Rory´s Rhythm and Rant

AT SZIGET FESTIVAL, BUDAPEST

By Karolina Alanko and Rory Winston

“Signal-to-noise,” I thought to myself as I stood amidst the gridlock of Sziget Festival’s main stage. Peter Gabriel was right. Like true content emerging triumphantly from the mire of what is otherwise merely an information overload, good music transcends background noise - especially with a little help from its friends like state-of-the-art sound systems and smart acoustics. As in Gabriel’s song, ‘signals deep and loud’ were being emitted all while ‘receive and transmit’ continued to take place. In parochial terms: despite the massive number of people listening to brilliant music in one place, the phones at Sziget managed to keep working.

Budapest’s Sziget Festival had 441,000 guests from 95 different countries and every single phone had perfect reception. This, while at Flow Festival, 70, 000 people were busy celebrating the annual signal meltdown. For some reason, the "technologically advanced country of Finland" regularly succumbed to reception failure during festivals and all major public events. Perhaps Hungarians were simply lucky. After all, ever since Nokia changed owners and consolidated, Budapest has had few "Finnish experts" to tell them why their servers shouldn't be able to handle a large number of simultaneous calls.

Traipsing about Sziget Festival’s Island of Freedom I received a day old SMS from a friend in Helsinki: “Hope you’re having fun. I lost my girlfriend and my mates while standing on line to buy water.” No such luck in Budapest, I thought. Here the water was free and readily available and, what was worse, my girlfriend was able to reach me even while trapped between the hordes leering at Robbie Williams. “Listen, deaf bitch,” came her loving message, “refill the bottle at the fountain and meet me on the left side of the main stage.” Like Gunga Din, I headed off in search of water. Little did I know when I set off that I would not only find water but I’d find a sandy beach filled with bathers in the moonlight who were taking a break from the music.

Held on the Island of Freedom - an island floating between Buda and Pest, between east and west, between headliner acts and upcoming artists – the 7 day long 24 hour a day Hungarian extravaganza hosted more than 300 artists from 50 different countries. Besides Finland’s esteemed 22-Piste pirkko, the festival was a name-dropper's nirvana boasting headliners like Florence and the Machine, Limp Bizkit, Paloma Faith, Tyler the Creator, Ellie Goulding, Marina and the Diamonds, Interpol, Major Lazar and Gogol Bordello to name just a few.

Along with many local bands, the event proved to be a cornucopia for music with everything from industry heavyweights to eclectic to indie to opera to classical to jazz to world music.

As Robbie Williams belted out the lyrics to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, it became ever more difficult to determine “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” What was certain is that between the ‘thunderbolts and lightning’ and lazar shows and stomping, there was something uniquely bohemian as well rhapsodic to the international event. With an idiosyncratically Hungarian artistic flavor added into the mix, it could be that the best way to describe the festival is as a Hungarian Rhapsody à la Liszt - a fusion of diverse cultures with a whole lot of drama, emotion and bravura.

Complete with several visiting circuses, dance companies, theater groups and art shows, activities are virtually endless. A myriad of ethnic foods, gourmet kiosks, cocktail bars, pubs, wine bars… the island made up a micro-nation of its own wherein the “Szitizens” (as they refer to the guests) could pretty much move about from one environment to the other, dwelling within whatever mood suited them.

There was an Artzone wherein performance and conceptual artists drew you into a world of body paint and ‘portraits for a beer’ and ‘build your own installation from these given components’. In addition there was a designzone and a sportzone that boasted all sorts of gadgets in an atmosphere that I can only refer to as a ‘post-modern outdoor gym’ where one got to exercise on idiosyncratically futuristic contraptions that were as entertaining as they were good for you. Then there was the I ching Labiryth - better than what it sounds like. And a multitude of freestanding art structures reminiscent of Burning Man.

“Your sex is on fire consumed with what just transpired”, sang the Kings of Leon to a hormone-driven crowd in the throes of exaltation. No discernible drugs. No heavily intoxicated football hooligans elbowing their way through the crowd. This was boho-heaven – a place where hugging, kissing and cavorting set the mood. It was an Island with its own rules. No closing hours; just an endless ‘party on’ atmosphere catering to all ages and nationalities.

A Danish girl jumped amidst a group of Brits and announced for no apparent reason: “This is so much better than Reeding and Leeds or the Isle of Wight. Better even than Roskilde. This is Woodstock 2015, Fringe Festival of the future - all of it rolled into one.” Though the Brits didn’t seem to mind the lecture - offering her a spliff by way of compensation - her boyfriend put a quick end to her symposium. Turning down the joint on her behalf, his barking eventually receded in a forest of lazars and sound.

Magic Mirror, Sziget’s queer program venue also celebrated its fifteenth year. Besides a series of films, talks, cabarets, drag shows and performances, there were special guests such as sociologists and authors specialized in LGBT issues as well as Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina from Pussy Riot. “You go mad if you live in constant fear”, explained both girls while reveling in the genuine adulation.

Boasting a large camping site for tents, the festival supports large numbers of young people being able to stay overnight for the full duration. However, since public transportation was available in and out of the city 24/7, we found it easier to stay in the center of Budapest while still being able to choose our own hours for revelry.

As alternative universes go, Sziget is a place for discovery as much as it is a place in which to sit back and enjoy established works. Besides the vast number of exciting new bands such as Selah Sue and Balthazar – both incidentally from Belgium – and coming from as far as Israel (Infected Mushroom and Asaf Avidan) and Australia (Knife Party and Nevo), Hungary had its own standout talents in the form of artists such as Akkezdet Fiai, Irie Maffia and Anna and the Barbies.

With state-of-the-art sound systems, dozens of venues and a myriad of different things to do, Sziget allows you to call all the shots when it comes to how you spend your time there. In addition to calling shots, it also seems remarkably easy to call just about anyone by phone. As though taking cue from Peter Gabriel, Sziget manages “to turn up the signal and wipe out the noise”

Listening to Foxes sing Home, my Finnish girlfriend couldn’t help but recall her own home and the crisis her friends were having reaching one another at Flow Festival. All puns aside, I thought myself, let’s call it as we hear it: For a festival of Sziget’s stature and magnitude to have water and phone service so readily available, is enough to convince any Finn in Hungary to join Foxes in her final refrain: “It was only yesterday we spoke on the phone… But I’m looking at these strange faces and I’m not coming home.”

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW - MUSIC & MORE

By Rory Winston

Upcoming artist…? Damn. The girl’s been around since - Come to think of it, she’s a lot younger than me which is weird because it feels like I’ve known her forever

The aforementioned quote is from a Finnish friend whom I had recently queried about the local response to Janita’s growing success abroad. After the spate of very positive reviews accompanying Janita’s recent US release, I had decided to ask those in her country of origin about how they view her development.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a Helsinki based pop producer confirms my suspicions, “If Janita were the next Alicia Keys, we’d probably be the last to acknowledge it. Don’t forget, she was a mega-star here at the age of 13”. With an embarrassed smile he adds, “Look, I know she has a remarkable tone. I hear that. We all hear that. But audiences in Finland don’t trust their ears – at least not enough to get enthusiastic about anything until someone from the outside tells them its okay to like it. This is especially true when it comes to Finnish singers abroad. Once they leave Finland, their popularity at home grows in direct proportion to their acceptance internationally. No joke. Even the big time local critics here are dead scared to voice an opinion. Their biggest fear, as you noted yourself (he is referring to an earlier article I wrote on Finnish Art reviewers) is looking stupid. So experts here stay experts by not saying anything. No statements no risks. We all kind of wait for Rolling Stone or NME to tell us when it’s okay to like our own mothers.”

Besides the ‘no man is a prophet in his own land’ issue, Janita faces a more pernicious ordeal: she’d evolved beyond the easily digestible image to which her childhood audience had grown accustomed. While Finns can easily imagine their country’s very own Destiny’s youngest Child (sic) blossoming into a blond Beyonce after hitting the global circuit, they have a harder time understanding that Janita’s own destiny lay elsewhere – namely, in the creation of extraordinarily powerful and evocative compositions the likes of PJ Harvey, Tori Amos and Fiona Apple.

Since her recent work begs comparison not to the myriad of prepackaged pop icons but to the select few artists capable of creating an idiosyncratic musical realm of their own, Janita’s become an oddity – an as yet unknown commodity – for those who had once celebrated her as a child prodigy. She is clearly no longer the girl whom Finns expected would one day sail back to Helsinki on the Good Ship Lollipop dressed like Ariana Grande while sporting a Shirley Temple smile.

"That said", my Finnish source adds, "There are literally hundreds of thousands of Finns who secretly follow Janita, listen to all her songs, watch her videos... mostly because they still like her so much even though no one abroad has given them the green light to officially feel that way. In a way you could say, they haven't come out of the closet recently but they are there in droves."

BACK TO THE SANDBOX
For every Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann, a Jon Brion; for every Beck and Radiohead, a Nigel Godrich; for each creative musician with a signature sound, there exists the producer/musician who - rather than insisting on a certain direction or relying upon an amalgam of easily employable stylistic devices – creates just the right amount of space in which an artist can hone in on his/her identity and see their given artistic persona for what it is. For Janita, Blake Morgan is just such a catalyst.

Eliminating the extraneous, imbuing each aspect of Janita’s music with the personality of its creator, Morgan enlists the perfect blank space in which Janita can speak. Didn’t You, My Dear? is the culmination of a lifetime of music, a series of life-altering experiences – all of which are thrown into a vacuum (i.e. a space where no musical preconceptions exist) and given infinite time to combust (okay, so in the music industry this translates into approximately two years). The result: a personal collection, part—monologue part-poem, part-story part-mood piece, part history, part projection, reflection… and just the right dose of self-deception for a suspension of disbelief. The album is the embodiment of the author’s voice. Sans filters, sans enhancements, this is Janita – as unadorned as bedazzling, both straightforward and complex.

Prior to the album’s completion, Janita had already been the recipient of numerous accolades. Everything from her voice and appearance to her writing skills had been praised by everyone from the village Voice to Billboard to Daily telegraph to Marie Claire. In addition, Janita had immersed herself in Blake Morgan’s #IRespectMusic crusade - an ongoing effort to ensure that all US singers (rather than just songwriters) be paid royalties per radio play (Janita herself suffering major financial losses moments after becoming a naturalized American citizen as her new status eliminated a major source of her revenue).

Though it’s often hard to see cause from effect in the life of a creative artist, the last few years had left a distinct mark on Janita’s sensibilities. From her fully engaged political activism to the turbulent changes in her personal life to her ever-shifting taste in art, a case could be made that any number of particulars contributed to the sense of rebirth that overwhelmingly marks her recent album. One thing is clear: listening to Janita divest herself of all pop iconography while delivering an emotionally urgent but sonically luxuriant totality is like witnessing the sort of pronounced paradigm shift that Tori Amos must have undergone when making Little Earthquakes. Raw but sophisticated, charged but chill – the dualities alone invite inspection.

