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REVIEW: Five Borough Songbook Premiere In NYC’s DUMBO

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The Five Borough Songbook enjoyed an auspicious premiere earlier this month at the Galapagos Art Space, in that Brooklyn neighborhood designated as DUMBO, Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Underpass. From twenty of the day’s significant composers, the Songbook gathers twenty songs, each expressing facets of New York City life. As happened, one of the commissioned artists was unable to make the deadline; a twentieth song should be added at the next performance in Queens on November 12. The extant cycle is of conspicuous artistic merit.

The Galapagos Art Space’s interior – with its seating islands arranged over an indoor pool – served as a symbolic representation of New York City’s geography, each borough, at least to some extent, separated from the others by water. Ricky Ian Gordon’s O City of Ships stirringly launched the cycle on its energizing course and then was followed by Christopher Tignor’s more intimate Secret Assignation. Tignor included in the program notes instructions to read silently along, at appropriate moments, with parenthetical unsung passages in Lewis Warsh’s text  — difficult to accomplish because of the dark lighting — yet I believe the requested participatory reading would enhance the listener’s experience of the song. In any event, it is unusual that an audience is asked to participate in a song performance in that manner. Matt Schickele’s Days afield on Staten Island sets a poem by naturalist William Thompson Davis; the music poetically evokes the sylvan scene described in the lyric.

This reviewer needed to take the A train to get to Galapagos but boarded what was actually a D train maddeningly mismarked as an A and so — across at Brooklyn’s Atlantic-Pacific station — had to hop the R back to Jay Street in order to get on the real damned A train and thus was perfectly primed for Gilda Lyons’ delicious “rapid transit.” Soprano Martha Guth and mezzo Blythe Gaissert sat facing one another upon chairs, as though on opposite sides of a subway car and then began soulfully singing “NYC, MTA” at each other a cappella. Lyons’ musical lines do certainly trump train lines; the audience appropriately laughed its approval over the expressively rendered “Expect delays in 2 and 5 service at this time.” Composer Russell Platt and poet Paul Muldoon are real New Yorkers – (both work for The New Yorker) – Platt’s setting of Muldoon’s The Avenue (II) conveys the enigmatic pains of a love affair snuffed by fate or something or other. Tenor Alex Richardson’s virile, compelling delivery of the opening verse – “Now that we’ve come to the end/I’ve been trying to piece it together” – drew the listener in; his skillful handling of the remainder of the song was matched by pianist Thomas Bagwell’s able accompaniment.

F from DUMBO, another of the Songbook’s tributes to the City’s storied underground, has Glen Roven treating Michael Tyrell’s poem with polished pizzazz in a scena that includes a startling line about “The flasher whose dick got caught in the closing doors.” The New Yorkers, with music and verse by Daron Hagen, presents an older married New York couple reflecting on how their expectations of the city have changed over time without ever eliminating their feeling for it. Guth and Richardson sang Hagen’s song from the inside out, meaning, they fully captured and communicated its essence.

Mohammed Fairouz’s treatment of W.H. Auden’s Refugee Blues rises to the historical and emotional scope of the poem – callousness to immigrants’ humanity and desperation, alas, still a topic of no small relevance. Gaissert’s rich, resonant, varicolored tone was aptly suited to Fairouz’s dramatic vocal writing. Richard Pearson Thomas’s The Center of the Universe is a sly take on the transformation of Times Square/42nd Street, from a squalid dump New Yorkers avoided, to a glittery tourist trap that they with snooty pride avoid more fervently still. Here, as each time they sang together, Guth, Gaissert, Richardson and baritone David Adam Moore performed beguilingly in ensemble.

The first half of the Songbook should be allowed meditative space after its end; deplorably, Galapagos rather immediately began blaring canned cacophony to help spoil the intermission. A critic might well reproach the out-of-condition piano used on this occasion for its production of bizarre buzzes and twangy twinges just where the critic least desired them. Bagwell and the evening’s second pianist, Jocelyn Dueck, made a silk purse out of that sow’s rear by navigating around the defective instrument’s eccentricities with increasing aplomb throughout the Songbook.

