On the evolution of gymnastics & spectacle

I've been watching women's gymnastics on YouTube, especially, of course, the gravity defying leaps and flips of Simone Biles.

Then I went back and watched some of the older gymnasts who I remembered from my childhood, like Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci, who got "perfect 10"s back then.

When I looked at the older performances, it almost didn't look like they were the same sport.  The older performers were doing less difficult stunts, but more gracefully, more slowly, and with more certain landings.

More recently, I started watching the rhythmic gymnastics.  Those hadn't run across my social media feed before today.  This seems to be because the USA didn't have any really strong contestants in that sport.  Instead, the dominant performances were from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Italy, China, Canada, Germany, Finland, Brazil, Austria, Uzbekistan, Estonia. In this sport, the competitors perform with apparatus: ball, clubs, ribbon.  I particularly liked the ribbons, which were very long and had to be kept airborne through twirling them into interesting shapes.

Interestingly, in this other sport the performances look more like the older ones in the ordinary gymnastics -- more ballet-like, less tumbling, more graceful.  There is something decided ungraceful about the necessity to run headlong across a mat in order to just barely manage to get multiple flips in the air without landing out of bounds.  These recent performances might be powerful, impressive, intimidating, amazing -- but certainly less graceful than the rhythmic gymnasts -- and less graceful than Korbut & Comaneci.

Also, I noticed that the women who were making these powerful jumps also looked powerful, with huge bulging muscles; while the rhythmic dancers were less muscular.

This reminds me of some earlier observations I have made in the area of fireworks.

When I was a kid, we went to a local park, in the small city where I lived, and they had fireworks.  Those were fired off at a rate of about one per minute or maybe one per 2 minutes.  We would watch each individual firework ascend into the air -- leaving a faint trail of sparks as it went up -- and then we would all say "oooo" very softly as it exploded.

The number of fireworks set of was decidedly less than what one would expect today -- there was also decidedly less noise, light, and smoke.  It was a much more laid back experience, where we took time to enjoy each individual firework.

I'm not at all convinced that the evolution of these spectacles so that the performances are bigger and more powerful is necessarily an improvement.

Josh Groban at Jones Beach 7/22/16

I went to see Josh Groban at the Nikon Theater at Jones Beach, Long Island, NY.  I actually live tweeted the concert, which was my first attempt at that.

I'd like to describe it in ordinary prose.

This is an outdoor arena near Jones Beach.  Jones Beach is a HUGE beach on the ocean on the southern side of Long Island near NYC.  In my opinion it's one of the world's premier beaches, tho it's often crowded, given its proximity to the city.

To get there, you have to drive on a long parkway through a marshy/estuary area.  It feels like the end of the earth driving out, which it sort of is.

Because of the ocean breezes, it's generally cooler there than inland on hot days.  In fact, I was surprised that things actually got a bit chilly when the rest of the NYC area was under a heat advisory during the day.

The concert had 3 parts: 1) Eric Hutchinson solo, 2) Sarah Maglachlan solo, 3) Josh Groban with orchestra and Sarah.

I disliked Eric Hutchinson.  He was standing playing an electronic keyboard and singing.  He was also doing something with his foot to create some kind of beat.  I didn't hear him hit any wrong notes, or anything like that, but I found his performance clearly unremarkable -- a nice, but not extraordinary, voice -- not really my type of music.  Also, the way the amplification was set the beat that he was creating was over-amplified in the bass register to the extent that it made my entire rib cage vibrate.  I found this sensation made me nauseated.  It was really torture experiencing this.

Sarah Maglachlan was *much* better.  She sat and sang and played an acoustic piano.  She has a much prettier voice and more stage presence than Eric.  Still, I found that her songs mostly sounded the same. I nodded off, which was certainly preferable to being nauseated.  Still I found that she was overamplified and I wore ear plugs at first, while tweeting my displeasure to Josh.

Later I found that I could take the ear plugs out, which might have been because they turned down the volume or maybe I got used to the sound.  I know Josh does read his tweets, or maybe his staff does, so they might have reacted to my tweet.

There were intermissions between these acts.  The intermission between Sarah and Josh was especially long.

Then Josh came out.  His part was a much more immersive experience.  He had a full orchestra plus there was a screen behind him with CG images, which were quite fascinating -- plus it was dark, so I wasn't looking at the sky and the birds.  I found myself sitting bolt upright from the first note, completely drawn in.

I was struck at how utterly relaxed his face and neck looked, despite the enormous sound he was producing.  I feel that he looks much better in this black shirt that he's wearing on this tour than he looked in the white tee shirt before, tho I still think navy would be better.

