WKNO Culture Desk

23/08/2024

We visited Graceland Too this week, the roadside attraction in Holly Springs, that has been rescued from the wrecking ball by an Elvis fan who lives in Peoria, Illinois. Her story is one of Elvis obsession.

One die-hard Elvis fan knew she had to own a small roadside attraction in Holly Springs, a tribute to Elvis Presley. Now, she's trying to make it a destination for true believers like her.

20/06/2024

RECOMMENDED – Belvedere Chamber Music Festival, through June 22 at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church (see below for times)

It was mid-afternoon on Wednesday (June 19) when a friend asked if I wanted to pop over later for some real live classical music. Pop over where? Is classical music something one just pops over for? Yes, of course, I would pop over.

At 7 p.m. I sauntered into Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church with some Dino’s gravy on my shirt (spontaneity has its risks, I confess) and embraced the rare and fabulous treat of a one-hour concert – opening night of the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival.

Organizer Patricia Gray tells me the series of short programs – there are six in all through Saturday evening (June 22) – offer the perfect dose of mixed rep pieces, mostly solos and duos, old and new. Certainly, if one can spend an hour torturing oneself in the gym or doing laundry one can reward these efforts with a free – yes, completely free – hour of beautiful music resonating off the architecturally magnificent interior of an old Midtown church.

Every program is different and features fun musical pairings. If Lizzo taught us anything, it’s that the flute is more versatile than anyone ever imagined, and hearing it partnered with a pipe organ and, later, a horn, got me excited about all the forthcoming combos. And not a single twerk was necessary.

Do yourself a favor and pop over to one of these performances in the next few days. Meditate. Luxuriate. Bring your journal or sketchbook. Or close your eyes and let our local orchestral pros give your synapses a treat. Below is a partial schedule with what I’d dare to call highlights.

--Christopher Blank

7 p.m. Thursday, June 20 – Works by Bach, Bartok, Memphis’ own Robert Patterson and an interesting trio of oboe, clarinet and bassoon by Gordon Jacob.

3 p.m. Friday, June 21 – A song cycle by Samuel Barber, a duo for flute and guitar and an oboe-bassoon-piano trio by Poulenc.

7 p.m. Friday, June 21 – Vocal works by John David Peterson and Benjamin Britten and a new sextet by Dan Lazarescou (flute, clarinet, oboe, violin, viola and cello).

3. p.m. Saturday, June 22 – “Cabaret Songs” by Schoenberg, and a sonata for flute and guitar.

7 p.m. Saturday, June 22 – “Six American Folk Songs” for flute and piano, and Bartok’s Duos for two violins.

16/06/2024

RECOMMENDED

"The Western Park Album," Emerald Theatre Company at TheatreWorks, through June 23.

Before Katori Hall became Memphis' best-known playwright, there was Howell Pearre -- a middle Tennessee transplant who churned out more than 40 scripts before his death in 1999. Emerald Theatre Company's current revival of his most haunting (in myriad ways) play, "The Western Park Album," offers a chilling ghost story for the heat of summer.

Set in a cemetery, deceased residents of a rural Tennessee town called Western Park take turns relating stories from their complicated, colorful lives and often unseemly deaths. There are drunks, adulterers, killers, spurners and spurned, young folks and old, whose memories weave a fascinating tapestry of a community that keeps its restless spirits close in both life and death.

Inspired by Edgar Lee Masters' famous collection of poems, "Spoon River Anthology," the play likewise serves as a stark commentary on small town life and the deferred dreams of its people.

I didn't know Pearre, but I'm told he cut a Truman Capote-like figure, a description that applies to his writing style, as well -- evocative, descriptive, but also with a journalist's economy of language. The characters say much with little, leaving the imagination to color in the rest of their histories. One of my favorite monologs called "Numbers," performed by Emerald co-founder Den-Nicholas Schaffer Smith, reads like a slim resume, a collection of milestones that ends anti-climatically with a tombstone. How many millions of lives are reflected in this terse summation?

Where obituaries are made to eulogize, these post-mortem confessionals are designed to elucidate -- to reveal larger truths or perhaps warnings. (My WKNO colleague) Sally Stover's monolog about a homely woman who works behind a department store's perfume counter hawking the implements of romance that she, herself, never receives is painfully real and deeply moving. Loneliness is a powerful through-line in "The Western Park Album." In a age when the Internet and social media has amplified loneliness, the play is a reminder that the years have merely changed the silos we inhabit, not the silos themselves.

Did I mention it's also funny? Pearre's wit and smart turns-of-phrases keep grim melancholy at bay.

One aspect of this production that deserves more articulation in future productions -- and this script is certainly worthy of a future revival -- is its technical austerity. The subject matter could benefit from greater atmosphere -- musical scene-setting, transitional or liminal sounds, lighting, projections -- that would give it the tonal impact of a true "memory play." The staging lacks the creativity of the writing.

