First off, the good stuff.
Soprano Janice Hall is electrifying. Some performers have an instant and palpable intensity about them -- a presence as concrete and tangible as if they have swept onto stage wearing a lavish fur coat and are trailed by an army of minions. Hall, one of the guest artists/instructors, kicked off the "Singing and Acting: the Work of a Musical Theatre Artist" public performance at Summer Arts with an a capella rendition of Cy Coleman's wry "It's Not Where You Start, It's Where You Finish." She grabbed the small but attentive audience -- the smallest Concert Hall draw I've seen at Summer Arts in a while -- and didn't let go as she treated the crowd to a lightning-quick encapsulation of her noted opera career. Ending with Steven Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns," which is more often performed by husky-voiced leading ladies more comfortable with talk-singing than full-on vocalization, she managed to impart to the song a precise, crystalline beauty.
There were some other good performances in this hodgepodge of a show, from baritone John Seesholtz's hammy aria from "Gianni Schicchi" (which will be presented as the free student culmination performance 7 p.m. Friday at the Concert Hall, by the way) to Gerald Seminatore's haunting rendition of John Kander's "Letter from Sullivan Ballou."
But ...
Summer Arts needs to do a better job defining its public performances. This year's festival already included an embarrassingly inadequate event featuring the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This singing/acting recital wasn't as sketchily put together as the Shakespeare event, but it lacked the drive, vision and energy of a full-fledged performance. By sticking stage director Jonathan Eaton and conductor Bernard McDonald into the middle of the performance for an unrehearsed discussion, the evening took a flat trajectory. I could accept the program being described as a panel discussion or colloquium -- and offering tickets for $7/$10. But to bill it as a "musical theatre concert" and charge up to $25 for a reserved seat was, I think, a misrepresentation.
It's important to be honest with the audience and not make people guess what sort of experience they can anticipate. If you burn the Summer Arts regulars too many times, you're going to lose them.
I understand that it must be hard for the Summer Arts administration to deal with early program deadlines and fickle artists. But it seems to me that there should be hard-and-fast performance classifications for the festival. A full-scale performance -- with the commensurate ticket prices -- should be exactly that: performances by world-class guest artists that would stand in any city or venue. Anything less starts to turn Summer Arts into a spin of the roulette wheel.
For the eighty thousanth time, you've said it much better than I could.
I've gone from season ticket holder and sponsor of Summer Arts to sometimes attendee for the exact reasons you specified.
I showed up years ago for a Joe Goode PERFORMANCE and got a very nice lecture instead. For something like $15 dollars.
The next year it was to be another performance and we got a panel discussion with a minor amount of singing tossed in...and the singing was by students instead of the instructor, as advertised.
While I thoroughly enjoyed both of those events, I went in expecting something I didn't get, and in the Joe Goode case, something I paid too much for.
I'm still a major fan of Joe Goode and his dancers/dances, but your commentary about CSU Summer Arts is perfect.
This has been one of the more challenging performance seasons for Summer Arts, but let us not neglect the great things we have brought to Fresno that otherwise would have never come. This years Joe Goode Performance Group performance was fantastic! Stephen, I do not recall the JGPG performance you are speaking of, but I am sorry to hear you were disappointed.
The Summer Arts administration is forced to work with what they are given. Artists are often not concrete in what they plan on doing for their performance before they reach their technical rehearsal, which is months after the events are published. Any changes that are received are made public as early as possible to avoid any miscommunication. Please remember to be somewhat forgiving- as Donald said, working with any artistic genre is a challenge and each genre is very different.
Summer Arts has a lot to offer the Fresno community, high quality artists like Janice Hall, Joe Goode, and many others. Let's just be thankful that we have access to the CSU Summer Arts program while they are here in Fresno-which won't be forever.