Flashback 2010: Here's one thing you didn't know about Mike Royko

      Sir Andrew Davis died Saturday. The renown conductor and music director steered the Lyric Opera through challenging times for two decades. I of course had reason to talk with him over the years, and figure this piece, about an unexpected connection between a certain  gruff columnist and opera, might merit sharing. What stands out, 14 years later, is that in 2010 the Lyric could put on "The Mikado,"  which would never happen today — cultural appropriation, etc. I'm fairly certain the unnamed colleague was Albert Dickens, the well-loved sports department assistant. We talked about opera all the time, and I miss him, and miss that whole era where one went to a place regularly and found interesting people there.

     Now and then, a reader will try to compress all my flaws into one sharp jab. "You're no Mike Royko," he'll say, meaning that I am not a Chicago born and bred tough guy writing the universally acclaimed best column in the city.
     And I always surprise him with cheery agreement — yes indeedy, I'm no Royko, nobody's Royko, it's impossible for anyone to be Royko ever again and, having somewhat known Royko and thus vaguely familiar with all that being Royko entailed, I'd prefer to carry my own load than his. Thank you.

Non-Royko and son heading boldly to the 
Lyric in 2010 to hear "Macbeth."

     For instance, by not being a tough guy, I have no tough-guy image to maintain. Thus I am free to go to Opening Night at the Lyric Opera, as I did Friday, to hear Verdi's "Macbeth," done up in my poncy tuxedo and froufy silk bow tie and twee gold studs, and not have to worry about shocking anybody.
     Royko, meanwhile, was captive to his legend. He had to keep a secret, which, with the opera season under way and him gone lo these many years, I now feel free to divulge: Mike Royko loved opera.
     "Dad was a classical music fan, and passionate about it," said his son, David Royko. "While there were columns alluding to that, it wasn't something that fit his image."
     Royko was a Lyric season-ticket holder.
     "He was a serious fan of opera, of operas that he liked," said Royko. "He had strong opinions about the opera. I remember him reaming out Carol Fox, director of Lyric Opera in the '70s. There was a premiere of a Penderecki work, 'Paradise Lost,' this incredibly atonal, difficult stuff to sit through. And was saying, 'Why don't these guys produce ''Porgy and Bess''?' He was just revolted by Puccini's 'Girl of the Golden West.' He thought it was absurd, a spaghetti western with cowboy hats."
     Which brings us to a little-known truth about opera: You don't have to like everything. In fact, it's certain you won't. Just as booing butterfingered infielders is part of being a fan at Wrigley Field, one of the joys of opera is scorning stuff you don't like.
     Earlier this year, I was at the press conference announcing this season's lineup — "barnburners" like Bizet's "Carmen" and Wagner's "Lohengrin," but more obscure works like Handel's "Hercules" and froth such as Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Mikado."
     The opera press present fell like wolves upon the selections, which were either too popular or too obscure. Didn't you just do "Carmen" five years ago, somebody asked.
     And then there was "The Mikado" — not a proper opera at all, but a comic operetta and sung in English at that.

Sir Andrew Davis
(photo courtesy of the Lyric Opera)

     "I know there are folks who don't think we should be doing that," said Sir Andrew Davis, the Lyric conductor. "But if you're going to do 'Fledermaus' and going to do 'The Merry Widow,' why not? I think the music has depths and I intend to bring them out."
     One reporter asked a question I'm sure many subscribers wonder about: Why not just fill the schedule with all-time favorites?
     "We do have an obligation to do new work," Davis explained.
     At first that struck me as eat-your-peas pedantry — art as duty. It's an entertainment, I thought, plagued by memories of Berg's "Wozzeck." Why assume airs? Put the slop where the pigs can get at it.
     But you can't discover you love something until you hear it — I had never heard of Franz Lehar until I saw "The Merry Widow" last year — now my kids play it on on the stereo. Every opera has its fans.
     For instance; I dutifully listened to CDs of "Macbeth," getting ready for the performance. Hmmm, I thought. Opening night was swell — I dragged my 13-year-old linebacker along, and he pronounced it "very good."
     So now we're in the newsroom, and I'm trying to explain my cool reaction to a colleague. "Let's put it this way," I said. "There are 12 Verdi operas in my copy of Henry W. Simon's 100 Great Operas, and 'Macbeth' isn't one of them. I just don't like the music."
     Which prompted another colleague to leap to its defense, literally standing up.
     "You don't like 'Macbeth'!?" he said, incredulous. "It's one of my favorite operas — I have it on my iPod. I can't wait to go."
     And he started to hum the overture.
     One man's ceiling is another man's floor. Like life, opera has highs and lows; you can't spend every minute with your hands folded over your sternum, drowning in bliss.
     Do you find "The Mikado" lightweight? I think it's both hysterically funny and tuneful and am taking 100 readers to its first night for my annual opera sweepstakes.
       Darn, out of room again. Circle Dec. 6 on your calendar, and I'll explain how to win tickets in my column Friday.

