New York Film Festival: The Kid with a Bike

New York Film Festival: The Kid With A Bike explores adolescent estrangement

Chicago—Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, The Kid with a Bike is a poignant dramatic film written and directed by Belgian brothers Jean-
Pierre and Luc Dardenne. A joint production of companies in Belgium, France and Italy, it can truly be called, on a small scale, at least, an international production. In many ways, its message is also international and universal.

The Kid with a Bike tells the story of Cyril, an 11-year-old boy who is left in a home for homeless children. His father tells him that the move will be temporary, but, the time approaches for Cyril to go home, it becomes abundantly clear to him that he is abandoned.

The film begins as Cyril makes his violent escape from the children’s home, biting and clawing his way past the counselors and paramedical staff and then finally using deception and guile to make his way to freedom. Once out, he sets upon his father’s trail.

Cyril’s personality and behavior are a dichotomy. On the surface, Cyril is troubled youth with the flashpoint of a dripping tank of petrol (a petrol station plays a pivotal role in the plot late in the film). When he goes back to the dingy housing project apartment where he and his father lived, he finds it abandoned, his father having disappeared more than a month previous. Not only is the apartment emptied of all possessions and his father flown the coop, his precious bicycle is also missing. It is at that point that the elements of the movie begin to kick in. As he is exits from the apartment feeling dejected, he is met by Samantha, the local hairdresser who tells him that she has purchased his bike from the father of a boy who had bought it from his father.

Cyril doesn’t believe her for a minute, asserting that the bike was stolen and sets out to exact revenge against the young thief and recover his bike.

He locates the suspected henchman and his young cronies on the local playground. Here, we get to meet the other side of Cyril’s split personality. He becomes a raging banshee, a vicious hyena who corners his prey around the watering hole in the Serengeti and attacks with fury. Needless to say, Cyril gets his bike back and rides off in a wave of retribution.

The curious thing about Cyril is that once he’s back on the scent of his father’s trail, he becomes centered and focused. He doggedly pursues him with intensity and deliberateness to the fury equal he displayed against the supposed bike thieves. Along his tracking mission of his father, he is directed to a local gas station where he sees a sign posted that, indeed, confirms that his father advertised and sold, not only all of his worldly possessions, but his precious bike as well. It is a crushing moment.

Miraculously, and with the help and support of his newfound Guardian Angel Samantha, he finds his estranged father, toiling away with his new wife or girlfriend as a cook in her small restaurant in a distant town. Not surprisingly, the father rejects him, this time to his face. Cyril is destroyed and attempts to disfigure himself on the solemn ride home.

This was a difficult film to watch because it raises some very tough questions about displaced and abandoned youth, particularly those who have been rejected by their fathers. It took a European film to bring home with thundering clarity the truth behind the issue of all these fatherless boys running around the ghettos of America, seeking a sense of belonging and mentoring in the street gangs and creating father figures and heroes out of the gang leaders and drug dealers that terrorize our streets. Transport the story of Cyril four thousand miles to the streets of Chicago’s south side and substitute the two-bit teenaged thug who recruits Cyril into his gang for Rev. John Fry and Jeff Fort and his Blackstone and later P Stone Nation and then take it back about eighty or so years to the streets of Berlin and Adolf Hitler and his Youth Brigades and their older siblings, the SS. But, I digress.

A thug named West (Egon Di Mateo-an enigmatic young actor with a smoldering undercurrent) trains him like a ninja in the art of thievery. Instead of creating sensei, he is developing monsters that use violence to rob and steal to pay tribute to their newfound evil Zen master.

The movie particularly hit home with me personally. I was about the same impressionable age, as Cyril when my parents divorced and my father outright disowned me to my face, in much the same manner experienced by young Cyril. Just like Cyril, my father cast me aside at a time when I needed him the most. Fortunately for me, I had loving grandparents to guide me and a love of sports and music that absorbed my attention and served as vehicles to absorb my hurt and anger.

Cyril’s journey is not without its obvious pitfalls. Somehow, his determination, and his precious bike, become vehicles to his salvation.

The Dardenne brothers have presented a beautifully crafted film that deserves recognition. You should go see it.