But for sheer, old-fashioned storytelling "The Western Park Album" gives audiences a chance to ruminate on death -- and life -- and the circumstances that inform both.

In some respects, Howell Pearre is like a character in this work: a playwright with great gifts who could never quite break out of his "local" author status. If there were justice in the universe, some of these monologs would be anthologized and performed in classrooms and acting competitions. For now, we applaud Emerald Theatre Company for keeping this work alive, or at the very least, fondly remembered.

-- Christopher Blank

"The Western Park Album" continues through June 23 at TheatreWorks on the Square.

http://www.etcmemphistheater.com/

05/01/2024

In case you missed it over the holidays, here's a WKNO special feature on how reporter Christopher Blank got involved with an effort to get the Orpheum's Wurlitzer organ onto a vinyl record -- an intriguing story on Wurlitzer history and what it takes to make an album the old-fashioned way.

A WKNO Radio Documentary on how a group of Memphis music lovers went on a three-year mission to get the Orpheum's Mighty Wurlitzer organ on vinyl for the first time in 95 years.

06/12/2023

Music lovers -- especially those at the intersection of organ music and Christmas music -- are invited to a free event at the Memphis Listening Lab (at Crosstown Concourse) tonight at 6:30. WKNO's Christopher Blank will lead a conversation about the first-ever recording of the Orpheum Theater's historic Wurlitzer organ. Albums, on green vinyl, will be for sale (think Christmas gifts!) and organist Tony Thomas will autograph.

19/06/2023

Tonight at 6:30 we broadcast a half-hour version of our latest Civil Wrongs series. Or follow the link below and listen at your convenience. We hope it's a powerful history lesson and also a conversation starter: what are the real cultural changes needed to fix some of the systemic problems in policing?

FULL SERIES: As college journalism students research the Memphis Massacre of 1866, they discover patterns in policing and victimization that haven't changed in more than 150 years.

17/06/2023

WE RECOMMEND
Memphis theater is cooking this summer. Some thoughts on two current shows: "Drag Queens on Trial" and "Jersey Boys"

"DRAG QUEENS ON TRIAL" by Emerald Theatre at TheatreWorks: Tonight and Sunday (June 17 and 18) are the last chances to see this funny/serious piece which may appear to be ripped from today's headlines.
But the three catty queens at the heart of this episodic "courtroom melodrama" made their stage debut way back in 1985 at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Their plea for tolerance, however, is timely again as conservative regimes attach new pejorative labels to drag queens and trans people. It's an important message wrapped in claws-out, deadpan humor.

"JERSEY BOYS" at Playhouse on the Square (through July 16): We knew when the title was announced that casting would make or break this show. Recreating Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons is no minor feat. The actors have to LOOK like them (in as much as they match the script's descriptions), but most importantly SOUND like them. Frankie Valli has one of the most recognizable voices in rock and roll and no mere approximation would do.
Great news: Playhouse brought in a dead ringer from New York. They also brought in a director who played one of the Four Seasons on the national tour. Not only does this production sound great, it has the moves, the staging and the soul of a Broadway show.
When "Jersey Boys" premiered in 2005, it quickly became the gold standard of biographical musicals, in part because of its multi-viewpoint storytelling. Each member of the band offers an unfiltered perspective on the group's rise to fame and eventual breakup. The language is salty, the conflicts are personality driven -- a collision of talent and ego that also happens to generate one hit song after another.
I haven't seen such an enthusiastic opening night crowd at Playhouse in quite a while, and if a few members of the audience thought mid-show standing ovations were warranted, who could blame them? It's a well-made production that flies by and nobody leaves trying to remember the melodies.

But what about "MARY POPPINS" at Theatre Memphis? Yeah, yeah, we've heard great things. A cast of thousands. A beautiful set. And my tickets are for next Friday. We'll get back to you.

-- Christopher

02/02/2023

Hey everybody, due to the cancellation of opening night of "Roe" due to the weather, our meeting has also been cancelled. Stay tuned for more conversations in the future.

20/01/2023

Need a last minute plan for this evening? Grab a ticket to the musical "The Scottsboro Boys" at Playhouse on the Square TONIGHT and join our discussion group at 7 p.m. in the POTS cafe (on the east side of the building) for a glass of wine, snacks and a conversation with the show's director. There's also an opening night reception after the show. Bring your curiosity and sense of adventure! Box office: 901-726-4656.

