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Sunday, May 11, 2008

Keillor's Wit Benefits Symphony

By D. S. Crafts
For the Journal
      Lake Wobegon came to New Mexico on Wednesday night. In a benefit concert for our excellent New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, “Prairie Home Companion” host Garrison Keillor brought his gentle humor, folksy stories and songs to the stage of Popejoy Auditorium, with both Keillor and the musicians donating their time.
       Dressed in a tuxedo set off with red running shoes, Keillor began with a monologue about his trip down from Minnesota, casting a few barbs at the needless harassment of airport “security.” The printed program proved no more than a suggestion of the order of pieces, as he skipped down to the third on the list, a rewriting of the Habanera from Bizet's “Carmen” as a description of the trials and travails of singing opera.
       To the opening melody of Haydn's “Surprise” Symphony, Keillor added some not-so-gentle excoriations about boorish audience behavior at a formal concert, concluding with a threat of “cement galoshes.”
       But clearly the highlight of the evening was his hilarious “Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra,” an instrument by instrument analysis of what might or might not be appropriate for Lutherans. Sara Tutland's piccolo was given a bluesy rendition of a well-known hymn, urged on to the highest register, and the clarinets were completely out of control. No instrument escapes unscathed, but as always, the viola seems to get the most pointed jabs.
       Orchestral arrangements of Edward MacDowell's “Woodland Sketches” (yes, including the one pounded out by piano students throughout the continent) were broken up by quasi-bawdy “sonnets” of Keillor's composition, sung a cappella to seemingly improvised melodies. Who else would really rhyme “pissed” with “atheist?”
       There was plenty of sentiment as well as humor. A medley of romantic verses bracketed a schmaltzy arrangement of Bobby Burns' beautiful “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose.” A lengthy monologue about the perils of everyday life in the frozen north, and adolescent mishaps, was capped off by the “Lake Wobegon Hymn,” words set to the famous melody of the second movement of Dvorak's “New World” Symphony.
       Guillermo Figueroa began the second half of the program leading the orchestra in a straight, uninterrupted performance of Rossini's “Overture to William Tell,” though one half expected to see Keillor make an entrance midway through. In this atmosphere one could not help but recall the classic Looney Tunes' “What's Opera, Doc?” Some excellent solos highlighted the overture, specifically the opening cello passage (Joan Zucker), and the later duet for English horn (Melissa Peña) and flute (Valerie Potter). The orchestra was dressed in its white pops concert dress, which Keillor called thoroughly un-Lutheran.
       A packed house turned out not only for an evening of fun, but to support a very worthy cause, the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.
   

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