Lincoln Center~Third Night

Pretty self-explanatory
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SweetPear
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Lincoln Center~Third Night

Post by SweetPear »

I'm surprized that no one else has checked in about tonight's show yet, so I'll start us off....

I was very excited to hear Il Sogno and the show was just what I had expected. I had a great time, conductor Brad Lubman looked as though he was having a great time and Elvis (despite him having a cold) appeared to be having a great time as well.

I was REALLY impressed with Il Sogno! I thought it was fabulous, I really did! Since it was mentioned before and I'm not just imagining it, the acoustics leave a bit to be desired, but I thought the score was beautiful. I truely was taken aback that our Mr. Costello penned this. Not that he wasn't worthy or capable....Not at all!! It was just so unlike anything he's done and it was just amazing. I'm so glad I went!

I'm not too swift with the setlist (from the second half of the show) but if I can come up with a decent one, I'll post it.

Bye Elvis. I had a great three nights. Many congrats~you deserve them!
I'm not angry anymore....
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HungupStrungup
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Post by HungupStrungup »

Il Sogno

Intermission

Still
All This Useless Beauty *
Almost Blue
She's Pulling Out the Pin *
You Lie Sweetly
Fallen
The Birds Will Still Be Singing
I Want to Vanish *
----

Dirty Rotten Shame *
I Still Have That Other Girl
Couldn't Call It Unexpected #4


All with full orchestra, or almost, except
* small combo (acoustic guitar, grand piano and double bass)
Last edited by HungupStrungup on Sun Jul 18, 2004 10:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
"But it's a dangerous game that comedy plays
Sometimes it tells you the truth
Sometimes it delays it"
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SweetPear
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Post by SweetPear »

Whew!
Thanks Hungup.

I didn't catch the name of Steve's song (which I really liked) which was You Lie Sweetly. (Steve is so modest :oops: .)

I Still Have That Other Girl is a favorite of mine and I loved hearing that one, as is All This Useless Beauty.

During his intro to Almost Blue, EC mentioned it was for the beautiful woman who was on stage at the Greek Theater.

CCIU#4 was unamplified (as usual) and the audience was encouraged to join in if they heard anything familiar, which they did at the end of the song with some La-la-la's.

(Howmydoin' so far, Mr. Strungup?) :lol:

It was also nice to see EC wearing a better fitting shirt this evening. :)
And it's true he was fidgeting with his cuffs the first night and someone said it made him appear nervous. I thought he looked very nervous at times tonight. Not uneasy....just a bit anxious perhaps.
But he was in such a good mood and he seemed really appreciative.

AND I GOT A FREE CD AFTER ALL!!!
I'm not angry anymore....
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SweetPear
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Post by SweetPear »

This is it....I'm going to bed after this!!
(Gossip)
After the show my husband and I were walking across the street to the great Italian restaurant Fiorello's (If you like Italian food, a great atmosphere and fantastic service, you need to give this place a try!)
and I couldn't help but hear the conversation between these three guys behind us.
One asked if they'd heard the new Diana Krall record and they said no but they'd like to. The first went on to say that he's listened to it quite a few times and he thought that the songs were terribly overwritten and became quite obtuse. :shock:
(I told you it was gossip.)
I haven't heard the entire disc, only two tracks that Diana had done on late night talk tv. I'm not a DK fan, but I know some of you are......so in the name of all that is good and true and in the interest of Elvis Costello, is this anywhere close to being true??

:lol:
I'm not angry anymore....
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so lacklustre
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Post by so lacklustre »

Thanks for the nice review SP, was the show a sell out?
signed with love and vicious kisses
laughingcrow
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Post by laughingcrow »

What kind of music is Il Sogno......? Is it as baroque as Im imagining it will be?
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HungupStrungup
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Post by HungupStrungup »

You did very well, SP.

As I remember it, Steve didn't get to play the melodica, not even on "Almost Blue." And there was certainly no theremin!

EC didn't give the title of "She's Pulling Out the Pin." He just called it a new song. But I think that phrase was repeated enough in the song that it should be right.

I've never heard "Dirty Rotten Shame" before, so that was a nice surprise. I know, I know, I should have Bespoke Songs . . .!

He was thrilled at how well Il Sogno was received, and I think he was in a great mood because of that. laughingcrow, I'm not expert at these things, but I's say it's in more of a romantic tradition than baroque.

I didn't notice any nerves, but maybe I just missed the signs. The arrangements made good use of the orchestra. "Still," "Fallen" and "I Still Have That Other Girl" were all magnificent. Oh, and some of the orchestra members joined us in demanding the encores. I enjoyed that.
"But it's a dangerous game that comedy plays
Sometimes it tells you the truth
Sometimes it delays it"
elvicos01
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Post by elvicos01 »

I am not sure what kind of music 'Il Sogno' is, but I quite enjoyed it. The sampler handed out after the previous was a good representatiion of the album / show.

I was pleased with the acoustics last night, something Elvis mentioned before CCIU #4. (Maybe Avery Fisher isn't design for amplified rock shows). I was able to pick out all instruments in the orchestra. I enjoyed members of the philharmonic who were swaying along to the music during their interludes.

I, as it appeared much of the audience, was a little confused what do between songs. During Act I, the Philharmonic played straight through without audience interruption. There was applause after Act I. During the Act II there were a few more audience applauses between the songs, as it seemed "we" figured out it was ok to applaud. (Il Sogno was performed in three acts, the first, Prelude, consisted of the overture and six orchestrations. Act II had 14 orchestrations, and Act III has one).