24/04/2022

DANCE REVIEW: Classical ballet and soul music may, in some ways, seem physically at odds. The centuries old Franco-Russo technique that emphasizes delicacy and lightness, and which Ballet Memphis dancers spend their mornings programming into their bodies often contradicts soul music's gravitational pull on our hips and thighs and booties.
Yet Ballet Memphis has frequently sought to blend the two, with mixed results. The company's final show of the season, "Soul," which concludes tonight (April 23) at the Crosstown Theatre, is a mostly uptempo and occasionally on-the-mark homage to this city's musical legacy.
The first two pieces fall squarely into the feel-good category. Former B.M. dancer Julie Niekrasz's opener "In Search Of" and company member Emilia Sandoval's "In Mind's Eye" use a familiar blend of contemporary choreography set to a variety of Memphis soul.
It's not until Chanel DaSilva's "Heathen Hearts" that all the flavors in this soul stew fully blend.
DaSilva has worked extensively with Trey McIntyre, another choreographer who spent years blending ballet and contemporary music (Beck, Johnny Cash, et al.) to rave reviews.
Like McIntyre, she knows exactly how to push and pull focus from the individual to the collective. The eye moves like a butterfly from simple individual gestures, like a sassy shoulder shrug, to explosive ensemble patterns, with dancers clapping hands and shifting directions in rhythmic waves.
Her piece has feeling. It also has a powerful message through the invocation of Estelle Axton (famously, the Ax in Stax), a woman who definitely deserves more local recognition for her contributions to Memphis' musical history.
Axton and her brother Jim Stewart were the white co-founders of Stax Records who, some might say, stumbled into one of the world's greatest musical legacies. They bought an old movie theater in South Memphis and turned it into a recording studio, initially thinking they'd capitalize on the country rock sound popular in Memphis at the time (think Elvis and Jerry Lee). Instead, curious neighborhood kids showed up.
She, her brother, and the house band made up of young Black and white studio musicians, tapped into the talented community around the studio.
Axton was the rare businesswoman in the male dominated industry who not only had financial skin in the game, she also set aside the prejudices of her era to see the potential of Black artists like Otis Redding, who would find their trademark vibe at Stax.
DaSilva's work is both documentary and present-tense; her soundtrack divided between spoken word and music. The former consists of audio clips from an archival interview with Axton (1918-2004) talking about the business of Stax. The music is from the high-energy Memphis band Southern Avenue, a terrific cocktail of vintage blues and soul with modern R&B currency. In a sense, this is a full-circle dance: the past and present combine to tell a story of empowerment and resilience.
What DaSilva brings to her choreography that the first two pieces miss is the actual "soul" of soul -- the spirit of the individual within the collective.
Her two featured dancers, Emilia Sandoval and Dylan McIntyre play to the crowd. They emote. The message in their bodies is loud and clear. If music can set you free, Memphis was America's Bastille. They embody that joy.
If, overall, the entire program was on the short side, a live band of Stax Academy alumni playing the hits between pieces got audience members dancing in their seats. You can't get more soulful than that.

--CB

Ballet Memphis rounds out Season 35 at Crosstown Theater on April 22-23 with a performance that celebrates the unique Memphis sound. The river, heat, and hum...

22/02/2022

What do we think about this? Good mix of old and new?

02/02/2022

WE RECOMMEND:👍👍👍👍👍
"Hadestown," Orpheum Theatre, Feb. 1-6, 2022
Even though this show won eight Tony Awards back in 2019 (including Best Musical), "Hadestown" arrived Tuesday night at the Orpheum with considerably less familiarity than nearly everything else on the docket this season. ("Cats," anyone?)
Yet this knock-your-socks off show, with a cast that absolutely slays, may be the one that exits as the season highlight.
As noted in its opening number, the story is an "old song," a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, of which we all already know the plot and the tragic ending.
So why, after it's been told myriad ways -- in paintings, operas, films, etc. -- do we need a musical theater version?
I had my reservations. But then the show kicks off with a trombone solo that whisks us directly to New Orleans, where where the joy and sorrow of a second line band evokes that liminal realm between celebration and mourning, between life and death. In short, it's a perfect analogue.
"Hadestown" brilliantly explores this Greek myth as a beautiful collage of cultural influences: Mardi Gras, Moulin Rouge, Kurt Weill, the Delta blues, La Boheme, etc.
I loved that "Hadestown" starts by asking the same question that I had: why are we revisiting this old story? The answer, as it turns out, is the point of the show, which is surprisingly hopeful.
Now to the voices.
Every one of these cast members could be (or should be) recorded in these roles for posterity. That's the quality this ensemble brings to this first national touring company.
There's Tony-winning Levi Kreis as Hermes, who beautifully transforms from a kind of sarcastic and fatalistic narrator into the story's designated mourner -- a track that I feel like I personally lived while watching this show.
Top-tier Broadway performers Kevyn Morrow (Hades), Kimberly Marable (Persephone) and Nicholas Barasch (Orpheus), along with future Broadway star Morgan Siobhan Green (Eurydice) round out a cast where every song is pitch perfect and the acting superb.
A chorus of five terrific individuals drive the action with emphatic ensemble singing and visceral choreography on a turntable set.
I certainly didn't expect "Hadestown" to check every box when I arrived at the Orpheum and slouched into my seat Tuesday night. But by the end of the show, I was on my feet cheering with the rest of the house. You will be, too.
-- C.B.