Perhaps the nearly overlooked and best deals for your money of the offerings of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival this season are the Piccolo Harbor Cruises. You are out on the ocean with a terrific view of leaping dolphins taking a spin around Fort Sumter and then admiring the lights on The Battery, which alone would cost you at least $25 a person for a two-hour cruise.

But that would be without the fantastic jazz offered by some of the areas best musicians. Not only that, you can dance on the top deck. And all for $15. I was on the first of the four Piccolo cruises Wednesday night which had people at the dock wanting to buy tickets. However, boat officials said the place was totally filled with 255 passengers. For full disclosure, I will say the Franklin Ashley Quintet was churning out the tunes that night, and I happen to be married to the piano player, whose name headlines the group. But I was not the only one who was amazed to hear clarinetist Jack Dressler produce a sound like Benny Goodman on “Moonglow.” And more than one person said, “Does that fellow play in New York?”

When Dressler and Bryan Reed swung like crazy with a jazz duet of “Honeysuckle Rose,’ the crowd went ballistic, as the wine flowed. As I mingled in the crowd, I estimated about 50 percent were from “off,” like playwright Carmilla Carr and her son Kali O’Dwyer who are from L.A., and about half were Lowcountry residents. “Los Angeles doesn’t have anything like this,” said Dwyer.

We also hear that John Tecklenburg & Friends’ mellow jazz on the cruise last night was well-attended in spite of the lousy weather. You can still catch Rolling on the River with Oscar Rivers on June 4 and singer Rob Keiter’s trio on June 5. And for all of this, tickets are just $15. Only in Charleston.

Spoleto gossip
Although the Boston Ballet has come and gone, as a dance critic I would like to point out that no matter how terrific, that dancers like writers, need to be edited. Certainly, technically, the Boston Ballet was to this dance critic of 30 years, on the level with the Bolshoi, the American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet. However, the first number “Brake the Eyes,” beautifully executed en pointe, consisted of the same combination of eight to 10 steps performed over and over again, despite the fact the audience kept applauding at various intervals, thinking it was over. This went on for nearly 30 minutes, but seemed like several hours. Choreographer Jorma Elo simply took the easy way out by having something that was superb go stale.

The excerpts in the next piece from”Swan Lake” were the best I’ve ever seen and 27 years ago I saw Russian prima ballerina Maya Pletsetskaya dance the “Dying Swan” divertissement. Unfortunately, we were left disappointed when Twyla Tharp in her modern piece “In the Upper Room” took the same path as Elo. She had her superb dancers perform the same combination over and over for about 25 minutes. At firstn we delighted in the “with it” costumes or black and white stripes with women in mini-skirts with matching briefs (often seen) and red socks. But after awhile, the frenetic trademark Glass music started to seem like bees buzzing in our brain and I began to feel imprisoned, as if I couldn’t bear the repetition and the unrelenting music anymore. Afterward, at the gala, which WAS gorgeous, a prominent local artist was walking around inquiring as to whether anyone had an asprin as the dance had given him a terrific headache.
I knew exactly how he felt. What a shame some of the most astute dance in the world had to be partly spoiled by choreographers.

It’s true: Life can come at you fast, as the TV ad says. Such as when going out to dinner results in an injury that forces the cancellation of a long-anticipated and carefully rehearsed musical appearance. University of South Carolina music professor Marina Lomazov, who lives in Columbia, was looking forward to her performance in the prestigious Piccolo Spoleto Spotlight Concert Series to be held Thursday night, May 29, at the New Tabernacle Fouth Baptist Church, 22 Elizabeth St. And, for sure, at $10 a head, the 11-concert series is one of the best deals in town.

However, according to the Spotlight coordinator Norbert Lewandowski, a cellist with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, several days ago Lomazov was going through the door of a restaurant in Columbia.  When the friend with her pushed the double doors open, an 8-foot-long, approximately 50-pound dividing rod connecting the two-parts of the double doors, crashed down upon her, breaking her collar bone.

Unfortunately, this meant Lomazov would be unable to perform in a concert titled “Marina Lomazov and Friends,” featuring six of the state’s musicians performing music by Shostakovich and Schnittke.
Piccolo officials had to scramble to get someone to take her place, but Andrew Armstrong, who now lives in New York but has frequently played for events here such as the College of Charleston’s International Piano Series, agreed to take her place and the program was renamed “Andrew Armstrong and Friends.”
The good news is that Lewandowski reports that doctors expect Lomazov to fully recover within four weeks.

And, of course, there’s always next year.

At the Spoleto Festival USA annual spring board meeting on Monday, the news was not so bright, the festival will end in a nearly $300,000 deficit. This was due to factors beyond the festival’s control, like: the poor economy, the fact the dollar is horribly weak and the plethora of foreign actors (coming from every continent except Australia and Antarctica) have to be paid up front, and the cost of plane tickets has skyrocketed.

Nigel Redden defended his selection of “Monkey: Journey to the West” which cost $1.2 million to stage as opposed to its 2007 counterpart, “The Constant Wife” staged by Ireland’s Gate Theatre, which cost around $300,000. In fact, The Gate Theatre was supposed to do “Sweeney Todd” but backed out after the deal had been made.