Fun-loving, musically naughty ingenuity marks Jorge Martìn’s City of Orgies, Walks, and Joys! – the audience was palpably caught up by the song’s honky-tonk-meets-cantus-firmus panache. John Glover’s setting of Matthew Hittinger’s 8:46, Five Years Later takes an intriguingly oblique view of the 9/11 tragedy. Then, modeled on Psalm 137, Julia Kasdorf’s poem On Leaving Brooklyn posits the Borough as the narrator’s Jerusalem. And composer Yotam Haber gives Kasdorf’s verse poignant musical expression. Harumi Rhodes, a violinist, unafraid to dig into her strings, joined the vocal quartet as a fifth voice lamenting for dear King’s County.

In Fresh Kills, Christina Courtin pays lovely, ironic tribute to the Staten Island landfill, where much 9/11 debris got sorted. The landfill presently is being converted to a park; future generations will need the song’s meaning explained. Renée Favand-See sets the image of a Brooklyn bank clock tower, glowing green, effectively against that of murky thunderheads over New Jersey in her nostalgia-tinged Looking West on a Humid Summer Evening. OuLiPo in the Bronx, Christopher Berg’s mischievously intellectual nod to the northernmost of the boroughs, was brightly sung and articulated by Richardson. Split between the four voices, Lisa Bielawa’s Breakfast in New York is a pastiche of banal lines – (luminously set, tuneful gold from teaspoonfuls of dross) – overheard in various diners around town.

Gaissert paced Gabriel Kahane’s Dunkin’ Donuts-dusted Coney Island Avenue with Broadway-like charisma and put an effective little edge of sarcasm into her voice while singing about “the socialist coffee shop.  With the nasty vegan cupcakes.” Rhodes was given to play an onomatopoeic zum-zum-zumming on her violin when insatiable mosquitos were mentioned in Scott Wheeler’s At Home in Staten Island, which Guth sang with an appealing sound and consistently comprehensible diction.

The only subway line not to travel to Manhattan comes in for heaps of good-humored abuse in Tom Cipullo’s G is for Grimy: An Ode to the G Train. The text goes through dozens of repugnant G-words . . . Garbage, Gutter, Germy . . . before climaxing on Giuliani and ending with Gross. Yet all composers contributing to The Five Borough Songbook are Greatly Gifted, the performances were Graciously Groomed, so as for the upcoming performances in Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, well, you really must Go, Go, Go, Go!

New York City-​based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-​interest by-​line has appeared on Advocate​.com, PoliticusUSA​.com, The New York Blade, Queerty​.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

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‘Repercussions’: Democrats and Republicans Stand Against ‘Pro-Putin’ House GOP Faction

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April 18, 2024

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Some House Democrats and House Republicans are coming together toward a common opponent: far-right “pro-Putin” hardliners in the House Republican conference, who appear to be led by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

Congresswoman Greene has been threatening to oust the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Last month she filed a “motion to vacate the chair.” If she chooses to call it up she could force a vote on the House floor to try to remove Speaker Johnson.

House Democrats say they are willing to vote against ousting Johnson, as long as the Speaker puts on the floor desperately needed and long-awaited legislation to fund aid to Ukraine and Israel. Johnson has refused to put the Ukraine aid bill on the floor for months, but after Iran attacked Israel Johnson switched gears. Almost all Democrats and a seemingly large number of Republicans want to pass the Ukraine and Israel aid packages.

RELATED: Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘Putin’s Envoy’? Democrat’s Bills Mock Republican’s Actions

Forgoing the possibility of installing Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, which is conceivable given Johnson’s now one-vote majority, Democrats say if Johnson does the right thing, they will throw him their support.

“I think he’ll be in good shape,” to get Democrats to support him, if he puts the Ukraine aid bill on the floor, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) told CNN Thursday. “I would say that there’s a lot of support for the underlying bills. I think those are vital.”

“If these bills were delivered favorably, and the aid was favorably voted upon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene went up there with a motion to remove him, for instance, I think there’s gonna be a lot of Democrats that move to kill that motion,” Congressman Krishnamoorthi said. “They don’t want to see him getting punished for doing the right thing.”