As far as the show being sold out, tickets were available @ the Lincoln Center website @ noon yesterday, but it did look like the place was near capacity, as there were people in the upper balconies. There were four seats were open next to my wife and I during Il Sogno in Row N Center. People did sit there (I don't think they had these seats anyway) during Elvis, Steve and Brooklyn Philharmonic portion of the show.
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Post by johnfoyle »

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Post by johnfoyle »

This mysterious , unidentified bassist has me curious ( as usual!). Maybe he is from the Brooklyn Philharmonic , last nights featured orchestra. Their site - http://www.brooklynphilharmonic.org/info/ORCH_PERS.htm -
lists these

Double Bass
Joseph Bongiorno*
Gregg August
Judith Sugarman
Louis Bruno
Gail Kruvand Moye
Jules Hirsh
Richard Sosinsky
*Principal

Do any of those names leap out any attendees who may have heard a stage credit from Elvis?
elvicos01
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Post by elvicos01 »

I Believe the bassist name was Greg Cohen
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martinfoyle
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Post by martinfoyle »

elvicos01 wrote:I Believe the bassist name was Greg Cohen
This the guy?
http://www.unterfahrt.de/photos/200304/ ... _cohen.htm
Last edited by martinfoyle on Sun Jul 18, 2004 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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HungupStrungup
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Post by HungupStrungup »

johnfoyle wrote:This mysterious , unidentified bassist has me curious ( as usual!). Maybe he is from the Brooklyn Philharmonic , last nights featured orchestra. Their site - http://www.brooklynphilharmonic.org/info/ORCH_PERS.htm -
lists these

Double Bass
Joseph Bongiorno*
Gregg August
Judith Sugarman
Louis Bruno
Gail Kruvand Moye
Jules Hirsh
Richard Sosinsky
*Principal

Do any of those names leap out any attendees who may have heard a stage credit from Elvis?
The program lists double-bassists Bongiorno, Sugarman and Hirsh from that list; but also Rachel Calin, Jacqui Danilow and Lisa Chen. Then there's an additional listing for "Amplified Double Bass, Greg Cohen." That's who was featured playing right behind Elvis I'm pretty sure, although his intro was mumbled.
"But it's a dangerous game that comedy plays
Sometimes it tells you the truth
Sometimes it delays it"
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Post by Jackson Monk »

Sounds great. I'm one of the few around here who love TJL and so I'll be over the moon if 'Il Sogno' is well received...which media arse will be the first to call it pretentious?
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Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Jul18.html

Music
Elvis Costello The Classicist: His Aim Is True

By Terry Teachout
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, July 19, 2004; Page C01


NEW YORK -- Rock legend Elvis Costello has been flirting avidly with classical music in recent years, collaborating with Anne Sofie von Otter and the Brodsky Quartet to striking effect. Now he's pulled a much bigger rabbit out of his seemingly bottomless hat: "Il Sogno," an hour-long ballet score for symphony orchestra.



Based on Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Il Sogno" was composed in 2000 for Aterballeto, an Italian dance troupe, and received its North American premiere on Saturday at Avery Fisher Hall as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. (A recording will be released by DGG in September.) Not only did Costello write it without assistance, he orchestrated it as well, and though the Brooklyn Philharmonic, conducted by Brad Lubman, was conspicuously underrehearsed, the performance was decent enough to leave no doubt that Costello knows what he's doing. The scoring isn't perfect -- the middle register is cluttered and thick-sounding at times, and the vibraphone is used to sugary excess -- but it's perfectly competent.

That alone made my jaw drop. Even Duke Ellington relied on professional orchestrators when writing for symphony orchestra, while Paul McCartney hired so many collaborators to help him produce the embarrassingly bloated "Standing Stone" that I described it at the time of its 1997 premiere as "the first as-told-to symphony." What's more, "Il Sogno" ("The Dream" in Italian), though it rambles a bit, is more than just a long string of songlike cameos placed end to end: Costello has channeled his thematic material into simple, formal structures that he uses in the disciplined manner of a bona fide classical composer.

Am I surprised? Totally. But if any rocker could pull off such an improbable feat, it's Elvis Costello, whose musical curiosity has always been boundless. What's more, "Il Sogno" doesn't sound like anybody else (except for a couple of lyrical passages that reminded me, logically enough, of Sir Michael Tippett's "The Midsummer Marriage"). It's not cut-rate Prokofiev or Bernstein, but a lively, ingratiating piece of mainstream modernism, with decorous snippets of symphonic rock and jazz thrown in from time to time to spice things up. If anything, it's too polite: Costello was clearly on his best musical behavior when he wrote it, and I'm sure he felt he had something to prove to all the "legit" musicians who took it for granted that no mere rock star could bring off so ambitious an undertaking.

Well, he proved it. Not only does "Il Sogno" work, but it stands up pretty well to the inevitable comparison with George Gershwin's concert music. Unlike Gershwin's wonderfully concise Concerto in F and "An American in Paris," it goes on too long (Costello should give some thought to spinning off a five- or six-movement suite) and lacks the high melodic profile that could have made it truly memorable. Even so, "Il Sogno" is more than good enough to recall Irving Berlin's envious remark that Gershwin was "the only songwriter I know who became a composer." If he chooses to, I have no doubt that Elvis Costello can do the same thing.

