The jazz trio gives Stravinsky's classic a fresh take in a festival that's moving in new directions courtesy music director Mark Morris.
Ethan Iverson, pianist for the Bad Plus jazz trio performs at the Ojai Music Festival. (Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times/ June 8, 2013)
By Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times Music Critic - June 7, 2013, 5:11 p.m.
OJAI — It can't, of course, be helped, but after a hundred years, "The Rite of Spring" has inevitably lost its sting.
"Le Sacre du Printemps" supposedly caused a riot at its Paris premiere May 22, 1913, although the police files are lost and musicologists now question whether a noisy incident was as fraught as history would have us think. Today, Stravinsky's ballet is big box office for orchestras and dance companies everywhere. The "Sacre" centenary is also being celebrated with festivals, symposia, radio station marathons, new recordings and reissues of dozens of historic ones.
More striking still has been the effort to preserve Stravinsky's once revolutionary score as a renewable resource with all manner of "Rite" re-writing projects. The one that began the 67th Ojai Music Festival on Thursday night was a fresh take on Stravinsky's complete score by the jazz trio Bad Plus. It wasn't bad.
But however untraditional a "Rite" for piano, bass and percussion may be, Ojai has a long tradition for being its own Stravinskyan rite of spring. The composer's close association with the festival in the '50s made the town musically famous. The three finest modern-day conductors of the "Rite" — Pierre Boulez, Michael Tilson Thomas and Esa-Pekka Salonen — have all been Ojai music directors.
This year's music director is choreographer Mark Morris, and he is taking the festival in new directions. The weekend programming revolves around Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison and John Cage, key California composers who have been curiously neglected in previous years. They had little to do with Stravinsky but were instead in Schoenberg's camp at a time when 20th century composers were forced to select their alliances.
Still, there is no escaping the "Rite" this spring and no escaping Stravinsky's aura at Ojai. In a public talk Thursday afternoon, Morris said he had little interest in making a new choreography for the "Rite" until he heard Bad Plus' version, which had its premiere at Duke University two years ago.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-ojai-rite-of-spring-review-20130608,0,5791097.story
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