Volume 21 Issue 9 - Summer 2016

and a rhythmic Balkan folk dance.
Beauvais incorporates Renaissance-style “divisions” in the warm
and luscious Open Moonflower which is paired with the cascading
Shoveling Clouds. Carré St. Anne, the final track on this very satisfying
disc, begins quietly but gradually builds to a driving conclusion
based on a Brazilian dance form. Throughout, the recorded sound
is rich, but natural, and surprisingly free of extraneous finger and
string noise.
One thing I did not mention in the
Beauvais review was that several of the tracks
put me in mind of the Paul Winter Consort
and how classical guitarist Ralph Towner
was integrated into the fabric of that seminal
crossover band in the 1970s. I mention this
now because another package that found my
attention this past month was a reissue of the
1996 CD Pete (LMUS 0032) along with the
DVD Living Music Festival 1982 (LMU-45) featuring Pete Seeger and
the Paul Winter Consort, on Winter’s Living Music label (paulwinter.
com). Released 20 years ago when Seeger was 77, Pete – Pete Seeger
and Friends brings together Joanie Madden (pennywhistle), Howard
Levy (harmonica), Paul Winter (soprano sax), Paul Preston (banjo,
mandolin) and three different choirs, Gaudeamus, the Union Baptist
Church Singers and the Cathedral Singers, in 18 songs showing the
breadth of Seeger’s interest and experience. From straightforward folk
songs like Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, through protest, pro-environment
and pro-humanity offerings, Garbage, To My Old Brown Earth
and My Rainbow Race, and to storytelling, Huddie Ledbetter Was a
Hell of a Man, and traditional songs like The Water is Wide, we are
presented with many facets of one of the most influential folk singers
of the 20th century, someone who brought so many people together
over the course of a career that spanned almost eight decades.
The DVD is a bit of a time capsule. Recorded at the Living Music
Festival in 1982 when Seeger was a sprightly 63, the footage never
saw the light of day until after his death in 2014 when Paul Winter
sought out filmmaker Phil Garvin who fortunately still had the raw
footage. The festival, organized by Winter in the Lichtfield Hills of
northwest Connecticut, featured the Paul Winter Consort in selections
from their album Common Ground, singer Susan Osborn and
the Brazilian Pe de Boi Samba Band. Seeger performs an extended solo
set singing in English, Yiddish, French and Spanish, accompanying
himself on banjo, 12-string guitar and block flute. He also collaborates
with the other performers and as you would expect there is
lots of audience participation. It is vintage Seeger and a wonderfully
nostalgic look at peace festivals of days gone by. There are bonus tracks
recorded at the “Pete-nic” at Winter’s farm in 1997 and a five minute
solo performance by Seeger for the Harriet Beecher Stowe Society in
2005 on the 40th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” Pettus Bridge
March in Selma, Alabama. Although his voice had almost disappeared
by that time, his energy and conviction had not flagged. It is a moving
performance.
The CD/DVD set was supported by Music for the Earth, a non-profit
foundation dedicated to “exploring ways that music can be used to
enrich the lives of human beings and awaken a spirit of involvement
in the preservation of wildlife and the natural environment of the
Earth” – things to which Pete Seeger devoted his life and his art.
Chaim Tannenbaum is another who has
been involved in the folk music scene for
more than half a century, albeit in a peripheral
role. Peripheral that is if you’re not part of
the Wainwright/McGarrigle musical dynasty.
The erstwhile professor of the philosophy
of mathematics and logic has been an integral
part of that extended family throughout
the decades, managing to stay as friend and collaborator with both
Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle in spite of their breakup,
frequently performing with Wainwright and with Kate and Anna
McGarrigle and mentoring Loudon and Kate’s precocious offspring
Rufus and Martha. Tannenbaum is a multi-instrumentalist with a
distinctive voice who can be heard on many of the recordings of this
family compact; his production credits include the album Therapy
which marked Wainwright’s return to recording after a three-year
hiatus in 1989.
Evidently happy in the shadows, it took much persuasion from
Tannenbaum’s friends to embark on this voyage to centre stage. His
belated debut album includes a number of traditional pieces – Coal
Man Blues, Moonshiner, Mama’s Angel Child – and the gospel song
Farther Along and Harburg/Rose/Arlen’s It’s Only a Paper Moon.
But it’s not all old-timey fare and Tannenbaum turns out to be a fine
storytelling songwriter too – the CD opens out to a double panel with
four paragraphs of prose I initially took to be a memoir, but which
turn out to be the lyrics for his song Brooklyn 1955. The booklet
includes extended encomiums by Wainwright (heard in harmony
vocals on several tracks) and by record producer (not this record)
Joe Boyd. Chaim Tannenbaum was produced by Dick Connette and
released on StorySound Records (storysoundrecords.com). This disc
is not just for aficionados of the Wainwright-McGarrigles, but it will
be of particular interest to them. Highly recommended.
Concert note: Chaim Tannenbaum launches his eponymous CD at
Toronto’s Tranzac Club on Sunday June 12.
I told you that Shakespeare would reappear
later and here he comes. April 23, 1616 is the
assumed date of the death of the Bard and
to mark the 400th anniversary Deutsche
Grammophon has released Take All My Loves
(4795508), a setting of nine Shakespeare
Sonnets by the above-mentioned scion of
the Wainwright-McGarrigle dynasty, Rufus
Wainwright. It is an eclectic offering, further
exploring the singer-songwriter’s interest in blending the worlds of
pop and high-art culture. There are readings by Siân Phillips, Frally
Hynes, Peter Eyre, Carrie Fisher, William Shatner and Inge Keller,
while the vocals are primarily shared by Austrian soprano Anna
Prohaska and Wainwright himself, with the participation of Florence
Welsh, Martha Wainwright, Fiora Cutler, Christopher Nell and
Jürgen Holtz.
The project grew out of an invitation from director Robert Wilson
back in 2009 – the 400th anniversary of the publication of the sonnets
– to set some of them for a production of the Berliner Ensemble,
a theatre company founded by Bertold Brecht in 1949. Although
Wainwright’s interest in the poems dates back to his youth when
he was encouraged to read them by his mother, they have been of
ongoing interest in recent years. Following the cabaret style production
in Berlin replete with garish costumes, the San Francisco
Symphony commissioned Wainwright to orchestrate five of the
sonnets for the concert hall, three of which appeared on his 2010
album All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu.
The current production is kind of a mixed bag, with lush full
orchestral accompaniments featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra,
smaller settings with the Berlin String Section and a number of
tracks with pop band instrumentation. All of the sung sonnets
are introduced by a dramatic reading of the text, with the exception
of Wainwright’s performance of Take All My Loves (Sonnet 40)
which incorporates Marius de Vries’ recitation into the body of the
song. Prohaska’s voice, celebrated across a repertoire that spans
three centuries, is a highlight, especially in the gentle A Woman’s
Face (Sonnet 20) and the wickedly dramatic Th’Expense of Spirit
in a Waste of Shame (Sonnet 129). Wainwright’s distinctive voice is
particularly effective in the title track, but his reprise of A Woman’s
Face is something of a letdown with its straightforward pop arrangement
and sensibility.
The extensive booklet includes an introduction by British actor
Peter Eyre, full texts, translations and production credits. What is
missing is an explanation of why two of the sonnets are presented in
German necessitating the translations, or more properly the English
originals, of All Dessen Müd (Sonnet 66) in a cabaret-like arrangement
and Farewell (Sonnet 87) sung beautifully by Prohaska. I assume
this has to do with the Berliner Ensemble origins of the settings, but it
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