Mind you, Costello doesn't need to write large-scale orchestral works to be taken seriously as an artist. Rock has produced no better songwriter. But if he really wants to set up shop as a part-time classical composer, he'll need to polish his craft still further. After the unexpected success of "Rhapsody in Blue," Gershwin toiled for 11 years and ended up with "Porgy and Bess." Is Costello in it for the long haul? Or will "Il Sogno" turn out to be a fluke? I hope not.


© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Image
Stephanie Berger/Lincoln Center Festival
Elvis Costello brought curiosity and complex lyrics to three Lincoln Center concerts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/19/arts/ ... 9COST.html

MUSIC REVIEW | LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL
Elvis Costello's 'Fondest Wish' Comes True
By JON PARELES

Published: July 19, 2004


There were only a few constants in Elvis Costello's three concerts for the Lincoln Center Festival last week. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights at Avery Fisher Hall, he wore black suits and played guitar; an unobtrusive music stand held his complex lyrics. Steve Nieve, who has been in Mr. Costello's bands since 1977, played keyboards at all three shows. Beyond that, everything was in flux: styles and structures, meanings and moods.


Mr. Costello is ceaselessly curious about music. He is inquisitive enough not just to listen widely, but to learn the makings of every idiom that moves him, from lieder to New Orleans rhythm and blues. In the three nights at Lincoln Center he was a crooner, a howler, a swinger, a brooder, an orchestral composer and a guitar twanger. Mr. Costello recognizes pop genres and what can be expressed by their particularities, but he refuses to be slotted into them. "This is my fondest wish," he sang near the end of Saturday's concert, "to go where I cannot be captured."

He delved into obscure corners of his catalog, tacitly demonstrating that some of his overlooked songs deserve to be heard. The concerts anticipated Mr. Costello's 50th birthday, on Aug. 25, and the lyrics were full of adult concerns: disillusionment, regrets, the shape of history, the persistence of folly. But there was more pleasure than bitterness in the music, if only the pleasures of clarity and distillation: of finding the turns of phrase, melody and dynamics that made some bleak insight linger. Mr. Costello, who married the singer Diana Krall last year, is still a master of songs about romantic entropy and breakups as parting shots, and he had plenty of them during the three concerts.

Mr. Costello's music has long veered between American and European polarities: primal, stomping riffs versus elaborate harmonies and florid ornament. It's a tension that was built into his bands, the Attractions and now the Imposters, with Mr. Nieve's quasi-Romantic decorations surrounding Mr. Costello's cutting guitar. For the three concerts he chose ensembles that can do some shape-shifting themselves.

On Tuesday he was backed by the Metropole Orkest, a Dutch group, conducted by Jim McNeely, that augments a big band with a string section. It was equally at home with a hard-swinging Charles Mingus tune and with slow-motion ballads; for a few rockers the orchestra simply worked as a hefty horn section. It was the most varied concert of the three; in one stretch Mr. Costello followed a stately tribute to Henry Purcell, "Put Away Forbidden Playthings," with a bluesy rocker, "Dust," and then a shimmering ballad, "My Flame Burns Blue," based on Billy Strayhorn's "Blood Count." With the Metropole Orkest, he came close to becoming a more ruthless Frank Sinatra.

On Saturday the Brooklyn Philharmonic, conducted by Brad Lubman, played Mr. Costello's hourlong ballet score, "Il Sogno" ("The Dream," written for a dance adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream") and then provided an orchestral penumbra for a core trio of Mr. Costello, Mr. Nieve and Greg Cohen on bass. "Il Sogno" is a rhapsodic work, following the plot's juxtapositions of characters by switching among courtly pomp, folkish lilt, sweeping romantic lines and jazzy swing, along with eerie sustained interludes. As tuneful themes recurred and intertwined, it was easy to imagine "Il Sogno" as the latter-day descendant of ballet scores: a film soundtrack.

While Mr. Costello has now proved his skill at writing songs with labyrinthine turns and chromatic kinks and he has become a convincing ballad singer, it's still in his rock songs that the cerebral and the visceral connect best. Thursday's concert unleashed the Imposters, his rock band, with two members of his punk-vintage band the Attractions (Mr. Nieve and Pete Thomas on drums) plus Davey Faragher on bass.

Mr. Costello and the Imposters played most of their next album, "The Delivery Man" (due in September), which is steeped in Southern Americana from Memphis soul to country ballads, and which sketches characters with terse empathy. They also went barreling through older songs from "I Hope You're Happy Now" to "Pump It Up," and let Mr. Costello roar and twang through a bluesy, extended version of "Love That Burns." He may chafe at the limitations of rock, but it's still his best outlet.

Mr. Costello can't do everything equally well. Some of his more complex songs are too attenuated; sometimes he accentuates details until they obscure the whole. But he's no longer overreaching by much, and his ambition trumps professional complacency anytime.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... s_il_sogno

Elvis Costello's Il Sogno

Sat Jul 17, 8:12 PM ET

David Sprague, STAFF

Avery Fisher Hall, New York; 2,738 seats; $65 top



Presented by Lincoln Center Festival 2004. Reviewed July 17, 2004.


Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Brad Lubman.


Elvis Costello has never been shy about collaborating, throwing his lot in with folks as diverse as Paul McCartney , Burt Bacharach and the Brodsky Quartet. The onetime angry young man really swings for the fences, however, on his latest "collaboration" -- transliterating Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as a symphonic piece entitled "Il Sogno."


