Concert Review: Diana Ross at Chautauqua Institution, NY

As soon as I heard that Diana Ross was coming to the Chautauqua Institution at the end of the week I was vacationing there, I resolved to see her. I don’t believe she had ever given a concert in this famous amphitheater in southwestern New York that had also seen such musicians as John Philip Sousa, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, The Beach Boys, and Michael Jackson; and, given her age, I didn’t know how many more chances I might get to see her perform again.

As it happened, I counted myself lucky to see her at all. The show sold out weeks in advance, and I was unsure, because of Chautauqua’s revised amphitheater seating arrangements of the last couple of years (notably, its “preferred seating” section), if I would even be able to get in. 

Luckily, armed with my weekly pass to the grounds, all I had to do was line up an hour and a half before the show. Even that far ahead of time, the line—senior citizens, the middle-aged, the young, the diehard fans and the merely curious—stretched down the hill.

I had never seen the Motown legend in concert. I suspect that many in the audience that night did not labor under this handicap. A middle-aged guy next to me, for instance, said his wife—sitting much closer to the stage than us—had seen the singer seven times, on this tour alone.

“This tour” was being billed as the “75^th Birthday Tour,” but it could just as easily have been labeled the “60^th Anniversary Tour,” as Ms. Ross had signed her first professional contract, with Motown, in 1959. Whichever title you prefer, the point is that Ms. Ross is a show-business veteran. She knows what her audience wants and what she must do to fulfill these expectations. 

More often than not, those expectations boil down to her greatest hits and a heavy dose of glamour—or, as another audience member noted at the conclusion of the show, “19 songs and five costume changes.”

Ms. Ross and her troupe—four backup singers and a tight set of musicians—have become quite adept at those wardrobe transitions. As she changed rapidly into yet another sartorial stunner (e.g., a clinging, gray sequined gown), her musicians used the additional two or three minutes tacked on at the end of particular songs to jam, demonstrating their considerable skill. (Saxophonist John Scarpulla was particularly impressive.)

Throughout the tour, Ross has not been afraid to vary her set list and even her routine, depending on the locale and the occasion. (At the Hollywood Bowl, for instance, backed by a full orchestra, she included several less-familiar tunes; at New York’s Radio City Music Hall less than two weeks before the Chautauqua gig, a number of tunes resonated very strongly with fans celebrating Pride Month; and on another occasion, she took audience questions, Carol Burnett-style.)

At Chautauqua, the opening number was—hardly a surprise—“I’m Coming Out,” with much of the early going featuring such hits from Ms. Ross’ Sixties heyday with the Supremes as “Stop in the Name of Love,” “Come See About Me,” “You Can’t Hurry Love” and “Love Child.” 

Later, solo career hits from the Seventies and early Eighties also thrilled the audience, such as “Touch Me in the Morning,” “Take Me Higher,” “Upside Down,” and the most familiar tunes from her films Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany, and The Wiz. Some cover tunes (notably, of The Spiral Staircase’s “More Today Than Yesterday” and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”) were also greeted warmly, as they have become concert staples of hers, too.

Like the ancient Roman huntress Diana, Ms. Ross has achieved the status of a deity. Remarkably, she has lost little not only in glamour but in the quality of her voice. While never powerful, even thin at points, it retains its warmth and sweetness, reaching out to touch three generations of fans. It was aided in Chautauqua by brief but effective stage patter in which she not only expressed sincere gratitude for fans’ affection but also conveyed a welcoming manner to many—notably, children she invited onstage with hugs and statements like, “Don’t be shy—I’m a grandmommy!” 

For all her undoubtedly sincere regard for her audience, Ms. Ross became a decade-defying institution less out of love than shrewdness and toughness—a canny calculation of her strengths and weaknesses matched only by her ability to withstand an entertainment industry that places a premium on trendiness and youth. In the eyes of some peers (notably, Supremes colleague Mary Wilson), she has gone beyond being a diva to being a termagent. 

But that endurance should be celebrated, too—as Ms. Ross did, implicitly, with the final song, song made famous not by her but by Gloria Gaynor: “I Will Survive.” The reaction at Chautauqua confirmed that she had done so, emphatically, already.

