What is it?
A drawing.
What's it a drawing of?
Ink.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Jackie Evancho--star or burnout in the making?
from the Guardian (UK):
Child geniuses: What happens when they grow up?
...
In 2002, [violinist] Jennifer [Pike], aged 12, became the youngest winner of BBC Young Musician of the Year....
"I'm very serious and very dedicated," she says. "It is like a swan on water: there's a lot of paddling underneath."
Her career has entailed sacrifices: her family did not go on holiday so she could play expensive, top-quality violins and there are many things, from basketball to skiing, she would like to do but can't, for fear of injuring her hands...
Her drive, she says, was her own. "The number of young people I've met with somebody speaking for them, literally forcing them to do this... I am lucky. I have a very inspiring and supportive family." As a child, she always wanted to do more practice and play more; it was she who had to push her teachers. "It's funny, the mentality of England is often, 'Let's just keep everybody at the same level', rather than assisting individual needs."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/15/child-geniuses-prodigies
Nightmare legends of pushy stage mothers are not without a factual basis. When actor/director Robert Redford was casting the part of an 11 year old girl for his new film "The company you keep" he said in an interview that it seemed like some of the chidrens' mothers thought they were auditioning, not their children. (He wound up casting Jackie Evancho because he said when she was acting she didn't seem to be Acting.)
But of course some geniuses have terrific parents, as Jennifer Pike says she did. Parents who realize the truth of what Blake said centuries ago: "One law for lion and ox is oppression." For children who have some species of genius, a regretted childhood is one that suppressed the full expression of that genius. Genius children are not miniature adults, to be sure. But they aren't "children" in the normal sense of the term, either.
Parents who rise to the challenge of having a genius child are those who carefully navigate between the Scylla of exploitation and the Charybdis of ignoring how different their child is.
Jackie Evancho's genius is that of an entertainer who sings. I don't know whether she's particularly talented in other areas. As a singing entertainer it's easy for specialists in classical voice to overlook the overall effect of her total package on her audiences--or to airily dismiss it as yet another child prodigy/future burnout. Likewise the doyens of pop music ignore her completely--what she is, is invisible to the editors of Rolling Stone magazine and suchlike.
She's not an opera singer, not a pop singer, not a child singer (because she neither sings like a child nor comports herself like one when she's singing--no mugging), not one of those autistic mimics who simply replicate someone else's voice. She is a classical crossover singer, but that's a muzzy category with no established canon. And other CC singers don't have the effect on audiences that she does.
Most of her admirers are not musically sophisticated, though some clearly are--including many of the professional musicians and singers she has performed with (one singer said she was "gobsmacked" by Jackie's performance.
The group that may best grasp what's she's got is other professional entertainers who make their living by standing in front of an audience by themselves (or as a soloist in front of other musicians) and enthralling them. She has performed several times at a charity held for/by Muhammed Ali, with such people comprising most of the audience, and their understanding of what she had was obvious.
It's not just operatic singing that she doesn't and probably can't do. Add to that jazz, rock & roll, Tuvan throat singing, Kabuki accompaniment, coloratura arias...many, many areas. She's a specialist. But within her area of expertise--"classical crossover" she's the best of the lot when compared directly with the adults she competes with for CD sales.
I've played her music for many people without showing them a picture or telling them anything about her. Some were unmoved, but many were thrilled--and had no idea she was the age she is. I did this because of so many music people saying it was just her appearance/age. I have proven to my satisfaction that it is not. It's something she does with her sound that affects many people profoundly.
It's not precisely her pitch sense, her phrasing, her restrained use of portamento (and never to hunt for a high note), her equally restrained vibrato, her buttery tone--though all those are prerequisites.
Whatever the mechanics involved are, her secret is her ability to disappear into the music and take the listener with her. She never shows off. She never appears to be communicating "Look at me sing! Aren't I great?"
That's the sort of self-referencing performing that keeps many a singer with great pipes from reaching the peaks. Jackie seems immune to this kind of anxious narcissism. Probably because her parents are so grounded, from all reports.
To a fan of, say, Frank Sinatra, an opera singer may sound like a congeries of screechy artifices. To a fan of opera, Frank Sinatra may seem like someone whose music is both plebian and kitschy. Each is hearing what the other isn't.
A good way to understand Jackie Evancho is to look at her audience when she's singing, and see how many people have tears streaming down their cheeks. What other singer has that effect on people?
Will she still have this effect when she's 20? I'd say almost certainly, because she does not depend on her extreme youth today when she's in performance--she doesn't affect today's trendy kid attire as Justin Bieber does, nor does she project "cute kid" affectations in performance. Nor are the bulk of her fans people who are in general fans of child singers. Most appear to not have been fans of anyone before she came along, in fact. That's what they report.
As for singing age-appropriate stuff...she never sings anything she isn't comfortable with singing. That, to me, is "age-appropriate." She says in interviews that she has a veto on any song proposed to her, and she doesn't hesitate to exercise it. She's polite but not a pushover. What's appropriate for one person to sing at one point in his or her life could be wildly inappropriate for someone else of the same age.
Anyone who has worked with a lot of children should know this. And as the founder of a school district's gifted student program, I saw this in particular with very bright youth. (I would have set no test for admission to the program--only interest and, after a while, a demonstrated ability to keep up with the rest.)
I can understand why someone with refined tastes wouldn't be interested in classical crossover music. My spouse loves it and I didn't hate it, but never wanted to go to a concert of same until Ms. Evancho came along. This has been reported by many other fans of hers. As a very rough guess I'd say maybe half were pre-existing CC fans. Similarly I'm not interested in Country Western music--except for a small number of exceptional artists. Conversely, I love many operas but find many others to be, for me, rather formalistic.
My point is that exceptional talent transcends genre. How a piece is performed matters--sometimes as much as what the piece is.
For example, my spouse and I recently spent several hours on YouTube (piped through our home theater) listening to the Prelude to Bach's Cello Suite #1 as done by dozens of performers using everything from violincello da spalla to double bass to harp guitar to Baroque cello to modern cello. We were both delighted to find that both of us chose the same rendition as our favorite--by a Taiwanese/Swiss guy I'd never heard of, on a modern cello. And I found his performance and that music as moving as I find Ms. Evancho at her best.
re: her schedule
I’ve flown to Taiwan (where Jackie performed March 22) a fair number of times, as it happens (it’s the best stopover for flights to Indonesia, where my wife & I go for scuba diving). Even from the west coast of the USA it’s a looong flight.
A long flight for us traveling economy class, that is. Jackie, of course, travels first class–the crucial aspect being that her seat folds flat and it’s easy for her to get up and move around the cabin.
I’m not saying it’s a snap to travel long distances even that way, but I know my own EconoClass experience is very different. Actually, once my wife & I flew from Heathrow to SFO Business Class (in exchange for getting bumped), and I almost wish we hadn’t. Because now we know what we’re missing! And that wasn’t even First Class.
Her performance schedule isn’t as arduous as one might think. She has stated that she spends half of her time at home, even without averaging in her family vacations. And it’s spaced out.
And within a given performance she alternates with other perfomers.
And her song selections are all well within her actual maximum range, which is reportedly 3 /12 octaves. Moreover, she’s always miked, never belts or even projects strongly.
So an evening’s miked performance of easy (for her) songs isn’t much like a “heldensoprano” doing, say, Siegfried.
Her father has said his main role with her professionally–besides keeping the exploiters and sycophants at bay–is saying “No” to more performances than she does, and regularly sitting her down–with his wife–and telling her they’re ready to pull the plug on the whole thing if she’d rather resume her former life as an ordinary school child. From all reports they are absolutely in earnest about this. Neither has shown the slightest interest in seeking the spotlight for themselves. Her father has said he didn’t even realize what a great singer she is until he observed her effect on other people.
So I’m reasonably certain that Jackie’s life–and the health of her voice–are both in good hands.
Enough talented kids have been exploited by avaricious, narcissistic parents that it’s reasonable to be on guard for that. It’s just not necessary in this case. They don’t push her–she pushes them. That’s one of the ways extremely gifted children differ from the rest of us–as Jennifer Pike says, it’s in their relentless drive.
Child geniuses: What happens when they grow up?
...
In 2002, [violinist] Jennifer [Pike], aged 12, became the youngest winner of BBC Young Musician of the Year....
"I'm very serious and very dedicated," she says. "It is like a swan on water: there's a lot of paddling underneath."
Her career has entailed sacrifices: her family did not go on holiday so she could play expensive, top-quality violins and there are many things, from basketball to skiing, she would like to do but can't, for fear of injuring her hands...
Her drive, she says, was her own. "The number of young people I've met with somebody speaking for them, literally forcing them to do this... I am lucky. I have a very inspiring and supportive family." As a child, she always wanted to do more practice and play more; it was she who had to push her teachers. "It's funny, the mentality of England is often, 'Let's just keep everybody at the same level', rather than assisting individual needs."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/15/child-geniuses-prodigies
Nightmare legends of pushy stage mothers are not without a factual basis. When actor/director Robert Redford was casting the part of an 11 year old girl for his new film "The company you keep" he said in an interview that it seemed like some of the chidrens' mothers thought they were auditioning, not their children. (He wound up casting Jackie Evancho because he said when she was acting she didn't seem to be Acting.)
But of course some geniuses have terrific parents, as Jennifer Pike says she did. Parents who realize the truth of what Blake said centuries ago: "One law for lion and ox is oppression." For children who have some species of genius, a regretted childhood is one that suppressed the full expression of that genius. Genius children are not miniature adults, to be sure. But they aren't "children" in the normal sense of the term, either.