The Kid with a Bike is also a Special Presentation at the 47th Chicago International Film Festival.

Two views of the End of the World at New York Film Festival

END OF THE WORLD IS ENVISIONED BY DIRECTORS AT NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

Reviewed at the New York Film Festival September 22 & 26

Story and post news conference photo by Dwight Casimere

1. Opening image of Kirstin Dunst as Justine in Melancholia

2. Willem Dafoe as Cisco and Shanyn Leigh as Skye in 4:44 Last Day On Earth

3. Shanyn Leigh in a post news conference conversation with Dwight Casimere

New York—Each successive decade, directors seem to pounce on a universal theme and create a new genre of film around it. In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, alien invaders seemed to be crossing the threshold of the atmosphere at an alarming rate. Post Anti-War and Civil Rights era, a lingering skepticism fueled a string of political satires and conspiracy movies. The excess of the ‘80s brought another round of self-absorbed cynicism, evidence the 1987 film Wall Street. Now, in post 9/11 America, a new threat has arrived on the horizon, the end of the world.

Within days of each other, two films were screened for members of the press and industry that viewed the apocalypse from the vantage point of a controversial Danish director and a brusk, Bronx-born independent American filmmaker. The film Melancholia directed by Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark-Cannes Palme d’Or winner 2000, Dogville-2003, starring Nicole Kidman), in which the narrative revolves around the aftermath of the wedding of one of two sisters, played by American actress Kirsten Dunst (Interview with the Vampire-1994, Little Women-also 1994, Spider-Man 2002) and British actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (Jane Eyre-1996, I’m Not There-2007). Gainsbourg is a von Trier veteran, having worked on several directed by him.

Melancholia is von Trier’s finest work. Unfortunately, he undermined it with his controversial comments about Nazism during a news conference at the Cannes Film Festival in May. In spite of his skewed comments, Dunst received the festival’s Best Actress Award for her performance. Von Trier has been banned from the festival.

Melancholia is almost operatic in its scope. In fact, it begins with the musical backdrop of the Prelude from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The music is epic in scope, no less so than the theme of the movie, the end of Earth. Visually, the overlay is a series of dream-like tableaux that hover somewhere between Salvador Dali and Francisco Goya; a bride drags her dress through the grass until it is in taters, a horse sinks into the mud, a child languidly carves a long tree branch as a woman looks on pensively from a distance, a view of the midnight sky shows what appears to be two moons. Already, you know where this is going, but, like watching a train crash, you can’t turn away.

Director von Trier has said the idea for Melancholia grew out of therapy sessions he was undergoing for treatment of depression. The idea for the cataclysmic collision was inspired by websites devoted to the event’s potential. Setting the event in during the course of a family event, he said, made it possible to examine the human psychological response during a disaster. He achieved that goal and more. Melancholia is a riveting film that draws you in and engages you, even though you know the ultimate outcome.

There is fine acting by a superlative cast throughout. Dunst, who is probably best known by the masses as the girl who kissed Spidy as he was upside down, shows real dramatic chops as the troubled bride, Justine. There is one scene where she unleashes her pent up fury on her vainglorious boss, Jack, played by Stellan Skarsgard (a veteran of four von Trier films and best known for his role as the guilt-ridden policeman in the original Insomnia).

The film opens in the moments just after the wedding and leading up to the wedding party. We already know trouble is afoot in the marriage, when she decides that the first person she wants to greet after the ceremony is not her family and guests, but her horse, Abraham. She decides to go for a ride.

The metaphor for her love of her horse is continued in a later scene, when she drags her newly appointed intern, Tim (Brady Corbet-Thirteen-2003, Mysterious Skin-2004), out to the eighteenth hole of the family’s private golf course, and proceeds to mount him sexually as he if were here prized steed.

Donald Southerland is absolutely commanding as the older brother. He has finally achieved the age and experience to fill the large acting shoes of his esteemed father.

What a delight to see John Hurt (The Elephant Man-1980, Lord of the Rings Trilogy) in the role of Justine’s impish father, Dexter. Charlotte Rampling spits venomous bars laced with penetrating truth as his estranged wife, Gaby. “Why don’t you just run from here? Just get away!” she advises Justine as her daughter agonizes over her recent marriage.