Daughter Rhonda Ross, a singer-songwriter and guitarist in her own right, preceded her mother in a 5-song, 15-minute set that was respectfully received by the audience in the amphitheater. Respect, that is, but not rapture, which can only be generated by goddesses like her mother. Or, as a lyric from my favorite song of hers goes: On that you can depend, and never worry.

(Photo of Diana Ross taken by Harry Wad at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, Oslo Spektrum, Norway, Nov. 11, 2008.)

Concert Review: Marshall Crenshaw at the Turning Point Music Cafe, Piermont, NY

Marshall Crenshaw is not exactly a closely held music secret, but he has never become a household name, as it appeared he would become in the early 1980s, when Robert Gordon’s cover version of his “Someday, Someway” reached # 76 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Crenshaw’s own self-titled LP earned critical acclaim. It was his misfortune that, already an unabashed throwback frequently likened to Buddy Holly, he lost momentum in a music industry changing styles and even, through MTV, promotional models.

I wish Crenshaw had achieved more commercial success over the years and that he had released more collections of his own work than his dozen or so CDs or EPs. But I was in more of a celebratory than a wishing mood earlier this week. After all, I—along with a small but equally appreciative audience—would be catching his act at The Turning Point Music Cafe in Piermont, NY.

The last time I’d seen him in this Rockland County music mecca, 17 years before, had been under adverse conditions for the singer-songwriter: he was struggling with a bad cold and trying not to strain his voice. But he still impressed me with his perfectionism, his instant recall of the entire history of rock ‘n’ roll, and—not coincidentally—a delightful spontaneity. (In tribute to George Harrison, who had died three days before, he performed a Beatles song, “I’m Only Sleeping.”) I resolved to see him again if I had the chance. Nearly two decades later, I finally did.

Performing, as he had before, without a backup band, Crenshaw revealed a songcraft as durable as ever, with irresistible hooks, sturdy riffs issuing from just his own guitar, and song titles that linger in the memory (“Fantastic Planet of Love”). Threaded throughout his 90-minute set were several tunes that made his 1982 album one of the most notable debuts of the pop era (“There She Goes Again,” “Cynical Girl,” and “Mary Anne”), as well as the jangling centerpiece of his Field Day follow-up LP, “Whenever You’re on My Mind.”

In the mid-‘90s, Crenshaw collaborated with Jesse Valenzuela and Robin Wilson on the Gin Blossoms’ hit single, “Till I Hear It From You.” This time, though, he highlighted several philosophical but propulsive songs composed with Dan Bern, including “Driving and Dreaming” and “Live and Learn.”

In addition to being a singer-songwriter, Crenshaw is also often billed in advertising for his shows as a “rock historian”—a nod not only to his early career stint playing the Broadway musical stage review Beatlemania and Buddy Holly in the denouement of the film La Bamba, but also serving as a deejay for the radio show “The Bottomless Pit” and writing Hollywood Rock: A Guide to Rock 'n' Roll in the Movies. His past shows have included cover versions of Bob Dylan (“My Back Pages”), Bruce Springsteen ("All or Nothing At All"), even ABBA (“Knowing Me Knowing You”). This time, he demonstrated anew his deep affinity for Holly with a cover of the latter's “Crying, Waiting, Hoping.”'

Crenshaw’s between-songs patter—sometimes employed while he was tuning his guitar—was concise, pointed, and when not informative, hilarious. In the case of the “informative,” he noted that the Holly tune was among the last home recordings made before his fatal plane crash in 1959. His “hilarious” explanations dealt with the origin of his song “What Do You Dream Of?” (reading a Cher magazine interview in which the pop diva opined helpfully that “everyone sleeps alone”) and a recent use for “Someday, Someway” (on Drew Barrymore’s Netflix series on Southern California real estate and cannibalism, “Santa Clarita Diet”).

Over the course of his career, Crenshaw has created roughly 150 songs, the overwhelming majority of which are marvels of the power pop genre. For whatever reason, at age 65, the compulsion to compose does not seem to burn as intensely, but the urge to perform live persists. His Turning Point audience benefited from that latter tendency this week, and one hopes that, alone or without others, Crenshaw will have another wellspring left in him, much like the decade-older David Crosby (whom I blogged about earlier this week).

The photo of Marshall Crenshaw accompanying this post was taken live in New York City, Sept. 5, 2010, by Ronzoni (talk).