“I think it is a very bad policy of the House to allow one individual such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an arsonist to this House of Representatives,” U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) told CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane, when asked about intervening to save Johnson. He added he doesn’t want her “to have so much influence.”

U.S. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, one of several Republicans who won their New York districts in 2022, districts that were previously held by Democrats, opposes Greene’s motion to vacate – although he praised the Georgia GOP congresswoman.

CNN’s Manu Raju reports Republicans “say it’s time to marginalize hardliners blocking [their] agenda.”

D’Esposito, speaking to Raju, called for “repercussions for those who completely alienate the will of the conference. The people gave us the majority because they wanted Republicans to govern.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, like D’Esposito is another New York Republican who won a previously Democratic seat in 2022. Lawler spoke out against the co-sponsor of Greene’s motion to vacate, U.S. Rep. Tim Massie (R-KY), along with two other House Republicans who are working to block the Ukraine aid bill via their powerful seats on the Rules Committee.

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a former Navy pilot, blasted Congresswoman Greene.

RELATED: ‘They Want Russia to Win So Badly’: GOP Congressman Blasts Far-Right House Republicans

“Time is of the essence” for Ukraine, Rep. Sherrill told CNN Wednesday night. “The least we can do is support our Democratic allies, especially given what we know Putin to do. To watch a report and to think there are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene on the right that are pro-Putin? That are pro-Russia? It is really shocking.”

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), as NCRM reported Thursday, had denounced Greene.

“I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the Speaker over it,” he said, referring to the Ukraine aid bill Greene and her cohorts want to tank. “I mean that’s a strange position to take.”

The far-right hardliners are also causing chaos in the House.

“Things just got very heated on the House floor,” NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin reported earlier Thursday. “Group of hardliners were trying to pressure Johnson to only put Israel aid on the floor and hold Ukraine aid until the Senate passed HR2.”

HR2 is the House Republicans’ extremist anti-immigrant legislation that has n o chance of passage in the Senate nor would it be signed into law by President Biden.

“Johnson said he couldn’t do it, and [U.S. Rep. Derrick] Van Orden,” a far-right Republican from Wisconsin “called him ‘tubby’ and vowed to bring on the MTV [Motion to Vacate.]”

“No one in the group (Gaetz, Boebert, Burchett, Higgins, Donalds et al.) were threatening Johnson with an MTV,” Tsirkin added. “Van Orden seemed to escalate things dramatically…”

Despite Greene’s pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine positions, her falsehoods about “Ukrainian Nazis,” and Russians not slaughtering Ukrainian clergy, reporters continue to “swarm”:

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Afraid and Intimidated’: Trump Trial Juror Targeted by Fox News Dismissed

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‘They Want Russia to Win So Badly’: GOP Congressman Blasts Far-Right House Republicans

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14 hours ago

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April 18, 2024

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A sitting Republican Congressman is harshly criticizing far-right House Republicans over their apparent support of Russia.

“I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the Speaker over it. I mean that’s a strange position to take,” U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a three-term Texas Republican rated a hard-core conservative told CNN’s Manu Raju, in video posted Thursday. “I think they want to be in the minority too. I think that’s an obvious reality.”

Congressman Crenshaw was referring to the movement led by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), now joined by U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), over the Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s decision to finally put legislation on the floor to provide funding to Ukraine to support that sovereign nation in its fight against Russia.

“I’m still trying to process all the b*llsh*t,” Crenshaw added.

Crenshaw on Thursday also commented on Speaker Johnson’s remarks, stating he will hold the Ukraine funding vote regardless of attempts to oust him over it.

“To be clear, he’s being threatened for even allowing a vote to come to the floor. For allowing the constitutional process to play out as intended by our Founders. That’s a wild thing to consider, especially when his enemies consider themselves ‘conservative.’ Not conserving the painstaking constitutional process our Founders created, that’s for sure. Conserving Putin’s gains on the battlefield, more like it.”

Journalist Brian Beutler, a former editor-in-chief at Crooked Media, called it, “darkly funny to me that a pincer movement of MAGAns and leftists mock liberals for claiming the GOP works hand in glove with Russia, and then multiple conservative Republican dissenters are like ‘no it’s true, we’re lousy with Russian influence.'”