4:44 Last Day on Earth by American Director Abel Ferrara is a rather claustrophobic look at the end of the world through the eyes of a New York couple, Cisco (Willem Dafoe, Platoon-1986, Shadow of the Vampire-2000) and Skye (Shanyn Leigh, Napoli, Napoli, Napoli-2009, Public Enemies-also 2009).

In contrast to the sweeping emotional and visual panorama of Melancholia, ‘Last Day’ is a claustrophobic closet drama that pales by comparison, but makes its point nonetheless. It is a microscopic examination of a sliver of life as two little people face the awesome challenges of the universe.

The film takes us into the Lower East Side apartment of Skye and Cisco as they frantically try to cope with the reality of their final hour on Earth. Cisco is an aging New York City actor who lives with his much younger, twenty-something girlfriend. It at times descends into a sophomoric discussion over ethics and the questions of how we choose to die and choose to live. The emotional climax comes when Cisco lets his old life creep into their New Age relationship. Should they spend their waning moments in mindless sex or should they heal the psychic wounds they inflict upon one another. Ironically, the most electric moment in the film comes when Skye becomes incensed over Cisco’s emotional allegiance to his past relationship and his selfish desire to give in to his former lust for drugs, rather than spend the time embracing her. At times, Dafoe seems to walk through his characterization, but Leigh catches fire with a torrent of rage that lights of the scream as surely as any solar collision. I asked Leigh about her on-screen outburst in the aftermath of a news conference following the NYFF screening.

“If you just listen to what he was just saying (Dafoe/Cisco), that he still loved his ex-wife, that gave me a lot of emotional fuel; just living in that moment. It was really difficult for my character, listening to him talking to his ex- wife. That was probably the hardest scene for me to shoot in the entire movie,” she said, her face visibly showing that she was reliving the anguish of the experience. “It really took a lot of emotion. Here she is, preparing to die, and she’s also feeling that she’s lost the emotional connection to her boyfriend. I mean, throughout the entire film, she’d been studying how to die, then she’s hit in the face with this, that she’s about to lose her boyfriend.

Melancholia is a Special Presentation in the 47th Chicago International Film Festival.

Maestro Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic create "One Sweet Morning"

Alan Gilbert creates “One Sweet Morning” with Mezzo-Soprano Stephanie Blythe

1. Music Director Alan Gilbert in full flight at the helm of the New York Philharmonic

2. Mezzo-Soprano Stephanie Blythe

Story by Dwight Casimere

NEW YORK—It is rare that a living composer graces the stage of a classical music concert, but there, amidst the ovations following a performance of John Corigliano’s One Sweet Morning by Music Director Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, stood the composer, flanked by the maestro and the superlative mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe.

It was Alan Gilbert’s finest hour and an example of the New York Philharmonic at its best. It was also a collaboration of kindred spirits. Maestro Gilbert is the son of two Philharmonic members, his mother, in fact, still plays in the orchestra. Corigliano’s father, also named John, was concertmaster for more than two decades. Add to the mix the super human talents of Stephanie Blythe and you have the recipe for a performance that is literally out of this world.

Corigliano’s One Sweet Morning was originally commissioned by the Philharmonic to commemorate 9/11. Coming just weeks after the orchestra’s Concert for New York, performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, which was broadcast live on the PBS network, marking the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it served as a sort of bookend to the tragedy. Unlike the conclusion of the Mahler, the mood on this night was celebratory, with Corigliano lifting the hands and arms of Ms. Blythe and Mr. Gilbert like champion marathon runners at the finish line.

Essentially a musical setting for four poems, A Song on the End of the World, by the Polish poet Czeslaw written during the weary waning days of World War II, Patroclus from Homer’s The Iliad, which plunges the listeners into the vortex of the Trojan’s war against Troy, War South of the Great Wall, another reflection on war by the 8^th Century Chinese poet Li Po and the titled One Sweet Morning by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg. Ms. Blythe’s rich, mellow mezzo voice caressed each word and underscored it with dramatic import. At times, her resonance melded with that of the orchestra, creating a sensation that made her voice seem like another of the finely tuned instruments.

