A week from now, five of us are going to step on stage at the new World Café Live at the Queen Theatre and do the first IVA show I've ever given in my hometown, Wilmington, Delaware. My band and I (Shaun Dougherty, guitar, Joe Trainor, keys, AJ Malme drums and Ray Gagliardino, bass) have been rehearsing for a couple of weeks and I had thought that perhaps we should cover a song at the gig. It had been suggested to me by a friend as a way to help the audience fell more familiar with me at my gigs, since all my songs are original. This past week at rehearsal, as my band got to know my songs better, AJ said "why should we do a cover? I want people to hear you rock on your own music." And Joe said "when people ask me and my trio to play a cover so they can hear something more familiar, I tell them to come to more of my shows and then they'll be more familiar with my music." This Sunday we have our final rehearsal and we'll be really familiar with my older and new songs by then, and I'll be wondering .. to cover or not to cover?
On my first album I wanted to do a cover, which my producer was against. But then he made a beautiful arrangement of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name," (click to listen on Myspace) and we were off. And earlier this year my lawyer/agent asked if I wanted to be a contestant on "The Voice" on NBC, where you have to sing covers with no rehearsal. Since I'm an opera singer by training and had basically only sung pop songs that I'd written myself, I didn't know how I was going to be able to handle singing covers on the spot, and we decided that it was not the right context for me to "break" in the States. But since then, I've found an awesome opera and pop teacher and we've been able to step up my pop vocals with real technical work in a way that goes naturally with my operatic voice. So ... a cover is entirely possible technically. But aesthetically? That's the real question.
Matt Cardle singing "When We Collide"
This month I've been following a very successful cover since I heard it on the radio. Last year's X-Factor winner Matt Cardle sang a Biffy Clyro song they called "Many of Horror" which he (or Simon Cowell's team) called "When We Collide". I absolutely love this song, and since I'd heard it on 104.5 FM I was searching for it on YouTube. I found the Matt Cardle version first, and loved his singing, but thought it didn't sound like what I'd heard on the radio.
Biffy Clyro singing the same song, called "Many of Horror"
So I dug further and found both versions, and found out that Matt Cardle had the #1 Xmas single with the song, while fans of the band Biffy Clyro made an outcry which brought their original version of the song up to #8 on the charts. Now they are coming to play in Philly. The songwriter Simon Neil is loving the controversy, I imagine, as well as the exposure his song and the band are getting.
So .. to cover or not to cover. What do you think?
The 6,000 bulb Eiffel Tower in the lobby of the Kimmel Center
Now that PIFA 2011 has wrapped, I thought I'd go through some of the highlights (and low-lights) of what I saw at the festival.
The puppeteers revealed after Basil Twist's Petrushka
The most exciting performances gave new conceptions of the Ballet Russes - Basil Twist's "Petrushka" and Center City Opera's "Danse Russe." Both shows took art forms with a legacy - opera and even more ancient, puppetry - and injected them into modern world with a current-cy that made them perfectly suited for PIFA. It helped us understand what took place in Paris a hundred years ago while holding its own as modern entertainment.
There were two low-lights of my PIFA experience. The first was the University of the Arts' "A Lyrical Opera for Two". This was a case of false advertising, for the piece was musical theater, not opera, and for an opera artist and audience member like me, it is not fun to show up for an opera and have it not be one. The two art forms use completely different vocal techniques as well as aesthetics, as fans of each well know. They should have listed somewhere in the notes on the show that it was to be musical theater.
The other disappointment was of course the Philadelphia Orchestra's announcement that it was declaring bankruptcy. No one wants to see an arts institution of the Orchestra's caliber go under. One of my friends expressed his fear that it marked the end of world-class classical music in Philadelphia. Let's not let that be so, and hope that while we as an audience support the organization, they also put their house in order and make history again.
Librettist Terry Teachout's backstage shot of "Danse Russe"
PIFA included a lot of events and even I had a hard time whittling down all the choices. WHYY's Jo Ann Allen said on her blog that she felt there was "too much" at PIFA. http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/allens-lane/item/16801-too-much-pifa
This was the first year for the festival and it came in with quite a bang. I hope that in the upcoming years it will evolve further into a festival to put Philly on the cultural map of the world.
Of course the spectacular grand finale over broad street was a spectacle for anyone and everyone to enjoy and was a more-than-fitting ending to the festival. For those of you that missed it, I'm truly sorry. It was as mind-expanding as it was purely entertaining.
Last night I got the chance to see something I've never seen before.
Broad Street was packed! It took about a half-hour to move just three block to get to the Kimmel Center.
The crowd on Broad Street awaits
At the corner of Broad and Spruce was a large metal ball suspended from a crane. The crowd waited expectantly as dark set in. People were standing in windows and on top of buildings to see the show. And as the night approached, the acrobats slowly climbed into the ball. One began ringing a large bell. It was like wind chimes preparing us for something from another world.
The structure rises...
Slowly the ball began to rise from the street, percussion musicians suspended above from its edges. They hung like Christmas tree ornaments, lit up in the dusk while they took on their crazy characters. The acrobats were perched up above them, and the musicians played different chimes and bell sounds along with drums to keep the wonderfully strange pace. As the performance went on, the ball opened from the bottom like a flower, a musician on the end of each petal. Then it spun like a merry go round, or a Christmas decoration that spins under an open flame.
...and the corners lift
The musicians continued to play until the acrobats began their incredible show, gracefully showing their balletic strength. Later they moved mechanically like dolls, dancing on top of the music box. They were lit with spotlights from the bottom, casting their shadows on the high rises on Broad Street. As they moved, we moved, to another time.
The whole performance was gorgeously magical, stylish and wild. I heard a woman next to me say that it made Philadelphia proud, and I believe she was right. PIFA ended their festival with the perfect modern influence of old world French artistry. Bravi.