Parents who rise to the challenge of having a genius child are those who carefully navigate between the Scylla of exploitation and the Charybdis of ignoring how different their child is.
Jackie Evancho's genius is that of an entertainer who sings. I don't know whether she's particularly talented in other areas. As a singing entertainer it's easy for specialists in classical voice to overlook the overall effect of her total package on her audiences--or to airily dismiss it as yet another child prodigy/future burnout. Likewise the doyens of pop music ignore her completely--what she is, is invisible to the editors of Rolling Stone magazine and suchlike.
She's not an opera singer, not a pop singer, not a child singer (because she neither sings like a child nor comports herself like one when she's singing--no mugging), not one of those autistic mimics who simply replicate someone else's voice. She is a classical crossover singer, but that's a muzzy category with no established canon. And other CC singers don't have the effect on audiences that she does.
Most of her admirers are not musically sophisticated, though some clearly are--including many of the professional musicians and singers she has performed with (one singer said she was "gobsmacked" by Jackie's performance.
The group that may best grasp what's she's got is other professional entertainers who make their living by standing in front of an audience by themselves (or as a soloist in front of other musicians) and enthralling them. She has performed several times at a charity held for/by Muhammed Ali, with such people comprising most of the audience, and their understanding of what she had was obvious.
It's not just operatic singing that she doesn't and probably can't do. Add to that jazz, rock & roll, Tuvan throat singing, Kabuki accompaniment, coloratura arias...many, many areas. She's a specialist. But within her area of expertise--"classical crossover" she's the best of the lot when compared directly with the adults she competes with for CD sales.
I've played her music for many people without showing them a picture or telling them anything about her. Some were unmoved, but many were thrilled--and had no idea she was the age she is. I did this because of so many music people saying it was just her appearance/age. I have proven to my satisfaction that it is not. It's something she does with her sound that affects many people profoundly.
It's not precisely her pitch sense, her phrasing, her restrained use of portamento (and never to hunt for a high note), her equally restrained vibrato, her buttery tone--though all those are prerequisites.
Whatever the mechanics involved are, her secret is her ability to disappear into the music and take the listener with her. She never shows off. She never appears to be communicating "Look at me sing! Aren't I great?"
That's the sort of self-referencing performing that keeps many a singer with great pipes from reaching the peaks. Jackie seems immune to this kind of anxious narcissism. Probably because her parents are so grounded, from all reports.
To a fan of, say, Frank Sinatra, an opera singer may sound like a congeries of screechy artifices. To a fan of opera, Frank Sinatra may seem like someone whose music is both plebian and kitschy. Each is hearing what the other isn't.
A good way to understand Jackie Evancho is to look at her audience when she's singing, and see how many people have tears streaming down their cheeks. What other singer has that effect on people?
Will she still have this effect when she's 20? I'd say almost certainly, because she does not depend on her extreme youth today when she's in performance--she doesn't affect today's trendy kid attire as Justin Bieber does, nor does she project "cute kid" affectations in performance. Nor are the bulk of her fans people who are in general fans of child singers. Most appear to not have been fans of anyone before she came along, in fact. That's what they report.
As for singing age-appropriate stuff...she never sings anything she isn't comfortable with singing. That, to me, is "age-appropriate." She says in interviews that she has a veto on any song proposed to her, and she doesn't hesitate to exercise it. She's polite but not a pushover. What's appropriate for one person to sing at one point in his or her life could be wildly inappropriate for someone else of the same age.
Anyone who has worked with a lot of children should know this. And as the founder of a school district's gifted student program, I saw this in particular with very bright youth. (I would have set no test for admission to the program--only interest and, after a while, a demonstrated ability to keep up with the rest.)
I can understand why someone with refined tastes wouldn't be interested in classical crossover music. My spouse loves it and I didn't hate it, but never wanted to go to a concert of same until Ms. Evancho came along. This has been reported by many other fans of hers. As a very rough guess I'd say maybe half were pre-existing CC fans. Similarly I'm not interested in Country Western music--except for a small number of exceptional artists. Conversely, I love many operas but find many others to be, for me, rather formalistic.
My point is that exceptional talent transcends genre. How a piece is performed matters--sometimes as much as what the piece is.
For example, my spouse and I recently spent several hours on YouTube (piped through our home theater) listening to the Prelude to Bach's Cello Suite #1 as done by dozens of performers using everything from violincello da spalla to double bass to harp guitar to Baroque cello to modern cello. We were both delighted to find that both of us chose the same rendition as our favorite--by a Taiwanese/Swiss guy I'd never heard of, on a modern cello. And I found his performance and that music as moving as I find Ms. Evancho at her best.
re: her schedule
I’ve flown to Taiwan (where Jackie performed March 22) a fair number of times, as it happens (it’s the best stopover for flights to Indonesia, where my wife & I go for scuba diving). Even from the west coast of the USA it’s a looong flight.
A long flight for us traveling economy class, that is. Jackie, of course, travels first class–the crucial aspect being that her seat folds flat and it’s easy for her to get up and move around the cabin.
I’m not saying it’s a snap to travel long distances even that way, but I know my own EconoClass experience is very different. Actually, once my wife & I flew from Heathrow to SFO Business Class (in exchange for getting bumped), and I almost wish we hadn’t. Because now we know what we’re missing! And that wasn’t even First Class.
Her performance schedule isn’t as arduous as one might think. She has stated that she spends half of her time at home, even without averaging in her family vacations. And it’s spaced out.
And within a given performance she alternates with other perfomers.
And her song selections are all well within her actual maximum range, which is reportedly 3 /12 octaves. Moreover, she’s always miked, never belts or even projects strongly.
So an evening’s miked performance of easy (for her) songs isn’t much like a “heldensoprano” doing, say, Siegfried.
Her father has said his main role with her professionally–besides keeping the exploiters and sycophants at bay–is saying “No” to more performances than she does, and regularly sitting her down–with his wife–and telling her they’re ready to pull the plug on the whole thing if she’d rather resume her former life as an ordinary school child. From all reports they are absolutely in earnest about this. Neither has shown the slightest interest in seeking the spotlight for themselves. Her father has said he didn’t even realize what a great singer she is until he observed her effect on other people.
So I’m reasonably certain that Jackie’s life–and the health of her voice–are both in good hands.
Enough talented kids have been exploited by avaricious, narcissistic parents that it’s reasonable to be on guard for that. It’s just not necessary in this case. They don’t push her–she pushes them. That’s one of the ways extremely gifted children differ from the rest of us–as Jennifer Pike says, it’s in their relentless drive.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Vikings on the History Channel--true or false?
An article on LiveScience discusses the academics' debate about the History Channel's scripted drama Vikings. My comment:
Both the article and the comments illuminate a philosophical dialog between science's Lumpers and Splitters. As should be obvious, Splitters obsess about the differences between things, Lumpers about the similarities. The article's author is making a Lumper argument.
As a Lumper myself. I'd ask the Splitters here: what difference do the differences make?
To me what would be the most problematic would be if the behavior of the Vikings in the show differed considerably from that of the real deal.
So for example in the sword & sandals Hollywood epics of the 50s, the women all wore modern hairdos and acted like 50s American women--to the point of laughability. I don't see anything so anachronistic here.
The biggest question to me is the shield maiden thing. I don't see absolute proof one way or another, though I'm a bit doubtful about them going raiding. At the same time the protagonist Ragnar is presented as a radical innovator, and his wife as well. So if anyone were going to kick over the traces it would be them.
Also, Christian mores had not yet come to Viking country, and it's conceivable to me that the extreme strictures imposed on women by Medieval Christian culture were not found in the earlier Viking culture.
I agree with the author of the article that there is an overall tipping point with docudramas, beyond which the show becomes unwatchable to anyone with a scientific background--even for us Lumpers. All the Chariots of the Gods nonsense, for example.
I submit that this show is far, far from such a tipping point. And on the level of human motivations, a chieftan hanging on to his power by all means fair or foul isn't just plausible--it's a given. Ditto the ways in which a tribe's smartest warrior could be pushed to take on the Big Dog.
Where I really get off the boat is when the Dickensian coincidences pile up, the motivations look like thin excuses to get us to the next fight scene or special effects event, or look like the screenwriters are just stirring the pot for the sake of stirring the pot. Or everyone's voice sounds like one person's voice. I find none of that here, so on the level of personal character-driven drama I find Vikings believable.
So I find myself in agreement with the NYTimes article about the series.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Water Lillies--no-spoilers review of this 2008 French film
That's what I'll try to do here.
First some filters: this is an organically-paced film in French, with subtitles, shot on a low budget. So if you demand that everything you see look like a glossy Hollywood spectacular, skip "Water Lilies." Even the landscapes aren't gorgeous. This is the Paris of sprawling anonymous suburbs. I'm not sure the characters have even seen the Eiffel Tower... except on TV.
And skip it if you're looking for French porn shot from a middle-aged male point of view (Louis Malle comes to mind). There's nudity here but it's painful, not titillating. There's powerful romantic passion but not the kind of elaborately choreographed love scenes that pass for "sexy" in Hollywood.
Also skip it if you're looking for a lesbian film. It's not about the lesbian community. It's not about a teen discovering she's lesbian and dealing with family and friends who are horrified, yada yada. None of that. There is at least one lesbian in the film, but that doesn't make it a lesbian film, any more than the presence of a black guy in a leading role in "The Matrix" made it a "black film." Lesbianism isn't the subject of "Wild Lilies."