Having been in regular contact with Blake Morgan, I cut to the chase and ask to be put in touch with Janita for a one-on-one. After all, when an artist of her caliber is undergoing a major transformation … well, needless to say, I wanted to get to the source.

THE SOUND of a SOUND MIND
Janita appears like a coil of tall thin lines woven into a gracefully boyish form. Imagine a young Maria Tallchief dancing the part of David Bowie in a newly choreographed ballet - grace and sensuality rearranged in an androgynous form. As she speaks, her long busy fingers move through the air with the certainty of a chiropractor adjusting time’s invisible spine. She is an elusive presence – her voice, an odd dichotomy of yearning and rapture in equal measure.

“Honestly, I’ve changed and evolved so much during the making of this album”, Janita says in response to my impression about how different and unexpected the moods and chord progressions are on Didn’t You, My Dear?. “The fact is”, she says nonchalantly, “I really wrote everything on this album myself”. By way of explanation, “It’s very different from how I worked previously. In the past I've always collaborated on songwriting with others. This meant that the musical starting point––even the chords––came mostly from them. I didn't play guitar back then, and I was very shy about my piano playing, hence I relied on others. “I'll Be Fine” was the first album where I was writing melodies and lyrics to each song. That, and my album “Seasons Of Life” were collaborative efforts with my musical partner at the time. With Haunted I started transitioning into more independence as a songwriter, and on my new album I wrote everything myself. It all came from me, and that was hugely empowering! I really got to embrace my own musicianship, and felt independent as an artist. So it's really been a natural progression. I arrived at a place where it felt right to do it on my own, and right now I think that's the best way for me to work as a songwriter.”

If ever a beautiful Hollywood starlet were required to play Ute Lemper in a biopic, Janita is probably what she’d look like – remote but intimate, certain but ever ready to interrogate her motives. “The approach, whether production and arrangement altered or effected my initial vision…?” Janita repeats my question as she looks passed me introspectively.

“Well, the foundation was all in the compositions themselves”, she announces as though visualizing the process.

“When I play guitar”, she goes on, “it’s done in a kind of unique fingerpicking manner most of the time so in a sense the arrangements are there to be discovered more than invented.”

Then in full throttle, “Of course, there was a production vision that I had, and Blake Morgan, my producer, helped me focus it, and realize it. When we were first starting out, we actually put a bunch of index-cards on the floor, and wrote different key-words on each of them, like “Beautiful Ugly”, “Raw”, “Dance-y,” along with specific references to influences and even instruments: Telecaster, Upright piano, Tube-preamps. Whether specific, or general in nature, those keywords informed the direction that we ended up going in. And we would refer back to those cards during the recording and mixing, to see if we were on course with the vision we'd set out to realize.”

IN ONE EAR
Uncertain about her influences, I ask whether the discernibly new direction is a result of recent exposure to different musicians (i.e. Tori Amos, Fiona Apple etc.) or something to do with her producer’s predilections for certain chords or moods. “Those are all great artists you’ve mentioned”, says Janita, “but when it comes to the compositions… unlike in the past, the chords and harmonic material on the record are entirely my own. So that may be one of the things that you're hearing. That said my taste in music has broadened quite a bit in the last five years. Radiohead is certainly a favorite of mine––a huge influence––and has been for quite some time. But I've also listened to a lot of Beck, Blonde Redhead, Neil Young, Elliott Smith... It all gets in there. Including, of course, Tom Waits which led me to cover his great song, Clap Hands, on the new record.”

Incidentally, Clap Hands as interpreted by Janita is utterly devoid of Waits’s characteristic phrasing or guttural tone. It is an authentic rendition rather than an effete homage - as if the lyrics evoke moments from her own life, as if each image were a refugee from her own imagination, one that finds a new home in her voice.

As Janita had moved to New York – and more specifically to Brooklyn - in 1996, I am forced to ask whether the then upcoming Williamsburg Indie Music scene with bands like TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, M.I.A gave her lots to think about.

“There are certainly some bands from that scene that speak to me”, says Janita, “But I never sought it out per se. My life was very isolated from all of that at the time, even though I was living in Brooklyn throughout. I never lived in Williamsburg though. I live in Windsor Terrace now, which is only recently being taken over by a hipster-y, younger crowd. Before that it was a very residential neighborhood. Just so you get a picture, the movie Smoke was filmed just around the corner from me. I like my peace, I like my Prospect Park, and have never really wanted to be in the middle of all the madness. Hehe. I'm a lone wolf, dude.”

UNDER THE INFLUENCE
“The artists that move me the most”, explains Janita, “are often those that get underneath my skin through a combination of music, production, and particularly lyrics. I'm a sucker for lyrics! Most recently, I've been moved by a band called The Punch Brothers. The musicality and the excellence of every member in that band is staggering. And they touch me as deeply artistically as any artist ever has. I literally bawled at a concert of theirs recently! Over the last few years artists like Patty Griffin, Tom Waits, and Jesca Hoop have made me similarly emotional.”

As for how important a role lyrics play in Janita’s own music, “I usually write a bunch of lyrics over a long stretch of time. Then, one day when I come up with a musical idea that inspires me, I'll go back to my book of lyrics, and see if there's something that belongs together with the musical idea. There almost invariably always is. They come from the same place, don't they? That's why I usually end up writing the melody too. Because I have access to the lyric!”

“Fortunately or unfortunately”, she continues, “These days, I think that I express myself better in English than I do in Finnish. I don't know when that happened actually... It's just a matter of usage, and day-to-day practice I think. I've lived over half of my life in the States now, you know. It is shocking how rarely I get to speak Finnish nowadays! I do think it’s a wonderfully rich language for lyric-writing though, and writing in general. I just haven't really gotten to try my hand at it very much.”

When asked whether she – in the vein of Morrissey (or Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill) - ever consciously uses contrasting lyrics and music to simultaneously say emotionally opposite things, Janita is quick to respond in way that was both utterly unpretentious but filled with a passion for experimentation, “I like the idea of tension between the two (lyrics and music). I do frequently end up creating contradictions with music and lyric, but I'm operating from a rather instinctual place. My intuition as an artist is perhaps my strongest attribute. I often understand things on an emotional level, not necessarily on an articulated level. I am self-taught in much of my craft as a musician.”

BETWEEN THE LINES
As with many autodidacts working in the world of art, Janita regularly applies things she learns from other disciplines – her development marked by sudden leaps rather than smooth and steady growth.

“I get a lot from other arts. I have really gotten into Aaron Sorkin's work (The West Wing, The Newsroom, Moneyball, Social Network…) over the last few years. The fast dialogue, the idealism, the humor, and the witticisms have inspired me, and I find that watching his movies and TV-shows sharpens me intellectually. I find the psychological and emotional depth in Christopher Nolan's movies (Batman, Inception…) compelling. I'm also a bit of a science geek, so the scientific content of his movies excites me as well. Mostly, I like it when an artist forces me to grow and expand in order to truly absorb their work. I like being challenged, and I find that all of the people that I just mentioned push me in the best kind of way. But in truth I am inspired by so many kind of artists, that I could talk endlessly about the subject. Art is essential to my life.”

THE PLAYS THE THING
Speaking with a fervor ordinarily reserved for one's own work, Janita enthusiastically relates her recent passion: “I've fallen in love with Tom Stoppard – amazing playwright, really… I’m thinking, in particular, about his play Arcadia. I also recently saw (Samuel) Beckett's Waiting For Godot on Broadway. It may very well have been the best play I've ever seen!”

When it comes to her evolution as a songwriter Janita explains, “There's a quote by (Anton) Chekhov that I think about a lot: ‘If you want to work on your art, work on your life.’ And I have done just that. I think my lyrics really show the change that's happened in me as a person. I think about things very differently than I used to. And so, I write about them differently too. The artists I most admire evolve, and I want to do that as well.”

VOICE WITHOUT CHOICE
When asked about the enormous swing her artistic development took and the changes it underwent in terms of genre, Janita patiently explains, “There have been a lot of people who have connected with my past work, and I respect and appreciate that. I will say though, that due to the young age I was when I got into the business, I didn't get much of a chance––in fact at times I wasn't allowed––to figure out who I was as an artist, or quite frankly, as a human being. That's why I got into a dynamic of being easily molded and led by other people, and the music industry. Had I had that chance to really listen to myself early on, my art would certainly have found a different direction sooner.”

Then after a slight pause, Janita emphatically states: ““When I came to the States with my very ambitious musical partner, at the time, I'd already been working with him for three years. He was really running the show. I'd just turned 17, and was just going with the flow. However, it is this very journey that has led me here, and just as I respect and appreciate that others have connected to my earlier work, I too respect and appreciate that work as well. Without it, I wouldn't be who I am now.”

THE MUSE IN MUSIC
Since there is a discernible difference in Janita’s work from the moment she joined Blake Morgan’s ECR Music Group, I ask her to explain how they met, how her music changed as a result of their interaction and and what defines their collaboration.

“I met Blake through a mutual friend, and an old bandmate of his, Marko Ahtisaari (Jazz musician and entrepreneur son of the renowned former Finnish President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari) . We were sitting next to each other at Peter Gabriel's Witness Organization's gala-event where Marko had invited both of us. I had happened to bring my album with me, and we exchanged music that night, and had a nice conversation. I also sang a snippet of Ain't No Sunshine on the limo-ride to the after-party. Blake got in touch with me soon after with ideas about working together. A fateful night indeed”, she says with genuine emotion.

“Though Blake Morgan wasn't actually part of the recording process on Haunted” Janita continues, “He did edit and master it which made a huge, positive difference. He made sure I was much more hands on that album. I guess that accounts for the change in sound.”

After a moment’s reflection, she adds: “I have to say that it is extraordinary working with Blake. He's taught me an unbelievable amount. And I mean that in terms of recording, production, performing, rehearsing, leading a band, you name it. He's opened my eyes as to how much vision there can be in all areas of an artist's career. And with vision comes decisiveness. Also, he’s helped me understand the production process in a new way, so it's not some foggy business that I have no clue about. And he encouraged me to play instruments myself as much as possible, and I did! On the new album I'm playing about half of all the electric guitar tracks on the album, all of the acoustic guitar, most of the percussion, most of the piano, and all of the singing. I've never played any instruments on my records before! He wanted me to not only be involved, but hands on every step of the way, and that is the polar opposite of anyone else I've ever worked with. Here too it has apparently been in the best interest of others to keep me in the dark.”

In an effort to explain, Janita continued in a very heartfelt way: “You will never find a more ethical soul in the music industry than Blake Morgan. He is such an advocate for artists, and for artistry, that he’s even managed to open my eyes to it in a new way. After my many challenging experiences in the music industry, it was a breath of fresh air to work with him, and to learn about so many things. I think that much of some, if not most of record labels' power is based on the artists' ignorance about the way things work. There's a Chinese saying: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; show him how to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Blake has really taught me how to fish. Most other labels would be horrified at an empowered artist who knows how things work.”