     — First published in the Sun-Times, October 6, 2010

Playing in the high school marching band makes you 'part of something bigger'

 

Morgan Park High School music teacher Steven Schnall, left, guides 8th graders Khaliah Lastic (center) and Jaydah Keefer as they practice their trumpets.

     Lunch begins third period in Morgan Park High School, which might sound odd, since the bell sounds at 9:25 a.m. Students use the time to eat, study, or in the case of Khaliah Lastic and Jaydah Keefer, both 14, both 8th graders, both friends, to slide by the band room with their trumpets for a little practice.
     "B flat scale, let's do it," says music teacher Steven Schnall, who plays 13 instruments and has a doctorate in jazz from the University of Illinois.
     They play.
     "Good, good, excellent job," he says, when they finish. "When you get to the higher notes, make sure you're supporting just as much as on the bottom notes." Then, snapping his fingers to set a tempo. "One, two ready go..."
     If you read the Sunday paper, you might have seen my column on how trumpets are made. The story began with a Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance of Richard Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra," with principal trumpeter Esteban Batallán playing the first three notes, CGC, made famous in "2001: A Space Odyssey."
     I originally thought it would be a fine thing if the story that began with one of the great musicians in the world ended with students just learning to play.
     But getting to know Lastic, looking smart in her ROTC uniform — 5,444 CPS students are in JROTC — and Keefer, with her purple dreadlocks, made it impossible to confine the South Side teens to a stylistic flourish in the last few paragraphs of a long story about making trumpets.
     "My dad played it in high school," said Lastic, playing a Horton B-flat trumpet, explaining why she took up the instrument.
    "My friend was in it, and I really wanted to join her," said Keefer, who has been playing a Blessing Scholastic for about six months."I thought it would be really cool to try to learn something new..."

     Plus playing a trumpet is a way to stand out.

     "So I can flex on people," Keefer said, as her friend laughed. "I really like the idea of being part of something bigger. I'm glad I chose this instrument. It's hard, but if you put in the work, it's worth it."

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A great trumpet is 'a thing of beauty, an extension of you'

Esteban Batallan (photo by Todd Rosenberg for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra)

     It begins with a low, barely audible rumble. The double basses, contrabassoon and pipe organ of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra groan out a sustained double C. Then Esteban Batallán, principal trumpet of the CSO, raises his 1955 Vincent Bach "Mount Vernon" C Trumpet, serial number 13959, to his lips and plays three of the most famous notes in classical music: middle C, then a fifth higher, G, then the next higher C, completing the octave. The "nature motif" of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30" which Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" branded into the public mind.
     The rest of the orchestra joins in, the timpani pounding underneath, and away they go. When Strauss's "tone poem" ends, about 24 minutes later, and the full house at Orchestra Hall erupts into applause, it is Batallán whom guest conductor Jakub Hrůša points to before anyone else, for the honor of taking the first bow.
     When he is not playing, Batallán occasionally shakes his trumpet — getting out the spit — "I like my trumpet very very clean," he says, later — and gazes down at it, quizzically, touching parts of it. A trumpet has four slides — small adjustable sections of tubing. "For the audience, it's imperceptible," said Batallán. "For me, I'm really sensitive with intonation, so I keep myself fine tuning all the time."
     Batallán has had a trumpet in his hands so long — since age 6 — that his pinkies curl involuntarily when he tries to hold his fingers straight. This particular instrument was played for a quarter-century before he was born, by Adolph "Bud" Herseth, the CSO's principal trumpeter for 53 years.
     "It's a very famous trumpet," says Mark Dulin, artist representative for Conn-Selmer, the country's largest manufacturer of brass instruments. "It has a really great sound. But that trumpet is from 1955. It's worn out. The valves have been redone five times."
     The violin played later that evening is nearly 300 years old. Trumpets can't last nearly that long, because of the stress of valves being pressed, rust caused by saliva coursing through the tubing, even a musician's sweat, which will peel the finish off a horn. Batallán's trumpet was in a batch of 11 crafted by Vincent Bach, the master trumpet maker, at his prime in 1955.
     "These trumpets have been studied for a long time," said John Hagstrom, CSO second trumpet. "Just like Stradivarius violins, they're reverse-engineered, trying to find out: what makes them so great?"
In search of sound
     "Everyone has tried in some shape or form to replicate these instruments," said Michael Sachs, principal trumpet of the Cleveland Orchestra. "While some have come close, nobody has been able to replicate that sound."
     Other trumpet companies, such as Yamaha, have tried. Now Conn-Selmer is giving it a go, consulting Batallán, Hagstrom, Sachs and others. They see the marketing opportunity here.
     "These are great instruments but there are just a few of them," said Hagstrom. "Everybody would like them, but they don't exist. There would be a great business advantage if you could build them again. They are striving to do that."

