Marginal Utility

• The hall and organ are gifts of local super-rich people Jerome Frautschi and Pleasant Rowland. She made her fortune with the upscale and pricey American Girl dolls (esp. selling the line to Mattel). He invested in his wife's business. They deserve much credit for holding the line on the corporatization of public buildings, and not giving Madison an American Girl Hall, or even the American Girl Organ at Overture Hall. The program had noted that Latry recently christened the organ at Philadelphia's Verizon Hall.
• Attendance was good. Why no refreshments at intermission? (There were Issues with the implosion of the firm that had the concession, but that really should have been ironed out.)
• One point from the introduction of the artist was that Latry spends about 250 nights a year on the road. That did a lot to suspend my usual thoughts that it would be really cool to be a top-tier touring musician.
  
• Latry's dismount from the organ bench was so jaunty it did not fail to put a smile on my face. I suppose successful concert organists must work on that.
• For my money, the most impressive feat of musicianship, not to mention coordination, was a "Trio" movement from Balbastre's Livre d'orgue de Dijon. It made my brain hurt just thinking about trying to have my right hand, left hand, and feet engaged simultaneously at independent tasks.
• Latry was also reported in the program to have recorded the organ works of Messiaen, which would have been more interesting to hear from than some of the works on the program, but I'm not sure if it wouldn't have set the audience fleeing.
• The program seemed pretty secular as the organ repertoire goes, actually. It was, at times, very loud — even to my slightly rock-n-roll damaged hearing — but maybe not so much to attendees past the seemingly rather advanced median age of the crowd.
  
• One of Latry's claims to fame is as an improvisateur. Among three themes he was tasked to improvise on at the end of the concert was a bit of "America the Beautiful" (through "amber waves of grain." The resulting improvisation evoked the Nautilus at flank speed, getting ready to send some unsuspecting man-o'-war to the bottom. A message, perhaps?
  
• The encore, an improvisation on the chimes of Big Ben [MP3], didn't seem to be quite so loaded.
  

Labels: Madison, Music, Random Bullets

// posted by Tom Bozzo @ 7:46 AM