D. J. Sparr on Guitar
Cross-genre arts creations are proliferating. So it was on January 6, 2012, that the Dresser heard composer-guitarist D. J. Sparr at Washington, DC's Atlas Performing Arts Center. Sparr mixes electric guitar with a contemporary classical base of music.
Sparr who has the looks and hair to be a rock star of the new music scene played his program of Steve Reich, Paul Lansky, Derek Bermel, and Sparr with such understatement that the Dresser wondered if he was too shy to be on stage or didn't care much that there was a sizeable audience eager to share his well-thought-out program.
What the Dresser loved best in this six-part program was Sparr's "Superstring Serenade," a composition that included CounterPoint, an ensemble of five string players whose credentials come from well known organizations such as the National Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, and Washington National Opera. "Superstring" opens passionately, moderates into a peaceful lullaby that breaks into grandeur and authority and ends whimsically in a fizzle. The strings enhance the riffs of the electric guitar in a confident marriage of sound.
Sparr's program began with two compositions played by the charming Levine Advanced Guitar Ensemble, a group of five 13-15 year-old acoustic guitarists under the guidance of the Risa Carlson, the Levine School of Music Guitar Department Chair. They played Sparr's "Mare arpeggi di Mauro," a difficult counterpoint composition that required careful counting, and Gilbert Clamens "Tango Amigo," a milonga piece which the group was more at ease with.
Showing a video interview with Steve Reich, Sparr introduced Reich's "Electric Counterpoint," a piece which features harmonic stasis or what the Dresser would call a "Gertrude Stein guitar composition" (very subtle changes that sound like repetition). As the piece was performed, it was historically interesting to think about what Reich explained to Sparr, and by extension the Atlas audience, that Reich drew on such influences as Ravi Shankar and Bob Dylan and without this rich environment there would not have been Terry Riley's "In C" or Reich's "Electric Counterpoint." The Dresser has actually heard Riley live taking credit for influencing Reich. Riley's "In C," said to be the first Minimalist composition, was composed in 1964. Reich's "Electric Counterpoint" was first recorded in 1987.
Paul Lansky's "Dance Tracks" was the piece in which the Dresser thought Sparr should have shaken loose. While playing in front of a psychedelic video where fragments floated and ribbons of color spiraled, Sparr's improvisation took on a Jimi Hendrix soundscape. It was a trance-inducing production where the light show-like video only served to make the Dresser zone out. Perhaps the Dresser is jaded because she saw an early light show in the fall of 1966 done by the Jefferson Airplane and Grace Slick at the unlikely place of Franklin & Marshall College. Nothing wrong with the video, Sparr just needed to move a little and connect with the audience.
Derek Bermel made a live introduction to Sparr's performance of Bermel's "Ritornello." The Dresser loved this composition that included the CounterPoint strings. Especially engaging was the counter play between strings and electric guitar in a passage that Bermel said was Corelli-Vivaldi meets King Crimson. This passage also made the Dresser think of the Argentine milonga--slow at points and moody.
Added to the physical set, the players spin their own clockwork wheels and become cogs in the system of time so that the audience sees only the wheels and not the people. In this day of digital clocks and watches, the analog clockworks of Synetic's set are the appropriate throwback in time for a Shakespearian play. Like steampunk, the Synetic interpretation suggests that people are trapped by man-made inventions and technology.
The Dresser continues to walk around with two scenes in her head, one involving Mercutio rolling up from the floor to stand face-to-face in uncomfortable close proximity to Juliet's hostile cousin Tybalt (Ryan Sellers) and the other when Nurse has a bawdy encounter with the lascivious Mercutio and she ends up shoving him and then riding him like a horse. In both scenes, these characters seem more sprung from a wild circus environment versus a sophisticated society where rules of etiquette and politics prevail. Still, both of these characters participate in social graces. Nurse, especially, as she grooms Juliet to look her best and helps her with politically fraught issues involving Juliet's parents and Paris, the man the Capulets want their daughter to marry. Mercutio knows the consequences of brawling and Montegues treading on Capulet territory, but he wants his best friend Romeo to be happy.

Caroline Dhavernas (as Jeanne d'Arc--Joan of Arc) and Ronald Guttman (Brother Dominic) and featured singers soprano Tamara Wilson (The Virgin), soprano Hae Ji Chang (Marguerite), mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor (Catherine), tenor Timothy Fallon (Porcus), and bass Morris Robinson.
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