Samuel Barber’s Essay No. 1 for Orchestra began the program with a candid look at the young composer at work. The orchestra had played his Overture to The School for Scandal as part of its Opening Night concert, featuring Deborah Voigt and this too served as a type of musical chronicle of this great composer. This rhapsodic work was a true showcase for the orchestra with the burnished warmth of the lower strings in the opening movement setting the tone for a dazzling performance. There were some tricky technical hurdles to overcome in the course of this fast paced orchestral recitative, but Maestro Gilbert was able to infuse a soulful resonance into both its opening theme in the Andante sostenuto and concluding Largamente, while lending balance to the intricate Allegro molto in between. There were parts that sounded identical to Barber’s most famous piece, the Adagio for Strings. That, as Martha Stewart would say, is surely a good thing!

As exciting as the first two offerings on the program were, the orchestra and its conductor truly shone in the Symphony No. 7 in D minor by Antonin Dvorak. Maestro Gilbert and the orchestra executed an eloquent reading of this finely crafted work. Gilbert’s conducting was inspired, with careful attention to intricate detail and phrasing. The most elegant gesture came when he urged the orchestra to full crescendo in the final movement, and then motioned to the horns to deliver an intricate grace note that perfectly revealed the ‘inner voices’ of the composition. It was an exquisite moment and the perfect ending to a magnificent, if not varied, evening of great music.

The Last Rites of Joe May: A powerhouse performance by Dennis Farina opens 47th Chicago International Film Festival

THE LAST RITES OF JOE MAY: DENNIS FARINA BRINGS A PRIZEFIGHTER’S TITLE-WINNING PERFORMANCE HOME TO CHICAGO

Story and photos by Dwight Casimere

1. Dennis Farina (Joe May) with Dwight Casimere

2. Jamie Anne Allman is Jenny

3. Gary Cole is Lenny

4. Director Joe Maggio delivers Joe May's signature 'rap on the bar'

5. A scene from The Last Rites of Joe May/Courtesy Tribeca Films

CHICAGO—Dennis Farina has played everything from an Irish mob boss in You Kill Me to a police detective in NBC’s Law and Order, which wasn’t too much of a stretch, since he actually was simultaneously a Chicago cop during the early days of his acting career.

He must have felt like a prizefighter parading his title-winning belt before more than 1,200 adoring fans as he strode the Red Carpet into the Harris Theatre for Music and Dance at Millennium Park for the Chicago Premiere of his most recent film, The Last Rites of Joy May at the Opening Night of the 47^th Chicago International Film Festival along with his co-stars Jamie Anne Allman, Ian Barford, Gary Cole and Chelcie Rose, writer/director Joe Maggio and the film’s producers.

For Farina, this was a victory lap of sorts for a Chicago-born actor who fought, and won a decision to bring the film project to his home town and create what many are calling a career-defining character performance as the down-and-out hustler seeking redemption, Joe May. “It was originally set in New York,” Farina confided in the heady afterglow of the film’s premiere night. “I brought Joe Maggio, our writer/director here, and persuaded him to shoot it in Chicago.”

The Last Rites of Joe May has writer Nelson Algren written all over it, or scenes from the 1949 Nicholas Ray Film, Knock on Any Door, which starred Humphrey Bogart and was based on the best-selling first novel of the same name by African American author Willard Motley. It is an elegiac, atmospheric look at the underbelly of society, only so much more. This is living Hell!

“We have our wonderful cinematographer Jay Silver (Persona Au Gratin-2011, War Against the Weak (documentary), 2009) to thank for that,” said co-star Gary Cole, who played the part of Lenny, the two-bit mob boss who sets the defeated Joe May on a wild goose chase that accelerates his downward spiral. “You can almost smell the garbage in those back alleys and taste the raw meat of the packing houses. We wanted to show that this is no place to be. In fact, its downright dangerous!”

In addition to the Ivan Albright-like frames of Jay Silver's evocative cinematography, there's the seamless editing of Seth Anderson which provides the legato pacing that adds to the film's gravitas.