Moreover, skip it if you don't want to see how three fifteen-year old girls see the world. This is what led to one singularly dense reviewer calling this a man-hating film. Well, duh. Imagine what boys are like from a fifteen year old girl's perspective. Girls mature emotionally before boys do, by and large. Boys don't catch up until they're in their 20s (if ever, some might add). The boys' preoccupation with getting laid, coupled with their emotional tone-deafness, makes them seem just like they're presented in this movie. If you're a man reading this, think back. You were like that then, weren't you? Be honest. Aren't you embarrassed by how you behaved during your first years of dating? I know I am.
Lastly, skip it if you want to cling to the belief that teenagers live strictly within the boundaries of a Disney teen comedy like, say, "Freaky Friday." I don't want to give away the plot, so I won't get into specifics like some other reviewers do, but some of the stuff these teens do will make you sit back and go "Whoa..."
But in retrospect it all makes sense--especially since these three teens are all outsiders: the girl boys lust after but who girls hate/despise; the overweight girl desperate for love; and the central figure, a skinny girl (think Scarlett Johansson without the curves) with the passionate depth of Juliet without any of Juliet's Shakespearian articulacy--and whose Romeo is ambivalent about her.
Hollywood screenwriters love the sound of their own words (with some exceptions, like Clint Eastwood), and their screen teens jabber incessantly, usually with the language and obsessions of a middle-aged male screenwriter ("Dawson's Creek"). But "Water Lilies"' teens talk in monosyllables, like many teens do.
And Hollywood teen actors grin and grimace and in general emote the paint off the walls. "Wild Lilies"'s teens look at the world through hooded eyes, with guarded expressions, never revealing more of what's going on inside than they have to.
This looks like non-acting to those accustomed to seeing people sawing the air with their hands and chewing the scenery. To watch this movie you have to recalibrate your head so you can watch people acting like people really act.
Do that, though, and you'll be rewarded richly. Pauline Acquart, who plays the movie's central figure Marie, is in nearly every scene; the movie rests on her narrow shoulders. As I said, she gives away nothing she doesn't have to. Yet hers is one of the most compelling portrayals I've seen of love so powerful it's nearly self-annihilating. But even then she never blurts out one of those totally phony self-revealing-speeches Hollywood uses to explain a character's motivations.
You have to watch Acquart as closely as she watches everyone around her to pry loose her secrets. And even though her love is probably hopeless, and even though it consumes her, she maintains an admirable, stoic dignity. Her courage is equally formidable. She's not one of those outgoing characters who naturally dominates a room. Nor is she a stalker, because stalkers believe their stalkee feels the same way about them and act accordingly. Marie has no such illusions.
Yet even though she has neither charisma, connections, nor the pseudo-courage of a nutcase, nor great beauty, she builds a connection with the one she wants, sometimes cautiously, sometimes boldly, as the occasion demands. She's an audacious general commanding a ragtag force in a war for someone's heart, and it's both fascinating and touching to watch her campaign evolve.
There's a scene in "Jerry Maguire" in which Renee Zelwegger's character dumps Tom Cruise's character, even though she loves him completely, because she can tell he doesn't love her as intensely as she loves him. Acquart's character, albeit less articulately, shows she's capable of the same kind of decision--even though she also shows that she will do almost anything for her Romeo (who's a female, as it happens, but this Romeo being female is absolutely not the point).
One other thing: this film shows us a few weeks in the lives of these three fifteen year olds. When the film ends, we don't know what "happens" later. That is, nothing is wrapped up with a ribbon tied around it. Nor should you expect the film to do so. These are 15 year olds, for heaven's sake.
Some Greek poet said "Call no man happy until his life is over." Likewise with these girls.
That said, I hope the director makes a sequel, with these same three actors. They've earned it. And they've earned your viewership--if you're worthy of this film.
------------
Note: I posted this review on Amazon in 2008, before I started this blog, & I only just realized I hadn't copied it here. It got 15 comments on Amazon BTW--pretty good for such an obscure (in America at least) film.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Why we're fans--doesn't matter who we're fans of
This is an anthropological explanation.
We're fans of particular celebrities because of the way we learned the skills we needed when we lived in little hunting and gathering bands for millions of years before adopting agriculture and becoming sessile, about 10,000 years ago.
We learned the skills we needed to know by following and imitating the people in our tribe who were best at a given skill. Everyone in your tribe knew who the best hunter was; the best fisherman; the best rain shelter-builder; the best communicator; the best edible plant-finder; the best water-finder, weather-predictor, etc. etc.
There wasn't much instruction. Mostly we watched and imitated. Kids imitate naturally, without even knowing they're imitating. We get less good at it as adults, but most can still do it.
Now in this society we know consciously how it works, more or less, but our instincts still think we're hunting for food in East Africa's woodlands.
It's hard to figure out who's the best dentist, or ophthalmologist, or auto mechanic, or...
But those jobs didn't exist back in the tribal day. On the other hand, what makes celebrities outstanding is far more obvious--a beautiful singer like Jackie Evancho, a dynamic action movie actor like Tom Cruise, a clear communicator of upbeat female teen angst like Taylor Swift. Or someone whose behavior embodies the ideals of our society, like the celebrities who don't become divas but act kindly and responsibly towards others.
So our instincts kick in. We want to follow the celebrity around and pick up their skills through imitation. We can't--not without getting arrested for stalking--and their skills probably aren't the ones we need to acquire (or that are beyond our ability to acquire). But our instincts still think it's 100,000 years ago, and they're just urging to do what our instincts "understand" is best for us.
Fandom isn't very "useful." But it's very understandable.
We're fans of particular celebrities because of the way we learned the skills we needed when we lived in little hunting and gathering bands for millions of years before adopting agriculture and becoming sessile, about 10,000 years ago.
We learned the skills we needed to know by following and imitating the people in our tribe who were best at a given skill. Everyone in your tribe knew who the best hunter was; the best fisherman; the best rain shelter-builder; the best communicator; the best edible plant-finder; the best water-finder, weather-predictor, etc. etc.
There wasn't much instruction. Mostly we watched and imitated. Kids imitate naturally, without even knowing they're imitating. We get less good at it as adults, but most can still do it.
Now in this society we know consciously how it works, more or less, but our instincts still think we're hunting for food in East Africa's woodlands.
It's hard to figure out who's the best dentist, or ophthalmologist, or auto mechanic, or...
But those jobs didn't exist back in the tribal day. On the other hand, what makes celebrities outstanding is far more obvious--a beautiful singer like Jackie Evancho, a dynamic action movie actor like Tom Cruise, a clear communicator of upbeat female teen angst like Taylor Swift. Or someone whose behavior embodies the ideals of our society, like the celebrities who don't become divas but act kindly and responsibly towards others.
So our instincts kick in. We want to follow the celebrity around and pick up their skills through imitation. We can't--not without getting arrested for stalking--and their skills probably aren't the ones we need to acquire (or that are beyond our ability to acquire). But our instincts still think it's 100,000 years ago, and they're just urging to do what our instincts "understand" is best for us.
Fandom isn't very "useful." But it's very understandable.
Monday, December 24, 2012
On encouraging children in the arts
Jackie Evancho is a 12 year old child with a Sony recording contract for doing classical crossover albums. Her dreams have come true in part because she worked hard to achieve them--but all that hard work would have gotten her nowhere if she was born with a tin ear and a wispy voice.
It takes both gumption AND natural talent.
My objection is to encouraging kids who aren't going to get there no matter how hard they try because they weren't born with what people like Jackie was born with.
We should all have our dreams, and our parents should have helped us realize the realizable ones. When our parents give us dreams we can't achieve no matter how hard we try--and which we try to achieve instead of working of what we actually can accomplish--then like Simon Cowell I'm the one being kind to tell them the truth and you're the one being cruel, by setting them up for a fall.
It is true that nearly everyone who has achieved great things has had people who didn't think they could. Every best-selling novelist has a shoebox full of rejection slips.
But it is equally true that everyone who reached for something beyond their grasp also have the equivalent of a box full of rejection slips--only they reflect reality.
We should all pray for the discernment to let us encourage everyone we meet to achieve the dreams they have or could have or should have...that are realizable. OTOH we should also pray for the discernment to not encourage dreams we know are hopeless.
That's one reason why I've never wanted to teach a writing class. I'd have to tell most of the students to write journals but don't try to publish anything because they can't achieve that.
You shouldn't be cruel to people whose dreams you know will fail. And you can take the easy way out and just make polite noises when they're obviously begging you for encouragement in their Quixotic quest. But you'd be kindest if you Simon Cowell'd them.
It's not the adult's job to be the child's friend. They have friends their own age. It's your job with children to at least be the guide on side if you don't wan to be the sage on the stage. But steer them toward the spot where the fish are. Don't give them a bum steer.
EDIT ADD: When I did my student teaching in several grammar schools, my instructors told me I taught 3rd grade as if it were 4th grade, 4th as it it were 5th, and so forth. I challenged them and stretched them, tried to find what they were capable of. I was both demanding and encouraging. I just never told someone they were something they weren't.
It takes both gumption AND natural talent.
My objection is to encouraging kids who aren't going to get there no matter how hard they try because they weren't born with what people like Jackie was born with.
We should all have our dreams, and our parents should have helped us realize the realizable ones. When our parents give us dreams we can't achieve no matter how hard we try--and which we try to achieve instead of working of what we actually can accomplish--then like Simon Cowell I'm the one being kind to tell them the truth and you're the one being cruel, by setting them up for a fall.
It is true that nearly everyone who has achieved great things has had people who didn't think they could. Every best-selling novelist has a shoebox full of rejection slips.
But it is equally true that everyone who reached for something beyond their grasp also have the equivalent of a box full of rejection slips--only they reflect reality.