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Jim Gwinn buffs a trombone at the Vincent Bach factory in Elkhart, Indiana.

Flashback 1991: Summer's last spring

 

   Richard Roeper's review of "We Grown Now" mentioned kids dragging a mattress out of Cabrini Green to use it to cushion their acrobatics. Sparking a memory. Bob Davis and I used to drive around the city, creating photo essays on whatever we could find. We noticed these boys, and got busy. The newspaper gave it a full page. Those were good days.

     Late afternoon on a golden summer day. A vacant lot at Elizabeth and 63rd Street, kitty-corner from a boarded-up skating rink.
     One rusted box spring. Two old mattresses. Seven young boys. "We're best friends," says Brandon Kinsey. The boys line up, racing full speed toward the mattresses. They spring into the air. Flipping, flying, turning somersaults.
     They call themselves the "Junior Jesse White Tumblers" after the famous group that performs everywhere in the city and beyond.
     The L rumbles by.
     Brandon sits at the edge of a mattress, his arms spread straight out. He faces the others, casting a long shadow. One by one they leap over him, landing, returning for yet another go.
     Suddenly the kids scatter. "We gotta go home now," shouts Brandon as they head down the alley, west toward the setting sun.

        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, August 30, 1991 

Chicago was once the heart of country music

     Loretta Lynn hugged me. In her dressing room in Reno. After I had sent the country singer two dozen roses to say there were no hard feelings.
     More about that later.
     Country music gets the short shrift up North. People like me who enjoy it — who've been to the Grand Ole Opry and seen Montgomery Gentry, twice — tend to be on the down-low on the subject. Maybe we're embarrassed to defend our affections. For me, it's the honest human emotion. I don't have a daughter, but Ashley McBride's "Light on in the Kitchen" still chokes me up. Admitting that is off brand, I suppose.
     It shouldn't be, not in Chicago. For all the talk of Chicago as home to the blues, to jazz, and even to house music, we somehow rarely get around to talking about our rich country music heritage. Rich and deep — the WLS National Barn Dance, which predated the Opry by two years, was first broadcast 100 years ago Friday, on April 19, 1924.
     If you haven't read Mark Guarino's "Country & Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival," it's a richly-researched, utterly fascinating revelation, from the Barn Dance to Ernest Tubb coining the term "Country and Western," in 1947 at the prodding of "a record man from Chicago," trying to escape the confines of "hillbilly music."
     The program was the center of country for decades, drawing all sorts of stars. Gene Autry lived in Aurora . Bill Monroe recorded "Blue Moon of Kentucky" at the Wrigley Building. In the 1920s, Chicago mayor William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson was known as "the cowboy mayor" for his Stetson hat and Nebraska ranch, and once rode a horse into the City Council chambers. We've gone from that to a mayor who can't hold an impromptu conversation.

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Flashback 1991: Win Stracke dies — folk singer was a pioneer in kids' TV

Win Stracke

   I'm reading Mark Guarino's excellent "Country & Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival" — more about that in my column Friday — and when he got to the founding of the Old Town School of Folk Music, and Win Stracke, I found myself thinking, "Wait a sec ... I think I wrote his obit." Thirty three years ago. As to why that would stick in mind, I'm not sure. His unusual name, maybe. Or the fact that I spoke with Studs Terkel about him. I would draw your attention to the name of the contributing writer at the end: Mary A. Johnson. That was the future Mary Mitchell. 

     Win Stracke, 83, troubadour  and co-founder of the Old Town School of Folk Music, died Saturday at his home in the North Shore Hotel in Evanston.