About his character, Joe May, Farina says his upbringing in Chicago and his experience as a Chicago cop had a great deal to do with the background information that informs his character.

“We shot the film around my old neighborhood,” Farina emphasized. “So I was familiar with some of those streets and back alleys. It was mostly shot around West Grand Avenue-on May Street, Racine. All the streets I grew up on. And those characters. The guys who sit in the taverns all day long and in the back rooms of local diners and make deals. They remind of people, not just from my police days; they’re people I ran across my whole life!”

Joe May is a low life hustler who comes out after months of confinement in the hospital due to a serious illness. He undergoes a Shawshank-like experience. Substitute the infirmary for prison. May gets a rude awakening when he finds that, in his absence, everything in his life has dramatically changed. Strangers now occupy his apartment. All of his belongings have been tossed into the trash and his car has been towed away and sold. Not exactly a heroes’ welcome.

All that is precious and dear in Joe May's life is seemingly destroyed, save for two things, which will later become key elements in the unfolding of the plot. His valued collection of old opera recordings of the great Enrico Caruso and Carlo Bergonzi singing the great operas of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini were squirreled away in a closed by the new tenant of his apartment. "I thought you might want them," she says off-handedly. Touched, but still wounded, Joe exclaims, "A hell of a lot of good they are without my record player!" The records and a worn family photo he finds inside one of the record jackets are reminders of happier times. At night, their discovery evokes memories, sadness, and tears.

The other element is his rooftop pigeon coop, his haven away from the rigors of the mean streets. A neighbor has stolen his trained pigeons and the coop is a mess but, "just put some new grass in for them to nest and some feed and they'll come back home!" Slowly, and with great psychic pain, he begins to rebuild the shattered shards of his life.

May starts to get his footing when he’s invited back to his old quarters to share them with the new tenants, a single mother named Jenny, (“Rapp, like the music, she says smarmily”, his retort, “mine’s May, like the month.”), who has a world-weary 10 year old, Angelina, played by Meredith Droeger, a newbie who is the younger sister of actress Abigail Droeger. Jamie Anne Allman (Six Feet Under, The Practice. The Shield), is Jenny.

“I was really glad that the director just let me and the character just sit and live in the moment. There were whole scenes that could have been just edited and cut short, but Joe (Maggio) allowed that character to live in that moment and allowed the audience to really feel her emotion. The movie raised the whole issue of the battered wife and I think the film really allowed the audience to feel what its like to live that. It also talks about inter-generational living, which a lot of people are living with now, especially with this economy. There are lots of people who suddenly find an elderly relative on their doorstep with nowhere to go or a friend who just lost their job who has no place to live. I didn’t really think about that until I’d seen the film a couple of times, but those issues are really there as part of the sub-plot.”

One of the criticisms of the movie is that it moves too slowly. That there’s not enough action. “I think it’s a matter of taste,” Allman said. “”If their taste isn’t toward sitting with someone for a while in a situation, then they’re not going to like it at all. They’re going to want the film to move on and get to the next situation. It’s not going to be to their taste.

“In a lot of movies, there’s explosions and things that might get your attention. It’s all for the eye. But this film is more meat for the soul (pardon the pun!).” She was referring to a scene where Joe is given a 50lb leg of lamb to boost as a backhanded tribute from mob boss Lenny. Frustrated that he’s unable to sell the meat, he finally discards it to a stray alley dog. “I’ve seen the film twice,” Allman said,” and each time I say to myself ‘why didn’t he just take that meat home and put it in the freezer. I’m sure Jenny and her kid would have liked to eat it. That 50 pounds of meat could have lasted them for months!”

The relationship between Joe May and the little girl, Angelina, are cemented as the two fly trained pigeons from Joe’s rooftop coop. “Racing pigeons is just like life,” he counsels in the film. “You’re flyin’ high one minute, and down in the crapper the next.”

Farina explained the odd couple relationship between his character and the girl this way; “We wanted Joe to talk to the little girl, just as if she were another adult, another 65 year old, because he really doesn’t know any other way. But Angelina, like a lot of kids like her today, grows up to be old very early. The kid sleeps with a knife under her bed, after all. It’s really sad.”