Covering the meeting for the first time was New York Times reporter Dan Wakin, who was the only other reporter in the room besides moi. After the meeting, Wakin could be heard grilling Nigel about the amount of money spent on “Monkey…”

Read The Post and Courier story.

The jazz boat was rocking on Monday night when the Piccolo Spoleto Festival’s Harbor Cruise launched from the Fountain Walk Dock, and it wasn’t just the lively winds, which eventually died down.

Former Broadway pit band pianist Maida Libkin (musical director of “Urinetown” at the Village Playhouse) showed up with her husband, singer Bill Schlitt, who is one of the city’s premiere show singers and directs “The Good Time Variety Hours” at at the Village Playhouse. Read the rest of this entry »

“I truly feel as if I am home,” says Patrice Caurier, co-director of the opera “The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny,” as he speared a piece of frozen pineapple from a crystal bowl at Judy and Jack’s Vane’s pre-Spoleto opening party last week at their home, also the site of one of the very first festival parties 30 years ago.

Paris-born Caurier and his directing partner Moshe Leiser were enjoying returning once more to the Vanes. “I feel like I’ve arrived home,” said Caurier. “We have been here seven or eight festivals and the Vanes are the first place we come to. It never changes and it’s what I most look forward to when I think of Charleston.”

Read the rest of this entry »

At one point on Saturday evening at the opening of the Batsheva Dance Company, the 18 male and female dancers, looking ominous in black suits and fedoras, walked off the stage at the Gaillard and filtered through the audience.

At first they appeared to merely shake hands with some audience members, but then whispered something to them, and gently pulled a dozen women and three men to their feet and led them up onto the stage, where the women were picked up and flung about and then allowed to remain mostly stationary as the dancers cavorted around them to such tunes as “Hooray for Hollywood,” which has the appropriate lyrics “Hooray for Hollywood…where any barmaid can be a star made dancing with or without a fan.”

And of course it was all in good fun as an elderly woman who appeared to barely make it up the steps to the stage, launched into kind of a hip-hop, cha-cha-cha to a swinging version of “Dance With Me.”

Spoleto Festival board member David Rawle, appropriately attired in white tie, was one of the men enticed to dance with the stars for a few minutes. Said Rawle at the gala afterward: “It was terrific fun and a contrast to the serious message delivered by dances at the beginning of the first act and in the second act. The only thing I didn’t care for was that the young girl who picked me wouldn’t let me lead, and so I was dancing the Ginger Rogers part!”

Su-Su Johnson of Spartanburg was one of those chosen to show off her terpsichorean skill: “I was just shocked! I really hate to get up in front of anyone to just give a speech, much less dance with a professional dance group! But it WAS kind of fun.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Two people who are major players with the Spoleto Festival USA are making waves in the arts world of the Big Apple.

On May 8, Spoleto artist Chuck Close, whose artwork “Large Phil Fingerprint/Random (1979)” is the official 2007 Spoleto Festival poster, recently contributed some of his artwork to an auction to raise money for the Metropolitan Opera. The auction was held the first week of May on the stage of the opera’s home at Lincoln Center and raised more than $1.8 million. Close painted a portrait of opera singer Renee Fleming and two editions of the Close work, using a cotton tapestry technique, sold for $70,000 and $80,000 each. Most of the lots were specially commisioned opera-theme works that were being offered for sale for the first time, according to The New York Times.

Copies of the Spoleto poster “Large Phil Fingerprint/Random (1979)” which is of composer Philip Glass who will perform one of his new works at the festival, are $25 and may be purchased from Gaillard Auditorium starting May 25..

Also, Jacob’s Pillow, one of the most pretigious dance festivals in the world celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The festival recently sent out a press release to all dance critics touting the fact that the State Ballet of Georgia will be the headliner for the 75th anniversary festivities June 20-24 in Becket, Mass.. The release says, “The State Ballet of Georgia is is directed by and will star classical ballet luminary nina Ananiashvili, renowned for her appearances with the Bolshoi Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Ballet.”

But those who attend Spoleto, will get to see her first, as she will direct and star as Odette/Odile in five performances of “Swan Lake” accompanied by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra.

So who in Charleston has seen Francis “Chip” Menotti, the adopted son of the late Gian Carlo Menotti?

The answer is Ali Rahnamoon, the longtime pastry chef at Saffron’s restaurant on East Bay Street near the Gaillard Auditorium. Rahnamoon remembers serving food to Gian Carlo Menotti back before the Pulitzer Prize-winning founder of the Spoleto festivals in both Italy and Charleston broke off his relationship with Spoleto Festival USA in 1993.

Said Rahnamoon: “Chip was in here last week, around April 11 or 12, and had a cup of coffee. He told me he was visiting with friends in Charleston and was staying the week at Wild Dunes.”

However, no one else seems to know anything about Chip’s mysterious visit to this city he once left on such bad terms. Redden was out of his New York office at Lincoln Center and could no be reached for comment. Paula Edwards, head of public relations for Spoleto Festival USA, said she knew nothing of Chip Menotti’s alleged visit. Same with Susan Ravenel, a longtime board member who recently rotated off the board. “I’m sure I would have heard,” Ravenel said.

Redden was in town on April 11 for a press conference and the public unveiling of the official 2007 Spoleto poster and didn’t mention any visit from Chip Menotti to the press.

Read the rest of this entry »