We should all pray for the discernment to let us encourage everyone we meet to achieve the dreams they have or could have or should have...that are realizable. OTOH we should also pray for the discernment to not encourage dreams we know are hopeless.
That's one reason why I've never wanted to teach a writing class. I'd have to tell most of the students to write journals but don't try to publish anything because they can't achieve that.
You shouldn't be cruel to people whose dreams you know will fail. And you can take the easy way out and just make polite noises when they're obviously begging you for encouragement in their Quixotic quest. But you'd be kindest if you Simon Cowell'd them.
It's not the adult's job to be the child's friend. They have friends their own age. It's your job with children to at least be the guide on side if you don't wan to be the sage on the stage. But steer them toward the spot where the fish are. Don't give them a bum steer.
EDIT ADD: When I did my student teaching in several grammar schools, my instructors told me I taught 3rd grade as if it were 4th grade, 4th as it it were 5th, and so forth. I challenged them and stretched them, tried to find what they were capable of. I was both demanding and encouraging. I just never told someone they were something they weren't.
re: Les Miz--the movie--my fears confirmed by NPR
I just heard David Biancouli's (sp.?) brief review of Les Miserables the movie on today's episode of Fresh Aire. He called it an abomination, just as I feared, in part because the actors weren't good enough singers to sing their roles, and in part because so much of the camerawork consisted of the camera coming in at different angles for tight closeups on their faces as they're singing badly (by "badly" I don't mean by church choir standards, but by professional musical theater standards).
What a pity. I think of myself as a sophisticated listener and of Les Miz as high art for the masses--but I still wept when I saw it live. So very sad that the movie version won't be iconic, but instead a very expensive tribute to bad judgments.
What a pity. I think of myself as a sophisticated listener and of Les Miz as high art for the masses--but I still wept when I saw it live. So very sad that the movie version won't be iconic, but instead a very expensive tribute to bad judgments.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Is Les Miz: The Movie...musical?
I've seen several clips from stars of Les Miz touting the movie on talk shows. And as usual for movie musicals, they cast stars and had them sing rather than casting singers and having them star.
That's why you saw the astonishingly beautiful Natalie Wood open her mouth in West Side Story and Marnie Nixon's astonishingly beautiful voice would emerge.
AutoTune has made this less necessary.
And of course you have many actors dubbing themselves, especially when they're required to sing while they're running around.
Now we have the most anticipated movie-of-a-musical in decades, Les Miserables. In which a selling point is that the performers are neither other-dubbed nor self-dubbed. What you see is what you hear, so to speak.
Which would be great if what you heard was what we've heard in its stage productions.
It's so not. Take Amanda Seyfried's Adult-Cosette. She is gorgeous, can act, and looks the part. She can sing on pitch--I'm no expert on detecting AutoTune unless it's done on purpose, but it doesn't matter, because what's wrong with her voice, AutoTune can't fix. Her voice is as un-beautiful as her face is beautiful.
Her tone is not better than what you'd find in the average church choir soprano, plus she has one of those high-speed quavers that I find nearly unlistenable to.
And this isn't a bit part. It's Adult-Cosette.
I heard Ann Hathaway too. Someone I'd be delighted to have in the choir of the church I attend. But Fontine? Uh-unh.
They showed a bit of Hugh Jackman speak-singing his way through a duet with Cosette.
I was just stunned. Les Miz has some of the best music of any musical since the Richard Rogers/Frank Loesser days. The music isn't incidental to Les Miz--it's the heard and soul of it.
They could have done a movie of the book, using the same cast as this movie, and I'd have had no complaints.
And the emotional honesty of the story does call for the voices you hear emerging from the mouths you see.
Just not these voices.
Maybe the other parts fare better, but thus far my impression is that Hollywood picked Hollywood's own for the cast. They could have had their pick of Broadway stars for this, but instead we get...what we got.
I hope and pray that the few snippets I've heard are the musical exceptions to a better rule.
I doubt it.
And if I'm right, I have to ask: why do a musical if you don't care about the music?
Normally Hollywood botches musicals. It "opens up" the setting, taking the extreme artificiality of people bursting into song every few minutes, and superimposing that artifice on realistic settings--on location or on big sound stages.
But at least Hollywood used to make sure you heard really good singing, whether from someone who had the complete package, like Shirley Jones, or a team who divvied up the whole package between them, like Natalie Wood/Marnie Nixon.
Now?
What I don't get the most is that Les Miz's creators are still alive. And they've overseen Les Miz being produced all over the world. So it's not like they don't know their way around a contract. So how did they let this happen?
Wouldn't it be interesting if, a decade or two from now, someone re-did the soundtrack of this movie, dubbing in the voices of great Broadway singers, offering that as a viewing option?
That's why you saw the astonishingly beautiful Natalie Wood open her mouth in West Side Story and Marnie Nixon's astonishingly beautiful voice would emerge.
AutoTune has made this less necessary.
And of course you have many actors dubbing themselves, especially when they're required to sing while they're running around.
Now we have the most anticipated movie-of-a-musical in decades, Les Miserables. In which a selling point is that the performers are neither other-dubbed nor self-dubbed. What you see is what you hear, so to speak.
Which would be great if what you heard was what we've heard in its stage productions.
It's so not. Take Amanda Seyfried's Adult-Cosette. She is gorgeous, can act, and looks the part. She can sing on pitch--I'm no expert on detecting AutoTune unless it's done on purpose, but it doesn't matter, because what's wrong with her voice, AutoTune can't fix. Her voice is as un-beautiful as her face is beautiful.
Her tone is not better than what you'd find in the average church choir soprano, plus she has one of those high-speed quavers that I find nearly unlistenable to.
And this isn't a bit part. It's Adult-Cosette.
I heard Ann Hathaway too. Someone I'd be delighted to have in the choir of the church I attend. But Fontine? Uh-unh.
They showed a bit of Hugh Jackman speak-singing his way through a duet with Cosette.
I was just stunned. Les Miz has some of the best music of any musical since the Richard Rogers/Frank Loesser days. The music isn't incidental to Les Miz--it's the heard and soul of it.
They could have done a movie of the book, using the same cast as this movie, and I'd have had no complaints.
And the emotional honesty of the story does call for the voices you hear emerging from the mouths you see.
Just not these voices.
Maybe the other parts fare better, but thus far my impression is that Hollywood picked Hollywood's own for the cast. They could have had their pick of Broadway stars for this, but instead we get...what we got.
I hope and pray that the few snippets I've heard are the musical exceptions to a better rule.
I doubt it.
And if I'm right, I have to ask: why do a musical if you don't care about the music?
Normally Hollywood botches musicals. It "opens up" the setting, taking the extreme artificiality of people bursting into song every few minutes, and superimposing that artifice on realistic settings--on location or on big sound stages.
But at least Hollywood used to make sure you heard really good singing, whether from someone who had the complete package, like Shirley Jones, or a team who divvied up the whole package between them, like Natalie Wood/Marnie Nixon.
Now?
What I don't get the most is that Les Miz's creators are still alive. And they've overseen Les Miz being produced all over the world. So it's not like they don't know their way around a contract. So how did they let this happen?
Wouldn't it be interesting if, a decade or two from now, someone re-did the soundtrack of this movie, dubbing in the voices of great Broadway singers, offering that as a viewing option?
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Advice for female celebrities appearing on talk shows
Case in point: Olivia Munn, 32, beautiful actor who has appeared in Maxim (a so-called "lad's magazine" in teensy outfits) and suchlike. If you Google her name and pick Images you can see that while she's no Lindsay Lohan, she isn't prudish either.
Yet on Jay Leno's talk show last night she appeared in a dress that was practically Amish by late night talk show standards--long sleeved, high necked, no holes--but it was gathered up on one side, as you can see.
Munn was onscreen 8 minutes, and she spent much of her airtime trying to not be in that dress. She tugged down on it repeatedly, tried to pull the longer part over the shorter part, put her hands over the exposed thigh, went back to tugging it down, and so forth.
It made her look neurotic and also made it hard to pay attention to whatever she was saying. Jay Leno didn't make her wear that dress. The stores are full of attractive outfits for famous women--outfits that show less leg. Thus not only neurotic but a little dimwitted. And she's known for being smart--college-educated. But she made herself look ridiculous--and her constant dress-tugging is already appearing all over the Internet.
She just has no excuse. Whatever glamorous effect she was shooting for by wearing the dress in the first place was lost by her onstage antics. She could have put duct tape over the slit and it would have looked better than she did.
This has been going on since forever. Minnie Driver's first movie role seen widely in the states was the starring role in Circle of Friends (1995), for which she gained quite a bit of weight. Then she made the rounds of the talk shows to promote it. I think first was the Jay Leno show. She appeared with all the weight gone, & obviously so because it was a minidress.
Spent the whole time tugging the top up and the hem down.
There's a broader lesson here--if you're conscious of your self, you won't be self-conscious on any occasion.
Friday, November 23, 2012
What you should know about portamento when listening to a singer
Portamento is a musical term, meaning, basically, sliding between two notes on the sheet music instead of crisply hitting the first, then the next. But more generally it means all the little stuff singers do instead of singing mechanically.
Portamento is musical seasoning. You've have soup that was too salty, right? And soup that lacked salt. Neither is fun to eat. Ditto portamento. Bad singers use portamento like bad cooks use seasoning: to mask the fact that the basic ingredients aren't very good.
In opera, for example, singers who aren't sure of just exactly where that high note is will sliiiiiide up to it, hoping to come across it--though like as not they still sing the note a bit flat anyway. I've heard opera singers and country music singers and pop singers all abuse portamento this way. The better your pitch sense is the more annoying this becomes.
