SLM | Look/Listen

Poem for Friday: B.H. Fairchild, "Mrs. Hill"

Though I urge you to check out River Styx's Hungry Young Poets series this summer, I also want to alert you to a poet who will be on the bill for the first regular-season reading on September 21. B.H. Fairchild is the author of the marvelously titled poetry collection Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (Norton, 2002). This poem, below, is from that collection; you can hit Norton's site to read more of his work. & note: St. Louis' own Jenny Mueller will be reading that night as well. --Stefene Russell

Mrs. Hill

I am so young that I am still in love
with Battle Creek, Michigan: decoder rings,
submarines powered by baking soda,
whistles that only dogs can hear. Actually,
not even them. Nobody can hear them.

Mrs. Hill from next door is hammering
on our front door shouting, and my father
in his black and gold gangster robe lets her in
trembling and bunched up like a rabbit in snow
pleading, oh I'm so sorry, so sorry,
so sorry, and clutching the neck of her gown
as if she wants to choke herself. He said
he was going to shoot me. He has a shotgun
and he said he was going to shoot me.

I have never heard of such a thing. A man
wanting to shoot his wife. His wife.
I am standing in the center of a room
barefoot on the cold linoleum, and a woman
is crying and being held and soothed
by my mother. Outside, through the open door
my father is holding a shotgun,
and his shadow envelops Mr. Hill,
who bows his head and sobs into his hands.

A line of shadow seems to be moving
across our white fence: hunched-over soldiers
on a death march, or kindly old ladies
in flower hats lugging grocery bags.

At Roman's Salvage tire tubes
are hanging from trees, where we threw them.
In the corner window of Beacon Hardware there's a sign:
WHO HAS 3 OR 4 ROOMS FOR ME. SPEAK NOW.
For some reason Mrs. Hill is wearing mittens.
Closed in a fist, they look like giant raisins.
in the Encyclopedia Britannica Junior
the great Pharoahs are lying in their tombs,
the library of Alexandria is burning.
Somewhere in Cleveland or Kansas City
the Purple Heart my father refused in WWII
is sitting in a Muriel cigar box,
and every V-Day someone named Schwartz
or Jackson gets drunk and takes it out.

In the kitchen now Mrs. Hill is playing
gin rummy with my mother and laughing
in those long shrieks that women have
that make you think they are dying.

I walk into the front yard where moonlight
drips from the fenders of our Pontiac Chieftan.
I take out my dog whistle. Nothing moves.
No one can hear it. Dogs are asleep all over town.

Q&A With Tim Schall of the St. Louis Cabaret Conference

By Alice Telios

Tim Schall, the producer and cofounder of the Fourth Annual St. Louis Cabaret Conference, is eager to give the rundown for the upcoming August event, where the tables will be set, the piano will be tuned and the cocktails will flow at The Jazz Bistro at Grand Center. Local and national artists will not only treat St. Louisans to performances, but will offer classes for local cabaret artists; this year’s teaching ensemble includes Lina Koutrakos, Rick Jenson, Alex Rybeck and Jason Graae.

Are a lot of the performers who come in for the conference already established performers, or do you get a lot of newcomers?

We have a great mix over the four nights. We have award-winning New York cabaret performers, we have a Broadway performer and then we have people who are taking the conference. All of the participants who take the conference will be performing on Sunday night, which is the final showcase, and everybody does a song. It is a great culminating event of the weekend. Then on Saturday, I am kind of moving backwards here, the faculty performs. Lina Koutrakos will perform a show; she’s an award-winning New York cabaret performer, and Jason Graae will perform a show. He is also one of the teachers. He has Broadway credits, television credits, film credits, [and] does a lot of concert and cabaret work around the country and in Los Angeles where he resides. Then Friday night I will be performing, doing a show on my own as the producer of the event. I have performed around the country. I make my home in St. Louis, but I will be performing a new show especially created for the conference. And on Thursday night the conference performance component opens with something called Highlights, which is a look back at the year in St. Louis Cabaret. So, I have got about ten people who have done solo shows throughout the year doing highlights from their shows…We have got everybody from the St. Louis artists, to a Broadway performer and everywhere in between. It is a tremendous mix.

Are a lot of the conference attendees local talent, or do you have some people throughout the Midwest who come to St. Louis for the conference?

I have got somebody from Houston coming and I have got another singer from Palm Springs coming. In the past we have had folks from Chicago, Washington D.C., Seattle, I might be forgetting a city, Boston…We have had people come form all around the country. Eighty percent of the people although are residing in St. Louis, so they are local.