The film is rife with symbolism and metaphor. In addition to the life-lesson symbolized by the pigeons, there’s scenes at the very beginning and at the very end where Joe ceremoniously shaves and dresses himself. They occur first, as he’s leaving the hospital, and again as he prepares for his final reckoning.

It’s a conceit that’s often used by directors to telegraph the denouement of the plot. It was used most eloquently in the 1986 Claude Berri film Jean de Florette, in which the character played by Yves Montand prepares to atone for his complicity in the events that led to the titled character of the film’s demise. It was used most recently in the 2008 American film drama Gran Torino, in which the Clint Eastwood character, Korean veteran Walt Kowalski, prepares to exact revenge against the gang bullies who have been pressuring his young Hmong neighbor, to whom he has entrusted his prized 1972 Ford Gran Torino.

There’s another ‘character’ in the Joe May film, which plays a pivotal, if not vital role- a rap of the knuckles on a mahogany tavern bar. “That knock on the bar was the director, Joe’s idea,” Farina explained. “I don’t want to give too much away about the film, but Joe said that was a thing his grandfather used to do. It meant that everything was ‘on the arm.’ Things were straight.”

Farina credits his old comrades at Steppenwolf Theatre with the success of the film. “It all really came together when Steppenwolf Films got involved. They brought a lot to the table with their people and their expertise. They let us borrow some of their actors and once they brought Gary (Cole) on board, it all coalesced.”

The Last Rites of Joe May is a film that demands your full attention. In fact, I recommend seeing it more than once, because there’s a lot that goes on that seems insignificant upon first viewing, that turns out to be vital to the plot’s development. The solitary piano in Lindsay Marcus’s sparse, but highly emotive score evokes the loneliness and isolation felt by Joe May. Even the opera arias selected for the film aren’t just there to impress. Sung mostly by the great Enrico Caruso, the words from Verdi’s Otello and Il Trovatore and Puccini’s La Boheme, tell the story concurrently with Silver’s stark images and Maggio’s poignant script. Case in point, the aria Ah Si Ben Mio, sung by Caruso in the opera Il Trovatore. It’s sung during the final scenes in which May prepares to face his destiny. It’s eerily reminiscent of the setup to the score-settling at the end of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, only the blood-letting here is on a much smaller scale.

Tribeca Film has acquired The Last Rites of Joe May for distribution in the U.S. and Canada. Produced in association with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Films, it will be released nationwide October 28 on Video On Demand. It opens theatrically in New York November 4 at Quad Cinema and in Chicago November 25^th at the Gene Siskel Film Center near State & Lake, across from the Chicago Theatre. I suggest ordering your tickets now and setting aside some time for discussion over dinner or cocktails afterward. This is a thought-provoking film that takes on a lot of hot-button issues such as battered women, homelessness, multi-generational living and the general disregard we have for our aging population. This is a film that will live in your conscience long after the final credits have rolled.

Cassandra Wilson:an eclectic work of art in progress in Jazz at Lincoln Center

Cassandra Wilson in eclectic showcase of artistic genius at Jazz at Lincoln Center: Rose Theater

Story and backstage photos by Dwight Casimer

1. Cassandra Wilson with Dwight Casimere at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center

2. Cassandra Wilson demonstrates her phrasing technique

NEW YORK—An eclectic evening of jazz, roots music, gospel and hints of the mellower side of R & B delighted a packed Rose Theater as Cassandra Wilson, the GRAMMY ®-winning vocalist, songwriter and producer kicked off Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Visionary Voices series.

With an exceptional septet of equally innovative musicians, pianist Jon Cowherd, bassist Reginald Veal, drummer Herlin Riley, percussionist Lekan Babalola, harmonica virtuoso Gregoire Maret, and guitarist Marvin Sewell, Ms. Wilson led the audience on an exotic journey into the deepest heart and soul of American music. Her selections are not presented so much as individual songs, but as portraits upon which she layers a collage of vocal colors and textures, using the many facets of her magnificent voice as an instrument. Her use of phrasing elevates the lyrics to the level of poetry. To say that this was an inspired performance is an understatement.