     For decades, Mr. Stracke, a big, deep-voiced, gentle-humored balladeer, was an important presence on the Chicago folk scene, performing his music on radio, television and the stage.
     Born in Lorraine, Kan., in 1908, he was the son of a German Baptist minister, Robert Stracke.
     The family moved to what became the 43rd Ward in 1909, and the elder Stracke served as minister at the church at Willow and Burling.
     Later, Mr. Stracke immortalized the ward in a ballad about its wild politics and colorful politicians.
     Win Stracke began singing at his father's church and soon became a soloist at other churches.
     During World War II, he served in an Army anti-aircraft battery in Europe, carrying his guitar through six overseas campaigns, playing his folk songs for troops.
     With the advent of television, he performed in what were known as Chicago School TV shows. He had a running role on the "Studs Place" show, the "Hawkins Falls" soap opera, "The Garroway Show," and his own children's shows, "Animal Playtime" and "Time for Uncle Win."
     Mr. Stracke's soft wit and gentle presence made him ideal for children's television.
     "Let's see," Mr. Stracke told his audience in an early "Animal Playtime" show, which made its debut in March, 1953. "Let's sing about animals that we like. What kind do you like?"
     Pausing for a second, he gazed directly at the camera and at his young viewers. Then he brightened. "Dogs? Why sure, we all like dogs, don't we? Now. . . ," and he began strumming a simple song about dogs, one of thousands of folk songs he composed.
     "He pushed other people into loving music," said Dawn Greening, who helped Mr. Stracke start the Old Town School of Folk Music. "He shared his love for the music with everybody, I just remember where I first heard him sing; one of the places was the Gate of Horn. I just thought he was really wonderful."
     When "Animal Playtime" was canceled in 1954, thousands of mothers — who appreciated Mr. Stracke's mixture of lively songs with lessons about animals — mounted an angry crusade that led to the show's reinstatement.
     "You can say Win was Chicago's Bard because of the songs he sang," said Studs Terkel, who called Mr. Stracke his "oldest friend."
     "Win was a friend of blues singers, folk singers, everybody. He sang in picket lines when the CIO was organized. He was there whenever there was difficulties at picket lines. He was a stalwart."
       Mr. Stracke "was the figure that brought together social action, the love of tradition and really good fun," said Stuart Rosenberg, a local musician, songwriter and WBEZ radio show host.
       "There is a whole generation of singers and songwriters who looked to Win for their first inspiration. He was a unique figure in that he related to everyone."
      In 1957, Mr. Stracke began the Old Town School of Folk Music with Greening, Frank Hamilton and Gertrude Soltker. Begun with one teacher and 20 students, the school helped make Chicago a center of folk singing.
     "The whole idea is to give people who love folk music a chance to participate rather than to just listen," Mr. Stracke said at the time. "This interest in folk music by city people betrays their search for the basic realities which they don't find expressed in commercial popular music."
     Mr. Stracke was a member of the Civil War Round Table and the Chicago Historical Society. He wrote the words to "Freedom Country," a 23-minute cantata celebrating the Illinois sesquicentennial in 1967.
     For the last 20 years he had been retired, living for seven years in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, then returning to the United States to live in Fort Collins, Colo., until three years ago, when he returned to Chicago.
     Survivors include two daughters, Jane Bradbury and Barbara Pavey, and two grandchildren.
     Services were pending.
     Contributing: Mary A. Johnson

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 30, 1991 

Hay as happiness, beauty and freedom at Joffrey's 'Midsummer Night's Dream'

Photo by Carolyn McCabe for the Joffrey Ballet

     Noon one day last week found 45 of the fittest young people on the planet — dancers with the Joffrey Ballet — lying on their backs in the company's Loop rehearsal space, on a floor covered with what looks like hay.
     Swedish contemporary music plays. Suddenly they leap up and scatter, running in all directions, flinging the hay at each other, while a big hay wheel is rolled in. Two dancers leap atop it and perform a kind of courtship gavot.
     Welcome to the dress rehearsal of "Midsummer Night's Dream," opening next week at the Lyric Opera House. Despite its name, the ballet has nothing to do with either the Shakespeare play or George Balanchine's 1962 ballet. Rather, this is Alexander Ekman's joyful solstice frolic.
     A glance at the prop list gives an idea of the production's whimsy. Along with 45 flower crowns, 40 umbrellas, 40 wooden chairs, 40 wine glasses, two bicycles and a hand-held fish — not to be confused with the wooden herring; this is a Scandinavian entertainment, after all — at the very end, in bold-face so as not to be missed, is:
     "Hay: 1100 pounds total."
     "It's actually raffia," said stage manager Mandy Heuermann. "Haylike, but much less allergenic. It's flame-treated, to make sure it's safe, since we basically cover the whole stage floor with it."
     Real hay might also impale the dancers, who are barefoot and are experienced at performing in clouds of various types.
     "The dancers are pretty accustomed to dealing with atmosphere," said principal stage manager Katherine Selig. "We use fog, we use smoke, we use haze. They're used to it; it's just part of the job."

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