The piece, which made its North American bow on the final night of Costello's three-date stand at Lincoln Center, was at once remarkably dense and wittily playful. Commissioned by an Italian dance troupe, "Il Sogno" revels in physicality -- percussion, including syncopated clapping worthy of a big fat Greek wedding, plays a large role, as does a forceful celeste -- but not to the point where it demands terpsichorean accompaniment.


Costello had virtually no trouble converting the mastery of character development he's shown in his pop lyrics into orchestration, assigning each set of primary actors a distinct sonic personality. Opening in the royal court, the piece immediately takes on a romantic tenor melodramatic enough to suit a Douglas Sirk heroine, with sighing strings and teasing woodwinds at the fore. An abrupt but apt mood shift is signaled by the emergence of a brass-led counterpoint bursting with the sort of feisty jazz-age energy once employed by Darius Milhaud.


The two diametrically opposed styles -- leavened now and again by gentle Celtic interludes that relied heavily on the dulcimer playing of Lawrence Kaptain -- didn't exactly fuse, but that clearly was not Costello's intention. For the duration of the three-movement, 70-minute piece, the musicians kept up a vigorous dialogue, hemming and hawing, then breaking into lustful roars.


Now and again, an individual player would materialize with something of a monologue -- first violinist Laura Hamilton's regal dissertation, double bassist Greg Cohen's rhythmic leg-pulling -- but "Il Sogno" is categorically an ensemble piece. Conductor Brad Lubman maintained that tem-perament beautifully: He let the nuances of Costello's writing emerge, making for a surprisingly profound concert experience.


After an intermission, Costello and longtime pianist Steve Nieve joined the Philharmonic for a brief set of his pop material, most of it gathered from the more shadowy reaches of his catalog. Highlights included "I Want to Vanish" and a wrenching "She's Pulling Out the Pin."


"Il Sogno," as recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, will be released by Deutsche Grammophon in September.

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http://abc.es/abc/pg040719/prensa/notic ... SP-098.asp

-- Apoteosis de Elvis Costello en el Lincoln Center de Nueva York
ALFONSO ARMADA, CORRESPONSAL/


ÁNGEL DE ANTONIO Elvis Costello cumple veinticinco años de carrera

ImprimirVotarEnviar


NUEVA YORK. El cantante y compositor británico Elvis Costello coronó el sábado en el Lincoln Center de Nueva York tres noches verdaderamente apoteósicas, en las que recorrió todas sus fuentes de inspiración artística, desde el rock más acerado al pop más lírico y ambicioso, desde las melodías para big-bang a la música sinfónica, y dejó la impresión, entre ovaciones y gritos de arrobo, de que está muy lejos de haber tocado techo.

Fiel a su tradición de rendir homenaje «a algunos de los más influyentes artistas de nuestra época», el Festival del Lincoln Center vendió todo el papel para las tres incursiones en la constelación de un músico que acaba de cumplir 25 años en la carretera. Abrió boca a lo grande el martes con el debut en Estados Unidos de la Netherlands Metropole Orchestra, con sus 52 intérpretes y su habilidad para sortear los escollos del jazz, el pop, la música para películas y la clásica. Acompañado por Steve Nieve, el pianista que escolta a este stajanovista de la música desde su primer «elepé», aquel lejano «My aim is true», de 1977, Costello y la formidable orquesta brillaron con luz propia con arreglos para big band y piezas más íntimas. En una asombrosa mezcla de Sinatra, Tony Bennet y But Bacharach (con quien Costello grabó en 1998 «Painted from memory»), el hijo del trompetista de jazz de clase obrera demostró por qué no le tiene miedo a nada. Reinventándose a sí mismo con cada nuevo disco de una carrera, que está lejos de concluir, y una excelente química con la orquesta, el público deliró cuando Costello reclamó su guitarra eléctrica para «Dust» y ante las explosivas versiones de «Watching the detectives» y, sobre todo, «Almost blue», como propina.

Euforia de los fans

Si el jueves fue el día en que los acomodadores del Avery Fisher Hall se las vieron y se las desearon para contener la euforia de los fans que se negaban a seguir sentados el recorrido que Costello hizo con The Imposters durante 145 minutos por buena parte de su repertorio, y el viernes volvió a probar su increíble resistencia y vitalidad, y clavó «Love that burns» y «Peace, love and understanding», el sábado acabó de darle la razón a un crítico que pidió para Declan McManus una placa que rece «Hombre del Renacimiento». Muy lejos queda aquel furioso rokero que decía que las únicas emociones que podía entender eran «la venganza y la culpa». La Orquesta Filarmónica de Brooklyn, con Brad Lubman al frente, interpretó durante una hora y diez minutos el primer trabajo sinfónico de Elvis Costello: la partitura que con lápiz y papel y durante diez agotadoras semanas escribió a partir del shakespeareano «Sueño de una noche de verano» para una compañía italiana de ballet. «Il sogno», que saldrá a la venta el próximo otoño en una grabación de la Orquesta Sinfónica de Londres, es una admirable vuelta de tuerca en su carrera. Con resonancias de Ravel, Chaikovski, Bernstein y Duke Ellington, el Costello compositor sinfónico mezcla estilos en la coctelera de su cabeza con una libertad y falta de prejuicios admirable, lo que a veces le lleva a incongruencias y a que la masa sinfónica, de una brillantez innegable, caiga en momentos fáciles que recuerdan a ilustraciones para una película del agente 007, aunque sí evidencia que no ha perdido de vista la intención de la obra: ilustrar, acompañar y ensalzar un ballet. Pero está lleno de vida, color y energía.