The walls of the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle, where Jazz at Lincoln Center is located, must have reverberated with the mellifluous sounds that she and her ensemble created. The Mississippi native freely navigates the rivers of the soul as she helms renditions of her own compositions and those of Stevie Wonder, Charley Patton and Miles Davis.

With her rich contralto voice, which is equal to any heard in Lincoln Center’s other venues, Wilson launched into an introspective journey that spanned the length and breadth of her impressive recording career; including selections from her landmark Blue Note albums released over the past 17 years.

Her soulful rendition of Patton’s Pony Blues was one of the timeless moments that brought her considerable talents into focus. The interplay between she and Gregoire Maret on his chromatic harmonica was among the most thrilling moments of the evening. The two raised the level of live jazz performance to that of high art.

Bassist Reginald Veal, with his resounding tones, proved equally proficient at providing a firm underpinning to the music’s progress and breaking loose with freely associated melodic lines. He showcased the flexibility of his instrument as well as his extraordinary talent.

Cassandra Wilson’s voice is like looking at a multi-faceted diamond. Each of the songs she presents reveals a different angle and color of her kaleidoscopic voice. She can change the meaning of a word with the slightest inflection of her voice and influence the harmonic tone of a melody with her phrasing and intonation. Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” also displayed her unique capability at becoming rhythmically at one with her band.

The original ballad “Until” was another of those moments when time and space seemed suspended in perfect equipoise. Her obbligato was mimicked by Gregoire Maret’s harmonic to perfection. She made no bones about who was in charge of things when she ordered the band to “Saddle Up My Pony.”

Her superior mike technique delivered an anguished moan on “Redbone.” Her later nod to jazz genius Miles Davis and his “Run The Voodoo Down” from his landmark album Bitches Brew provided a vehicle to meld the rhythmic power of her voice with that of her superb percussionists.

No Cassandra Wilson concert is complete without a rendition of St. James Infirmary and Ms. Wilson did not disappoint, delivering a version that gave extra punch to the lyrics (maybe she had headed down to the Wall Street protests before the show!) and then gave plenty of running room for Marvin Sewell’s blues guitar.

This was not a concert in the typical sense, but a retrospective of a brilliant career, curated by the artist herself, who is still a work in progress.

I have long been a fan of Cassandra Wilson and have spent many evenings intently listening to her CDs. My last experience of seeing her live was at the Chicago Jazz Festival several years ago. Unfortunately, a talkative companion ruined my evening. Fortunately, the superb acoustics and the unobstructed sightlines of the Rose Theater ensured an all-encompassing interface with this engaging artist, that more than made up for that lost experience.

Anna Netrebko lends dramatic thrills to Met Premiere of Donizetti's Anna Bolena

Anna Netrebko’s lends dramatic thrills to Met Premiere of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena

Reviewed by Dwight Casimere

Photos by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

1.Anna Netrebko as Anna Bolena

2. Anna Netrebko and Ildar Abdrazakov as Anna Bolena and Henry VIII

NEW YORK—Russian soprano Anna Netrebko was luminous in the Met Premiere performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. The opera recounts the final tragic days of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, who is sent before the headsman’s axe, in his murderous palace intrigue to wed a new queen. Even those who are closest to her, betray her. As the doomed innocent, Ms. Netrebko gives a towering performance in the title role, which many are comparing to the legendary 1957 performance by Maria Callas at La Scala.

The opera, which opened the Met’s 128^th season, was transmitted live from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House to large screens on Lincoln Center’s Josie Robertson Plaza and to Times Square in New York. The opera will also be transmitted Live in HD to more than 1,500 movie theatres in 46 countries around the world Saturday, October 15 at 12:55pm Eastern Time/11:55am Central.

Directed by David McVicar, the production featured stark sets designed by Robert Jones and opulent costumes by Jenny Tiramani that evoked the period and also heightened and underscored the dramatic import of the opera with a bold use of color. Tiramani is the former head costume designer at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London and based costume ideas on portraits by Henry VIII’s court painter.

Lighting by Paule Constable was an integral part of the success of this searing production. It is no surprise that Constable also won a Tony for her work on the Tony Award-winning play War Horse, in performances next door to the Met at the Beaumont Theatre.