He was sounding very good, tho still a bit distorted around the bass.  I noticed this at Tanglewood also that the bass was overamplified.  What gives Josh?  Do you have a bass obsession?

There was a peculiar asynchrony between the video and the audio at first.

Josh started by singing the quieter Broadway pieces from his Stages album.  The acoustic distortions were most apparent when the orchestra was quiet.  It sometimes sounded like Josh's notes were in a different key from the orchestra.  I wondered if he was being thrown off by the distortion, but I don't think that can be, because he's got those in the ear things where he hears things directly, without amplification.

Then Josh went into some of the older songs, like February Song, Allejate, Alla Luce.  That's when things really got exciting for me.  Then the sound settings seemed to work better and I really got drawn in.

Also I was fascinated with the CG animations on the screen, tho occasionally there were glitches where a black rectangle would appear or things would ripple or become distorted -- still the video portion was generally good.

I took a couple of little videos of the animations

The first was right at the end of Vincent.  I really loved this animation, which made the painting come alive in a way that I thought was very authentic

Now I can't remember which song this was, but it had a great animation, I guess "Run".

Tariqh had several solos and I thought he did especially well.  He's looking thinner than I remembered.  There was something about the closeups, shown up on the big screens, of his black fingers on the strings of the guitar that looked particularly mystical, I thought.

I did think sadly about the absence of Lucia.  I am grateful that I've gotten to hear her playing with Chris Botti, but I never got to hear her play with Josh.  I didn't notice any violin solos.  There was a trumpet solo in Old Devil Moon, of course, which was nice.  Josh seems to be getting a lot of different trumpeters to do that solo.

On the whole, despite all these details, I thought Josh's part of the concert was amazing.  I was really riveted most of the time.

I was really tempted to drive to NJ for the concert the next day, but I decided my body couldn't take any more driving, since I had driven down from NH the day before.

Below is a record of the tweets that I put out during and after the concert.  Some of them are embedded, but mostly they're screen grabs.  The screen grabs, you have to click on to enlarge.

@DeneeBenton @joshgroban @rachelchavkin she couldn't have come out and sung something at Jones beach?

— Skysong263 ♜ (@skysong263) July 24, 2016

@joshgroban I feel the older songs work better with the size of orchestra and the way you've got the sound system set

— Skysong263 ♜ (@skysong263) July 24, 2016

@joshgroban I considered driving to see you again in NJ, but didn't have the energy. It was awesome last night. Particularly the older songs

— Skysong263 ♜ (@skysong263) July 24, 2016

Addendum 8/6/16

I'm watching a concert video from CMAC in 2014 and seeing a violin soloist on Vincent.  Now I'll have to go back and see if I can find a Jones Beach video of that song.  I guess I was too distracted by the CG animations to notice the violinist.

This partial doesn't seem to show one from Darien https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6IK7OQYn7c  I can't find one from Jones Beach.  Maybe I didn't miss it.

possibility of Assassin's Creed duet @joshgroban @PeterHollens @awintory

I used to be pretty sure Josh was reading my tweets to him. If I told him about a rumor I had heard, he would generally promptly deny it.  He sometimes commented on my other tweets as well.

Recently, I have been less active.  I guess my obsession with Josh has been waning some.  So I'm not sure he's reading any more.  Probably looking for more active fans, who are actually gossiping about him online.

So there's been quite a bit of activity on my timeline about this proposed duet between Josh Groban and Peter Hollens, ever since Josh said he wanted to sing something from Assassin's Creed.  Even Austin Wintory, who wrote that music, has been involved.

But Josh has apparently not noticed.  Maybe we need to go on Snapchat now???

Here are some tweet images

Whoops here's another

And 2 more

Oh, wait!  He did notice at least part of this.

Well, this is getting a life of its own

So, if we do end up getting a Hollens/Groban Assasin's Creed duet, I could take partial credit for getting the ball rolling, eh?  Of course, Josh is pretty busy right now, on tour, and about to go on Broadway to realize his long held Broadway dream -- so even if this does happen, I'm predicting it won't be before next year.  

Still getting more people noticing this topic -- so even though Josh didn't tweet me directly this surely has his attention

Here were some earlier tweets that preceded the above

Twitter really is amazing.

Latest on the Quixotic Quest cc @joshgroban

I saw a tweet on my timeline that reminded me of my Quixotic Quest.  This is the interchange I saw.

YES, YES, indeed!