But imagine hearing someone with no musical imagination sing something without any note-bending, without any accelerations or hesitations, nary a gospel lick, nor blues lick either (very closely related, those)--and you're back to that bowl of soup that tastes like hospital food.
I've heard singers with un-beautiful voices make their bones as song stylists--which is perfectly acceptable. I've also heard singers with beautiful voices (like Barbra Steisand) overuse portamento--as if they didn't trust their own basic materials.
Listen to Jackie Evancho sing anything for an example of using portamento just right, within the scope of her genre ("classical crossover"); to Bonnie Raitt for bluesy pop; to Mahalia Jackson for straight-from-the heart gospel licks; to Dulce Pontes, La Albita and Elis Regina for Latin music... Those singers will teach you most of what you need to know about portamento.
Portamento is musical seasoning. You've have soup that was too salty, right? And soup that lacked salt. Neither is fun to eat. Ditto portamento. Bad singers use portamento like bad cooks use seasoning: to mask the fact that the basic ingredients aren't very good.
In opera, for example, singers who aren't sure of just exactly where that high note is will sliiiiiide up to it, hoping to come across it--though like as not they still sing the note a bit flat anyway. I've heard opera singers and country music singers and pop singers all abuse portamento this way. The better your pitch sense is the more annoying this becomes.
But imagine hearing someone with no musical imagination sing something without any note-bending, without any accelerations or hesitations, nary a gospel lick, nor blues lick either (very closely related, those)--and you're back to that bowl of soup that tastes like hospital food.
I've heard singers with un-beautiful voices make their bones as song stylists--which is perfectly acceptable. I've also heard singers with beautiful voices (like Barbra Steisand) overuse portamento--as if they didn't trust their own basic materials.
Listen to Jackie Evancho sing anything for an example of using portamento just right, within the scope of her genre ("classical crossover"); to Bonnie Raitt for bluesy pop; to Mahalia Jackson for straight-from-the heart gospel licks; to Dulce Pontes, La Albita and Elis Regina for Latin music... Those singers will teach you most of what you need to know about portamento.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Does 12 year old Jackie Evancho understand what she's snging about?
Years ago a university chemistry class got a guest lecturer for the day. Afterward the students were asked about the lecturer. They all agreed he was the best chemistry lecturer they'd ever had, bringing the concepts alive for them as never before. They figured he must be some Pulitzer Prize-winning genius.
In fact he was a professional actor who knew nothing about chemistry.
The point wasn't what he knew or didn't know--it was what the students learned when they listened to him.
His area of expertise wasn't chemistry--it was communication.
Likewise what Jackie Evancho knows is the language of music--of tone, of phrasing, of portamento (all those little notes that aren't in the score), of passagio (seamless transitions from chest to head voice), of vibrato.
If you played just the audio of "The summer knows" for someone who'd never heard--or heard of--her, theyd probably say the singer must be a tall, heavyset (to support the big voice) woman in her 30s, who's been around the block a few times.
I've tried this experiment and that's the result I usually get.
It's important to note that Jackie never tries to act a day older than she is. That's not the way in which she's precocious.
As for what she herself understands--of course she knows little about romantic love etc. But she does understand--as do many 12 year olds--love in a more generalized sense, and longing, and loss. Jackie just does more with that than most.
So she's the storyteller, not the story; a conduit for your own life experiences, not hers, connecting those experiences to those that the song she's singing deals with.
Lastly, she's not a "child singer." There are a lot of those. They sound like children. They're cute. They compete with other children.
Jackie is a singer who happens to be a child. From the start she has competed with adult singers for sales of her CDs, DVDs and concerts. She sings in an adult voice. she mostly sings songs other adults sing. Her CDs chart on Billboard Magazine against those of singers like Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban. And her fans are rarely fans of child singers.
It's hard for critics to categorize Jackie because in a way she's a category of one. There has never been a child in history of recorded music who sounds/sounded like her. Julie Andrews, at Jackie's age, sounded like a child with a beautiful, agile, wide-ranging child's voice. She didn't sound anything like Jackie, who's not as agile and not quite as wide-ranging, but whose tone and texture and vibrato aren't excelled even by highly-trained adult singers.
Some people get there by training, others by sheer talent. Jackie's the latter--living proof that we're not all born the same.
In fact he was a professional actor who knew nothing about chemistry.
The point wasn't what he knew or didn't know--it was what the students learned when they listened to him.
His area of expertise wasn't chemistry--it was communication.
Likewise what Jackie Evancho knows is the language of music--of tone, of phrasing, of portamento (all those little notes that aren't in the score), of passagio (seamless transitions from chest to head voice), of vibrato.
If you played just the audio of "The summer knows" for someone who'd never heard--or heard of--her, theyd probably say the singer must be a tall, heavyset (to support the big voice) woman in her 30s, who's been around the block a few times.
I've tried this experiment and that's the result I usually get.
It's important to note that Jackie never tries to act a day older than she is. That's not the way in which she's precocious.
As for what she herself understands--of course she knows little about romantic love etc. But she does understand--as do many 12 year olds--love in a more generalized sense, and longing, and loss. Jackie just does more with that than most.
So she's the storyteller, not the story; a conduit for your own life experiences, not hers, connecting those experiences to those that the song she's singing deals with.
Lastly, she's not a "child singer." There are a lot of those. They sound like children. They're cute. They compete with other children.
Jackie is a singer who happens to be a child. From the start she has competed with adult singers for sales of her CDs, DVDs and concerts. She sings in an adult voice. she mostly sings songs other adults sing. Her CDs chart on Billboard Magazine against those of singers like Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban. And her fans are rarely fans of child singers.
It's hard for critics to categorize Jackie because in a way she's a category of one. There has never been a child in history of recorded music who sounds/sounded like her. Julie Andrews, at Jackie's age, sounded like a child with a beautiful, agile, wide-ranging child's voice. She didn't sound anything like Jackie, who's not as agile and not quite as wide-ranging, but whose tone and texture and vibrato aren't excelled even by highly-trained adult singers.
Some people get there by training, others by sheer talent. Jackie's the latter--living proof that we're not all born the same.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
More on the undertone of sadness in Jackie Evancho's art
Jackie Evancho faces a paradox. The interpretive genius that enables her to connect with her audience in such an emotionally powerful way at the same time isolates her. Maybe that's the real essence of the "darkness within her light."
Musically at least, she sees deeply into the human heart. Yet the more this ability ennobles her and makes her famous and successful...the less time she can spend with ordinary people, and, progressively, her extra insight into the human heart includes sensing how few people have her depth.
She now has at least one foot into adolescence. I seriously doubt whether she's thought about this consciously yet, but who will she be able to even date when she's old enough to do that? She doesn't go to school. She know a few girls who are her childhood friends. Most of the boys she knows are siblings or cousins.
So on both the practical and the philosophical level, she's coming to realize the degree to which her life of the heart separates her from other hearts. And there's not much she can do about it. She is who she is. Even if she stopped performing now, she'd still be herself, with the abilities she has, whether she uses them professionally or not.
When she's 16--the age her mom identified as when she'd be willing to let her start dating--most boys her age will be too intimidated to ask her out, and unwilling to be identified as someone's boyfriend instead of the girl being identified as his girlfriend.
At her current age of 12, the dating stuff is well over her horizon. But she's insightful. Surely in some way she sees it coming, and she already experiences it. Who are the fans cheering her from those expensive front row seats? Old coots mostly, who will never be in her dating pool. And boys her age are mostly listen to Rihanna and Pink and Fergie and Selena Gomez and Beyonce and Lady Gaga and Kei$ha etc....not her.
She will find love, eventually, to be sure. But it will be a challenge. And even outside of the world of romance...it's always lonely at the top. Whether it's as a CEO or as a prima ballerina or as a potter on the crafts fair circuit or as the top cop in your precinct. Being the best at anything isolates you.
Hence, perhaps, the undertone of sadness in much of her music. Her way of seeking the consolations of philosophy...
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
New CD "Songs from the Silver Screen" by Jackie Evancho
Executive summary:
This CD perfectly expresses the paradox that is Jackie Evancho-the most beautiful voice of any singer whose voice has been recorded, coupled with intuitive mastery of the art of singing--immaculate phrasing, use of portamento, seamless passagio, and above all the ability to connect the listener emotionally to the music--all contained, however improbably, within the small-for-her-age frame of a cheerful 12 year old suburban American girl whose talents were as much of a surprise to her parents as they were to the rest of us.
And of all her CDs, "Songs from the silver screen" most embodies this paradox, applying her formidable musical skills to musical piffle like "Pure Imagination," the theme song from the children's film "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." There are more serious songs on the CD-most notably Ennio Morricone's theme from "Cinema Paradiso" and Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Music of the Night " from "Phantom of the opera," written for its antihero.
That is, the musical interpretive genius who is Jacqueline Marie Evancho is at the same time Jackie Evancho, a child who still loves Disney cartoons. And in this CD you see the confluence of the genius and the child.
As such, I doubt she'll ever do such an album again-even now, you see her looking forward towards her adult life in a way that she hasn't in the past. And about half the songs here embody that looking-forward-ness. So this CD's collection of songs combines a fond farewell to her childhood with a wide-eyed first step into the hormonal hurricane of adolescence.
I also doubt that the children's film songs here will ever again get such remarkable renditions. Because Jackie is the rising tide that lifts all musical boats. This CD answers the question of how important execution is vs. the original material that emerged from the composer's pen (or keyboard or virtual input). Even the piffliest of the songs here-"Pure Imagination" is worth listening to because Jackie Pygmalioned it, lifting it out of the musical gutter just as Professor Henry Higgins turned Eliza Doolittle into something like a real lady.
