Audiences thrilled to be in theater: Byrne
NEW YORK, Oct 21, (AP): Since returning to Broadway’s “American Utopia” after the pandemic pause, David Byrne has noticed a few things about his audience: It seems younger, a little more diverse and people are juiced to see live entertainment again.
“They’re thrilled, just completely thrilled, to be in a theater, seeing a show, hearing music,” he said. “It’s like, ‘wow, did we miss this or what?’”
“American Utopia” had its formal reopening at the St. James Theatre on Sunday, although there were a few weeks of previews. The music and dancing, performed by a barefoot troupe that operates without wires, is the same as before the break. The theatrical concert is a call for hope, connection and reaching utopia. Byrne has made a few changes to his monologues to reflect the times.
Some of the change in the audience composition might be due to Spike Lee’s filmed version of “American Utopia,” which streamed while the live show itself was dark.
“I can sense that there are audience members who are not as familiar with the Talking Heads songs we play,” he said. “They’re coming to see it as a show, and they’re taking it all in — not simply as music fans but as people who are seeing a show. They have to absorb it and process it in the same way that they would with any musical where they don’t know all of the songs ahead of time.”
Quickly in the show, he addresses what has kept people away.
“Thank you for leaving your homes,” he says. “I used to say that in the old world and it had a different meaning. But many things have changed,”
He references COVID-19 in some of his other monologues.
Opportunity
“Because of the nature of the show, because I talk directly to the audience and I’m not a character in a play, I have the opportunity to address a little bit of what we’ve all been through,” he said in an interview. “First I thought, ‘how do I do that?’ I didn’t want to turn the show into being about the pandemic. But I can’t ignore it.”
During the break, Byrne thought about musical changes, swapping some songs for others in a personal catalogue that encompasses nearly 45 years, but ultimately decided he liked the current mix.
There was no question about bringing the show itself back. All of the pre-pandemic performances had sold out, so he knew there was an appetite for it. He also considers it a distillation of many ideas about performance that he’d been trying through the years, and Byrne thought “I should let this ride for a little bit before I abandon it and go on to something else.”
“American Utopia” has performances scheduled through next spring. Byrne has committed to a different theater project in Denver, Colorado, next summer, so it won’t go on indefinitely.
Just as importantly, “American Utopia” doesn’t feel dated upon its return, he said.
“The show dealt with a lot of issues that really came to the fore during the pandemic, whether it was race and policing or voting,” he said. “It was, in a way, lucky, maybe prescient. We just happened to catch the tenor of the times. It didn’t seem to lose any of its relevance.”
Nathalie Stutzmann, the French-born contralto turned conductor, will succeed Robert Spano as music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra starting with the 2022-23 season and become the second woman to lead a major American orchestra.
The 56-year-old agreed to a four-year contract, the orchestra announced Wednesday, and she plans to spend 10 weeks annually in Atlanta starting in 202223.
Marin Alsop was the first woman to head a major American orchestra as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 2007-21.
Spano spent 20 years in Atlanta and left after the 2020-21 season. He will become music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in 2022-23.
Stutzmann, who lives in Geneva, will become the ASO’s fifth music director after Henry Sopkin, Robert Shaw, Yoel Levi and Spano. She debuted with the orchestra on Dec. 2, 2020, in a program of Lauren Bernofsky’s Passacaglia for Brass Ensemble, Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll” and Beethoven’s First Symphony. She returned for a second program last February.
“You feel if the connection works,” she said. “You feel it the work you are doing if what the musicians are expecting. And as a conductor you feel if the orchestra is in connection with you. And I must say it was very clear that the connection was working very well from the first time I came. And I really liked it because, well, I’m working intensely and my rehearsal work is very demanding and some orchestras are not so interested in this kind of rehearsal. But here they love to work hard.”
Repertoire
Stutzmann was a singer before concentrating on the podium.
“I grew up as a musician. I was a pianist, I was a cellist and a bassoon player,” she said. “Of course, I adored singing, but it was sometimes a little bit frustrating as a musician to have only one line to sing. And as a conductor, first of all you have an immense repertoire. A full life is not enough to conduct all the repertoire existing. And this is magic because you can pick all the works you really feel for. And, of course, instead of one voice, you have been put all voice in your hands. So it’s for me the best way to express the music I have in me.”
She is a full-time conductor but sings occasionally. “I literally have very little time for it,” she said. “It’s just a pleasure sometimes to come back to my original instrument.”
Stutzmann is in her first season as the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal guest conductor, will serve for the rest of this season as Atlanta’s music director designate and is in her fourth season as chief conductor of Norway’s Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra. She was principal guest conductor of Ireland’s RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra from 2017-20.
She was to have made her Metropolitan Opera debut last month in Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride” but the production was dropped in schedule revisions caused by the pandemic. She is now scheduled for a Met debut next season.