So I tweeted back. These are screen images, so the tweets appear in reverse chronological order, just as they would on twitter.

I think I've blogged about these videos that appear in my tweets before but they're still on my mind.

This is one that shows Michael Jackson's audiences a lot.   I think it's a composite of many audiences. MJ liked to show his audiences, because he felt that these views demonstrated that he was channelling spiritual energy from the universe into those listening.  He commented later that he travelled to 40 countries, and everywhere he went people cried, fainted, lit candles &c in exactly the same places.  He concluded that music, dance, and children could heal the world.

This one shows a group of singers singing "We are the World" at the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010.  

These are all very fascinating performers who we haven't heard much about in the USA, but who are big in their home countries.  I really urge people to look into them, because it's not clear to me why we don't know about them.

I have been most interested in 費翔 Kris Phillips, because he is an American who lives in New York and performs in China. He is also a citizen of Taiwan. He went into China in 1987 -- alone -- armed only with his beautiful voice, his handsome face, and his disco dancing skills and he took that country by storm. He introduced pop music there and became a figure of similar magnitude to Michael Jackson there. We never heard a thing about it. He's the one who sings first in the video, the very tall, very handsome half Asian.

He was criticized by Taiwanese, because he was viewed as a communist appeaser. He was criticized by Chinese for being a decadent capitalist influence. Yet he went in. He seems to be a very idealistic person who loves China and wants to promote international cultural understanding.

I feel he deserves more recognition here, though I guess he likes the fact that Americans don't recognize him, while he probably can't go out on the street in China.

Tho I must say that Vitas' amazing falsetto is something that we have also been missing out on, presumably because he's Russian -- as if that should matter.

Laura Fygi is a person of fascinating mixed ethnicity. Rain is a big star in Korea. SunNan is a Chinese tenor with an absolutely lovely tone. CoCo Lee has performed here, once at the Oscars, I think.

The World Expo in Shanghai in 2010 got a virtual news blackout in the USA -- except for a few reporters who interviewed malcontents outside the event. Our press seems to have a see no good, hear no good, speak no good attitude towards China.  

Other countries took the event more seriously. The city of Copenhagen sent their actual Little Mermaid statue to the festival -- THE SYMBOL OF THEIR CITY. Think about it, as if we had sent the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia. During the Expo, if you went to the place where the Little Mermaid normally stands in Copenhagen, you would find a screen with a video feed to Shanghai. Now that's commitment. I admire them for it.

By contrast, our press attitude was deplorable.

(I don't understand why I can't clear the background color out of this section. Google's blogger interface is not so great)

But the curious, and remarkable thing, was that that only the month before, a group of Americans sang "We are the World," including Josh Groban -- who is a common theme in this blog. 

I erroneously said it was the same month as in China, but the YouTube dates of these videos are a bit more than month apart.  I'm not sure when the recording in China actually occurred.  The actual expo didn't start until May, but CocoLee uploaded her video March 31, 2010.

Still, pretty close.

------------------

Addendum

I see that this is what Adele actually sang for Brussels -- very nice

Audra McDonald & "Shuffle Along"

I saw Audra McDonald perform with Josh Groban or at least in the same concert at least twice. Once was in Lincoln Center, I think at the Marvin Hamlisch concert. The other was on his Stages DVD. Anyone new to this blog is perhaps not aware that being a Grobanite is a central feature of mine and of this blog.

After Stages, I looked up some of her videos on YouTube. I liked what I heard. I decided I wanted to hear more of her singing, and in person.

So I went to her website and looked for her tour. Josh said on the DVD that she was on tour. I found out she was in New York City for a while in March doing a show called “Shuffle Along.” I was still thinking this was the name of a concert she was doing. Josh always has names for his concert tours.

The show was in a Broadway Theater, The Music Box, but I know Jackie Evancho has done concerts in Broadway theaters, so I was still thinking it was a concert.

I got there early and there was a huge line to get in, people who already had tickets. I double checked my ticket and I had an assigned seat, so I went off to the side and checked in to my next day's acting job using my cell phone.

Eventually the line started moving. I went in past a very cool, historical drinking fountain, where the water was coming out of something that looked like a fish and there were small paper cups to collect it. These were really small, like shot glasses. You had to drink several of them to get any appreciable amount of water. Fortunately, there wasn't a line for that.

Nor was there a line for the bathroom, fortunately. I suspect they must have added some stalls since the original theater. The place was quite ample. Curiously, I later saw men waiting for the restroom at intermission. You seldom see that.