Watch Crenshaw’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘Putin’s Envoy’? Democrat’s Bills Mock Republican’s Actions

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OPINION

Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘Putin’s Envoy’? Democrat’s Bills Mock Republican’s Actions

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16 hours ago

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April 18, 2024

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For years U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has been called “Pro-Putin.” As far back as 2021, her first year as a member of Congress, the question had been raised on social media: “Is Marjorie Taylor Greene a Russian asset?”

In 2022 The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org reported: “Marjorie Taylor Greene Parrots Russian Talking Point on Ukraine.”

Back then, as the article highlighted, Greene had said, “there is no doubt that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s actions in Ukraine are despicable and evil.”

Now, she promotes a far more favorable view of President Vladimir Putin and his illegal war against Ukraine, a sovereign nation which the Russian autocrat wants to incorporate – at least partly – into Russia.

Just last week Greene spread demonstrably false pro-Russia talking points about a “war on Christianity” while defending and promoting President Vladimir Putin.

READ MORE: ‘Afraid and Intimidated’: Trump Trial Juror Targeted by Fox News Dismissed

“This is a war on Christianity,” Greene told far-right propagandist Steve Bannon. “The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians, the Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that.”

That’s just plain false, as NCRM reported.

Largely in response to her strong opposition to the U.S. supporting Ukraine, and her spreading Russian disinformation and flat-out pro-Putin falsehoods, Greene’s fondness for Putin and Russia has been making headlines.

“Republicans Who Like Putin,” was the headline last month at The New York Times, which observed: “A few Republicans have gone so far as [to] speak about Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in ways that mimic Russian propaganda. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has accused Ukraine of having ‘a Nazi army,’ echoing language Putin used to justify the invasion.”

“The Putin Republicans Have the Upper Hand” warned Washington Monthly‘s David Atkins on Wednesday, reporting on “conservative extremists led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

“They admire the strongman as a Christian nationalist leader, and won’t support Ukraine. The global consequences of their besotted love affair with the Russian strongman could be cataclysmic.”

“Russia Is Buying Politicians in Europe. Is It Happening Here Too?” The New Republic‘s Alex Finley wrote last week. The photo at the top of the page? Marjorie Taylor Greene.

READ MORE: ‘Used by the Russians’: Moskowitz Mocks Comer’s Biden Impeachment Failure

Finley pointed to Greene’s interview with Bannon, “about Ukraine’s persecution of Christians, which is a Kremlin talking point aimed at boosting the pro-Moscow wing of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church. The U.S. should be spending money on the border with Mexico, not on Ukraine aid? That’s a Kremlin talking point. Russia invaded Ukraine to defend itself against an expanding NATO? That’s a Kremlin talking point. Call for a cease-fire, and give Russia Crimea and eastern Ukraine? That’s a Kremlin talking point.”

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post last week ran this headline: “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she ‘seriously hates’ people who support sending more aid to Ukraine: ‘Most repulsive, disgusting thing happening’.”

Then there is Greene’s obsession with Nazis. Specifically, equating Ukrainians with Nazis, which she did several times over the past week, including on Wednesday. That earned her the condemnation and wrath of U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who demanded: “Stop bringing up Nazis and Hitler.”

Wednesday night, Congressman Moskowitz, known for his use of humor and sarcasm to make his points, declared: “Just submitted an amendment to Bill drafting appointing MTG [Marjorie Taylor Greene] as Putin’s Special Envoy to the United States Congress.”

Moskowitz’s amendment was in response to Congresswoman Greene’s amendments requiring members to “conscript in the Ukrainian military” if they vote for the Ukraine military funding bill, as Juliegrace Brufke reported.

READ MORE: ‘Big Journalism Fail’: Mainstream Media Blasted Over Coverage of Historic Trump Trial

The Florida Democrat wasn’t joking, as Axios’ Andrew Solender pointed out Thursday morning.

Moskowitz did not stop there.

He drafted legislation on Thursday to name the Capitol Hill offices occupied by Congresswoman Greene after the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, infamous for promoting appeasement in dealing with Adolf Hitler.

Chamberlain also signed the Munich Agreement, which allowed Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia.

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