Do a lot of the performers who come to learn have similar styles, or do they all have their own unique flair?

Everybody has their own unique flair. Cabaret, really what it is, is just the art of song performance. It’s coaching on song performance for intimate settings, in a very personalized way, an intimate relationship with your audience. That’s what cabaret is. People who are coming, Lina has a very pop bluesy style. She does the old standards also, but she does a lot of contemporary work and she writes her own material. She is a pop singer in a lot of ways. Jason, who is the other teacher, is a Broadway singer. He does a lot more Broadway show music and he is also a brilliant comic. He is absolutely hilarious. In one evening you will be laughing yourself sick and then you will hear some great pop and blues too. Then what I am doing on Friday night is my show. I am celebrating the male singer-songwriters of pop music: Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Harry Chapin—those kinds of singers. On the other two nights of the showcases you are going to hear a wide variety of music from current pop music, to standards that were written in the ‘20s and ‘30s and then everything in between.

What would you say the people who attend the conference classes expect to learn from the four teachers?

They really learn about being themselves on stage and connecting in a personal way with their material. A lot of singers who come in to this, not all, but a lot of them are from theater backgrounds where you act and portray a character on stage. In cabaret it is you. You are yourself on stage. So it is about being yourself on stage, connecting emotionally, connecting honestly with your material and having a very up front intimate relationship with your audience. 

The guest teachers that you have brought in, have they performed in St. Louis outside of the conference?

They both have performed here last year as part of the conference. But prior to that, Jason Graae, he performed at the Edison Theater a few years back with Liz Callaway, who is a Broadway star. Lina Koutrakos performed in St. Louis this spring at the Kranzberg as part of Cabaret St. Louis’ series. So yeah, they have performed here beyond the conference. And Alex Rybeck, who is one of the music directors who is coming in, he has performed here in St. Louis probably for 12 years supporting a wide variety of singers who come in to St. Louis to perform.

How do you think bringing in professionals from around the country affects the cabaret scene in St. Louis?

Oh, It has defined the cabaret scene in St. Louis, the local cabaret scene. There wasn’t a local cabaret scene, really to speak of. A few isolated events now and then, but there really wasn’t the kind of cabaret scene even a few years ago that there is now, and it is directly related to the training that people have received at the St. Louis Cabaret Conference.

What do you hope the conference can do for St. Louis cabaret in the future?

Oh, I think it is just going to keep expanding it and inspiring it. You know I have 25 people training at the conference this year. Fifteen of them are returning for the second, third and sometimes fourth time. So people keep coming back because it’s an enriching experience. They get inspired to do their shows. People come in new, come in and see this training, and they see people have come through it before who are now out doing their own shows, so those new people get inspired to do their own shows. It keeps, how can I put this poetically? It is really an inspiration for the local cabaret scene, I feel, in my opinion. It is the inspiration, motivation and training for the local cabaret scene.

2009 St. Louis Cabaret Conference
Tickets: $15-$35
stlouiscabaretconference.com
brownpapertickets.com

Interested participants should contact Tim Schall, RNI Productions at 314-721-4634 or at tjschall@sbcglobal.net.

Lost Chords

Last night, I had the frustrating experience of having a song roll up on the iPod and the title and artist information was all garbled. I still don't know what it is, it was an MP3 a friend sent of a friend's band, nothing pirated or anything, just something beautiful and basement-y and, unfortunately, still anonymous. I tried listening to it three or four times and typing the lyrics into a search engine, but no dice. I guess I can always ask the friend what it is, but at 10:43 at night, you don't really want to be calling someone up, holding the phone to the speaker and shouting "What is this?"

My better half once had the idea to create an audio search engine, where you could sing, whistle or play a bar of music into the computer and the search engine would find the song for you. I think that's a brilliant idea, and will probably have its day (just like RepRap printers that can churn out a new pair of sandals or light-swtch cover at the push of a button) but for now, we just have to content ourselves with the inferior power of our own organic musical recall. Just out of curiousity, though, I did a search for audio search engines, and what I found delighted me with its inegniuty and absurdity. MusicRobot is probably the closest thing to a music search engine -- you can search by guitar tab. Then there's FindSounds, which allows you to look up specific sound effects (zebras whinnying, turbines churning, coffee percolating, people playing bongos). My favorite discovery, though, is Quiet American. It's one man's ongoing field recording project, where he captures sounds like "musicians, trains, moving water, crickets, monks, markets, metalwork, tired animals, and drunken tourists" as he travels the world; he then posts the sounds online so that people can listen and imagine themselves elsewhere, or at least just alter their headspace temporarily. He has one album, and it may have my favorite title of all time: "Plumbing and Irrigation of South Asia." Though that suggests an intensely industrial sound, note that one of the tracks is the sound of "pilgrims at a well outside Muang Sing, Laos, during a full moon celebration."

