Franklin’s roots, which she never abandoned, are in gospel music. As a girl, she began singing in the choir of her father’s church, the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit. The Reverend C.L. Franklin, a noted figure in black America in the 1950s and 60s, was one of the first ministers to have his own nationally-broadcast radio show. Because of his stature, many famous black musicians, including Sam Cooke, Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson and Jackie Wilson, visited the Franklin home.

In the early 1960s, legendary talent scout and record producer John Hammond signed Franklin to her first recording contract with Columbia Records. Hammond said Franklin was the greatest voice since Billie Holiday. Unfortunately, her advisors had different ideas about the direction her career should take. Occupying a space between Rock and Roll and Gospel, Franklin could not find her niche. Those years at Columbia gave her experience and exposure, but no big hits.

In 1967, however, Franklin moved to Atlantic records, where she finally achieved a commercial breakthrough with “I Never Loved a Man.” She had found her style with a new blend of gospel vocals with inventive piano playing in passionate secular love songs. For Franklin, soul music combined a personal and emotional voice with the drive of the 1960’s black pride movement. In the late 60s and early 70s, it was the rare Franklin recording that did not become a soul classic.

In these early years Franklin was viewed as a potent symbol of black advancement. She often lent her talents to the civil rights cause, and performed publicly in support of Martin Luther King, Jr., a family friend. But by the mid-1970s, soul music had lost much of its political and social significance. The musical trends of the time reflected new values, and Franklin lost momentum and direction. She again switched record companies, and began to record a wide variety of music.

Throughout the eighties, Franklin had major hits such as “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” and “Freeway of Love,” but her biggest songs were collaborations. She recorded duets with Annie Lenox, James Brown, Whitney Houston, and had a number one hit, “I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me),” with George Michael. Always trying to expand her range, Franklin sang and performed in the movie THE BLUES BROTHERS, worked with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and recorded an amazing gospel album in 1987, “One Lord One Faith One Baptism.”

Now in her late fifties, Franklin continues to make exciting, vibrant, and personal music. The range of her achievements and of her commitment continue to be an inspiration to young musicians everywhere. It is clear however, that with such songs as “Do Right Woman—Do Right Man,” “Chain of Fools,” and “Respect,” it is those great early hits that will remain the defining work of “the Queen of Soul.”

Moore (1898 – 1986) is one of England’s most respected and widely seen modern artists. In “Moore in America,” the show at the New York Botanical Garden his large sculptures of bronze and fiberglass span a familiar array of reclining figures, mother and child, echoes of hillsides. There is no artist whose work looks more comfortable and – in a way that demonstrates his ubiquity and legacy to public art – predictable in a verdant setting. For a viewer, the work offers numerous pleasures, and many of them stem from these qualities. Yet Moore was also a master of mass, negative space, and form.

Bourgeois (born 1911) has produced a body of work, on the other hand, that’s anything but predictable. A stroll up the ramp at the (did I say cool?) Guggenheim, unspools the artist’s progression through forms and media. It also shows her voracious and fearless – even compulsive – exploration of the psyche, and it’s this total package that makes the air conditioned environment even more rewarding. (more…)

There’s absolutely nothing bad-boy about Franch-Ballester (pronounced FrAHnk Bai-yess-TAIR), who judging from my recent conversation with him is completely down to earth and rather endearingly modest, considering his accomplishments and talent. He only mentions in passing that at age 27 he is simultaneously on the roster of three of the most prestigious organizations for classical musicians—Young Concert Artists, Astral Artistic Services, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two. In 2004, a year before he graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, he won first prize at both the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and Astral Artistic Services’ National Auditions. Three years ago, when Franch-Ballester was 24, Anthony Tommasini gushed in the New York Times about his New York recital debut at the 92nd Street Y, with pianist Anna Polonsky, in which he easily conquered Messager’s showpiece “Solo de Concours” with “warm and alluring reedy tone and with brilliant technique,”demonstrated with Brahms’s Sonata No. 1 in F minor that he was a “musician of some depth,” then went on to play the New York premiere of Kenji Bunch’s whimsical Cookbook, ending with a chops-busting Fantasia on Themes from Rigoletto by Luigi Bassi. It seems that every concert or musical appearance by Franch-Ballester is met with some version of of dazed approval.

I spoke to Franch-Ballester on July 3, four days before his River to River concert.

Tell me about the program you’ve chosen for your River to River performance.

I’m playing the third rhapsody for clarinet and piano by Claude Debussy, which is really very atmospheric, and then I will play the second sonata by Brahms for clarinet and piano, and then after intermission, I will do the Poulenc sonata, and then finish with the Fantasy on Themes from La Traviata by Donato Lovreglio. My pianist is Anna Polonsky. We’ve done a few recitals together.