When I comment about how the mixing in Didn’t You, My Dear? sounds very decisive as opposed to her earlier Finnish albums (which suffer from a over-democratic ‘everything getting equal importance’ approach), Janita says “Blake Morgan's philosophy of mixing is pretty simple; it’s as Bowie said: you turn the good shit up, and you turn the bad shit down. Of course, mixing is incredibly nuanced and an art all on its own, but I think that Bowie quote resonates because it humorously boils it down to just that one idea. And, at its heart, it sounds about right to me... I don't think that democracy should be the starting place when it comes to art. Vision is unilateral.”

MUSIC TO OUR EARS
From Haunted – an album Janita considers more of a transition album in that “I was much more involved in productions and arrangements throughout than ever before, but I had yet to find the nurturing musical community that I'm part of now” – to Didn't You, My Dear where everything about the music is very much her own, Janita has exponentially evolved both as a creative artist as well as a person. As she explains “I am proud of the woman who made Haunted. She was incredibly brave to go through all of that. But still it comes from a rather dark place whereas the recent album comes from a righteously defiant one. Didn’t You, My Dear? derives from empowerment in the purest sense.”

With a newly born insouciance, Janita has an utterly unfiltered response to my question about who her ideal artistic partners could be: “I think that Beck would be an interesting duet partner. I am drawn to a wide variety of music styles, and I connect with his hip hop influences, just as I connect with his Serge Gainsbourg stylings. I also think that our voices would potentially mix in a cool way.” As for genre or style, “Something on the orchestral side would be interesting to try. A mixture of classical, electronic, and voice. Wouldn't necessarily even have to be lyrics; just something atmospheric and bold.”

“As for now,” says Janita as an afterthought, “ECR Music Group and I will be promoting this album all year. I have a gorgeous, and powerfully artistic and emotional video in my back pocket, which I look forward to releasing.”

Janita gives way to a larger than life smile as I ask if music for her is a place to express emotions, work out problems, or escape into. Then as if caroming off some hidden melody, she tilts her head sideways and thoughtfully announces, “You know. It’s funny. It’s all of those things to me. The thing I turn to regardless of what I need. I suppose music’s purpose changes depending on where I'm at in my life. Right now music is a very joyous and energizing outlet. At other times it has helped me through challenges in my life, and has been a confidante, a confessional of sorts. But I don't think that I've ever experienced the pure enjoyment around music as I do right now. There's almost an innocence to it – one that’s quite extraordinary."

"We have all kinds of plans for the near future, but they’ll unfold gradually", she says with growing excitement. "We're building the foundation for a whole new career for me. This time on my own terms.”

Speaking with the candor, yearning and unadulterated vision of a newly arrived artist, Janita is a paradoxical figure - she is a seasoned pro with eight records out who has just released what could be termed a debut album. If ‘many times published debut singer songwriter’ sounds like an oxymoron it is because we are not taking into account that Janita had been the voice for other collaborators for years - people who often lived vicariously through her skills. Having finally abandoned the Good Ship Lollipop, thrown years of baggage overboard, Janita arrives reborn in Didn’t You, My Dear?. No longer the great blonde hope for others, she has become a self-styled artist in her own right.

As for the many Finns who still think about Janita as a 'guilty pleasure': I am here to assure you, it's okay to come out of the closet. Civilized listeners everywhere will confirm that you are not alone.

By Rory Winston

While springtime and Paris have maintained a romantic relationship that’s made its way into the annals of poetry, music and fine art, there is another city equally adept at courting the season of awakenings – a city that like Paris boasts large gardens, has a river running through it, shares a similar temperate latitude, and even comes complete with contributions from Gustave Eiffel. As seductive twin sisters go, Budapest seems in the throes of its very own Belle Époque – one wherein where decadent bars and clubs brim with intelligentsia and lush parks burst with champagne picnics as much as they do with flowers. Whether taking in the streets during the day or carousing into the wee hours of the morning, Budapest’s ‘rite of spring’ assails one as relentlessly as Stravinsky’s masterpiece by that name. In a city seemingly doused in all forms of art, it is little wonder that spring is ushered in with an all-encompassing annual festival that includes everything from opera to ballet, theater, concerts and gallery showings. And so it was that the 35th annual Budapest Spring Festival opened on April the 10th running nonstop through to the 26th.

My own entry into this cultural banquet began with a three-tiered descent into Dante’s inferno - in this case, a juxtaposition of music, poetic narrative, and visual art. Beginning with Tchaikovsky’s Symphonic fantasy after Dante, the show came complete with a recitation by the actress Chiara Muti who read passages from the epic poem while lights colluded with projected works of art to illustrate the scene. It did not take long before we were entering the emotive gates of Franz Liszt’s Dante symphony complete with the Angelic Girls choir singing from all four corners of the balcony. Engulfed within a world of words, sound and visual arts, artistic director and conductor Vittorio Bresciani made for a marvelous guide into what can only be described as a most heavenly hell.

With legendary names like Vladimir Ashkenazy and the world-renowned Hungarian pianist Ránki Dezsö, the festival is a cornucopia of international talent. Equally adept at picking exciting acts in the world of pop, the Festival organizers had managed to bring Sinéad O’connor to the Béla Bartok National Concert Hall as well as hosting Little Boots on a ship, A38, which is permanently docked on the Danube. Of course, what’s a body water during springtime without the classical return of its breathtaking swans. And so the Hungarian State ballet performed a newly staged version of the Tchaikovsky ballet, Swan Lake in the remarkably beautiful opera house. With an ongoing photo exhibition of the iconic Hungarian born Hollywood cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond being shown at the city’s Ludwig Gallery, the 2015 Budapest Spring Festival was a frenzy of burgeoning art for all the senses.

Budapest’s spring is addictive. The city, the season and the festival were not things one can easily give up; and so, I did what I had never done on any other press trip. I postponed my return in order to take in at least one performance from the Budapest Dance Festival that began on the first days of May – the performance being Nuevo Ballet Español’s Titanium at the city’s dazzling Palace of the Arts.

As a fusion of Flamenco, hip hop, classical ballet and Jazz, the choreography moved from somber reflections on isolation to geometric reflections of the theme as ropes and lights created a netlike battlefield for the dancers wherein respite came in the escapist form of collective ethnic identity. Once discovered, the folkloristic world gave way to the contemporary needs of its participants in a beleaguered world of hip hop that became indistinguishable from its flamenco undertones. As the different forms of dance face-off against one another in an odd fit of rival gang violence, the all-male cast moves from overt combat to an internal struggle that ends with a dialogue between the dancers and the musicians who have – though mostly unnoticed till now - been sharing the stage all along. As the creators of this show, Angel Rojas and Carlos Rodriguez never quite transcend the dynamics of form to a significant degree. Nevertheless, the ambitious and highly energetic work creates a sense of frenzy that works on the rapt audience. And rapt they were. In fact, as audiences go, Hungarians were quite unique.

Far from being pretentious or removed spectators, Hungarians of all ages and backgrounds seem to love theater, classical concerts and dance. Watching the audience, I was reminded just how many opera and ballet goers in the UK and US spend fortunes merely for show rather than true appreciation. Highly discerning and utterly unselfconscious, Hungarians are a grateful and educated lot. They regularly attend reasonably priced (by their own standard of living) shows, making little distinction between entertainment or highbrow art. Or rather, they see the entertainment in what many of us would qualify as elite pass-times. Forever on the edge of their seats and bursting with energy and rapture, it is the inhabitants of Budapest that make art and culture what it is – a rite as wholly natural as frolicking in a park and as filled with anticipation as the spring itself.

The man who stopped Pandora, took on U.S. radio, produced Lesley Gore and, now, Janita.

- EXCLUSIVE: REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NY RESIDENT MAGAZINE

By Rory Winston
Photos (Blake Morgan Profiles) by Noam Galai

“I’m waiting for better angels” sings the recently deceased ‘it’s my party’ legend Lesley Gore on her last album Ever Since; and not since Johnny Cash did the legendary cover version of Trent Reznor‘s Hurt has an aging icon found a better fit. Had Stephen Sondheim’s Desiree in A Little Night Music been a former pop icon instead of an actress, this rendition could easily have passed for her Send in the Clowns reprise. While Gore’s gravelly but tender tone evokes a kind of weltschmerz, the lyrics beckon change. The thought-provoking arrangement that juxtaposes a cabaret sensibility with melancholic folk elements is the brainchild of Blake Morgan. Just months after releasing the song on his own album, Burning Daylight, Morgan handed it over to Gore. His passion to selflessly do what’s best for a song speaks tomes about his commitment to music.

It should come as little surprise that the artist behind Better Angels has been on a Quixotic mission ever since: a mission to empower music’s prophets, defrock its corrupt clergy and unmask its fraudulent angels – especially those like Tim Westergren, Pandora Radio’s co-founder.

While cashing in shares at a steady rate of one million per month, Westergren – who presents himself as a self-sacrificing music industry savior - claimed his business model was unsustainable unless musicians agreed to lower their royalties. Morgan responded, ruffling this business angel’s feathers with polite but poignant criticism. His remonstrations went viral shortly after their email exchanges got the attention of the Huffington Post. The message was heard: there was something seriously wrong with a content-providing service (Pandora) lobbying already underpaid content creators (musicians) to martyr themselves for a place on a heavenly sound cloud where only the harp would go unpaid.

By January 2014, Morgan took on the music industry’s most sacred order, terrestrial radio. As Morgan’s #irespectmusic floated through cyberspace, musicians woke from their stupor: America was among the only countries where radio stations didn’t compensate musicians for airplay - ‘while songwriters like Otis Redding receive royalties, performers like Aretha Franklin didn’t get any R-e-s-p-e-c-t in the form of money.’ Countries that shared American radio’s slave labor policy: North Korea, Iran, Vietnam and China (the latter, incidentally, in the process of changing their legislation). Also, since US based stations didn’t pay foreign musicians, foreign stations wouldn’t pay ours. Despite having the highest number of hits internationally, American musicians received no royalties. Morgan’s apostasy was soon embraced by everyone from Taylor Swift to Pink Floyd. In the words of Morgan’s classic, “Better late than not at all; better to make the break than take the fall”.