Con el público tan entregado como la propia Filarmónica de Broolkyn y su director, la segunda parte sirvió para que Costello interpretara algunas versiones para orquesta de algunos de sus temas que ya forman parte del pop clásico. Otra vez con su fiel Steve Nieve, responsable de algunos de los arreglos, al piano, y el propio Costello con la guitarra acústica, canciones como «Useless beauty» o, una vez más, «Almost blue», convirtieron el gigantesco teatro en una caverna íntima en la que el antiguo joven airado dejó claro que a sus 49 años es un hombre feliz, un artista en estado de gracia.

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NEW YORK. The singer and British composer Elvis Costello crowned Saturday in Lincoln Center of New York three nights truely tremendous, in which she crossed all his sources of artistic inspiration, from the acierated rock more to pop the more ambitious lírico and, from melodías for big-bang to symphonic music, and left the impression, between ovaciones and shouts of ecstasy, of which she is very far from having touched ceiling. Faithful to his tradition to pay tribute "to some of the most influential artists of our time", the Festival of Lincoln Center sold all the paper for the three incursions in the constellation of a musician who finishes turning 25 years in the highway. He opened mouth to great Tuesday with the debut in the United States of the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra, with its 52 interpreters and their ability to draw for the stumbling blocks of the jazz, the pop one, music for films and the classic one. Accompanied by Steve Snow, the pianista that escort to this stajanovista of music from its first "elepe '", that distant "My aim is true", of 1977, Costello and the formidable orchestra shone with own light with adjustments for big band and more intimate pieces. In amazing mixture of Sinatra, Tony Bennet and But Bacharach (with who Costello recorded in 1998 "Painted from memory"), the son of the trompetista of jazz of working class demonstrated why he is not scared to him to anything. Reinventando to itself with each new disc of a race, that is far from concluding, and an excellent chemistry with the orchestra, the public was delirious when Costello demanded its electrical guitar for "Dust" and before the explosive versions of "Watching the detectives" and, mainly, "Almost blue", as he offers. Euphoria of fans If Thursday were the day in which the ushers of the Avery Fisher Hall saw them and were desired you to contain the euphoria of fans which they refused to follow seated the route that Costello did with The Imposters during 145 minutes by good part of its repertoire, and Friday returned to prove their incredible resistance and vitality, and nailed "Love that burns" and "Peace, love and understanding", Saturday finished giving the reason to a critic who requested for Declan McManus a plate that says "Man of the Renaissance". Very far it is left that furious rokero that said that the only emotions that could understand they were "the revenge and the fault". The Filarmónica Orchestra of Brooklyn, with Brad Lubman to the front, interpreted during one hour and ten minutes the first symphonic work of Elvis Costello: the score that with pencil and paper and during ten exhausting weeks wrote from the shakespeareano "Dream of one night of summer" for an Italian company of ballet. "Il sogno", that will on sale leave the next autumn in a recording the Symphony orchestra of London, is an admirable return of nut in its race. With resonances of Ravel, Chaikovski, Bernstein and Duke Ellington, the Costello symphonic composer mixture styles in the coctelera of its head with a freedom and admirable lack of prejudices, which sometimes takes to incongruencias and to that the symphonic mass, of an undeniable brilliance, falls at easy moments that they remember to illustrations for a film of agent 007, although yes evidence that is lost of Vista no the intention of the work: to illustrate, to accompany and to praise a ballet. But he is full of life, color and energy. With the public so given as the own Filarmónica de Broolkyn and its director, the second part served so that Costello interpreted some versions for orchestra of some of its subjects that already comprise pop of the classic one. Again with their Steve faithful Snow, person in charge of some of the adjustments, to the piano, and the own Costello with the acoustic guitar, songs like "Useless beauty" or, once again, "Almost blue", turned the gigantic theater an intimate cavern in which the old angry young person made clear that to his 49 years he is a happy man, an artist in grace state.

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http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... 3792c.html

Saturday, as the Festival ended its Elvis Costello retrospective, the Brooklyn Philharmonic under Brad Lubman gave the North America Premiere of "Il Sogno," Costello's first symphonic work. Also, Costello sang some of his pop standards with full orchestral backup.

"Il Sogno," a version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," was commissioned by an Italian dance company and would probably make a stronger impression if we saw it as an accompaniment to ballet rather than music standing on its own.

Nevertheless the score is full of delights, sometimes sounding like vintage jazz, other times like vintage Hollywood. Its most notable feature may be Costello's understanding of the riches of a symphony orchestra. One can only look forward to his future explorations of this great resource.

Originally published on July 19, 2004

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http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/ ... 028060.xml

Costello the composer
Popular singer turns a page with first orchestral work
Monday, July 19, 2004
BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER
Star-Ledger Staff
NEW YORK -- For pop musicians, there is a fine line between artistic ambitions and pretension. What enables one to earn the tag of intrepid, while another is labeled a poser?

A long litany of rock artists have sought to mature gracefully by composing "classical" music, whether or not they could actually orchestrate or even read music on paper. Unlike some of his illustrious peers, Elvis Costello took the trouble to learn skills that he could easily have done without as a successful singer/songwriter.

