Re: review /sorry didn't relize you had to register

MUSIC REVIEW
Fest Background Music Sadly
Overshadowed
A silly play gets in the way
of an exquisite score in the third installment of
MicroFest 2002.

By RICHARD S. GINELL, SPECIAL TO
THE
TIMES

MicroFest 2002, which by
definition lies defiantly
outside what passes for the
musical mainstream, took
a particularly bizarre turn at
Pasadena's Pacific Asia
Museum in its third installment
Saturday night.

Within a windowed performance
space on the second
floor of the museum, the Shadow
Theater of
Anaphoria backed an hourlong
shadow play of
dubious value, "Their Venture
Beyond the Horizons:
An Odyssey Submerged in the Inner
Tribes," with a
shimmering, often exquisite score
of alternatively
tuned toccatas and meditations.

Directed by composer Kraig Grady,
the ensemble
performed on four metal mallet
percussion
instruments--including two bass
variants called the
Mt. Meru that produced
impressively deep, tolling
reverberations--a battered reed
organ and two
stringed instruments hidden
behind the stage. There
was no need to adjust one's ears
for alternative tuning
systems; this music had an allure and beauty that
communicated immediately.

The prologue, where a silhouetted hand holding a ball gave way to
projections of a
comet flying through outer space,
was a most striking sequence--and one's hopes
immediately went up. Alas, the
ensemble's sonic splendors were then lavished
upon a piece of silliness
burdened with antic barbed voices and so-called humor
whose chief reference point was
not the imaginary South Seas island of Anaphoria
but good old Southern California (with mentions of McDonald's, the Santa
Monica
Mountains, energy bars, Charlton Heston, etc.)

The shadow play was credited to
an "author" named Isafa--and according to the
program notes, "Rumors have
varied from Isafa being a woman of notoriety to
Isafa being a collective
endeavor." If you had written this play, you might want to
hide behind "rumors" too. George
Zelenz wrote:

> Hey K!
>
> paste the review, as the times wants you to register. Some folks won't
> want to do that, like me.
>
> Paste IT! I wanna read the idiot reveiw.
>
> GZ

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

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