The Velvet Revolutionary
When it comes to clean breaks, Morgan excels. Though far from being a media-hungry iconoclast, Morgan has had his share of ‘velvet revolutions.’ The charismatic and lanky artist with a disarming smile and raconteur’s wit spoke to me about the road less traveled:

Sometime after finishing Berklee College of music and recording six raw demos, Morgan got signed to the short-lived N2K label by the legendary Phil Ramone. As Morgan explains, “People often think a big record deal is the dream-come-true. For me it felt like seasickness. You feel like you’re drowning but to your friends it looks like you’ve just boarded a cruise ship and you’re riding the waves. Anyway, I’m at my album’s first strategy meeting – incidentally, uninvited - and someone from the label informs us that I’ve just topped at number 8 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart. So the astute marketing expert asks, ‘That’s great but does someone know how many are ahead of him?’ And he wasn’t joking. Heartbreaking, really. My job is to play, sing, create… and here I am with supposed experts… Needless to say, I was already looking for a way out of my 7 album contract. Phil was cool about it and obliged. Six months later the company goes down like the Titanic. And no wonder. I mean, when my record came out, they invested 100,000 dollars in a massive Billboard ad with a big picture of me. Public response: ‘who the hell is this guy? He doesn’t even have a record out’. It just pissed people off. Same money… I could have used for making a great record… Hell, 10 great records.”

Released from his contract, Morgan returned to ‘label-hunting and showcasing’. In his words, “The most unmusical un-rock and roll thing you can possibly be involved in. Playing for suits at 4 in the afternoon.” Morgan continues as if in reverie, “So there I am walking with my mom, and I tell her that in the end I’ll probably wind up with an unsatisfying deal like before, and if I had any guts I’d take all the musicians who’ve recently asked me to produce their demos and start my own label. So my mom turns to me and - with best intentions - says, ‘yeah, if you had any guts that is what you’d do’. It was an epiphany. Right there while walking on 5th Avenue and 11th, I suddenly decided that’s exactly what I had to do. I launched my own label, ECR (Engine Company Records) from my laptop the very next day. And it’s been going for over 13 years now”.

While those years have been the recorded worst in music history - with labels either having gone belly up or having shrunken by as much as 90% - ECR has grown. Their break-even rate on albums - rather than being the usual 2% (a figure based on the nearly 75,000 albums that came out last year) – is a steady 80%. The reason for the difference, as Morgan explains, “At ECR, success is measured by the high note as much as it is by the bottom line”. In practice, Morgan’s strategy is simple: create the best music possible, music the artist is proud of. A marketing plan only comes into it after this phase is complete. “99.9% of labels”, Morgan affirms, “start with ‘what’ll make us money’ before looking for the best music. Their whole raison d’être should be to help win an audience for an artist they believe in rather than believe in an artist that can help them get an audience. That’s why I only sign artists I can see myself having a long-term relationship with. The idea of working on 7 records over a 10-year period is inspiring. It excites me as an artist, as a producer and as a label owner.”

Another unique element: “We sign works, not artists.” Unlike other labels, ECR only makes license contracts to distribute and publish a given work. As for what stops an artist from going elsewhere…? “Nothing”, says Morgan candidly, “but since our inception, no one has ever wanted to leave”. The simple reason, Morgan avers, is that ” We’re in a partnership with the artists – we’re both forced to give a constant 100%.” Morgan’s metaphor: “Margaret Atwood once wrote that ‘wanting to hang out with famous people because you admire their work is like wanting to meet a duck because you love pate’. It’s senseless to own the artists. It’s a fatal mistake that every other label (as far as he knows) makes”.

Lesley Gore’s Last Resting Place
Despite ECR Music Groups diversity in genre, there is a definite Blake Morgan signature on the entire artist rostrum. The emphasis remains genuinely evocative melodies and moods over contrived soundscapes.

It takes no more than a listen to the Jazz-inflected sultry sound of the Finnish born singer Janita to tell what direction her new album will be headed in. “Beautiful”, Morgan muses, “2 years in the studio and her album’s finally ready to come out. It took about the same amount of time for Melissa Giges whose Just When I Let Go came out last summer… Melissa’s been on tour, TV, and has a new video coming out. Then there’s David Cloyd out of Buffalo who’s in recording. His album’s due next year. Together with myself, and the late Lesley Gore - these are our cornerstone artists.”

Morgan describes his own most recent album, Diamonds in the Dark, as a Dorothy discovering Wonderland experience. Listening to Morgan sing “you’re the best bad idea I ever had”, one senses how extraordinary it must feel to fall hopelessly in love with something as irrational as making music. After all, if these are Morgan’s ‘best bad ideas’, even his ‘worst good ideas’ are bound to land Grammies. Forever evolving, Morgan remains a favorite of alternative rock fans and music aficionados alike. From his well lauded debut album, Anger’s Candy, to his more rumantive pieces that sound like urban cantorials for an agnostic age, the singer/producer/composer/independent label owner Morgan has always done precisely what he wants by maximizing the means at his disposal. Like the late great Lesley Gore, Morgan has gone through life telling everyone from the major labels to those like Pandora “You don’t own me”.
ECR Music Group

Reprinted with permission from NY Resident magazine
Knockout Festival
Knockout Performances

By Rory Winston

‘As shameful as it seems, artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship are often envied by those who work in freedom’, Tom Stoppard related at a conference in the mid-eighties while discussing his recent translation of a Václav Havel play. There was something to it. We are often, ironically, jealous of our oppressed counterparts. Whether dissident artists are persecuted by those that wish to silence them or hailed as heroes by those who see them as fearless iconoclasts is neither here nor there; what matters to us is that their given society is not indifferent to their works. In addition, we are also not indifferent to it internationally. Critical dramatists living under oppressive regimes are a political presence, a viable threat, a force to contend with; they are even – and how wonderful it sounds to us – a menace. Anything is preferable to being relegated innocuous dinner conversation for polite society.

By the early nineties, media had romanticized the plight of ex-Soviet authors, to the point that our collective imaginations saw all of Eastern Europe as an elaborate hothouse for sexy subversives harboring undiscovered literary gems. A decade later, and the interest had dissipated. Whether or not state suppression is worse now than during the last years of communism is immaterial, the fact is that a struggling artist under a supposedly democratic regime simply does not carry the same clout as even a state-approved ‘bad boy’ in an otherwise intolerant or closed society.

But what was happening now? As the child of Hungarian Jewish émigrés, I was adamant to find out. Although I had worked with theatre, my limited knowledge of Hungary’s cultural history meant I subconsciously divided drama into three rather arbitrary time periods: the classics (verse dramas, historic pieces, national romantic subject matter), the Pre-WWII cosmopolitans (these included satirical geniuses whose work, thanks to a horde of immigrants, managed to influence the sixties and seventies generation of New York and London based comedy writers), and the Perestroika writers like György Spiró – a dramatist whose play Chickenhead had an irreverence similar to that of Look Back in Anger for an earlier generation of Brits.

Sadly, the last complete Hungarian production I was even aware of was Stephen, the King – a revival of a twenty odd year old rock opera that, like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, employed a historical parallel to criticize the powers that be. To be fair there were contemporary names like the writer/director Béla Pintér whose works had created a buzz in Central Europe’s alternative theatre scene, but as for his oeuvre… My ignorance was such that had anyone informed me that Béla Pintér was merely the long lost relative of Harold Pinter, I would have merely nodded knowingly, content with the misinformation.

And so, Facebook had served an educational purpose. Stumbling upon the ‘like’ of a friend of a friend with whom I no longer recalled how I was acquainted, I discovered the Contemporary Drama Festival Budapest – a festival that had gone under my radar for what was now its 12th non-consecutive year. ‘Yes’, I thought, ‘About time.’ Why not find out what kind of plays were being produced in a country that had most recently received media attention for its government’s right wing bent, its racism, its political corruption and its partisan modification of its constitution. Was there censorship? Self-censorship? Covert resistance? Overt criticism? What was the voice of the new generation? Was there a voice? What became abundantly clear from the moment I arrived in Budapest was that the festival’s own exuberant and caring voice belonged to Mária Mayer-Szilágyi, a woman whose resourcefulness and enthusiasm was singlehandedly responsible for the entire event.

Hungarian Rhapsody – The Remix
Neither governmentally organized nor state supervised, the partially subsidized festival owes everything to Szilágyi’s conviction. Working in close contact with German theater, Szilagyi, by the early 90’s had noticed a renewed international interest in Hungarian drama. At the very moment when In-yer-face theatre started making the rounds throughout Central Europe – with new works by Philip Ridley, Mark Ravenhill, David Eldridge and Sarah Kane winding their way through the German circuit – a host of independent project-based ensembles popped up across Budapest. Cross-pollination soon ensued and the idea for the festival was born. The festival is held in the Jurányi Art Incubator House – a large Fin de siècle school-like complex where dozens of disparate theatre companies test and showcase their works to an ever-growing public. Imagine a mid-sized city whose entire Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway scene were squeezed into a single large schoolhouse and you might have a picture of how the venue works. In terms of showcasing, organizing performances, conducting workshops, seminars and parties it is a perfect venue. As poetic justice would demand, collaboration between German and Hungarian theaters remains an essential part of Szilagyi’s annual portfolio; take the opening piece: Mikó Csaba’s The Fatherless (Apátlanok)– a Hungarian play that was paradoxically making its debut in German with surtitles running in the original language.

Directed by Michael Lippold and performed by the Theater Regensburg, The Fatherless (Apátlanok) has a highly designed approach wherein visual constructions run counterpoint to dialogue. Bringing to mind the early works of Thomas Ostermeier, albeit scaled down to a small sized theatre, the directing purposefully works against the given space by exaggerating the plays highly symbolic motifs with larger-than-life epic moments. Juxtaposing grand architectural concepts with an intimate setting, Lippold ends up ‘distancing’ during the more realistic scenes while creating a sense of familiarity during overtly theatrical moments. Like Marius von Mayenburg’s The Stone, Mikó’s chronological leaps and breaks in continuity are designed to toss us back and forth between competing metaphors. It is a world where absence itself becomes the very glue that holds together the illusion of a family, a realm wherein ‘father’ has become a mythopoetic notion whose relevance depends entirely on which theory one is temporarily willing to subscribe to in order to fill the paternal vacuum.

Whether talking about Hungary’s pagan forefathers, ‘our father who art in heaven’, the nationally romantic ‘fatherland’, father Stalin who arrived after WWII, in the end, it is clear from Mikó’s play that Hungary was left without a viable father figure. With the Russian troops gone and a new republic declared, and religious, national and communist principles long dead and buried, what ideological father was there to turn to? Who was left that had not already been deconstructed? It was solely the absent father that remained. Even as mass media took the role of stepfather, the Hungarian family unit insisted on retaining the ghostlike figure whose essence could be interpreted any which way each family member chose. Lyrical, contemplative and highly associative, Mikó’s The Fatherless is a contemporary opera devoid of music. In a sense, it is a conceptual response to Gertude Stein’s The Mother of us All.