One more audio note: Checking the Off Broadway calendar, I see that the everwonderful Maggie St. Germain must be in town, because The Good Griefs are playing there tonight! Joining them are Racketbox, and a "surprise guest." The promo flyer also promises lots of "cheap-ass beer." Sounds even better than a WAV file of zebras. --Stefene Russell

Spell of the Twee(t)

Wendy Rosendfield usually blogs about theater, but she has a nice little reflection on Twitter vis a vis music journalism. Specifically, how do you review an album in 140 characters or less?

The answer is: you can't. Put a link on that, dummy! The joy of NPR's "Song of the Day," isn't the caption, it's ths song itself -- though I do appreciated their willingness to embrace the 140-word-zeitgeist. For me at least, the digressive Midwestern ramblings (and free MP3s) of Daytrotter will never be replaced by a preference for a digital bleat supplemented with a tiny URL.

Note: thanks to everyone who posted about The Chapel Sanctuary for the Arts yesterday! --Stefene Russell

Question: Anyone Been to the Chapel?

The Chapel Sanctuary for the Arts, that is?

I discovered them via their postings on RAC's Artszipper Calendar, and have yet to visit the venue or see their current show, I'll Be Your Closest Neighbor: Ruminations on Jazz and Travel, though I find the title pretty intruiging.

Here is their mission statement, straight from the source:

"THE CHAPEL is a not-for-profit musician-centered venue, event-based gallery and theatre.  Through generous supporters,  THE CHAPEL provides all services free of charge to artists and musicians.   We support St. Louis as it positions itself as a premier city for the arts and music.    

 THE CHAPEL is a Sanctuary for the Arts, a converted gothic structure behind Memorial Presbyterian Church, across from Forest Park, next to Washington University, at 6238 Alexander Drive St. Louis, Missouri 63105."

If anyone out there has visited and has stories to tell, I would love to hear them. Anyone been to a concert here yet? An art opening? A play? What's the story? I'm hoping to make it down sooner rather than later, but anyone who has beat me to it, would love to know what you thought. --Stefene Russell

Seattle-Based Animator, Stefan Gruber, Screening His Stuff in StL for One Night Only

 

Stefan Gruber, Totem

Stefan Gruber, contributor to the Meathaüs SOS comics anthology -- but first and foremost an animator -- is crossing the country on a backyard tour. He'll be screening an hour of his homemade animation shorts out in back of Typo and All Along Press (3159 Cherokee, at the corner of Cherokee and Compton) tomorrow night (Thursday, July 9) at 9 p.m. Word has been passed to me that "those inclined to bring tasty desserts will be hailed as heroes." However, no word if Kaboom cereal with milk counts as a tasty dessert. Get a preview of Stefan's work at his website, stefangruber.com.

Just a side note: I was charmed that he spelled us out minus a "u" on his tour itinerary: "St. Lois." Not to be confused with our warrior king, I believe Lois may be the patron saint of plastic rain bonnets, but let it be known that the name actually does translate "famous warrior." --Stefene Russell

Openings: Fire Island, The Photographs of Tom Bianchi

Tom Bianchi, Climbing Out

This is part two of my "the shut-in makes it out to art shows" series. (Scroll down for Part I, a recap of A New Currency at Snowflake/Citystock.)

On Saturday, I shot even further down Cherokee to phd Gallery for the opening of Fire Island: The Photographs of Tom Bianchi. Gallery proprietor Philip Hitchcock had done some nice preliminary PR on this show, so I knew it had an interesting narrative. The photographs, shot in the mid-1970s on SX-70 Polaroid film, have been digitally enlarged and reproduced on archival paper; there are 24 represented here, but they were curated from a pool of more than 6,000. The artist, Tom Bianchi, began his career as a lawyer, and began to shoot after receiving a Polaroid camera as a corporate gift. His subject was Fire Island:

"Part Garden of Eden, part Sodom and Gomorah, this tiny little barrier to Long Island, just south of the Hamptons, was as much a state of mind as it was a destination. Synonymous with freedom to gays around the word, Fire Island was the ultimate mecca where gays and lesbians who often lived their lives in secret, were free to be who they were, among their own, living and playing without judgment or scorn."

