Out There :: Music to Our Thirsty Ears

As jaded and been-there-done-that as Out There can sometimes feel -- occupational hazard -- we still get a little thrill when we see the gay Pride rainbow flags a-flapping down Market Street. So happy Pride month, LGBT peeps! In honor of the auspicious month, we offer this archival photograph of two immortal LGBT heroes, author James Baldwin and playwright Lorraine Hansberry, cutting a rug together. We adore this photo because: A) both clearly have style and elegance; B) it's in glorious black-and-white; C) she is smoking a cigarette while dancing; and D) they're so gay, gay, gay!

Out There loves the entire Arts & Culture beat, but our heart most belongs to music in all its forms. Symphony, opera, lieder, jazz, show tunes, pop tunes: You name it, we'll listen to it, being quite promiscuous in our tastes. We're endlessly fascinated with how people react to music. To our mind, one of the few endearing traits of the human race is how a whole room full of us will sit, transfixed, when someone with a great set of pipes sings a simple song to us. And this is despite the fact that music is the most abstract art-form of all. Folks who can't or won't appreciate abstraction in visual arts, non-narrative film or (heaven forefend!) experimental fiction easily accept the abstract nature of most, if not all music. OK, there is some programmatic music -- say, "Peter and the Wolf" -- but most of the time, there are no signposts built in. Yet music so rules.

Last week the worthies of the Opera Guild invited us to an elegant cocktail party at the St. Regis San Francisco to announce plans for Passione, the Opera Ball 2014 that will kick off San Francisco Opera's fall season in September. The opening-night attraction will be Vincenzo Bellini's great tragic opera "Norma." In keeping with its Roman Empire setting, Opera Ball 2014 Chairmen (Chairwomen?) Teresa Medearis and Cynthia Schreuder promised the party will provide Roman centurions ushering us into City Hall for the Ball. OK, we'll take that!

Not that it's been officially announced, but given the acclaim and excitement that has greeted SF Opera's production of "Show Boat" this summer, it's not surprising that word has leaked out: Coming up in a few seasons will be a fully staged operatic production of Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece "Sweeney Todd." Attend the tale!

Last Friday at Noon, the City of San Francisco officially saluted 40 Years of Steve Silver's "Beach Blanket Babylon" with a special event in the Rotunda of City Hall. The hats, the costumes, the politicos and dignitaries were all there -- the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd -- but it was hearing show music fill our civic cathedral that gave us the shivers.

Last Saturday night, OT was at Davies Hall to hear conductor Charles Dutoit lead the San Francisco Symphony in an account of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto with soloist Kirill Gerstein, and Shostakovich's great 10th Symphony, that fascinating conundrum of Soviet-era music. The composer had been tormented by the brutal dictator Joseph Stalin, who could snuff out his career -- or indeed, his life -- at his caprice. Stalin died in 1953, the year of the symphony's composition, so it's hard not to hear the 10th as Shostakovich's commentary on the end of a personal threat. A lively Georgian dance (Stalin was born in Georgia) is countered by the insistent repetition of Shostakovich's signature musical phrase. Composer conquers all!

Today, with a Russian leader asserting Soviet-style intimidation against the free expression of artists (Pussy Riot) and citizens ("homosexual propaganda"), it's hard not to hear echoes of Stalinism. Let's hope that artists and gay people will again prevail!

Traveling in Style

We've been reading a little American history in the new volume "Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire - A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival," by Peter Stark (Ecco), and as usual, found some suppressed gay history within. In its 19th-century tale of both sea-going and overland expeditions to reach the fur-bearing riches of the Pacific Northwest, Stark describes the flamboyant style of certain French-Canadian voyageurs. "The voyageurs wore soft Indian moccasins on their feet and deerskin leggings up over their knees that were held up by a garter-like string tied to a belt around the waist. In warm seasons they typically wore a breechcloth, in the Indian style, leaving thighs bare.

"Above the waist, the voyageurs wore a loose-fitting and colorful plaid shirt, perhaps blue or red, and over it, a long, hooded, capelike coat called a capote. In cold winds they cinched this closed with a waist sash -- the gaudier the better, often red. Topping off this rainbow-hued, multicultural ensemble, the well-dressed voyageur sported either a colorful headscarf or a red wool hat, on which the French-Canadian voyageurs loved to display badges of their status. 'Je suis un homme du nord!'" And they say drag queens are over-the-top?