Costello's first orchestral work, the ballet score "Il Sogno" ('The Dream'), garnered its North American premiere on Saturday as the final panel in the Lincoln Center Festival's triptych devoted to his versatile muse and marking his 50th birthday. (On previous nights, he sang in front of a jazz orchestra and with his rock combo, the Imposters.) The piece brims with color and charm of a kind wholly distinct from Costello's pop music or even his classically oriented song cycle, "The Juliet Letters."

Although episodic and a bit long at about an hour (but then many collections of dance cues seem that way), "Il Sogno" was also unflaggingly melodious, rhythmically vital and -- most impressive -- orchestrated with kaleidoscopic vividness. Reading music is one thing; orchestration is quite another (with most rockers who compose orchestral works ceding that all-important job to trained experts). Costello seems to have taken to this new art with as much panache as he did Americana, torch songs or other genre offshoots from his initial vein of combustible, if highly literate, rock'n'roll.

Commissioned for an Italian ballet company's adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Costello's score evokes the material's bittersweet humor and magical air. His soundprint alternated between Stravinsky's commedia dell'arte pastiche "Pulcinella" and the impressionistic big-band charts of Gil Evans. Throughout, there were beguiling sonic touches from bell-like tuned percussion, cascading cimbalom, arching trumpet and swinging trap drums, as well as much mellow-toned saxophone.

The Brooklyn Philharmonic under conductor Brad Lubman performed the jazzy parts with plenty of insouciance, shifting idiomatic gears between those and the more "classical" passages with aplomb. A younger, more rock 'n' roll crowd than usual for Avery Fisher Hall, the audience seemed thrilled, or at least genuinely impressed, by the fresh, tuneful "Il Sogno." But the reception for the concert's second half -- featuring Costello singing a brace of his songs with the orchestra, plus his longtime pianist, Steve Nieve, and double-bassist Greg Cohen -- was rapturous.

In spectacular voice, from sotto voce to stentorian, Costello sang several songs that he orchestrated for his recent ballad album, "North." The one vintage number Costello brought out was "Almost Blue," which has become something of a modern standard, interpreted by more singers than just his new wife, star jazz chanteuse Diana Krall. The laconic Richard Harvey arrangement of "The Birds Will Still Be Singing," from "The Juliet Letters," was another highlight.

Costello also aired songs from his next Imposters album, which -- further illustrating his multi-faceted ways -- will come out the same September day as a Deutsche Grammophon disc featuring "Il Sogno." The concluding item brought out another side of the English artist -- that of the showman. He turned off the microphone to voice his Nino Rota-like waltz "Couldn't Call It Unexpected #4," leading the audience in a wordless singalong at the end. It was, to use an adjective rarely applied to Costello in his days as an "angry young man," enchanting.

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http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/27484.htm

'DREAM' COME TRUE FOR COSTELLO

By SHIRLEY FLEMING



July 19, 2004 -- IT'S impossible to pigeon- hole Elvis Costello, and the Lincoln Center Festival has been smart enough not even to try.

The diverse talents of this very popular singer/songwriter/composer, just turning 50, could not really be contained in a single program, so the festival gave him three last week.


The Netherlands' jazz ensemble Metropole Orkest backed him in the first concert and his own trio, the Imposters, collaborated in the second.

The mini-fest came to its climax on Saturday as a tumultuous audience welcomed him to Avery Fisher Hall for the U.S. premiere of his first full-length symphonic work, "Il Sogno" (The Dream), performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic.


The work started two years ago as a ballet score for an Italian company's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and proved rich enough to expand into an hour-long, three-movement piece that takes musical glances at various situations in Shakespeare's play.

The emphasis is on "quick." In the attempt to capture the spirit of no fewer than 21 incidents from the play, "The Dream" is inevitably fragmented, and often a particularly promising idea got nipped off just as you started to become absorbed in it.


But say this: Costello knows his way around an orchestra. The writing is full of color and variety, and solo instruments get their fair share of the spotlight — a beguiling trumpet song in the second movement still lingers.

There are all sorts of style references — luxuriantly romantic passages, outbursts of Ivesian exuberance, sudden turns into Latin rhythms, sturdy marches, a couple of hints of Elizabethan ballad. The work goes all over the place, but it's a fun trip.


IL SOGNO (THE DREAM)
Symphonic work from Elvis Costello at Avery Fisher Hall
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bambooneedle
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Post by bambooneedle »

Here's a translation for that Spanish article in John's last post:



Elvis Costello's apotheosis at the Lincoln Centre New York

ANGEL DE ANTONIO Elvis Costello's career turns twenty-five.

PrintVoteSend (nothing to do with the article...)

New York. The British singer and composer Elvis Costello on Saturday crowned three truly apotheostic nights, in which he ran through all his fountains of artistic inspiration, from most galvanizing rock to more lyrical and ambitious pop, from explosive melodies to symphonic music, and left the impression, between ovations and enraptured screams, that he's far from having reached his peak.

Faithful to his traditional rendering of homage "to some of the most influential artists of our era", The Lincoln Festival Centre was sold out for three incursions into the constellation of a musician who has just completed 25 years on the road. He left mouths agape on Tuesday with the U.S debut of the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra, with its 52 interpreters and its ability to mix schools of jazz, pop, movie scores and classical. Accompanied by Steve Nieve, the pianist who has escorted this stageman since his first LP, the long ago My Aim Is True from 1977, Costello and the brilliant orchestra sparkled with proper light on big band arrangements and more intimate pieces. As a frightening mix of Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Burt Bacharch (with which Costello recorded Painted From Memory in 1998), the son of a working class jazz trumpetist demonstrated that he wasn't afraid of anything. Reinventing himself with each new record of his career, which he is yet far from concluding, and an excellent chemistry with the orchestra, the audience was delirious when Costello reclaimed his electric guitar for Dust and before the explosive versions of Watching The Detectives, and above all Almost Blue, as bonuses.

