Sounds of music

Flanders Recorder Quartet does impressive things with wood instruments

Helping me overcome my antiquated stereotypes of the instrument, the FlandersRecorder Quartet played a beautiful concert hosted by Houston Early Music.
Photo by Koen Beets
Joris Van Goethem with his contrabass (we think) recorder. You didn't know theymade them that big did you?
Tom Beets was incredibly funny, making coo coo sounds with the upper part of hisinstruments.
Paul Van Loey and the little sopranino recorder, the highest member of therecorder family.
Bart Spanhove rocked his sparrow theme and variations.

Did you play recorder growing up?

I certainly did and I bet most everyone who had any sort of music education as a child was handed one made out of some sort of resin, plastic or a random oil byproduct. To make a sound (noise), all that is required is a stream of air right into the mouthpiece. It's hard to get it wrong.

My memories of the instrument include being involved in a nightmare-inducing choir, often misbehaving and blowing as hard as I could to produce the most annoying high pitched piglike squeal in an attempt to break any glass that had survived previous rehearsals. Mysteriously, my dog was nowhere to be found when my recorder was within sight.

I wasn't very good. And South Park's Brown Noise episode didn't help the instrument's cause.

I only gained somewhat respect for the recorder when I was studying the piccolo concertos of Vivaldi. Michala Petri, Danish soprano recorder virtuoso, was the first performer that started to shift my view of the forsaken piece of plastic (professional instruments are made of wood). She is fantastic, playing with a clear and angelic sound and exemplifying why the instrument was so popular in years past.

But was she the only one?

Houston Early Music recently hosted the Flanders Recorder Quartet at Trinity Episcopal Church. My curiosity was piqued, so I checked it out.

It was as unusual an ensemble as they come. Four men, living in close proximity, all dedicating their respective lives to an instrument most neglect and deciding to form an ensemble and play together, for over 23 years. I rationalized it as a medieval version of today's string quartet. Two's a couple, three's company and four is an orgy. We like music that way.

Overheard: "Oh my, that's a big recorder!" To which the lady's male companion responded, "well, thank you."

The group's collection of instruments is rather impressive. From the cutest little sopranino baby to the grandfather-esque five-foot contrabass, these men are serious about proving to the world the aesthetic capabilities of the instrument.

The philosophy behind the Belgian ensemble is not as peculiar as it appears. Each recorder acts as each pipe of an organ, creating a haunting homogenous Elizabethan sound. And keeping with the regal air du jour, they presented a through-composed program of music, songs and readings titled "The Six Wives of Henry VIII."

It included a scene from Shakespeare, reading of letters from King Henry and Anne Boleyn and a contemporary piece written specifically for the ensemble by Belgian composer Piet Swert.

What worked? The music was sublime. Playing with virtuosic musicality, sensitivity and poise, members Bart Spanhove, Tom Beets, Joris Van Goethem and Paul Van Loey exploited the limits of the recorder, often changing instruments and role to suit the composition, even using humor where appropriate.

I couldn't help but laugh at repeated mischievous coo coo sounds courtesy of the embouchure of Beets' instrument (though the audience didn't seem to show their appreciation) and the playful theme and variations on a theme by a sparrow.

Soprano Cecile Kempenaers was delightful, singing with a subtly ornamented style, suitable for the music. Her pitch accuracy was superhuman, executing large leaps with ease and scientific precision, almost sounding like an organ herself. Her vibrato shimmered while her phrasing achieved that elastic early music aesthetic, where notes seem to grow in intensity and are thrown into the abyss of a reverberant hall. Chillingly sexy, the concert was filled with satisfyingly delicious medieval cadences.

What didn't work? Though I appreciate the effort to create a cohesive programmatic experience for the audience, the speaking portion was at the level of community theater at best. Cross-artistic concepts are not new, and anyone attempting to do so should be 100 percent committed to their execution.

The concert finished with a couple of encores, which included a little jazzy sexy-naughty tune.

If Houston Early Music continues to bring artists like Cecile Kempenaers and the Flanders Recorder Quartet, its upcoming season is worth checking out.

See you at the concerts.

Here is what the Flanders Recorder Quartet sounds like:

In concert in Taiwan in 2006:

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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