LA JOURNAL 

ACCENTUATION 

 As I travel about the country I keep an ear out for how pronunciations change, one regional accent sliding into the next. There is, I’ve observed, a sorta continuum that flows down from Maine across New England then spreads west and south. But I’ve never been able to detect a California accent. At first I thought it might well be because everyone there is from someplace else. That was before Erik, George and Heather came into my life. All are native Californians and all speak that unaffected mid-continent anchor desk media English (essentially a Nebraska accent). Turns out I was listening in the wrong place.  

              Bill, down at the corner on Sunset, spotted two guys washing the windows on the Pharmacia building. Likely motivated by my kvetching about our very dirty, very difficult to reach apartment windows, he asked them to stop by and give us an estimate. It proved to be so reasonable that we and some tenant neighbors hired them on the spot.  

              They did a great job.

Before

After

 

             

 

 

 

 

 

 

The window washers were very congenial guys. When conversing with us they spoke English; between themselves they kept up a lively banter in Spanish. They were equally facile in both languages. But their English was spoken with a light Latin lilt. 

                “That’s it!” I realized. That’s the California accent. Well, at least the Southern California accent. It’s where that slowly changing flow of spoken English blends into its near neighbor which just happens to be a different language. There’s that flow again. It disregards borders. Anglosphere meets Hispanosphere.  

              While I was drafting this post, Alvaro stopped by. Together we recalled a conversation that took place during his last visit to Buffalo. He engaged two fisherman on Unity Island in Spanish. Later he noted how much their Puerto Rican accented Spanish differed from his Mexican accented Spanish. That prompted me to further inquire about the many different Hispanophones here in LA: Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Salvadoran, etal. Of course he can, he told me, distinguish one from another by their accent. For instance he told me those window washers were speaking Quechua, a dialect from the highlands of Guatemala.

                LA JOURNAL

 

 

                                                 GET AROUND, GET AROUND, I GET AROUND. 

“Do you know where you are?” Bill asks. We’re on our way back from a club when Bill suddenly hangs a left and we’re headed uphill through the narrow streets that wind past the homes that cling precariously to the hillsides.

It’s always a lesson going places in LA with Bill. He’s a veritable Rand McNally, a living breathing road atlas. Indeed, on our way out this evening we’d a “watch this” moment during which he taught me a short cut only a real Angelino would know.

“We’re on top of the hill between Griffith Park Boulevard and the actual Silver Lake. We're on Micheltorena Street. If we continue downhill we’ll come out by the school on Sunset,” says I, the proud ardent student.

 

Silver Lake

 

But really, it’s getting harder for me to get lost here. I pretty much know my way around Silver Lake (our neighborhood as opposed to the former reservoir now repurposed as a decorative water feature after which our neighborhood is named) and Los Feliz, the next neighborhood over. I can get downtown; I can cruise Hollywood. I can meet a high school friend for a beer way out in the San Fernando Valley. I know which freeways to take and even better I know which “surface” streets to take to avoid the freeways.

Let me not get too ahead of myself. There’s lots of this five hundred square mile city (by comparison, Buffalo is forty square miles) and its huge attendant sprawl that remain a complete mystery to me. Then again, strictly by accident, or so it seems, I left Garminella at home in a box on a shelf in a closet. I imagine her muttering to herself, “recalculating, recalculating.” That was an error but nowhere near as egregious as it would have been in previous times here. Sooner or later, the training wheels must come off.

 DRIVING

 

 It’s just not possible to write about Los Angeles and avoid writing about driving here. As I’ve noted in previous posts, LA traffic has only gotten worse in the years since we’ve been wintering here. Its by now pretty extensive public transit system doesn’t really help much. In fact, faced with a 13% decline in ridership, the authorities commissioned a study to account for it. Their conclusion: the problem stems from low interest rates. No really! Low rates have allowed more folks who might otherwise rides the buses or the Metro to buy cars and join the stop and go, mostly stop, jams on the freeways. Making matter worse, I suspect, is prosperity. Southern California is now experiencing the lowest unemployment rate ever in the history of keeping track. More folks are on their way to work in the morning and irascibly heading home again in the evening. It’s almost enough to make one wish for the return of hard times.  