Concert Review: ‘David Crosby and Friends,’ BergenPAC, Englewood NJ

Even at 77 years old, David Crosby hasn’t given up defying convention. In the Sixties and Seventies, at the height of his commercial popularity, that involved challenging political and sexual attitudes. These days—certainly, when I saw him a few days ago at the Bergen Performing Arts Center (BergenPAC) in my hometown of Englewood, NJ—he was about overturning audience expectations for an oldies set.

As he worked through a first half containing material released only in the last few years, Crosby noted that this was not something that artists with his career of hits was supposed to do. “But I have a habit of doing things you’re not supposed to do,” he added with a chuckle.

The audience chuckled at this wink at the problems with substance abuse and the law that blighted his career in the Eighties. Under the circumstances, it was miraculous that the veteran rock ‘n’ roller was even alive, let alone ambulatory.

But, as this last week of his fall tour revealed, the singer-songwriter remains not just uncompromising but also creative. Since 2014, he has released four solo CDs of surprising depth and variety, and the resonant voice that contributed so much to The Byrds and the multipart harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young has lost little to age. 

Rather than squawking for old hits, the BergenPAC audience—slanted heavily toward the Baby Boom generation—rewarded him with a respectful hearing for his newer efforts and appreciation for his continuing activism (“Thanks for speaking out!” one female fan near me yelled).

Oh, that “and friends” part of the billing? It was never in the cards that this would include Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young. The fallout these last few years has been considerable, from Crosby’s blunt comments about actress Daryl Hannah, the woman Young dumped for his wife of nearly 40 years (a “purely poisonous predator”) to Nash’s depiction in his memoir a few years ago of Crosby’s randy younger days. 

That’s the bad news. The good news is that, with expectations tamped down for all-too-familiar songs from a half-century ago, Crosby has been able to experiment with “friends” Michael League (of Snarky Puppy), Becca Stevens, and Michelle Willis—musicians nearly four decades Crosby’s junior who collaborated with him on his two most recent releases, last year’s Lighthouse and this fall’s Here If You Listen. 

The results are both wonderfully old and new: the multi-instrumental League provides the kind of versatility that Stills displayed with CSNY; the four singers do a nice job of approximating the intricate vocal web of CSNY; Stevens and Willis represent female perspectives that CSNY did not have; and one can hear jazz textures in the vocals that have increasingly interested Crosby. 

What was additionally surprising was Crosby’s willingness not merely to collaborate with his younger colleagues, but even cede the stage to them. He not only made sure to credit them with fleshing out ideas lying undeveloped for years in his vast tape archive, but even allowed them to spotlight their own contributions, such as Willis’ “Janet,” about the uselessness of jealousy, and Stevens’ “Regina.”

I do wish that Crosby had juxtaposed his newer songs with his older ones on the same subject. For instance, he noted that his recent warning of climate-induced aqua apocalypse, Vagrants of Venice,” is science-fiction, just like “Wooden Ships.” But having whetted the audience’s interest, he never got around to playing the latter haunting song he wrote in his CSNY heyday with the late Paul Kantner.

But there is also a warmth and tenderness in this version of “Croz” that was largely missing from his younger, edgier self. Sixties Crosby’s “Triad,” about the advantages of a menage a trois, led to a quarrel that contributed in no small part to his expulsion from The Byrds. These days, though, he sings unabashedly of his love for his wife of more than three decades, Jan, in “The Things We Do for Love”: “At first it’s just fun / but love is long / a little each day / you build it that way.”

Crosby and his three accomplished younger “friends” finished their regular set with longtime favorites “Guinevere,” “Carry Me,” and “Déjà Vu” (the closing number for the second set), before concluding with two rapturously received encores, “Woodstock” and “Ohio” (his favorite CSNY tune).

The only other time I saw Crosby live was in Central Park with Graham Nash in the mid-Seventies. Much has changed since then, and not only because the former hippie can no longer sing “Almost Cut My Hair” without irony.

Amazingly, Crosby has been producing the best work of his non-CSNY career at a time when not only musical tastes have shifted, but the distribution of songs makes it harder for the average fan to find his work. If he can maintain what remains of his health (these days, diabetes has become a concern), you will not be seeing a tired retread but an artist who refuses to go gentle into that good night.