The Fans' Euphoria

If Thursday were the day when the ushers of the Avery Fisher Hall were challenged and left wishing they could contain the fans' euphoria when they refused to remain seated during 145 minutes of a good part of their repetoire, and on Friday he returned to prove his incredible resistance and vitality again and nailed Love That Burns and Peace Love & Understanding, on Saturday he finished giving reason to a critic for asking to pin the label "renaissance man" on him. Long left behind is the rocker who said that the only emotions he understood were "revenge and guilt". The Brooklyn Philarmonic Orchestra, with Brad Lubman fronting, over an hour and 10 minutes interpreted Costello's first symphonic work: the composition which with pencil and paper over ten exhausting weeks he wrote based on Shakespeare's "A Mid-Summer Night's Dream" for an Italian ballet company. "Il Sogno", which will be on sale next Autumn as a recording by the London Symphony Orchestra, is an admirable turn in his career. With resonances of Ravel, Chaikovski, Bernstein and Duke Ellington, symphonic composer Costello mixes styles in the concoctionary of his head with an admirable freedom and lack of prejudice, which at times shows you incongruities and which the symphonic mix, with an undoubtable brilliance, falls on facile moments that recall images of a 007 movie, though it does demonstrate that the intented vision for the piece is never lost: to illustrate, accompany and exalt a ballet. But it's full of life, colour and energy.

With the audience as dedicated as the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra and its director, the second part served to allow Costello to interpret some of the themes that are already part of classic pop with an orchestra. Again with his faithful Steve Nieve, responsible for some of the arrangements, at the piano, and Costello himself on acoustic guitar, songs like All This Useless Beauty or, once more, Almost Blue, converted the giant theatre into an intimate cavern in which the former angry young man made clear that at his 49 years he is a happy man, an artist in a state of grace.
normabuel
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Post by normabuel »

FYI, you can download You Lie Sweetly (and Passionate Fight) from Steve Nieve's website. Both are worth a listen.
WhipsnSpurs
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Post by WhipsnSpurs »

SweetPear wrote:One asked if they'd heard the new Diana Krall record and they said no but they'd like to. The first went on to say that he's listened to it quite a few times and he thought that the songs were terribly overwritten and became quite obtuse. :shock:
(I told you it was gossip.)
I haven't heard the entire disc, only two tracks that Diana had done on late night talk tv. I'm not a DK fan, but I know some of you are......so in the name of all that is good and true and in the interest of Elvis Costello, is this anywhere close to being true??

:lol:

The LA Times had the review of her Greek Theater concert on Friday. The reviewer praised her voice, ensemble, her piano playing and choice of 'standards'. When it came to the original pieces, well, lets say he was less than charitable.
johnfoyle
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Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.therestisnoise.com/

Still, better than McCartney

For me, Elvis Costello’s Il Sogno, which the Brooklyn Phil- harmonic played at Lincoln Center last night, was a scary blank. After half an hour, I did something I’ve never done in twelve years of reviewing concerts in New York: I got out a book and started to read. My brain needed something else to grasp on to — I felt like I was clawing the air and plummeting. It’s not that Costello is inept; the score actually showed a fair amount of skill, especially in the orchestration, which is usually the aspect of the art that newcomers master last (see Gershwin). It made a clean, lucid sound, whether in the faintly Stravinskyish neoclassical passages or in the jazzy vamps. But the content was bafflingly trite. On the radar screen of compositional authority, where Gershwin registers as a dominating blob, Costello would be lucky to show up as a blip. Portions of melodies wandered in constricted circles; sequences began unpromisingly and went nowhere. At its best, and this is not as big a compliment as it sounds, Il Sogno ranked with mediocre Sibelius — those purring interludes that the old man tossed off when he was trying to replicate the freak popularity of “Valse Triste.”

I’m all for flinging open the doors of "classical music" to pop sympathizers. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, the BBC's new composer-in-residence, is probably the most promising boundary-smasher right now; his Bodysong has wonderful Bartokian passages for string quartet. Björk could make the same transition if she wanted to. Back in the day, Ellington and Gershwin made nonsense of the distinction between "composer" and "pop musician": they weren't beyond categories so much as categories melted down. Costello, too, has an all-devouring mind, as he showed in a virtuoso Vanity Fair article about what to listen to at different hours of the day. But he has nothing urgent to say with instruments alone. He’s simply demonstrating another facet of his cleverness. More power to him, I guess, although if I were a young composer struggling to get my music heard I’d be angry at Lincoln Center for fawning over him. Now, if it were a symphony by Prince, that might be another matter…

Just a first impression. See Terry Teachout

http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnig ... html#83095

for another view.