Noting my interest in Mikó’s work, Ms. Szilagyi recommended I see the play Mary Stuart, Mikó’s adaptation of the Friedrich Schiller classic. Although the play is not part of the festival, Szilagyi’s unbiased love of theater and her need to share worthwhile works is enough to impel her to inform me about the play. In terms of writing and directing, Mary Stuart is a multi-tiered construction that associates to three distinct eras. Without sacrificing the essence of the original work, this rendition draws contemporary parallels while also alluding heavily to Hungary’s communist past. Exceptionally well directed by Ildikó Gáspár, the play braces us within a music box realm of deadly whispers and stifled cries. It is a pastel blue world where Machiavellian plots are dressed in protocol and cruelty wears a cordial if bureaucratic guise. We are privy to the inner workings of Schiller’s Elizabeth – a woman who wants her cousin Mary dead but does not want to be the one taking responsibility for it. Appearance is everything; and power desires nothing more than to continue being loved while allowing itself the luxury to hate with impunity.

Mary, the object of Queen Elizabeth’s hate and fear, is fixed on stage throughout the performance while other characters are seen plotting against her. The only time these characters catch a glimpse of Mary is when they feel guilt, fear or loathing. The idea of being present through absence seems to be a recurring theme for Mikó; it is also one that Gáspár tackles with éclat and depth.

If Mikó’s The Fatherless (Apátlanok) shows Hungarian identity as a void waiting to be filled, Hungari, written and directed by the highly esteemed professor and dramatist, Péter Kárpáti, is a journey into the information overload that stands ready to fill that void with whatever vague definition our contemporary lives allow for. Hungari is a country without borders, regions or cities; it is the makeshift identity had by those who inhabit cyberspace. Thanks to the internet, a person can be physically located in Hungary while inhabiting the mental landscape of New York; likewise, an expat living in New York can retain a totally Hungarian identity. Chatrooms, skype, facebook, twitter, telephone… Kárpáti has relentlessly trekked through these spheres before cut-and-pasting together a series of monologues based on real internet conversations.

Working together with the HOPPart Company – an ensemble of actor/musician/singers – Kárpáti, dramaturge Bori Sebők and composer Árpád Kákonyi present us with nine people – each of whom inhabits a single unified apartment on stage while simultaneously being located in a very different part of the globe. Like the short film The Parlor (2001) there is no way for a participant to verify the age, gender or true location of his/her counterpart. What is clear is that this is an apartment where time zones, seasons and styles vary a great deal. The common factor: the participants are all communicating in Hungarian. While the humorous lyrics bring to mind musicals such as Avenue Q, there are disconcerting elements of our atomized lives that recall Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information. With eclectic music that caroms from folk to pop to elegiac to brash Broadway Musical, Hungari is the cacophony of contemporary identity delivered in a symphony of observations.

The Sound of the Unsound
When it comes to grasping the zeitgeist of the transition period from communism to ‘wild east’ capitalism, few writers could have done it as evocatively and perceptively as the twenty seven year old, László Potozky. Born in the Hungarian-speaking region of Transylvania, Potozky is a published novelist who has – already in his first play – demonstrated both a great ear for dialogue and the smarts to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ when relating large concepts. Though Aba Sebestyén makes some interesting decisions in directing – creating what amount to contemporary danced versions of Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interludes-like monologues – the strength of the play Strodgegon Superglue (Sztrodzsegon) resides primarily in its insightful characterizations and its ability to captivate without once changing sets.

As the play begins, three impoverished flea-market merchants witness a friend of theirs being run over by a train somewhere offstage. Accident? Suicide? As in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, the opening foreshadows the annihilation of an era. More interestingly, each character becomes inadvertently complicit in his/her own demise – their fate inexorably hastened and sealed by their very attempt to escape the status quo. Hoping for a better life, they profit off one another’s weaknesses. Friendships are severed, dreams are fractured, families are torn apart. While none of these can ever be glued together, Strodgegon Superglue (Sztrodzsegon) – a brand of super-glue leftover from the Soviet era whose only remaining function is being sniffed – can at least help us forget. As up and coming international talents are concerned, Potozky fits the bill. With a markedly confident style, Potozky’s work eschews both gimmickry and trendy devices. His strong characterization and his concepts would likely survive the journey abroad.

No Place for the Likes of You by Márton Kóvacs and the Mohácsi Brothers takes on the very touchy subject of Hungarian complicity in the holocaust; or, better yet, the subject of Hungarians murdering other Hungarians whom they opportunistically decide to relegate as Jews in order to usurp what they own. As a darkly comic musical where pulp-meets-social commentary and absurd fuses with macabre, the play has all the elements of a Hungarian Urinetown, albeit more risqué and rhapsodic. Given that Hungary’s most renowned satirical pulp fiction author, Jenő Rejtő, was murdered by Hungarian Nazis who were probably enjoying his books while killing him, the play’s mordant humor seems fitting. With a minimalist set that makes brilliant use of lights and shadows, the play elicits a response similar to Lina Wertmüller’s Seven Beauties – a film that opens with easy-going Jazz music set to a Hitler speech.

As for the university production of Boris Vian’s Foam of the Days directed by Balázs Benő Fehér, let’s just say that while Ádám Fekete’s wordplays are way more imaginative and closer in spirit to Vian than Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo, the cartoonish world represented with its unique brand of surreal romanticism is not capable of sustaining its length. Despite the feverishly changing scenarios, the highly acrobatic performers, and the well-balanced caricature-like portrayals, the overall play feels more like a demanding cross-genre exercise than anything else. While it is easy to imagine this cast performing the best ever version of Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers, the Vian play falls short of satisfying. The one saving grace: Ádám Fekete – a creative and performing artist whose intensity and range recalls a young Eric Bogosian or John Leguizamo.

Created with the feel of Immersive Environmental theatre – as demonstrated in works such as Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding by New York’s Artificial Intelligence comedy troupe – the Children of Dollar Daddy company in Budapest performed Emma Bovary based on the character from Gustave Flaubert. Of course, this particular Emma Bovary was reputedly based on the work of Flaubert, Dumas, Walter Scott and… Basically, whoever and whatever Emőke Kiss-Végh – who was responsible for the entire performance (in concept, text and performance) – felt like borrowing from. The play is performed in an actual dressmaker’s salon where Emma greets her guests, has them sit around a table, offers some snacks and drinks, while telling them about her life, aspirations and the shortcomings of her marriage. The one woman show – done in collaboration with the dramaturg Erzsébet Csikesz and her long standing acting partner Tamás Ördög (relegated, this time around, to working the sidelines) – is about as Off-Off-Broadway as a Hungarian performance can get. Staging works in apartments, cellars and other offbeat locations throughout the city, the Children of Dollar Daddy get a lot of mileage on minimalist aesthetics.

Irrational Voices of Reason
As an exciting addition to the festival, Szilagyi offered us a screening of Krétakör’s Loser – a one-off masterpiece created in direct response to state repression. Self-ironic, bitingly satirical and transgressing the boundaries between reality and fiction, Loser is a cross-genre roller coaster that goes from a strict dialectic to realism to heightened theatrical moments to macabre comedy, ending in a post-expressionistic orgasm that is bound to leave any viewer with both a shiver running down their spine and thoughts spinning through his/her head. If ever anyone wanted to answer my initial questions about criticism, resistance and new directions in Hungarian theater, Director/Writer Árpád Schilling managed a trompe l’oeil by delivering the reality offstage in an entertaining onstage format.

Krétakör’s Loser shows us the terror of a non-terror state; the lengths a seemingly democratic regime can go to in an effort to stifle criticism are quite astonishing since few are monitoring the excesses of a government that is no longer part of a communist block or the axis powers. As brilliant as Loser is, the show - aside from a few sporadic performances given by Schilling's very determined group - is mostly limited to DVD viewing. The reason for this unfortunate circumstance is that government funding was so ‘insultingly low’ that the founder of the internationally lauded and awarded group, Schilling, tore the government subsidy check live on air while informing the Hungarian public that his company would henceforth be closed thanks to the wishes of their ‘supreme leader, Viktor Orbán’. Such panache. Max Reinhardt would be proud.

When it comes to other political issues such as Hungary’s inherent level of Antisemitism and Antiziganism, there is likely no better play out there than the darkly satiric Scorn (Lefitymálva) written by András Vinnai and directed with élan by András Borgula. What starts out as seemingly frivolous banter between a very self-conscious working class man and his more matter-of-fact colleague, soon eddies into a whirlpool of hidden animosities whose undercurrent is profound racism. “Don’t use the J-word”, remonstrates the wary and Politically Correct worker, his greatest fear being that others might perceive him as an anti-Semite. It does not take long to realize that the reason this is his greatest fear is because he has long bought into the notion that Jews do in fact own everything, run everything and are watching his every move. His is a world of Zionist conspiracies, blood libels, and covert ops by the Mossad intent upon infiltrating every aspect of Hungarian life. It seems that the only thing keeping the main character’s rabid anti-Semitism in check all these years is a genuine fear of Jewish omnipresence and imagined reprisal.

As the play moves from hyperrealism – with intense staccato dialogue reminiscent of David Mamet – to a more abstract poetic construction, the audience is cajoled into letting down its guard. Soon the stage has become a representation of our protagonist’s mental landscape and we forget the very real danger this psychotic wonderland poses to our world. Underestimating the ability of a deluded person to incite, we become ever more vulnerable and it comes as a momentary shock when the play draws our attention to the fact that with each laugh we forget that the hero’s vapid allegations – the big lies – have the potential to kill.

Just before losing ourselves entirely in his Ionesco-like world, we are jolted from our stupor and thrust into yet a third realm – one known for its faux objectivity, the televised talk show. Having once again jumped genre, Vinnai ‘does a Christopher Durang’ on us by subverting a familiar format in order to make us reflect on both the concepts and the artifice in our means of perception. The artifice of TV is revealed for what it is: a vehicle for informing us of danger while simultaneously numbing us to the threat being posed. This final ‘mass media’ zone is one wherein the play confronts all the rationalizations our society creates to excuse those that irrationally hate. Borgula is an actor’s director. Whether creating a space that highlights what the characters are emotionally going through or creating a dissonant world that stands in sharp contrast to their words, his focus steadfastly remains the content. To paraphrase the immortal bard, “the play’s the thing”; and when successful it is precisely the play that can “catch the conscience” of us all.

Although the Gólem Theatre that presented Scorn (Lefitymálva) was not included in the festival, the show came highly recommended from many of the participants and it is no coincidence that the theater is lodged within the same Jurányi complex.

Besides the many plays on offer in Budapest, the festival also included bus excursions to Cluj in Romania and Subotica in Serbia where two other Hungarian theatre festivals were simultaneously taking place. I myself took a trip to the scenic city of Kecskemét where the Katona József Theatre did a marvelously at nuanced rendition of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

In addition to the many seminars, debates and workshops, each night in Budapest meant a continuation party at a specially allocated moody city club where a wide range of up and coming indie bands and alternative live music played till the wee hours of the morning.

As a final response to my opening question about whether there was overt criticism or covert resistance, the Festival took us to see the Víg Theatre’s and the Sputnik Shipping Company’s production of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector. Directed by Viktor Bodó, the play felt as if Dario Fo had hijacked the Comédie-Française and fed all of them amphetamines before the performance. And I mean this in a good way.