ADAMS AT DISNEY 

I consider John Adams to be the preeminent living American composer. So when a program is billed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as “John Adams Conducts”, say no more, I wanna be there. It turns out Adams holds the position Creative Chair of the LA Phils. That meant this night he was more curator than conductor.

A world premiere set to open the program was cancelled due to performer illness. The Los Angeles Percussion Quartet filled in. Their selection, “Aura” played on a large ensemble of percussion instruments was performed in the dark. No really, the house lights were turned off and the players wore LED lights on their hands. It was less of a spectacle than what you might expect and for a percussion piece unexpectedly subdued.

Adams came to the stand for the second piece, yet another world premiere. Scored for brass, piano, harp and percussion, Anthony McIntosh’s “Shasta” proved to be more academic than engaging.

After intermission Adams came on stage microphone in hand to introduce the concluding two pieces. Both works he said were by composers he’d known and worked with during his early days in San Francisco. I’d read his delightful autobiography, “Hallelujah Junction” so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

First up, Julius Eastman’s minimalist “Evil Nigger” scored for four pianos. Notes reiterated, themes appeared and disappeared, all the while sonority rolled along. Intriguing though prolonged.

And then the finale, Salvatore Martirano’s “L.’s G. A. for Gas Masked Politico, Helium Bomb and Two-Channel Tape”. In which L is for Lincoln, G.A. is for Gettysburg Address and in which a gas masked narrator recites portions of Lincoln’s text while hitting on nitrous oxide and prowling the stage backed by a rudimentary psychedelic film and prepared tape. Silly? Perhaps. Then again, it's a preserved artifact of another time when the potential of creativity seemed infinite, at least so it seemed in 60’s San Francisco.

In all an evening more interesting than enthralling. I would way have preferred a full philharmonic orchestra filling this beautiful place with John Adams compositions. At least it was a return visit to the Frank Gehry architectural masterpiece that is Disney Hall.

 

 

Headed down to the Music Center we wondered, “Why are we even doing this?” The evening’s presentation, Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide”, had never been on our radar. But it was what the LA Opera was offering during our visit. From experience we expected a world class production which, it turned out, is just what we got: brilliant direction, an engaging cast and super stagecraft.

Kelsey Grammer sang but mostly acted, cleverly transitioning between the dual roles of Voltaire and Dr. Pangloss. I’d only ever seen Grammer on TV as Frazier Crane on two series I’d never watched through a complete episode. Acting in a TV series entails working small on tight sets. The challenge of performing on the immense Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage is just the opposite. Grammer nailed it. His speaking voice, unamplified, easily filled the hall. His singing voice, not operatic but strong, suited his only solo number just fine.

              The other leads, soprano Erin Morley as Cunegonde and Jack Swanson as Candide where just what we’ve come to expect at the LA Opera, strong, vibrant and youthfully attractive. Indeed, the entire cast including Broadway star Christine Ebersole, was exceptional.
 

 

               I’m guessing “Candide” was programed in recognition of the Leonard Bernstein centenary. I’d always known Bernstein as a great conductor. I’ve a shelf full of his Beethoven recordings. I quite recall watching him conduct the Young Peoples Concerts from the black and white days of TV.  I’m less familiar with him as a composer. As a pious former altar boy I was thoroughly confused by his “Mass” which I’d watched when it was televised as part of the Kennedy Center inauguration. It wasn’t like any mass I’d ever served. And then, of course, there’s” West Side Story.”

“Candide” is more operetta than opera although there are some stirring operatic parts including some soaring choral work. It’s also a pastiche of musical styles, some blues, some Broadway, a tango and, imagine that, some satirical bel canto soprano parts. I look forward to hearing more Bernstein this centennial. He did write three symphonies, a dance suite, chamber music, choral music and (I gotta hear this) “La Bonne Cuisine: Four Recipes for Voice and Piano”. Meanwhile I’m happy to have attended a fine production of “Candide” and hope the work stays in the repertory.