Concert Review: 2 French Masters a Century Apart, at Lincoln Center, NYC

Two Saturdays ago, I did something I cannot recall doing before: attending an afternoon matinee concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I had seen two operas at Lincoln Center (Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, both nearly 40 years ago, when I was in college). But it was only when I saw a musical on the grounds a couple of weeks ago, My Fair Lady, that I thought of seeing a classical music concert.

The matinee on that Saturday worked well with my schedule. I can’t say that I know much about the composers featured in the program, but in a way that worked to my advantage, too, because my impressions would be fresh even as I learned more about the periods they represented: the Baroque and Romantic eras. 

David Geffen Hall, the concert venue, was built decades after the operas I saw here, courtesy of entertainment mogul David Geffen. While certainly a beautiful space, enough problems existed with the acoustics that a very expensive renovation plan was formulated. The price tag for that was so steep (a half-billion dollars) that it has been shelved, for now. However, I like one idea floated in connection with it: decreasing seating to increase audiences’ intimacy with the musicians. 

The first half of the show consisted of Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, by Gabriel Faure, late in the Romantic Era. The Adagio movement was so melancholy that at least one associate and biographer of the composer, Emile Vuillermoz, angrily denied that it was inspired by Faure’s broken engagement with a fiancée. Whatever the case, the quartet provided plenty of opportunities for impassioned playing by cellist Carter Brey, violinist Sheryl Staples, pianist Shai Wosner, and, on the viola, Cynthia Phelps.

In the second half of the concert, the full orchestra came out to tackle Selections From Dardanus, by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Guest conductor Emmanuelle Haim was at pains to communicate her passion and affinity for this Frenchman of the late Baroque period to these New York musicians. (When not wielding the baton, she was playing the harpsichord, the closest Baroque approximation to the piano.) While Faure was able to take advantage of 150 years of instrumental improvements since Rameau’s time, Rameau could draw on dramatic elements of his opera, especially a magic ring, a sea monster, and a total eclipse.

It might have been all to the good that the Rameau portion of the program dispensed with lyrics, as the opera from which it came sounds, in its entirety, like a bear to play (let alone to mount). Instead, the instrumental portions played here conveyed moods, especially Entrée por les guerriers (Entry of the Warriors) and Bruit de guerre (Notes of War).

Zachary Woolfe’s New York Times review of a concert from a few nights before, similar to what I saw (just replacing Faure with Handel’s Water Music) allowed that the Philharmonic had played with “lean grace,” but with “little surprise or delight, essential in this repertory.” 

I guess restraint is not in favor these days at the Good Gray Lady. But at least I (and, I believe, other listeners) heard an ensemble playing with precision and skill. 

It was also, I discovered in a post-show discussion moderated by Philharmonic librarian Lawrence Tarlow, an ensemble with deep understanding of the two wildly disparate musical eras on the program that day. The talk revolved around what it meant to have a “historically informed performance,” with featured members of the orchestra (oboeist Robert Botti, bassoonist Kim Laskowski, and violinist Kuan Cheng Lu) highlighting the challenges of different instruments, eras, and conductors:

*There are 45 keys in the modern oboe, for instance, but in the Baroque period there were only three, and there were difficulties with the instrument not found now.

*Kuan held up a violin bow, demonstrating   how in the Baroque, the wood curved outward, while later, with a “transitional” bow, the wood curved inward. 

* Laskowski observed that in the Baroque era, there were only two keys in the bassoon, with fingernails often tearing on holes in the instrument.

*The clarinet was only a single reed in the Baroque period, and with composers not yet writing for the instrument it was effectively not part of the music scene.

*Even without looking straight ahead, the musicians were well aware of Haim’s directions. Botti observed that her movements were still visible just above their instruments, and Kim noted that it was “not every day we play Baroque music,” so they “couldn’t help but feel” Haim’s energy.

*Newer instruments differ from earlier ones not so much by the age of the wood but the set-up of the instrument, according to Kuan. Kim noted that instrumentation is not static, but continues to improve all the time.

This concert was part of a series of four Saturday matinee post-show “talk-backs” with the Philharmonic’s musicians. Based on the informative nature of this one, I will try to attend the next one in February 2019.