You seem to be doing an awful lot of traveling these days—you just returned from a trip to Panama and Japan. How much would you say you perform in the United States, and how much abroad?

I’d say 70 percent of my performances are in the United States. I am kept pretty busy through Young Concert Artists as management, plus I belong to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two, and Astral Artistic Services. When I have time I go a lot to Europe, and I go a lot to Spain. And I’ve just been in Japan for a few weeks, yesterday I came back from Panama city. I will be going go South America in September for a tour in Colombia, and in January I will be participating at the Cartagena International Music Festival in Colombia. Most of my tours are with piano, then I also tour a lot with orchestras, and I do a lot of chamber music … I love playing chamber music. It’s my number 1 thing right now.

Would you say chamber music is a bigger focus for you right now? Especially since you’ve been a member of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two, I would imagine that has moved you in that direction.

I wouldn’t say it’s bigger … I’m 27 years old, and it is like a new shape. For me there is solo with orchestra, recital programs, and chamber music, and I like to do all three as much as I can, because I learn a lot from all of them. To be a better soloist with orchestra I do more chamber music, or vice versa. But of course with clarinet you cannot have the same amount of solo appearances with orchestra as a pianist, so I have to balance that with chamber music and solo recitals.

You play a fair amount of new music on your programs. Among other pieces, in 2004 you played in the world premiere of Jake Heggie’s song cycle Winter Roses with Frederica von Stade, and just this past February you played the world premiere of Paul Schoenfield’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano. How important is it to you to play new music?

Very important. Just two weeks ago, I premiered another piece, a commission from a friend of mind, John B. Hedges, at the Delaware Chamber Music Festival. He is a composer I connected with through Curtis, because what happens is everybody leaves [the conservatory and] goes to different places, and you don’t see your friends for years. One day I met up with John; he does all kinds of R&B music, and when I heard that music, my mind just started thinking clarinet, based on these rhythms. So I asked him, would you like to write me a piece in three movements, with New Orleans rhythms, for recital? Also I do lot of education programs, and I thought it would be a great piece for those activities. So he wrote the piece and called it Gumbo. The premiere at the Delaware festival went very well. I’m going to start playing the Paul Schoenfield piece on my recital programs for next season. I also premiered another piece in 2004 called Cookbook, by Kenji Bunch, which I’ve also recorded; it’s one of my favorite pieces to play. I really think it’s very important to every year collaborate with a composer, to have a personal connection and approach with them while they are writing the piece. I also play a lot of contemporary music, like I’m always playing new music … I just want to learn everything.

Tell me about your family—you were born into a family of clarinetists and zarzuela singers. Which members of your family are the musicians?

My parents are not musicians. My father was involved with a nonprofit organization for music, but all my uncles and aunts were musicians. My great grandfather was a clarinet player, and most of the family were all musicians, most of them nonprofessional. They just did it because they loved it. In Spain in 1950, all my aunts sang zarzuela, but they say they preferred to be with the family rather than tour around Europe. Where I’m from, you have a family; that’s just what they did. Those of them that wanted to start a professional career, many of them are in Spain and around the world, working. It’s a very musical family that is growing; all my cousins even 11 and 12 years old are fantastic musicians, very musical. Two of them play clarinet. The most prominent ones play clarinet, but we have also oboe players, horn players. As far as zarzuela is concerned, no so many people go to performances these days; the young generation prefers to go to Broadway style musicals.

If someone had never heard you play before, is there a way they could identify your sound or style, closing their eyes and just listening?

I would say a lot of character and personality through my background growing up in Spain. And since I was little, I loved all kinds of music. I was the kind of person who would listen at age 15 to 16 Aranjuez or Mahler or maybe go to John Adams or a tango, Piazzolla. I just have this love for all kinds of music. The recital in New York this Monday will be a very classic recital, but I also do recitals where there is nothing classic at all, where there is music from South America and Piazzolla, and in a way I guess I have many faces. I decided to do these classical concerts in New York because I kind of feel that I need to settle as a classical artist.

Who have been your most important influences—musical and otherwise?

Chronologically, probably the most important person to me was my cousin Venancio Rius. He is a wonderful clarinet player, and a mentor to me since I was very little. He taught me as a musician and as a person and clarinet player until I came to the United States. To have a person like him being next to me all the time, taking care of me—I was very lucky to have a person like him as a teenager sharing the love with music with me. He is a very grown-up person. When I went to Curtis in Philadelphia, the school was like a dream come true, to see so many people who shared so much love for music. In Spain I didn’t find so many people like me, but when I came to Philly, everybody was like I am. Every music teacher I had at Curtis, every music student there, was a huge influence on me.

Are you starting to feel like an American? You are based in Philadelphia now.