So even if you disdain many of these songs (at least as originally sung) and their cinematic sources, don't let that turn you away from this unique, evanescent testament to Jackie Evancho's 12th year on this lucky planet. And anyone who aspires to be a singer needs to get his, regardless of their own chosen genre-because this CD could be the musical text for a master class in the art of singing so that you carry the audience away with you to whatever emotional destination you choose.
Not that even Jackie could explain what she does. She can't. It's up to you to pay attention to what she's doing when she's doing it-and the more attention you pay, the more your efforts are rewarded, as you swim into the shimmering depths of her voice.
Buy this CD and bring some beauty into your life, whether it's just for a gentle background sound or for intense scrutiny-either way you'll find what you seek. A bit like those chilcren's films that are made to entertain both their intended audience and their parents.
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The details:
There's an undertone of sadness in much of Jackie Evancho's music. I doubt anyone-even her parents-know where that comes from. It's as if the singer is a veteran chanteuse in her late 60s, looking back on a sunny youth with both fondness for how wonderful it was and regret that it's long past, never to return.
All of us adults were once 12 years old, but not one of us was the 12 year old that Jackie Evancho is. Not that it's obvious in interviews. I've known kids that age who presented themselves as well as she does, and spoke about as well as she does, with the kinds of charming grammatical boo-boos typical of thoroughly middle class children. She doesn't exude the gravitas Scarlett Johansson did at the same age. Until Jackie sings, that is.
Some other kids even display the kinds of lofty goals she expresses, such as "I'd like to sing for the President of the United States"...the difference being that she has sung for the President-more than once even.
And some also express some of that sadness, but it's usually over personal stuff-drunken parents, acne, whatever. Jackie's isn't for herself. It's for all of us, all of us embraced by her loving concern for all of our griefs large and small, and the mortality that overshadows this life.
I'm doing a little mindreading here, to be sure. As I said, she isn't particularly articulate about her art. Not need she be. You can see how intensely she's concentrating when she performs-rarely smiling, her brow often furrowed as she shapes every note, every phrase, every verse, precisely as she wants it to be. I think I'm right but there's no way to prove it. Just regard her art and see if what I say resonates with you.
You can expect to see hundreds of reviews for any Jackie Evancho album, all of them gushing over her voice, her songs, her character, her family, her nascent beauty, her fashion sense, etc. etc., all concluding that you'd have to be nuts not to buy this CD.
Personally I agree. However, I can understand why some would not. Musically speaking, Ms. Evancho dwells far from the world Rolling Stone Magazine covers-and equally far from the pure classical world for that matter.
So if you only like pop, or jazz, or field recordings of Tuareg musicians, Jackie Evancho isn't for you. Her music doesn't rock and it doesn't roll. It's irony-free. It's generally aspirational, slow to medium-tempo'd, usually with ornate orchestral accompaniment. It hearkens back to Linda Ronstadt's "Lush Life" album with Nelson Riddle and his orchestra. I long for her first "unplugged" album, but that's probably a long ways off.
Meanwhile we have "Songs from the Silver Screen," and even if you aren't a fan of Classical Crossover-her nominal genre-you may still want to get this CD, because she possesses, arguably, the most beautiful singing voice of anyone in the history of recorded music. It soars over accompaniments normally found on "Easy Listening" albums and song choices that would be pedestrian in anyone else's hands. When she sings songs that have been done to death by others-or which we think of as being "owned" by another artist-she sweeps all that history aside, singing it as if it's the first time it's ever been sung. She never references other singers musically, and you'd be hard-pressed to find something she's imitating. She doesn't read music, so she learns songs by listening to others' renditions, but she seems to shed those renditions in the process of absorbing the songs, until all that's left is what's uniquely hers.
Consequently, though I wouldn't buy the collection of movie theme songs that comprises "Songs from the silver screen" if anyone else were the singer, Jackie Evancho can and does pull these songs out of their cinematic boxes, dusts them off, and sets them going in a new direction. You might say they get Jackified. High-Jackied? (This is where my wife tells me to stop messing around and get down to business.)
I'll add some thought to the individual songs, in the order in which they appear on the CD. I won't talk about the movies they come from by & large because Jackie recontextualizes them-her approach is so original it really only makes sense to consider them afresh.
1. Pure Imagination
The intro-a lush assemblage of celeste, flute, veils of strings, echo-reflects the Pretty Serious Treatment this song gets. After Jackie starts singing, a drumset pulls it into a midtempo piece marked by discreet rimshots and flurries of orchestration that create a kind of musical dialogue with Jackie's singing.
This is the kind of arrangement that David Foster has parlayed into a small fortune, so it's popular, and it's well-executed here by seasoned studio musicians.
The question for me is how would it compare with the singer doing the song acapella? Not that acapella is necessarily better-just that it's my starting point. The equivalent of zero-based budgeting in economics. Here my impression is that the arrangement sets a mood clearly. It intends to wrap you in a kind of Wall O' Sound that generates its own little universe-one which embodies the concept of "aesthetic distance" I learned about in college philosophy classes. The goal with this arrangement is, I believe, to make you feel something about that song that's neither intense nor pallid-that is, definitely engaged, but not weeping or laughing either. Fairly calm.
This is the metier of so-called "easy listening" music found in elevators and supermarkets. "Pure Imagination" is a definite step up from string arrangements of Beatles songs (which can drive me out of a market). And the arrangement may be appropriate for the song, whose lyrics talk about the joys of imagination, but not of the imagination found in, say, Goya's terrifying tributes to the brutal Napoleanic invasion of his country early in the 19th century. This is more like the imagination of lying on your back with your sweetie on a calm summer's day and imagining what animals the little puffy clouds in the sky look like.
So if this song, then this arrangement may be most appropriate for the Jackie classical crossover treatment. I hope Jackie never picks a song as musically lackluster as this again, but as I said earlier, I see this CD as her farewell to childhood, and I guess she enjoyed the movie. The song may not deserve her love, but her loving, sincere treatment certainly makes it all it can be/
2. The Music of the Night
Here's a song more worthy of Ms. Evancho's art. It shows off her passion, her rich lower range, her soaring high notes, her attention to the meaning of the lyrics-in this case a song sung by a criminal psychopath attempting to seduce a young female singer by appealing to a modicum of darkness swirling around inside her.
In her TV special Jackie sang this wearing a tuxedo with ruffled sleeves and high heels, and the outfit combined with her absolute authority as regards this song, made for a commanding presence and presentation. I tell you this because when you hear her sing it I want you to visualize Jackie singing it in a tux-and doing so convincingly. It's pretty stunning to hear how Jackie phrases this song perfectly. Listen to it five times in a row, as I just did, and you'll just marvel more and more at what an awe-inspiring singer this girl is, and how she brings her "old soul" to a song I wouldn't have dreamed a 12 year old child from a near-idyllic background could grasp a very adult song like this so well, leaving not a moment of her performance to chance. And she does it just about as well in live performance-so this doesn't represent a tribute to the producer's art. It's a tribute to Jackie's-her art and her emotional intensity.
I said she recontextualizes everything she does. This is one of the best examples. She first heard this when she saw the movie at age 7, and by all accounts it had an electric effect on her. My guess is that she felt something inside made her different from every other kid she knew. Not consciously, nor to anyone else either. She hadn't known anyone could make a sound like what she heard before this, as far as I know.
She was different, she felt it, and within a year or so everyone around her knew it as well. Not just the ability to sing well-but also the passion to become world-famous for what she does, and the drive and discipline to make that happen. You can't tell what she is by looking at her playing with her family and friends, or even from seeing her in concert. It's the in-between times that make her different-the concentration it takes to learn a song the way she learns a song, the acceptance of a life less ordinary-a life spent on airplanes and in hotel rooms and strange cities (from St. Petersburg to Tokyo so far), and through it all never to waver from her goals.
Greatness isolates. That's the "darkness" inside her. Not evil. But, in a deep sense, solitary. And at odds with the friendly, bubbly, social kid who is also Jackie Evancho. There's a price for fame, and she's already paying it-and accepts that price.
And in her last, sustained note of this song, if you listen to subtly disturbing chord progression underneath it, you can hear that darkness in a way that isn't obvious musically in the rest of the song. Actually it starts out, musically, rather innocuously. It's the very end that puts into music what the words have been saying all along. The chord progression finally resolves, but it leaves a dark residue behind in your mind.
3. Can You Feel the Love
I think Elton John did an admirable job with this song, elevating it above the normal forgettable Disney fare. And Jackie does it more than justice, down to the smallest detail. Such as the way she sings "moment" the first time in the song, lingering on the "n" before adding the "t' instead of making it one sound as we mostly do. This kind of thing isn't an affectation the way she does it-listen to the moment she sings "moment" and see if it doesn't make perfect musical/lyrical sense to do it as she does it.
This is also a good example of Jackie's "aspirational" mode. She does a lot of aspirational songs, and this is largely devoid of that sad undercurrent you can sense in some other songs she does. It's uplifting. Makes you want to go out and accomplish something-something worthy.
4. Reflection
This too is aspirational, and Jackie has said how close to her heart it is. It's about living behind a mask, struggling to break free. Most of us first encountered Jackie on America's Got Talent at the age of 10. But she'd been competing-and mostly losing-in local and regional competitions for 2 ½ years by that point, trying to get somewhere, sending in audition tapes to talk shows (that were never answered). Meanwhile you have to imagine how most people-peers and adults-treated her. She's small (even for her age) and cute and friendly. It's a miracle her mom took her seriously, but most people around her-and it was reasonable, really-just saw a little kid whose big dreams were what most little kids' big dreams are-talk.
