our girl ever drew – forgotten and still-taped above the kitchen sink.” In performance, Lot’s wife is embodied by the astonishing Helga Davis, a pure theater artist with a gorgeous voice and true commitment to her craft. Using precise movements and a diverse array of voices, Davis is riveting. At one point the lights behind the stage went to full brightness and I took a quick look around the nearly sold-out theater. Not one person was anything but rapt and completely focused on the performance.

Joseph C. Phillips ~ On the New Score for The Loves of Pharaoh at BAM’s Next Wave

Joseph C. Phillips, composer and founder of the ensemble Numinous, had a few minutes to discuss the premiere of his scoring of the silent epic The Loves of Pharaoh, a film by Ernst Lubitsch. Considered lost for many years, it was recently recovered and restored, and will be featured at the BAM Next Wave Festival from Oct 18-20 at 7:30 PM.

CM: Can you talk about your re-scoring of the silent film The Loves of Pharaoh? How did that come about?

Joe: Well there was a bit of serendipity involved. I went to the opening night of my friend Darcy James Argue’s wonderful Brooklyn Babylon at the 2011 Next Wave Festival. I saw another friend there, writer George Grella, and afterward we ‘crashed’ the official after-party. That’s where I happened to meet Joseph Melillo, the Artistic Director of BAM, on my way to the bar for another drink and while our conversation was fairly brief at the time and did not include any talk of performing at BAM, I did contact him about a month later to see if it would be possible to meet to discuss my music. At that subsequent meeting a few weeks later that’s when Pharaoh came up and here we are almost a year later!

Jennifer Koh ~ On Playing Violin and Einstein

Photo courtesy of Juergen Frank

Violinist Jennifer Koh had some time to talk with me about a few things: her multi-tiered project Bach & Beyond, which is both a compelling series of concerts as well as her upcoming CD. She’s also been performing in this interesting stage production you may have heard something about: Philip Glass’s opera Einstein On The Beach at BAM, where she got to not only play the violin part but also portray Einstein himself. Number one, how often do we see a concert violinist perform in any kind of opera onstage, and how often is it a female violinist portraying a male character?

In any event, look for some interesting projects from Jennifer, including the CD, some West Coast performances of Einstein, and more performances of the Bach & Beyond concerts.