One of the most interesting things to note about these photographs is that though you will see plenty of (usually toned and well-tanned) bodies, you will never see a face. That's because at the time, it was "career suicide" to be outed as gay. There is something about the anonymity of these photographs that makes them not just historically reflective, but very poignant. They have survived the journey from small to large format in fine form, too: the Polaroid format writ large translates to saturated color and soft edges, which gives these photographs a dreamy, summery feel.

For those who feel squeamish about such things -- this is St. Louis, after all -- note many of these photographs feature full-frontal male nudity. (I will remind everyone, however that the satyr depicted in Montorsoli's Reclining Pan, which has been on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum for decades, is not wearing boxer shorts, either.)

My only regret on Saturday was not trying harder to track down Mr. Bianchi, who was there for the opening. That's no small thing: Bianchi is now world-famous as an artist. Those simple, early Polaroids eventually led to 12 art photography books, three documentaries and many sculptures. But it was too much fun just people-watching, since a good part of the crowd was made up of bouyant, sunburned revelers who'd trekked from Tower Grove Park, where PrideFest was underway. I also need to note that if you stop by to see this show, also check out David Landcaster's Please God, Make Me Not Queer: Modern Prayers Painted on Alumnium, which are beautiful -- and cheeky, too. --Stefene Russell

Openings: A New Currency

Jennifer Wilkey, Day 47, digital inkjet, knitted wool, jenniferwilkey.com.

This weekend, I actually made it out to two art openings, after a long spell of being a shut-in-ist. And I was very glad. I am going to write about each separately, since they were very different shows; tomorrow I'll recap the Saturday opening of Fire Island at phd Gallery.

On Friday, I went to see A New Currency at Snowflake/Citystock.This is an an international show (it was recently mentioned in the NYT by Chuck Close), but it's not a touring show. Or, at least, the art does not go on the road--the idea does. Per Snowflake:

"Art often acts as a sign of the times and the effect of today’s economy on the art market seems to be no exception. The current recession has hit it hard, affecting the actions of artists, curators, critics and buyers. Directed by curator Dan Cameron (Prospect New Orleans), a group of thirty-one MFA students at the School of Visuals Arts have developed the exhibition A New Currency as an artist’s response to these changing economic circumstances on the contemporary art community.

A New Currency in St. Louis will be a part of the global impact of the exhibition, joining cities around the world such as Los Angeles, D.C., Seoul and Taipei, to explore the current trends and feelings of artists in each city...Looking at each of these artists’s perspective of what is current in our artistic community; A New Currency shows the power of the individual artist to define his or her own career and share with the rest of us a sign of the times."

The St. Louis curators, Cole Root and Amy Blomme, chose work by Bruce Burton (who, has, by the way, a show coming up at PSTL Gallery on July 10), Nate Chung, Eric Hall, Mike Schuh and Jennifer Wilkey. I quite liked Mike Shuh's version of 52 pickup -- black spay-painted cards, thrown on the floor of the gallery -- as well as Eric Hall's contraption, silver metal tubing attached to a series of amps and pedals and other noisy gadets. When you threw coins down the tube, it would make a beautiful racket, sort of a combination of ocean surf and shopping carts falling from the sky.

But it was Jennifer Wilkey's work that really got me in the solar plexus. Wilkey, who graduated from SIU-E in 2005, is now attending graduate school in Syracuse, N.Y., and combines handcraft with photography. The pieces included in A New Currency are from her Hospital series, including a medical recliner reupholstered with hand-embroidered fabric, an IV drip bag filled with handmade fabric medallions that are reminscent of human cells, and a series of affecting photographs -- like the one above -- that will resonate with anyone who has ever had to pass time in a hospital, whether as patient or worried other. She says of Hospital:

"Monotony, repetition, and duration of my craft explore the longevity of illness and the feeling of sameness associated with being in the hospital. While enclosed in a hospital room, life continues on in the outside world and in a sense, passes the patient by. Time becomes an element that exists in a slow motion within the hospital and is hurrying by beyond its doors."

I visited Wilkey's site, and discovered a cache of thoughtful and superlatively executed art. Though Wilkey uses her personal experiences as material, her work rises far above that, illuminating the larger experience of being human. Her series of photographs of her developmentally disabled brother, James, for instance, are not sentimental or mawkish; however, though they were produced with a clear eye, they are still wonderfully tender. Procedures, a series of video shorts related to Hospital that are meant to evoke the experience of being a patient, features Wilkey, barefoot in the snow, kitting an endless red scarf whose appearance is meant to evoke blood, EKG readouts and knitting away the time in the waiting room (or hospital bed) all at once.

