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Transatlantic transcriptions & performers
By Nicholas | March 21, 2008
Today is Good Friday, the heaviest day in the Christian religious calendar, and I have spent much of it transcribing a piece called “Heaviness” - the first track on my latest CD ‘Hamlet’ (to be launched soon at the Fábrica do Braço de Prata, watch this space for details) - this music accompanied Hamlet’s first soliloquy in André Gago’s production last year (see previous post). At a launching it is normal to perform some of the music on the CD, but in my case I can only do this by transcribing the contents first, as all my CDs were recorded by a process of pure intuitive improvisation. Now transcription is very hard work, and I had always been against the idea of recording improvisations, let alone writing them down. But I was persuaded to try for the first time in July 2001 in New York by my friend Dante Anzolini, who thought others should have the chance of playing the music. In reality its prime use has been to allow me to play it again, and I have used these transcriptions for concerts ever since then.
Dante and I were both working at the time with Bob Wilson and Philip Glass on their opera The White Raven (O Corvo Branco), for its very successful run at the Lincoln Center Festival. The one Portuguese singer still in the cast (the première had been at Expo 98 in Lisboa) was Ana Paula Russo, who gave a memorable performance as Queen. Here is a short video clip of her entrance (taken from the Madrid production in November 1998). For full screen click here.
Ana Paula Russo’s most recent appearance was in another queenly part, as Mrs Morris in Terry Jones and Luis Tinoco’s ‘Evil Machines’ (three of the male members of that cast - João Merino, Fernando Guimarães and Marco Alves dos Santos - are currently performing in Paulo Matos’ mini-opera competition, along with Margarida Marrecos, Natasia Sibalic, and Inês Madeira). But the starring female role in this case went to Ana Quintans, who transformed her personality to an astonishing degree in her quest for liberation as the girl Nancy. In two weeks time it will be her turn to sing in New York, albeit in a very different musical context - at Carnegie Hall, with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.
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