Home to me will always be Spain, of course, but I really like living here, and the U.S. is so important for me for my musical career, and I also love being here. I do spend most of my time now in the U.S.

What do you do in New York when you’re not performing or rehearsing?

Well, I am usually very very busy with the Chamber Music Society, or with my pianist. But New York is an unbelievable city with so much stuff going on, I try as much as possible to get to a lot of museums. I go a lot to the Met, because it’s a big museum, there is always new stuff. I also spend a lot of time doing photography, and that’s one of the things I do when I travel, I carry my camera and lenses with me and wake up early in the morning, and get great shots, and spend like two or three hours, and then I go do whatever I have to do, with orchestra or pianist, and then back at the hotel, I set up the photos with Photoshop … Of course, when I travel I go a lot to concerts, movies, to the museum. Today I’m probably going to go to the Museum of Modern Art, and walk around and then I will improvise.

The Waterfalls — Making Public Art video chapters:

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3

The Waterfalls — Making Public Art video chapters:

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3

The Waterfalls — Making Public Art video chapters:

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3

Let’s pretend, for instance, that the Oscars have any kind of relevance in terms of actual quality and wonder: When was the last time they rewarded a comedic role? I’d argue that Steve Carell is as good if not better in The 40-Year Old Virgin as Daniel Day-Lewis is in There Will Be Blood, but one actor has a statuette and the other doesn’t. (Actually DDD has two, having already scored with an eminently predetermined Oscarable part in My Left Foot.) And Hilary Swank, a two-time winner, could never dream of offering a performance as nuanced and unpredictable as Molly Shannon’s in last year’s tragically underrated Year of the Dog.

This train of thought was prompted by the prospect of this weekend’s broadcast: Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, a funny opera staged in a funny manner by Laurent Pelly, with funny performances by an ultra-game cast. Of course, many in New York found the production too broad, too over the top. (more…)

Die Soldaten was first performed in 1965 in Cologne, Germany, in a scaled-down production because it was considered “unperformable” the way Zimmermann had originally envisioned it. It has not had a lot of productions during its lifetime, so it’s always an event when anybody tries to stage the thing. The plot is based on Jakob Lenz’s play Die Soldaten (1775), which is very similar to Buchner’s Wozzeck (which also skips around in time and place). It calls for multiple stages—twelve of them, I believe—that show past, present, and future all at once. The music incorporates twelve-tone techniques, Gregorian chant, Bach chorales, a rock band, and lots more. The production coming this July to New York courtesy of Lincoln Center Festival is from the David Pountney’s 2006 staging at the Ruhr Triennale Festival in Germany, where performances took place in a large former gas power plant of a steelworks factory, with the audience seated on platforms placed on a system of railroad tracks, so they could move in and out of the action. The performances this July in the Park Avenue Armory will be part of a showcase to demonstrate the scope of what can be performed in that space.

Die Soldaten was described as “unremittingly bleak” in Peter Davis’s review of New York City Opera’s 1991 production of the opera. Its 1982 U.S. premiere, by Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston, drew a review from music critic Michael Walsh that described Zimmermann (1918-1970) as a “latter-day Wagner gallantly reaching for the twentieth century’s Gesamtkunstwerk” and falling far short. The 2006 staging that New York audiences will see received better reviews.

Postscript: The publication in which Michael Walsh’s 1982 review of Die Soldaten appeared was Time, which back then still had a classical music critic on staff. It’s hard to imagine a weekly news magazine with that sort of cultural coverage today.

At the moment, they’re doing some of their dismantling at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where at 7 pm. on four Fridays in June, you can hang out with the other cool kids from the class at concerts that are free with pay-as-you-please museum admission. (more…)

Most people—except for musical-theater fans, that is! America is said to be obsessed with success, but Broadway has a singularly obsessive relationship with failure; no wonder one of the most beloved books about theater, Ken Mandelbaum’s Not Since Carrie, is subtitled “Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops.” It’s not surprising, then, that the most interesting parts of Strouse’s books concern his misfires. (more…)

Yes, Dudamania is in full swing. In Los Angeles, where Dudamel begins as the L.A. Philharmonic’s new music director in 2009-10, the orchestra welcomed its curly-haired superstar this spring with a lunch catered by none other than Pink’s hot dog stand, creating for the occasion a special “Dude dog”—guacamole, cheese, fajita mix, jalapenos, tortilla chips. (Dudamel is said to be fond of hot dogs.) (more…)

The first observation is that the two most inventive musical revivals of the past few years on Broadway (George and John Doyle’s Sweeney Todd) have come from England, which says something about the state of American directing. The second is how startled some critics seemed to be by Buntrock’s use of technology to make the painting so integral to the show come to life; it’s as if they had never seen that type of stuff before. For some reason effects are fine in movies but to many theater fans, technology still feels like a new gimmick. (more…)