Death by Democracy
Throwing the plot of the visiting inspector into a local context, The Government Inspector was a funhouse with associations to Hungarian corruption hidden in every corner. From visual associations to triple layered verbal jokes to vaudeville moments with political references, this is intellectual slapstick at its best. Transforming Gogol’s play into a three ring circus of storytelling, sociopolitical satire and post-modern self-referential theater, The Government Inspector is one of those plays where the allusions and ripostes come so quickly that focusing too hard on any one line means missing the one that follows. With cornered bureaucrats lamenting, ‘turn left, turn right… in the end, you sink in the moderate middle’, the play is an ongoing commentary about the country’s current leadership. When the trapped mayor realizes that everyone is laughing at his plight, he turns to the audience – in a way reminiscent of Joel Grey’s most frightening in-your-face moment in Cabaret – and says, “So you think I’m the joke? What about you?” As revelation turns schadenfreude into genuine terror, the audience’s roar soon subsides into a less than comfortable laugh. So this is the voice of theater in Hungary: still struggling, still haunted, still evolving and more powerful than ever.

In short, Hungary’s theatrical voice is not one voice at all. It is, and has always been, the voice of many. While the hubbub of politics becomes indistinguishable from white noise, it is these voices that can be heard slowly rising from the vast halls, filled auditoriums, and small improv spaces of the city: each voice distinct, each with its own tone, each as unique as the voices of those inhabiting our stages in New York.

Tom Stoppard may have been right about our envy regarding the attention paid to artists working in overtly repressive regimes, but he failed to mention how easily we ignore artists that struggle against less media-sexy forms of oppression. After witnessing Contemporary Drama Festival Budapest, I realized ‘woe onto the artist who struggles not against a globally recognized threat but against the anonymity inherent in a minor world language’. When it came to Hungarian artists, it appeared that just as the Iron Curtain had come up and a new show was about to begin, the west snuck out of the theater in search of another play.

And here's what's coming

1) Exclusive interview with singer-songwriter/producer/Recod label owner, Blake Morgan, of #IRespectmusic renowned ...We discuss his battles with Pandora and Terrestrial Radio; we talk about Finnish artist Janica whose record will now be coming out on Morgan's ECR label. And we also discuss how former Finnish labels may have done more harm than good with her career and how Morgan's own ethos brilliantly reinvents the idea of what a record label should be doing. "We don't own any of our artists and they own their own music. We simply own the products we create together with them". This is not only a new direction for a label but the results are way better percentage wise. "Artists work on what they work on before we see where it fits on the market, rather than the other way around which is getting artists to create songs we think the market may be looking for. We work in precisely the reverse way".

2) A New Jewish Cabaret with comedy, self-irony, and pop genre parodies to be performed in Hungary, a country where neo-nazi conspiracy theories are daily conversation.

3) Interview with Ken Austin, Jeezy and Entourage's Doug Ellin on the glorious bottle of Avión Tequila that has brought all these magnates together.

4) Talking to Nicole Hanley Mellon (of Carnegie Mellon) on indecisiveness often being a key factor to success.

5) Why the Finnish Honesty Advertising Campaign has backfired. Experts from ad agencies in Scandinavia, UK, NY all have their say about the misfire.

6) A Personal story about a recent Dannish/Hungarian/UK film production that is now in development.

7) Exciting new coproductions in music between UK & Hungary already piquing great interest from several US based majors. Projected Completion date: Fall of 2015

8) The state of Contemporary Drama & Art in Budapest today: an overview

By Rory Winston

A millennium was coming to a close. Paradigm shifts in science and lifestyle were taking place on a daily basis. Many vied for sociopolitical reform. No. I’m not talking about the year 2000 but about 1898. The Millennials who looked forward to change back then were not Generation Y but the residents of Budapest anticipating the 1000th anniversary of their nation. As a member of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Budapest was about to host the most massive expo ever – one that would include the first electrified underground metro in all of Europe. Illuminated fountains, a newly constructed bridge, two major museums, it was the Belle Époque. The allures of royalty existed but they now belonged to a new creative class of thinkers. Philosophers, poets, physicists would sit in cafés discussing culture and change. Decadence and innovation made a vibrant couple – they played in the city gardens, strolled the grand boulevards and like a pair of newlyweds caroused throughout the city of Budapest, reveling into the morning hours. CAFe Budapest, the annual Fall Festival, is a celebration of this longstanding marriage – a marriage that has managed to outlast both the Nazi and Soviet regimes, a relationship that lives on in all that still defines the magnificent city.

CAFé Budapest is an extravagant romp through the world of classical and contemporary music, dance, theater, visual art, design, food and all that which is created by a city whose audience celebrates life – a city whose audience had been painstakingly raised on clever coffeehouse conversations, a city that has for centuries absorbed the cultures of all those who had occupied her. If not for the Ottoman invasion, Budapest would be devoid of its great bathhouses. If not for the Hapsburg monarchy and subsequent Austro-Hungarian Empire, Budapest would not have the grand tradition it has in classical music and pastries. This is a lesson that all xenophobes should keep in mind. The development of a culture does not happen in isolation to other cultures but through repeated exposure.

Budapest is an idiosyncratic juxtaposition of different eras and moods all coexisting with one another. Our hotel was located alongside the Danube – a majestic landscape of hills and castles on the Buda side and an elegant strand on that of Pest. Walking deeper into Pest’s urban landscape one hits the Jewish District, a Bohemian enclave of turn of the century restaurants and pubs and ruin bars built on the premises of long abandoned meat markets and courtyards – a strange cross between regal themes, bordello motifs and a Mad Max film set. As Tipsy Tours go, the district lent itself perfectly to Palinka tasters and a host of amazing local wines and sparkling wines – a tradition that dated back to Roman times and one that includes awarded desert wines like Tokay.

A38 is a floating stage and club stationed smack on the Danube. The Ferry, which hosts a myriad of brilliant acts throughout the year, was a perfect venue for watching St. Vincent. Although Paris may indeed have been burning, Budapest was perpetually on fire. From the Franz Liszt Academy with its golden laurels adorning the walls to the majestic opera house to the Thalia Theatre, each festival venue had as much of a story to tell as the brilliant events they were respectively hosting.

One standout event was the Armel Opera competition – a showcase of international talents that ran the gamut between Sir Hartrison Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy and Mozart’s Figaro. What is more than evident is that in Budapest culture is an everyday affair; and even the most sublime classical music is often introduced with the most off-colored of jokes. Unlike in most places where I’ve been, in Hungary, there is very little pretension when it comes to high culture. Classical music, poetry readings, and contemporary dance is cherished by the masses as much as it is by the elite; so too when it comes to gourmet food – an area in which Hungarians not only excel but have made an art of it. In Budapest, fowl is more than fair; it is exquisite. When it comes to game, goose, duck as well as goose liver, a dish at Gerlóczy Café is enough to explain why even the French are importing these specialties from Hungary. As for desert, the Austro Hungarian tradition in pastries seemed to have been successfully passed survived all the regimes that followed.

As closing concerts go, Nina Hagen seemed a perfect way to end my Budapest escapade. Like the city itself, the punk goddess was a brilliant cross between opera, Goth rock and drag queen extravaganza. With a genuine classical range and true ‘fuck you’ flare, Hagen was emblematic of any true Budapest experience: regal, captivating, rich, over-the-top and, at times, even grotesque… anything but forgettable.

Swedish: New Yorks unga skavaller kolumnister
Finnish: Nykin nuoret Rita Tainolat
Appearing here with the permission of Rory Winston & the New York Resident Magazine

By Rory Winston

The dope, the skinny, the lowdown, the dirt… Ever since antiquity, we’ve been consumed by a need to know ‘what’s going down’ with those who are ‘higher up’. We want hearsay confirmed, laundry aired, scandals unearthed, calumny dispelled; we hanker for a behind-the-scenes look at our celebrities, craving access to exclusive realms. We want to be privy to the private lives of public figures. And - more than anything - we yearn to unveil the inner workings of the very legends that we have so painstakingly shrouded in mystery. Having deified and worshipped mortals, we, paradoxically, wish to see them undone - exposed as the sordidly ordinary human beings they are. In an age devoid of belief in the supernatural, the deconstruction of celebs has become a means of transcendence. Building gods with planned obsolescence, we take pleasure in replacing them, proving again and again that they are no better than us. In this world of fleeting rapture, the gossip columnist is high priest.

When it comes to celebrity news, verifiable information is often as indistinguishable from hype as history is from myth in the bible. Facebook, Twitter, and websites run amok with press releases, sound bites, speculations and fabrications. While each messiah is surrounded by ardent disciples and a core team of apostles – fan base and publicist, respectively – they also bear the cross of having an equally determined horde of detractors, rumor mongers and skeptics. Caught between those who would hail them as saviors and those who wish them crucified, our ephemeral heroes await judgment from the masses; this while the masses wait to be informed by unbiased opinion. The contemporary name for a revelation capable of shifting public opinion is ‘a scoop’. As for the sacred cabal who make such revelations, they are gossip columnists - investigative reporters whose reputations rely on their ability to research events, dig up facts, corroborate stories, verify sources, and beyond that, to deliver news in an eloquent and entertaining manner.

Although televised celebrity news has been overrun with presenters who do no more than aggregate and announce, in May of 2013, VH1’s executive producer Shane Farley reinvented the genre – his nuance, ironically, being an ‘old school’ formula: having the show’s researchers and writers double as hosts. The result: the Gossip Table - a hit show newsworthy enough to defend its daily morning timeslot. With witty banter to accompany genuine exposés, the show is no blurbathon. Instead, it presents celebrity insights and socio-political observations in the unassuming guise of - to borrow a refrain from the Man of La Mancha - “A little gossip, a little chat, a little idle talk of this and that”.

Upon learning that a rendezvous had finally been scheduled with four of the five GT cast members, I muse: Why not turn the table on my guests by having them respond to a few startling discoveries about their own lives. How hard could it be to unearth the odd indiscretion? Though far from my own area of expertise; the George Plimpton ‘get-in-the-ring-with-them school of journalism’ feels like a worthwhile endeavor.

Since Chloe Melas – Senior Entertainment Reporter at HollywoodLife.com – was the one member that would not be present, I could forget about confronting her with dredged up secrets. That left: Marianne Garvey, Confidential columnist for the Daily News; Noah Levy, Senior News Editor at In Touch Weekly; Delaina Dixon, cofounder and editor in chief of Divagalsdaily.com; and the British born linchpin, Rob Shuter – an entertainment columnist extraordinaire who was not only the former executive editor of OK Magazine – taking it from a floundering rag to major contender – but someone who been a power publicist representing Alicia Keys, Bon Jovi, Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Simpson, Naomi Campbell, P. Diddy, Estee Lauder and Esquire Magazine.