You can hear all that remembered struggle in the impassioned way she sings this song. Yes, it's a kid's song, a Disney cartoon song, only slightly more memorable than most of its ilk. But even if Jackie gives it more TLC than it deserves, when she sings it you believe it and her. She means every word. You can't buy that sort of conviction at any price, and her rendition makes the song into something it didn't start out being.
5. The Summer Knows
How does a 12 year old kid from the `burbs who wears a Promise Ring sing a song like this, and sing it with such conviction, double entendres and all? This is a bittersweet pop standard that's an inch away from being the blues. I'm sure if you put the question to Jackie, she'd just shrug and say "I dunno." This is serious right-brain stuff, so it's not surprising her 12 year old left brain can't wrap words around what she does here.
And to some extent she's leveraging your own understanding of summer flings recalled with a mixture of pleasure and regret-the literary convention of "ubi sunt" ("those were the days"). She know exactly how to make the music. You know how to use the music she made to trigger and contextualize your own recollections to make up your total experience.
The true artist doesn't have to have had all the exact experiences he puts in his art. He just has to understand joy and sorrow, attraction and repulsion, regret and anticipation...it's up to you to fill in the details specific to each of our lives.
That said, I'm impressed by her tackling this song in this album. It becomes progressively harder to think that there's any kind of song she can't do, and do exceptionally well.
I'm sure some Concerned Parent types will have fits over songs like this. I would direct their attention to the many, many thousands of abused and neglected children leading tragic and often brief existences in America and abroad. Just because Jackie sings about adult topics doesn't mean she's in a hurry to experience them personally-but neither is she interested in avoiding knowing about the world as it is, warts and all. This is a very clear-eyed child whose mother has said she doesn't wall her four kids off from reality. And Jackie strikes me as having a lot of personal discipline-and judgment. Her campaigning on behalf of animal welfare is part and parcel of this. I wouldn't be surprised if as an adult she didn't get involved in the sorts of human welfare activities that responsible celebrities like Meg Ryan and Angelina Jolie pursue.
6. I See the Light
A sort of love song from a charming Disney movie becomes a tribute to freedom and brotherly-sisterly affect in this duet with Jackie's older brother Jacob. Jacob has a pleasant, clear young teenage boy's voice-any church choir would be delighted to have him. And he shows the pitch sense his celebrity sister is known for. I don't think singing will be his direction, but the occasional duet with Jackie will be very, very sweet. Jackie has a special bond with Jacob because after leaving her primary school to travel the world performing, Jacob left too and has been her constant companion on the road. You can see how much he means to her when they perform together.
I wouldn't want more than one song on an album to be a Jackie-Jacob duet, but one is great-and shows how Jackie can harmonize and blend beautifully, even with a weaker singer (no insult to Jacob-very few human beings aren't "weaker singers" than Jackie). Josh Groban is a great duetter, and I think Jackie will be one too.
7. What a wonderful world
A simple song can be a great song when it's done straightforwardly with great sincerity and the shaping Jackie does, so subtly you might not even notice the touches she's using to deliver the emotional content into your heart-unless you listen to it repeatedly. Her rendition of this could be the "required listening" for a master class in portamento-that's the note-bending that's usually not in the sheet music, but which keeps a song from sounding mechanical. I also appreciated the restraint of the arrangement here.
Listen to how she sings "for me and you" in the first verse, just for one example. She turns "and" into a multinoted piece of musical perfection that expresses the emotional import of that simple conjunction, tying her and the loved one she's singing to in something that's more of an embrace than an association. All those pitiful American Idol singers thrusting gospel licks into every bar should listen to what portamento can accomplish when it's used with refinement, in the service of the lyrics, and not just for showing off one's vocal agility.
Because Jackie never shows off. Everything she does musically, she does in the service of the song. This is a key element of her musical genius. She never gives in to the sort of diva-yodeling that has made Christina Aguilera much less of a singer than she could be.
8. Se
This is another of her trademark aspirational-yet-poignant songs. I don't speak Italian and haven't looked up the lyrics. Instead I treat it as a gorgeous vocalise, filling in the content with visual associations, of which I have many, having traveled in 17 countries (not including Italy however).
I think this uses Morricone's own arrangement, and it complements Jackie's power and subtlety nicely. I hope the maestro hears it and appreciates what a wonderful gift Jackie has given him. And musically I think many would agree that it's the best song on the CD, exploiting her range, expressiveness, tenderness, compassion, hope, love....I have no idea whether Jackie can express any emotion that isn't admirable. She's never done so. I'm thinking something heartless and heartbreaking like the love duet from Die Dreigroschenoper " (Kurt Weill/Bartolt Brecht) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HiJuCMWocI). But admirable-emotionwise, she Da Man.
9. My Heart Will Go On
Most pop music fans think Celine Dion owns this song. No more. I predicted a couple of years ago that when Jackie tackles a song it becomes her property from then on. This rendition, accompanied by Joshua Bell (one of the most famous violinists alive), is so ineluctable I now hear it even when remembering the memorable images from Jim Cameron's movie. And her amazingly long, delicate, held note at the end shows that she's rapidly outgrowing the breathing challenges her tiny body imposed on her at age 10.
When songs have been out there as much as this one has they often/usually become a cliche, a hackneyed shadow of themselves, even when done well. But on this CD "My heart will go on" have been given a second life. Jackie ace with songs like this is her evident sincerity. Can't fake that. She makes you believe her and the song. Package deal. I hope she never sings a jingle for a junk food restaurant. That would be the death of me, I fear.
10. Come What May
Here Jackie transforms the impassioned love duet from "Moulin Rouge" into a duet with The Tenors-formerly known as The Canadian Tenors. It would be hard to overstate just how well she does pitting her voice, coming out of her 4'9" frame or whatever it is now, against three grown men who are all professional singers. She holds her own and then some, not to mention producing some of the spine-tingling harmonies I've heard in a long, long time.
And it's fascinating to hear how she negotiates this emotional territory. I doubt she's been in love yet, and this is anything but steamy, but as with "Nessun Dorma," what she puts out is utterly convincing.
Note that she isn't just singing the melody-she sings a descant for much of it, showing that there are sopranos out there who can sing something besides the melody.
This song is an anthem-big sound, big passions, big orchestral accompaniment, four big voices-honestly it's kind of stunning. I sure hope she does more work with these guys-the four of them are a powerhouse combination.
Playing it for this review, I had to stop the playback for a minute before going on to the next song, just to let its reverberations die down in my head, and to mentally replay bits of it, like the first place she shifts into a descant and one of the tenors goes onto the melody. Ay caramba.
I pity the people who are too tragically hip to hear what's here. I absolutely love Miles Davis' "So what" which is still so hip it's almost too hip to exist on this planet. But there's room in my heart for that and for this, and there should be in yours too.
11. Some Enchanted Evening
In concert Jackie has said this song embodies what she imagines her first love might feel like. And she's taken a song written for an operatic bass-and a male character, naturally-in one of the most iconic musicals ever. No problemo. Change a few pronouns and she's off to the races.
Off to the races against what I'd call a revisionist orchestration. It's fully in keeping with the other original arrangements on this CD-lush, lots of strings, unrhythmed intro followed by a rhythmed body of the song, marked mostly by rim shots (hitting the wooden frame of a drum with a drumstick).
I'm a little ambivalent about the arrangement, which seeks that "aesthetic distance" I talked about earlier, while Jackie's own singing is anything but mannered, as the accompaniment seems-to me-to call for. Personally I'd love to have heard her singing this to the original Rogers & Hammerstein arrangement, which I think is better suited to Jackie's sincerity.
Just speculating but I wonder if the arranger tried to "lighten the mood" in view of Jackie's age? If so I disapprove. Jackie can take care of herself musically, and "Come what may" shows what Jackie can do when she's given the opportunity to go straight ahead into the passionate depths of a song instead of floating around in an inner tube. This arrangement would be great for a Perry Como. Not for someone like Jackie.
Doesn't mean I won't listen to this song, but I may fiddle with my home theater settings to try to foreground-ize her voice more and push the accompaniment into the background more.
12. When I fall in love
Same kind of arrangement here, again somewhat undercutting Jackie's approach. I look forward to the day she takes charge of every aspect of her CDs' production, as I'm sure she will.
The song itself is both romantic and clear-eyed. It's a song by someone who's been around the block-rode hard and put away wet, as a cowboy might say-so it's kind of minor keyed, which you don't expect in the average love long. Of course it's a song about falling in love rather than a love song per se, but still...the lyrics say that these things often don't work out, while at the same time saying that the person singing is ready to go all in with the right person-100%-which I'm guessing is also how Jackie sees things and will continue to see things.
This song choice is more proof that Jackie's an Old Soul. This is very sober romanticism-no blinders on at all. No effort to make the world any different than it is, while still maintaining her own lofty goals in life.
It puts her mark on the ground. As does the whole album.
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Jackie did a movie theme song on her last album-"Lovers" from the Chinese epic "House of Flying Daggers." Makes you think she'd like to do movie theme songs. I hope Hollywood is paying attention (and Paris and Rome for that matter, since she sings well in French, Italian, and Latin, as well as in English).
The only problem is that a song that fully exploited her range and other capabilities couldn't be sung by most pop singers. But what an instrument for a movie composer to exploit.
Meanwhile you can do your bit by buying this CD. For Jackie's hardcore fans that's a no-brainer. But even if you aren't partial to the Classical Crossover genre-and I'm not myself, actually, apart from Jackie-there's a lot here that you won't find elsewhere.
Because no one sings like Jackie, regardless of age. People say "one of a kind" just as hyperbole, and then it sounds hackneyed when it's actually true.