You can see work from other artists and follow this project's progress on the New Currency blog, which also features an awesome I HAS A KAROT/Euro graphic at the top. --Stefene Russell

Flickr Friday: L/L Edition

"Postcard of the giant 25ft. Vess Soda Bottle Sign located just north of the Edward Jones Dome along I-70 north of downtown St. Louis, MO. First erected in 1953. Renovated and refitted with 600 ft. of neon tubing. 

Name: Vess Soda Bottle
Address: 520 O'Fallon St.
Year: 1953
Property Type Codes: Other
Dimensions: 35 1/2´ x 6´7"
Alterations: Moved to new location in 1989.
Designation: City Landmark
History: A giant replica of a family-size Vess Soda Bottle, it was erected at Hampton Av. and Gravois Blvd. in South St. Louis. It was constructed by Treesh Neon Sign Company, East St. Louis, Illinois for the Vess Bottling Company of St. Louis. The bottle revolves on a steel pole. In 1953, it was believed to be the largest, revolving, lighted bottle in the world. At night it was lit by more than 600 lineal feet of neon tubing. In 1989, after the bottle had been found in storage, it was re-erected at 520 O´Fallon. It is mounted on a pole similar to the original, but no longer rotates (From Vess Soda Bottle Landmark file in the Cultural Resources Office)."

Postcard (printed in the early 1990s to commemorate the sign's renovation) and text both courtesy of kocojim.

Ansel-ary

William Mortensen, self-portrait, courtesy of A Journey Round My Skull.

Growing up on the west coast, I became exceedingly familiar with two things: jam bands, and Ansel Adams. Not that I dislike Ansel Adams; when I was living in Cleveland, the Adams print I hung over my stove got me through some pretty homesick months, especially during the whiteout that is January around Lake Erie. And I am definitely going to go see the Ansel Adams exhibit currently on display at the Saint Louis Art Museum, a collection of photographs of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

As much as I admire his artistry, his restraint, his technique and his class, I do hold one thing against Adams: ruining the career, or attempting to ruin the career, of one William Mortensen.

Mortensen has been called a "Gothic Modernist;" he is notable because he continued to embrace the Pictorialist movement long after it had gone out of fashion (Pictorialists -- Adams was an early adherent -- manipulated photographs to make them more "painterly"). Because Mortensen was based in Hollywood, where artifice, fantasty and over-the-top aesthetics are always welcome, he was able to use that technique to his advantage. For two decades, he was Hollywood's hottest portrait photographer, and made his living shooting celebrities like Fay Wray and Marlene Deitrich. He also pursued his own fine art photography, and while his work is not really aligned to my aesthetics so much, I admire his mastery of photographic technique (and some of his photos are truly beautiful). But apparently his gothc sensibilities deeply offended Ansel Adams and a cabal of fine-art photographers who favored the naturalist school of photography; they went after Mortensen with a tar-brush. From the above-linked article on Photo.net:

"...the f/64 group, spearheaded by Ansel Adams and Beaumont and Nancy Newhall (curators with the Museum of Modern Art), it was not enough merely to disagree philosophically with Mortensen. Had they done so, it would have been unlikely that Mortensen would have been forgotten and ignored so during his own lifetime and after his death, for he was something more than just another painterly salon photographer: His compositions were steeped in Gothic and Romantic traditions, his subject matter often whimsical, often bizarre, his style a strange combination of Lorenzo de Bernini, Edgar Allan Poe, Man Ray, Salvador Dali and Maxfield Parrish.

In his essay, 'Beyond Recall,' photographer A.D. Coleman -- who is quite sympathetic to the Adams aesthetic -- presents a scathing indictment of Adams and the Newhalls, and their active campaign to completely shut out Mortensen from the elite artistic inner circles. Although he never said so, it is evident from reading these essays that Mortensen died a broken man. Even after Mortensen's death, 'Saint Ansel' Adams tried to prevent Mortensen's work from being archived at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Fortunately, for posterity, curator James Enyeart (who, though a friend of Adams) remained objective, and was instrumental in finding a permanent home for Mortensen's artistic legacy.

Sadly, little remains of his artistic output: Most of Mortensen's negaives are missing, whereabouts unknown. He also left few notes or letters. No conclusions can be drawn, but it is strongly suggested that by the time he died Mortensen felt so irrelevant to the history of photography that he never bothered to leave much behind."

And that's a shame. It makes me wonder what else has been squeezed out of the artistic canon for not adhering to the sensibilities of the day. Mortensen's being rediscovered now, but until the art world has its own version of the Numero Group, we just have to assume that a large percentage of visionary weirdoes are falling through the cracks. --Stefene Russell