Realizing that Garvey and Shuter are regular Huffington Post contributors, I decide to call a Huffington blogger I know. Dead end. No insights gleaned. Suddenly, it dawns on me: an ex-colleague from my time in theatre had been slated for a part in Harmony - the stirring new musical by Barry Manilow and his lifelong collaborator, the legendary lyricist Bruce Sussman. And Sussman is – drum roll! - Shuter’s spouse. I call. Though we are both enamored by Sussman and my source extols the production, there is not much in the way of insider information. Six degrees transgressed and still no gossip on the Gossip Table. Celebrity news gathering is not for sissies. You need feelers and spies everywhere. It is a specialized form of investigative journalism that takes street smarts, precision, unlimited endurance and years of devotion.

On first impression, the idiosyncratic quintet known as the Gossip Table appear like highly charged quirky personalities that are, oddly enough, harmonic as a unit. The flamboyantly charismatic Naughty but Nice Rob Shuter careens into my field of vision, giving way to a grand conductor’s bow that tapers off in a half-hearted curtsey, followed by a waltzed retreat. The ensuing repartee only reinforces the Marx Brothers atmosphere: “We’re not some artificially constructed cast of models – although I’m very good looking”, quips Rob, “we’re actually friends who’ve known and worked with one another since, well, even before we started lying about our age”.

“Rob was my mentor and sponsor at OK magazine”, Delaina chimes in.

“As I said, we’ve known for a very long time”, reiterates Rob, “Marianne for 15, Noah for 12, Delaina for –gosh I’m old – 20”.

Noah turns his head as if for a profile shot, and coquettishly adds: “We have no secrets from one another. Everyone here knows exactly what I look like with my mask off at 7 AM. Our on air personality is what we really are but amplified by a hundred – it’s a better version of ourselves”.

"Actually, I think I’m a better version off air”, interjects Rob, “On air I’m relaxed. In real life I’m far more obnoxious.”

Our Algonquin circle is in full swing. Marianne – a dressed down Indie version of Dorothy Parker - explains why Delaina is their delegated “eulogy girl” and why she herself has been expressly forbidden to discuss the dead or dying. Rob admits that Delaina does indeed ‘give great eulogy’; while Marianne is the funniest.

“I was runner-up as NY’s funniest reporter”, Marianne proclaims in a demure beauty pageant style, “but only because Judith Regan was judging …the bitch.”

As any ballerina knows, it takes a lot of hard work to make something look this easy. While the group does have fun on air, moments after the show ends they’re back on the beat hunting stories. By nightfall each has at least 3 original items to pitch which then gets edited down to six favorites. “We never regurgitate”, Rob insists, “we break news daily”.

Noah is certain that a big reason for their growing fanbase is their ability to share their process of discovery. Deliana agrees it’s their journalistic integrity that made sources like Diamond, the stripper, come to them with her Justin Bieber story.

Always on the job, when Marianne saw an Olsson Twin spit her gum onto a table in a Chelsea bar, she went to the trouble of retrieving it. “DNA - just in case the celeb wants to deny the story and sue for slander”. While Rob admits they won’t ameliorate the truth when celebs smell rancid or simply have bad skin (Brad Pitt), they do love both pop culture and celebrities as much as the average viewer:

“We are our audience – not stars, not Mean Girls bitching, not talking heads; but simply regular people who feel so extraordinarily lucky to be doing what we love that we pinch ourselves before every show. Imagine, being in the TRL studio overlooking Times Square; living in the center of the universe, the most thrilling city in the world – a city that I especially chose to come to 20 odd years ago”.

“As far as New York goes”, adds Marianne, “- the constant noise, the people, the breakneck tempo…I need those distractions. I hate being in my own head. And with everything going on here, there’s always gossip and gossip means communication. In reality, everyone loves to connect over what celebrities are doing - even the most educated.”

Noticing I had no gossip on them, Noah took pity and offered: “Okay. The biggest story here…? Someone at the Gossip Table is pregnant and I’ll give you a hint: it’s not me or Rob”.

Although reluctant to admit it, the members of the Gossip Table are slowly becoming celebrities in their own right. If that’s true, there’s little doubt left that even celebrities can’t get enough of celebrity gossip.

Linkki

EXCLUSIVE WITH ARIANA & THE ROSE - BEFORE RECENT SONG SESSION IN SWEDEN

by Rory Winston

[All photos except promotional ones taken by Michael Locissano with Stylist, Jules Wood]

As the mellifluous voice of Ariana DiLorenzo scampers across the unmistakably jagged line “Just because I’m in your bed doesn’t mean I’m yours”, one suspects that the identity of the culprit being addressed could as easily have been all of pop music as the lover alluded to in the song. After all, although Ariana may have seduced the fickle genre with catchy hooks, her moody chord progressions clearly demonstrate that she won’t be owned by it. While the affair between Ariana and a mainstream audiences is looking ever more steamy, her indie-edged arrangements - each, a unique juxtaposition of rambunctious phrasing and a melancholic undertone - make a good case for her relationship with pop being no more than a question of opposites attracting. As sultry meets sophisticated and earnest meets impish, one gets the definite sense that the fashion savvy 24 year old Tisch-graduate behind Ariana and the Rose will be having numerous flings with different music styles before settling down in a comfortable pop-friendly bed.

Since the native New Yorker was on a brief break from her recent Gay Pride Tour, I took the opportunity to conduct an informal tête-à-tête between studio sessions. Ariana’s demeanor is the type that immediately puts one at ease - albeit in that disquieting sort of way that humility by highly attractive artists has a way of doing. She possesses a quiescent form of intensity and humility alike - equally rare commodities in the music industry. Was her helpful nature and patience due to the fact that she had studied journalism herself and knew what it was like to be interviewing someone? There was no denying her attentiveness to questions and her thoroughness when it came to responses. The usual disparity between her on and off stage persona simply didn't exist.

Alert blue eyes hurtle towards one like roving twin planets: Her face appears as though it is on loan from J. W. Waterhouse’s study of Dante’s Beatrice, while her unrehearsed responses are an oddly entertaining composite of thoughtfulness and sheer whimsy.

Like Janelle Monae and Azealia Banks who had both attended dramatic and musical academies, Ariana is conscious of the influence that theater exerts over her: "Certainly, my studies have had an effect on my approach – It’s not just about the stage presence but about the creative vision behind it. My familiarity with different arts helps when doing both music videos and shows. I get to think in conceptual terms rather than doing a straight forward visual rendering of the lyrics. It gives me the vocabulary for collaboration. Whether that means working with the director on a storyboard, or coming up with a treatment, I remain an integral part of the creative process rather than just a performer.”

It was this profound understanding of other arts that had landed Ariana’s music on a runway show with renowned London-based designer Ashley Isham. That Isham’s admiration for Ariana’s music was reciprocated when she chose his dress for her own video attests to the ongoing give and take between different disciplines. But whether she is the catalyst or the one being catalyzed by her encounters, Ariana admits to the serendipitous nature of her partnerships: “It's the way you're here now. Things either seem right to do or they don't. 'Let's try a song, see where it takes us.' Most of the time, that's precisely how it happens. Just my instinct that someone's talented and may be right for where I'm headed. As you can probably tell by now, I'm not 100% sure in advance exactly what I'm looking for in a song but I'm fast to say when i like something a lot and when I don't. So, it usually works the same way no matter who I'm working with. We decide- hey, you know what - let’s do something really fun together… After which, more often than not, the two aesthetics kind of blend.”

While themes are important to Ariana, she, nevertheless, eschews superimposing a contrived structure onto her albums. “Don’t get me wrong,” explains Ariana,”I absolutely love Janelle Monae’s concept album about the alien girl. I mean she has incredibly accessible songs like Tightrope and still manages to get that big cinematic idea out. And while I envision doing something of the sort in the future, for now I’m primarily focused on the subject matter. In each song, I ask myself: ‘What is it that you’re really trying to say’. Well, what I’ve discovered is that I keep circling back to the same questions that I’ve struggled with myself: finding out who I am, how to love and how to give and receive, how to get back up when I fall; and mostly, finding some middle ground without feeling like I’ve compromised my values. So, yes, my material is highly personal but it’s also general enough for most young people to identify with. It’s similar to the issues in the hit series Girls, similar to issues bubbling in social media, and - from a slightly more academic perspective – it’s the very same stuff that even the New Yorker is writing about. Like I learned as a journalist, you write about what you know and if you do it well enough there’ll be an audience out there for it.”

When asked what that audience is, and whether she feels an urge to dumb down her material in order to hit this ‘golden middle’, she unequivocally responds: “No. I come from the simple belief that pop music and pop culture doesn’t have to be dumbed down. My natural inclination is to be accessible without diluting the message. So far I haven’t had to hold anything back. .American audiences – and especially British ones – crave reality: Adelle, Florence and the Machine, Lorde… A song like Royals got through precisely because Ella (Lorde) sang it exactly how she meant it and it spoke to people. No one would have thought ‘ooh this is a perfect pop formula’; but when it came out, suddenly it was. We need to start giving the audience more credit. People want real in other walks of life. What would make anyone assume they don’t want it in their music”.

Her dream team…? With irrepressible enthusiasm, she names the much lauded grey eminence Rick Rubin and the compositional genius, Sia – both of whom had, incidentally, been part of Benny Blanco’s recent line-up. Launching into a paean, Ariana wants to make sure I am familiar with all those from whom she has gleaned insight: David Kahne (Regina Spektor’s producer) is a “singer’s producer – meticulous with arrangements and phrasing”, Charlie Arme – Ariana’s very proactive A&R - has not only managed Elle Eyre (of Waiting All Night) but has also set co-writing sessions for Ariana with the highly talented Martin Sjøle in Norway, and those like Oliver Nelson have remixed her work, allowing Ariana to see her songs in a new light.

In response to what direction she’s headed in and what genres she hopes to incorporate, Ariana answers as if from a reverie: “Ethereal, sweeping soundscapes”, she muses, “Something along the lines of what Imogen Heap does." "But", she proclaims, "bringing that vibe into the more structured playing field of pop.” Was this the next genre fated to crawl into Ariana’s pop-loving embrace? Of course – as every fan knows by now – regardless what genre ends up in Ariana’s bed for the night, the single lady (and singular artist) is likely to remain an entity very much her own.

THE INDELIBLE DEL & HIS IMPROV EMPIRE

Although you may have heard the legendary skull allegory, few people today working outside the field of comedy are familiar with the name Del P. Close. Yes, he’s the guy who on his deathbed bequeathed his skull to be used as a credited prop in the Goodman Theater’s then upcoming rendition of Hamlet. Although lifelong collaborator and cofounder of the Imrov Olympics, Charna Halpern, later confessed that the coroners refused to allow for the discrete decapitation, for the improve artists who had spent a lifetime working with mockups and imagined sets, the purchased anonymous skull from a local medical supply would forever be revered and treated as Close’s own.