Conductor Marco Armiliato set the tone for this somber portrait of tragedy from the opening strains of the overture. Donizetti’s fluid score sparkled with sharp tempos and bright melodic figures from the first violins to elongated, thundering lines from the bass and percussion. Woodwinds and brass were especially strong in setting out the opera’s main themes.

Ms. Netrebko is flanked by a stellar cast, which matches her superlative vocalese note for note and plays off of her exceptional acting skills. Especially strong are the performances of Stephen Costello as Anna’s first love, Lord Percy and mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford as her devoted page, the musician Mark Smeaton. Her singing in the first scene is magical. The scene between Anna and her turncoat lady-in-waiting Giovanna, Jane Seymour, sung by fellow Russian, mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova is one of the richest moments of the evening.

Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov is deliciously despicable as the vainglorious Enrico, Henry VIII, King of England. His is a towering presence, with a commanding voices that booms to the rafters.

The Second Act is all virtuoso Netrebko in full flight. She pulls out all the stops in a tour de force performance in which she excels as both singer and actress. Rarely has such power been unleashed on any stage. I had to see her twice to ensure that I was witnessing what I perceived to be one of the finest performances ever on the Met stage.

Anna Bolena is one of the defining roles of dramatic and Bel Canto opera. For Anna Netrebko it is the vehicle that will make her one of the enduring stars of the modern opera universe.

Deborah Voigt is stunning Salome in New York Philharmonic Opening Night concert

Deborah Voigt is stunning Salome in NY Philharmonic opener

by Dwight Casimere

Photo: Chris Lee-New York Philharmonic

NEW YORK—The patina of a late summer rain dampening the plaza near the Dancing Waters of Lincoln Center Plaza, making the patrons rushing inside Avery Fisher Hall look like subjects in a painting by Caillebotte, did little to dampen the enthusiasm over what was to transpire inside. It was the start of the 2011-2012 New York Philharmonic season, with super-soprano Deborah Voigt making an appearance across the plaza from her usual home at the Met to lend a bit of opera glamour and prestige to the start of Maestro Alan Glbert’s third season as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in a program to include her singing Samuel Barber’s and the final scene from Strauss’s Salome.

Ms. Voigt looked stunning as she swept onstage in her regal blue gown and launched into the angular strains of Samuel Barber's Andromache's Farewell without so much as a nod to the thunderous applause that greeted her. A knowing smile crept across her face as she looked toward the podium. It was all clicking. This was to be a performance for the ages, made even more indelible by the live PBS broadcast and subsequent internet streaming webcast that would continue through the week. Hard on the heels of Gilbert and the New York Phil’s performance of Mahler’s Second in the Concert for New York, commemorating the tragedy of 9/11, this was also to be the maestro and the orchestra’s finest hour. With the world’s attention riveted on the Avery Fisher stage and one of the world’s finest orchestras and the music world’s leading vocalist just beneath his baton, Maestro Gilbert had asserted himself as one of classical music’s finest conductors. The orchestra could not have sounded better and been more in synch with its conductor and soloist.

Gilbert and the orchestra sparkled from the outset. After the customary season-opening Star Spangled Banner, the orchestra tore into Samuel Barber's Overture to "The School for Scandal." Their later Overture to Wagner's Tannhauser showed the flawless power of the brass section's unified playing. It was thunderous to behold.

Strauss's Dance of the Seven Veils set the stage for the vocal fireworks that were to follow.

Ms. Voigt’s ability to shift gears (and gowns) to rise to the dramatic occasion of Salome's final mad scene was nothing short of astounding. She scaled the heights of Strauss’s challenging vocal peaks with ease and reached its dramatic crescendo without overplaying her hand. It was a measured performance with just the right amount of tension leading up to the final moment of complete madness, when she kisses the mouth of the severed head of John The Baptist. Her expression and the resonance of her voice convey the horror of the moment, without taking it over the top. It was hair-raising and brought the audience to its feet. The performance was broadcast live on the PBS network and streamed on the New York Philharmonic's website at www.nyphil.org.