It turned out that the show was sold out. I like to buy cheap tickets, so I was near the rear of the balcony. I don't have long legs. My height has always been in my torso. Even so there wasn't enough leg room. It was quite uncomfortable.

It was the guy sitting next to me who clued me in to the fact that it was a Broadway show, a musical. Fortunately, Audra was appearing in the musical, as one of the leads. Naturally, there four male leads, and only one female, though there were some supporting females who got substantial performance time.  

One of the other leads was Brian Stokes Mitchell. He also has performed with Josh Groban. There's a recorded duet of them somewhere. Also I saw Mitchell at the Americans for the Arts Awards, where Josh got an award back in 2012. They both got awards.

So I essentially killed two birds with one stone, getting to hear them both perform. 

Apparently some of the other performers are well known also, but not to me, so that wasn't as exciting for me.

Anyway, the guy next to me informed me that Shuffle Along was the first Broadway play to be all Afrimerican performers. He thought this was a reenactment, tho that also turned out to be not quite right.

They sang the songs from the original show, but in between they told the story of the show and of the performers. It turned out to be a history lesson.  I found parts of the show fairly confusing at first, possibly because I was coming in with the wrong expectations. 

I did like Audra best of all the performers. It turns out that she's a triple threat.  She acts and she did tap dancing.  Although she seemed quite shy and retiring in the video where she performed with Josh, she didn’t seem so on stage at all. She played a sassy character convincingly.

I definitely did like her singing a lot. Everyone was singing on stage, but her voice was the one I liked best. If she were to do a concert on her own, I would love to hear her.  She has a very rich, full tone.  Though belting seems to be all the rage on Broadway, she’s more of a legit singer.  It’s nice to know that legit singers aren’t completely excluded from Broadway.

Questions for @joshgroban

There were a couple of instances recently where questions for Josh were solicited.  I did submit some, but they didn't get answered.

I decided to post them on this blog, because it's been my experience that Josh does eventually answer questions that he sees on line.

Your improv has inspired me to study improv, so I’m interested in learning more about your improv background.  I've been studying improv for 3 years now.

I’ve heard you say that you were studying improv before you became interested in singing.  Does this mean before you were 12?

I heard a rumor that you studied improv at a summer camp at Second City, in Chicago.  Is this so? How old were you then?

When you studied improv, did you study short form or long form, or both?

Also, you once said that Stevie Wonder asked you to call him so that the two of you could write a song together that might save the world.  You also said that you were too chicken to call him.  I’m not sure if you’ve become aware of my quixotic quest for the world anthem.  I’ve blogged about it a lot.  Here’s a summary

http://skysong263.blogspot.com/2015/05/trying-to-organize-information-about-my.html

So Stevie Wonder’s request to you is of great interest to me.  Have you called him yet?

My dream band for you would include all of the following: Tariqh, Lucia Micarelli, Ruslan Sirota, and Taku Hirano. Any chance that we could get all of them at once?

being obsessed with @joshgroban makes me a successful tweeter, apparently

Sort of in shock.  Twitter & blogger just gave me all this data -- see below  People are actually reading what I'm writing on here. I mean I know this blog has over 23k page views -- but 1.5k impressions per day on twitter???  Phew!

Of course, they want me to pay to post ads.... as if this were a business.

Wow.

Now, I came on twitter, because I was obsessed with Josh Groban, and I wanted to be able to tweet him.  I also had this idea about my quixotic quest for the world anthem: more here Blog about the Quixotic Quest for the World Anthem

 I was really embarrassed about being so obsessed with a celebrity.  I thought this was an example of some kind of character defect on my part.

Of course, what I found out when I started coming here is that a lot of people are obsessed with celebrities.  I should know better than to think I'm terminally unique.

But I also have 2 real name twitter accounts, which I really am thinking of as being for business, and they don't get nearly as much attention as this account does.  The posts I put on those other accounts are much drier -- in keeping with my idea of being business-like and professional.

What I'm learning about from this, which I feel I should have known, but didn't, is that play is better business practice than being "business-like" or "professional."

This is not what my very strict, conservative German Jewish immigrant father taught me.  He was a very straight laced fellow, indeed.  I'm sure he would be disapproving of this whole account and this whole blog.

I recently saw a FB meme on this topic FB meme about how people know about celebs but not public affairs/history  I posted it on my real name timeline.  My friends and I all clucked with disapproval about it.

But the truth is that if one wants to understand how to make friends and influence people one has to understand and master this phenomenon.  My Aspie brain is straining to get it.