Posted by Alex Ross on July 18, 2004 | Permalink
laughingcrow
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Post by laughingcrow »

Apart from that blog, so many good reviews....wow! I thought it would get a similar reaction to North.
bobster
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Post by bobster »

Well, there's probably a reason Elvis didn't premiere this one in London...
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
johnfoyle
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Post by johnfoyle »

Salon review ( text from listserv ; original only available for a subscription)


Fallen angel

Thumb-wrestling my way through a concert by the once great Elvis
Costello.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Thomas Bartlett

July 21, 2004 | Last Saturday I went to the Lincoln Center's Avery
Fisher Hall to see a real live fallen angel, the once great Elvis
Costello.
His debased status was made official last year with his marriage to
Diana Krall: It's simply incomprehensible to me that a great artist
could fall in love with someone so artistically vapid, even insidious ...
ergo, Costello must no longer be a great artist.

The first half of the program was devoted to a concert performance of
Costello's hour-long orchestral ballet, "Il Sogno," which it's hard to
view as anything but a hubristic vanity project. Jon Pareles, in the New
York Times, described the work in a few sentences while diplomatically
avoiding any pronouncements on its quality, but the New Yorker's Alex
Ross, writing in his excellent blog, didn't pull any punches: "I did
something I've never done in twelve years of reviewing concerts in New
York: I got out a book and started to read. My brain needed something
else to grasp on to -- I felt like I was clawing the air and
plummeting."


I feel his pain: My girlfriend and I, sans book and having read the
very dull program cover to cover, resorted to a lengthy thumb-war
tournament, much to the disgust of the rather starched-up couple
behind us. To be fair, while "Il Sogno" is boring, tremendously boring,
it's not bad. It's actually astonishingly competent for anyone's first
attempt at orchestral writing -- but it's the rare prodigy whose first
attempt at orchestral writing merits performance at the Avery Fisher
Hall.

The second half of the concert was devoted, mercifully, to Costello's
songs. He sang accompanied by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, as well
as the always excellent Greg Cohen on bass and Steve Nieve on
piano. Nieve was the keyboardist in Costello's band, the Attractions,
and has been his almost constant musical sidekick, but he is a truly
horrendous and tasteless piano accompanist, and should never be
allowed near a 9-foot grand. The songs were uneven -- many were
culled from the less-memorable corners of the Costello catalogue
("The Juliet Letters," "North"), while some of the classics sounded
uncomfortable being dragged into this world of strings, dragging
tempos and turgid piano arrangements.

But for all that, I was spellbound. Over the last decade, Costello has
developed, quite unexpectedly, into a great torch singer. His vibrato
can go a little bit overboard, sometimes even making it ambiguous what
note he's trying to sing, but his phrasing is both impeccable and
distinctive. And most important, I always believe him.
invisible Pole
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Post by invisible Pole »

"Fallen angel" and at the same time "great torch singer" ???
That's a bit schizophrenic, isn't it ?

And calling Steve a "tasteless piano accompanist" is really beyond me.

Well, I suppose that for a few years now it has become Salon's policy to be against almost anything Elvis does.
If you don't know what is wrong with me
Then you don't know what you've missed
johnfoyle
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Post by johnfoyle »

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServe ... 7373864893

The Financial Times (London)

Music: Elvis Costello's 'Il Sogno'
By Martin Bernheimer
Published: July 21 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: July 21 2004 5:00


So-called classical music is playing only a minor role at this year's Lincoln Center Festival and the facsimiles thereof are not particularly reasonable. The most prominent shreds and patches emanate from an unlikely source: Elvis Costello.


On Saturday at Avery Fisher Hall, the nearly-50-year-old wunderkind from Paddington demonstrated his rocky-jazzy-funky-symphonic eclecticism with the US premiere of a suite entitled Il Sogno. Sprawling over an hour, it entails moderate ado about A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Costello produced the score for the Italian dance company Alterballetto in 2000, and a recording by Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra is due in September. Unaided by collaborators of any kind, as the annotation proclaims, the composer toiled on the project for 10 weeks, scrawling 200 pages in pencil. The result, divorced from the Shakespearean inspiration, sounds pretty, crafty and a tad innocuous. Think Bernstein, as in West Side Story, without the slush but also without the flair.

Having benefited from an escapade with the Brodsky Quartet, Costello is no primitive stranger in a sophisticated paradise. This is serious stuff, not to be confused with such ancient crossover misadventures as Jethro Tull's Switched-On Symphony and Frank Zappa's 200 Motels. Lean, clean and episodic, Il Sogno engages with dancerly syncopations, nifty modulations and melodic quirks.

To delineate contrasting universes, the composer provides mock-lofty music for the nobles, folkish naivety for the lower classes, swing for the fairies. The score rambles and rumbles sweetly, fits and spasms notwithstanding, and makes idiomatic use of the forces at hand. The orchestration remains essentially conventional, despite incidental use of progressive saxophone, cimbalom and a few (inaudibly) clapping hands. One recognises nods to Prokofiev here, to Gershwin there, and even traces of Mendelssohn. Still, enough original impulses remain to thwart the flattering spectre of imitation. If only those impulses were more brash, more brutal.

Urged onward if not upward by Brad Lubman, the Brooklyn Philharmonic demonstrated much apparent respect, not so much bravado. The crowd, which did not quite fill the 2,738-seat auditorium, applauded politely when the performance ended, then added a cheering ovation when Costello strolled out for a bow. After the interval the conquering hero returned for some overdressed arrangements of his greatest hits.

***

Image
bobster
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Post by bobster »

Now, these are the reviews I expected. (And, in a way, it's good to see old Martin Bernheimer again. He used to be the classical critic for the L.A. Times entertainment section, back when I used to read it cover to cover every day...ah, my misspent youth....)

All in all, I'm actually thinking I'm going to buy this one!
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
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