As is the case here.
Now go buy the thing. I'm going to go and play the album again.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Why don't the Olympics include snorkeling and cut swim styles nobody uses?
Seriously, when is the last time you saw anyone trying to get somewhere in the water use anything but the Australian crawl? Look at triathlons. Butterfly? Backstroke? Not when you're in a hurry. If the Olympics tried to make their swimming contests resemble what people really do, they'd have the different distances and relays and make them all freestyle--use whatever you choose.
When they mandate a particular stroke, be honest and admit it's because they think these alternate strokes are...pretty. OK--then in such races, score them on how aesthetically the swimmers do that stroke, same as you would in artistic gymnastics.
Otherwise define the distance and leave it up to the swimmer how he covers it.,
Ironically the two strokes most used in the real world besides the Australian crawl are the side stroke and what you do with swim fins.
People use the sidestroke to conserve energy and when it's useful to keep your head out of the water.
Finning is extraordinarily common. The Olympics should replace their goofy not-used-in-real-life strokes with races of different distances where the athletes were allowed to use fins/mask/snorkel. What possible reason could they have to exclude this? After all, besides running events we have bicycling events. A bicycle is exactly the same kettle of fish as swimming with fins. This should be a no-brainer, and it would be exciting to watch, because with fins you can really haul.
And while I'm at it, I'd love to see races on scuba. We now have the technology to show what's going on underwater, so it would look great on TV...not so much in a stadium. So you'd do it in the ocean, around a marked course. It's a serious challenge to make speed while encumbered with scuba gear. But again this is something real people really do in the real world, but since it isn't a live spectator thing I wouldn't push for it as seriously as snorkeling.
Another argument in favor of the snorkeling event is that it might well favor a different body type than what you see for most swimming events (a bit less so for the longest distances), since the major source of propulsion moves to the legs.
While I'm at it what's with the rowing stuff? Those boats are made to move in a straight line--they're hyper-specialized, and really divorced from real-world rowing.
So how about making the rowing events around a course, with turns in both directions--even a set of esses like you'd see in road racing for cars? I'd find that far more interesting to watch. I mean, what if the kayak races went down an arrow-straight course? No one would put up with that.
The closer Olympics sports map to the real world, the better it will be for attendance and support, sez me.
When they mandate a particular stroke, be honest and admit it's because they think these alternate strokes are...pretty. OK--then in such races, score them on how aesthetically the swimmers do that stroke, same as you would in artistic gymnastics.
Otherwise define the distance and leave it up to the swimmer how he covers it.,
Ironically the two strokes most used in the real world besides the Australian crawl are the side stroke and what you do with swim fins.
People use the sidestroke to conserve energy and when it's useful to keep your head out of the water.
Finning is extraordinarily common. The Olympics should replace their goofy not-used-in-real-life strokes with races of different distances where the athletes were allowed to use fins/mask/snorkel. What possible reason could they have to exclude this? After all, besides running events we have bicycling events. A bicycle is exactly the same kettle of fish as swimming with fins. This should be a no-brainer, and it would be exciting to watch, because with fins you can really haul.
And while I'm at it, I'd love to see races on scuba. We now have the technology to show what's going on underwater, so it would look great on TV...not so much in a stadium. So you'd do it in the ocean, around a marked course. It's a serious challenge to make speed while encumbered with scuba gear. But again this is something real people really do in the real world, but since it isn't a live spectator thing I wouldn't push for it as seriously as snorkeling.
Another argument in favor of the snorkeling event is that it might well favor a different body type than what you see for most swimming events (a bit less so for the longest distances), since the major source of propulsion moves to the legs.
While I'm at it what's with the rowing stuff? Those boats are made to move in a straight line--they're hyper-specialized, and really divorced from real-world rowing.
So how about making the rowing events around a course, with turns in both directions--even a set of esses like you'd see in road racing for cars? I'd find that far more interesting to watch. I mean, what if the kayak races went down an arrow-straight course? No one would put up with that.
The closer Olympics sports map to the real world, the better it will be for attendance and support, sez me.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
water strider
Seen on a nature walk by the birdwatching center in Bolinas, California. I love the shadows they cast.
 |
| shot with Canon G11 with an Olympus telephoto add-on lens + Lensmate adapter; 180mm equivalent |
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Color in monochrome photos
This is a photo I shot in Taipei's international airport last October. It's not very colorful except for the country's mostly red flags. I don't think this shot would work in B&W, but I also don't think it would work if the rest of the shot (apart from the flags) had been colorful. The flags "pop" because the surroundings do not.
Canon G11, hand held, ambient light; photo here is greatly reduced from the hi-rez original.
Here's another example, from Bali last year, taken at Pura (temple) Gading Wali. You could shoot this in monochrome as far as the plants in the foreground are concerned, but the scarf on the statue really needs to be in color.
Same camera, with an Olympus 1.7x telephoto lens mated to the Canon with a Lensmate adapter. Photo again greatly reduced from the original.
But this shot of a fabric store in Ubud, Bali, obviously needs to be in full color, while this
, of a beach near the aforementioned temple, should be close to monochrome for the best effect.
Clichés
Elsewhere I was discussing the idea of an image of Jackie Evancho in B&W with her blue eyes in color, perhaps for a poster or a T shirt.
Someone else pointed out that the bit of color in a B&W image was a cliché no real photographer would use.
I said this:
re: clichés
In every kind of artistic endeavor, acquiring good taste is great--pretty essential, really. And part of that is of course realizing what bad taste is in that field, and part of bad taste is the cliché.
But acquiring good taste is a stage, not the end point, though it is the end point for most who acquire it. "Good taste" basically means not making mistakes. Products in good taste are pleasing, competent, are rarely offend.
They also rarely transcend either, though.
Shakespeare saw Hamlet before he (re)wrote it. It was a popular play of the day, but when Shakespeare saw it he thought he could do it better. He was write (so to speak). The plot was clichéd, but Shakespeare's execution and brilliance with the language made his version a classic and the predecessor a footnote.
If you want to see photography's clichés go to an Ikea store and look at the photographic prints there.
If you look at them--and they'll probably include a B&W print with a bit o' color somewhere--you should see that those clichéd images are there because they tap into something in us. Humans love lush greenery and fresh water, baby animals with big eyes, etc.
Those things are both clichés and things we're hardwired to respond to.
They aren't clichés because of the subject matter or use of a particular technique, but because they're executed in a routine, un-brilliant manner. It's like the difference between a crummy movie about a pretty girl dying of cancer and a brilliant movie about a pretty girl dying of cancer.
Execution. Execution trumps everything. E.E. Cummings once wrote a poem that he built out of the verbal clichés of the day. It was brilliant.
But the cynosure of making humdrum done-to-death material glow in the dark is...Jacqueline Marie Evancho.
Look at all the songs she's done that have been beaten to death and then the dead thing beaten with abalone pounders until it was a paper-thin pulp.
Yet when she does them it's as if we'd never heard them sung before. That goopy song from Pinoccho, When you wish upon a star. Impossible dream. Danny boy. Jackie is living proof that the true artist knows what clichés are but doesn't keep him from using them IF done right.
Because nothing--absolutely nothing--becomes a cliché in the first place unless it's something many people respond to. They're a part of the artist's toolkit. They're a dangerous part because using them means you're going where darn near everyone has gone before. But real artists don't let that stop them under the right circumstances.
Bottom line is that like so many things, even good taste should be used in moderation...
Someone else pointed out that the bit of color in a B&W image was a cliché no real photographer would use.
I said this:
re: clichés
In every kind of artistic endeavor, acquiring good taste is great--pretty essential, really. And part of that is of course realizing what bad taste is in that field, and part of bad taste is the cliché.
But acquiring good taste is a stage, not the end point, though it is the end point for most who acquire it. "Good taste" basically means not making mistakes. Products in good taste are pleasing, competent, are rarely offend.
They also rarely transcend either, though.
Shakespeare saw Hamlet before he (re)wrote it. It was a popular play of the day, but when Shakespeare saw it he thought he could do it better. He was write (so to speak). The plot was clichéd, but Shakespeare's execution and brilliance with the language made his version a classic and the predecessor a footnote.
If you want to see photography's clichés go to an Ikea store and look at the photographic prints there.
If you look at them--and they'll probably include a B&W print with a bit o' color somewhere--you should see that those clichéd images are there because they tap into something in us. Humans love lush greenery and fresh water, baby animals with big eyes, etc.
Those things are both clichés and things we're hardwired to respond to.
They aren't clichés because of the subject matter or use of a particular technique, but because they're executed in a routine, un-brilliant manner. It's like the difference between a crummy movie about a pretty girl dying of cancer and a brilliant movie about a pretty girl dying of cancer.
Execution. Execution trumps everything. E.E. Cummings once wrote a poem that he built out of the verbal clichés of the day. It was brilliant.
But the cynosure of making humdrum done-to-death material glow in the dark is...Jacqueline Marie Evancho.
Look at all the songs she's done that have been beaten to death and then the dead thing beaten with abalone pounders until it was a paper-thin pulp.
Yet when she does them it's as if we'd never heard them sung before. That goopy song from Pinoccho, When you wish upon a star. Impossible dream. Danny boy. Jackie is living proof that the true artist knows what clichés are but doesn't keep him from using them IF done right.
Because nothing--absolutely nothing--becomes a cliché in the first place unless it's something many people respond to. They're a part of the artist's toolkit. They're a dangerous part because using them means you're going where darn near everyone has gone before. But real artists don't let that stop them under the right circumstances.
Bottom line is that like so many things, even good taste should be used in moderation...
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