La Jolla Music Society concert featured pianist Conrad Tao and dancer Caleb Teicher in a dazzling collaboration
On Friday, the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest took an unusual turn with a program called “Synergy: Counterpoint II” that brought tap dancer Caleb Teicher on stage with pianist Conrad Tao, at times assisted by a string quartet.
Tap dance and chamber music? It got even stranger than that with an instrumental arrangement of the complete Act II Finale to Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro” that backed Teicher’s time steps.
Yet if you could set aside notions of musical purity, the merging of high and low art throughout the evening was magical. Above all, the sincerity of Tao’s and Teicher’s respect for a wide range of styles, and their masterly executions, dissolved any barriers that might separate Bach or Mozart from buck-and-wing hoofing.
This was not Tao and Teicher’s first appearance in the society’s Baker-Baum Concert Hall. They gave a memorable concert there two years ago, with many of those numbers carrying over into “Counterpoint II.”
Both shows opened and closed with Bach’s Aria from the “Goldberg Variations,” delicately danced by Teicher. Once more Tao’s rendition of Art Tatum’s dazzling interpretation of “Cherokee” was enhanced by Teicher’s joyful choreography, and their conception of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” stopped the show.
Again Tao played the Waltz from Schoenberg’s 5 Pieces for Piano, op. 23, which Tao pointed out combined the 12-tone technique of composition with that most popular of Viennese genres, a waltz — high art meets low art. Tao’s reading was very dramatic. Teicher sat on the sidelines for this, but in the pause between Schoenberg and Tatum, he slowly extended one foot above the wood platform, bringing it down with the first chord of “Cherokee” in a wonderful transition.
The highlight of the new material was the aforementioned arrangement of “Figaro.” Tao was inspired by musicologist Wye Jamison Allanbrook, who argued that Mozart used dance forms in his operas which provided information about his characters.
In taking away the vocal parts, the underlying dance music became clear in Tao’s arrangement for piano and string quartet. At times Teicher’s gestures evoked different characters, most noticeably the Count, but in general his sympathetic choreography captured the mood of each number, highlighting what Tao described as Mozart’s “demented” music.
The additional musicians were Blake Pouliot and Rebecca Benjamin on violin; Matthew Lipman, viola; and Paul Wiancko, cello. Tao and the quartet were splendid, and with Teicher’s limber dancing, 19 minutes zipped by, every phrase and gesture a delight.
Teicher had two solo pieces. Following intermission, he asked the audiences to call out numbers from 1 to 8, and improvised a dance using groupings of 3 and 6, as well as 2 and 7. He invited the audience to clap along with him in the final measures.
On the first half, he performed choreography that Nic Gareiss transcribed from a 1965 film of Appalachian folklorist Bascom Lamar Lunsford demonstrating square dance steps. As Lunsford did, Teicher called out the steps while performing them.
“Procession,” a collaboration by Tao and Teicher, began with Teicher stomping and clapping out rhythms, prompting music reminiscent of Keith Jarrett. Tao returned the clapping, which went back and forth between the two over the jazzy music.
A selection of dances from Bernstein’s “West Side Story” brought the string quartet back on stage in the second half (with Njioma Grevious replacing Benjamin on violin). Tao’s arrangements were effective, the musicianship superb, with Teicher’s dancing nicely complementary.
After the final bars of Bach’s “Aria” (in an uncredited arrangement for piano) brought Teicher to rest, the audience jumped to its feet to show their enthusiasm for this most extraordinary evening.