Besides the fact that Del Close had coached Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley, Jon Favreau, Tina Fey, Bill Murray – well, you get the drift, he was also considered one of the most prominent influences on the development of Improv theater as we know it today. Having taken it from the late sixties where it departed from being merely a technique to enhance acting skills and turned it into a legitimate art form in its own right, it is his name being sported over what had recently been the 16th annual Del Close Marathon – a 56 hour long celebration that included everything from the renowned Upright Citizens Brigade to incoming acts from all over the world.

As someone who has worked with comedy primarily in the capacity of a writer, I had over the course of many years made the mistake of relegating Improv to the limited role of emergency aid for dead end scenes. Improv for certain playwrights is the theater world's ICU. A sketch or scene looked like it was convulsing, the flow of dialogue wasn’t getting to audience’s brains in time and, the very next day, a gifted director would wheel the entire scene in on a gurney and allow the troupe of actors to attempt a resuscitation. Having already tried traditional theatrical cures such as script doctoring and a series of invasive ‘kill your darlings’ surgical maneuvers, it was at this point that the pagan rites of Improv would commence. Relying on the momentum, associative skills, and the dynamics of unrehearsed interactions by gifted actors, scenes were revived like some golem – occasionally inhabited by the voice that had been present earlier on but just as often taken over by some unidentifiable being becoming its very own animal.

Intrinsically, Improv is, of course, way more than merely a technique used to either revive a scene or aid an actor in fleshing out a role. It is a craft in its own right – a craft, that I began to appreciate more and more throughout the years of working with very gifted stand-up comedians and, more specifically, Imrprov artists. The field was evolving and drawing in a wider audience – it was opening its doors to entirely new groups of young people.

In an interview I conducted several months back with Hot 97’s Cipha Sounds, he explained the strides taken to bring Improv to urban kids in otherwise rough neighborhoods. What used to be mostly an art form practiced in the domain of a university crowd was turning into a valid means of expression for a group of kids who would otherwise have relied solely on rap or stand-up comedy. It was an art form that lent itself to a different sensibility than the one required by either of the other two. You could express touchy and highly personal issues with a distance unknown in stand-up while being utterly devoid of the usual posturing that often inhabited rap. This was not proclamation or self-expression; it was interaction. This was not a mapped out concept but a theme in the throes of change. Likewise, the fact that nuances popped up during a performance meant that the audience was able to share in a performer’s first time revelation. Instead of a pre-rehearsed crescendo where the performer knew his position on a certain subject in advance, Improv could lead to an epiphany had on stage. It was less cynical somehow, less about just the quality of the delivery and more about the new places it was headed. It could even – given that everything came together just right – bring simultaneous and unpredictable solutions to the dilemmas of both audience and performer alike.

Despite all the marvelous experiences I had watching Improv, it wasn’t until I had gone to write a pilot for a TV series in Finland that I understood the level of contribution one very gifted Improv actor was capable of making while on the set of a television show.

While waiting for my Finnish fiancé to return with me to New York, I tried to make good use of my time in Helsinki by coming up with what I felt was a unique concept for a comedy-driven TV series – one in which the audience would be kidnapped and taken hostage into a parallel universe that could breech all the more universal and touchy subjects by playing off EU-related themes and local eccentricities. Like many such TV formats, it underwent a series of different collaborators, producers, revisions and working titles over the years. From a highbrow concept to a more straightforward SNL-type of production, it bounced around the networks garnering interest and was close to being green-lighted on several occasions only to be set aside due to budget considerations and questions relating to the track record of the respective producers involved. Just when I had all but given up on the show, a new set of circumstances had rekindled the flame.

Having befriended a highly gifted DJ and radio host from the UK, Joelle Reefer, I explained him the content of my show, read him some excerpts and, no sooner were we done with our first meeting than he suggested I do my own talk radio show while finalizing the TV script. The move was serendipitous since not only was the radio station a good way to test new material but the English speaking station was the perfect venue for my mythical comic ‘ant-terrorist terrorists’ who would kidnap the audience. As both Joelle and I concluded from our many conversations, the radio station where we worked was a caricature of an American Hip Hop station – one that in its effort to promote minority culture was unwittingly stereotyping the black community.

Although the owner of the station may have had a genuine affinity for hip hop and R&B music, he desired nothing more than to have his otherwise sophisticated UK born announcer sounding like he had come ‘fresh from the ghetto'; while I was expected to go from observational humor to what can only be described as the audio equivalent of slapstick. Since being more 'gangsta’, using more 'yo’s', and speaking a very affected form of Ebonics seemed to be synonymous with inhouse credibility, it became increasingly hard to believe that we were actually in Scandinavia and the year was 2013. As for the news that white people would do well to steer clear of using the ‘N’ word, it never seemed to have penetrated the upper echelons of the administration. It’s use was not only systematically overlooked but positively applauded as constituting ‘cool’. In short, we were not only from 'the streets' that did not exist on any local map, but we were from streets that existed nowhere since the late 90's as we drove our Hummer to a festival at a time when the rest of the world aspired to smart cars.

To be fair, these abuses were not ones practiced by the DJ's who ran their weekly shows oblivious to the underlying policies - they mostly managed to play their own tracks and maintain a respectable distance from the embarrassing platform. As for the staple programming and playlist, that was another matter entirely. With all the posturing and righteous indignation of an opportunist cleric, the station embraced an ever changing list of topics that it pretended to be extremely concerned about - this list of course was subject to basically two things: (1) the things our possible sponsors and investors would find pleasing to hear (2) things which happened to be 'globally cool' and acceptable to be worried about on a given week. If news broke that Somalian immigrants were being attacked by right wing fanatics in Finland that would hardly compare in importance to the fact that Kanye West felt that corporations were stereotyping their consumers.Since all this was done with uncanny earnest, the venue lent itself to a level of self-irony that would otherwise have been unavailable in the highly educated country of Finland.

In short, for a few of the regulars (Joelle, my co-host Karo and myself), the station was heaven. It was a grotesque – if naive – example of all those politicians and businesses that had exploited the causes of others without ever even going to the trouble of understanding what those causes were about. By simply doing riffs on our own hypocrisies, we were able to tackle every global issue from homophobia to Islamophobia to racism to the mock-concern often displayed by Western politicians for the plight of the third world.

And what was even better was that - unlike our audience - those running the station didn't seem to notice. It is a testament to the sophistication of the audience that the more ambitious our material became, the more our fan base expanded and grew.

If there was anything we had learned over the many months was that the average member of the Finnish audience was far more savvy than those who made their living being on the "forefront of local media". Youths were globally aware and had grown up on the best in international broadcasting, while those who decided on what to broadcast for them were often too busy competing with one another to notice what was going on abroad.

After several months of testing material and planning, we had done it. We had attained a level of popularity that helped convince the owner of the station to become the executive producer for the TV show I had written. A month or so later and we were shooting the pilot. The one hitch: it would be in a language I didn’t understand – namely, Finnish. Though I had the benefit of a remarkably good translator – my fiancé and part-time radio co-host, Karolina Alanko – who was not only adept at pulling off wordplays but also of transposing concepts and finding cultural equivalents, it was often difficult for the respective directors to explain to the actors what types of personas or stereotypes they were supposed to be playing off.

It was at this stage that I had the fortune of meeting Miska Kaijanus, a highly gifted stand-up comic and Improvisation artist with a background in acting. Not only did Miska approach each role with layers of nuances, but he turned a room of virtual strangers into a veritable acting troupe. Schooled on a large variety of shows from all over the world, Miska was the new generation of performing artist - one that complemented all his formal training with incessant viewing of the best artists globally. Downloading, watching you-tube, grabbing names and techniques off the internet, he had groomed himself into the type of performer who competed with the very best on a daily basis. He was familiar with what was going on and relentless in his pursuit of excellence. Waitering his way through California, he fearlessly hit the comedy clubs of LA as a total unknown just to get a better sense of what he was up against and where he was headed. Not content on working in one genre or even in one language, he threw himself whole-heartedly into performing in both English and Finnish, careening from stand-up to improv to music-based parody. The result was a distinctive voice with a unique ability to create an insular micro-universe around himself that was, nevertheless, accessible to all those who desired to enter. It is both his highly punctuated and precisely timed moments as well as his utter sensitivity to spontaneously react to what is around him that allows him to maximize on a given situation.

If there are successfully directed moments in many of the sketches, they owe as much to Miska's vision as they do to the respective directors involved with the show. It was Miska’s interdisciplinary approach – with its grasp of acting, directing and even writing – that gave him both an understanding of what each role entailed, as well as the language with which to communicate these aspects to the other actors. And, it is precisely this kind of range that makes Improvisational Artists a very necessary component of many shows.

It is a pleasure to note that along with hundreds of other improvisational actors that were performing at one of the eight venues for this year’s DCM 16, Miska Kajanus took to the stage in the company of the VSOP improv group,(known in NY simply as Team Finland). With a cast that included New York trained Ulla Virtanen (American Academy of Dramatic Arts and UCB), Tuuka Tiihonen, Jussu Puhakka, Sanna Saarela and Katja Lappi, the performance entitled That Day in Finland proved both fascinating and highly entertaining to all those who haven’t managed to see Finland’s upcoming generation of improv talents.

With artists traveling from all over the world to perform what often amounts to no more than 15 minutes of stage time, the Del Close Marathon is non-stop weekend of 24 hours a day performances – one whose diversity and flair ensures that that there are many dedicated audience members capable of watching runs from morning to night to morning again. With brilliant writers like Chris Gethard, Key and Peele, Nick Kroll, Thomas Middleditch, Ben Schwartz, Diamond Lion, Jason Mantzoukas, BriTANick, Broad City cast members,and plenty of musical improv, the enactments are bound to possess both élan and staying power. In addition to longfrom improv by UCB that may include special guests from SNL, 30 Rock and the Colbert Report, ASSSSCAT 3000 – with legendary Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts and Matt Besser – will once again be closing the festival.

In tune with the 1960’s communal zeitgeist, Del Close was convinced that art could be done ‘by committee’ – by a group that worked like an organism in much the same way a single human brain functions but exponentially better. Under his tutelage, actors would take a suggestion from the audience and play out improvisations. These small set-ups would eventually give birth to elaborate structures where parts would naturally echo one another, motifs would recur and themes would rhyme. For Del, every word spoken, every action undertaken was part of an emotional game meant to manipulate someone; his art form – which he likened to a sport in terms of the audience routing for success – allowed those attending to see otherwise innocent moments in their own lives as the heavily veiled bearers of deeper subliminal concerns. If Dem 16 is anything to go by, it is clear that the need for communally witnessing the unplanned interaction between human beings has not dissipated over the years. Judging by the turnout, The internet age has people craving art that is live and spontaneous more than ever. Though Close’s last wish to have his skull used in place of Yorick’s was not honored, the thoughts that drifted within throughout his lifetime have an entire festival bearing his name as their living edifice: ‘Alas, poor Del, it seems your contributions are still known – a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.’