In the absence of a production photo, my past two reviews for The Volume have featured headshots of several musicians involved in each concert. There was the Faust in their Class block of soloists from ASO’s Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust (the highlight of an otherwise underdeveloped gem), and then today there was the double-feature review of the NY Phil’s Contact! and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s all-Ravel program. With two great programs, it seemed silly not to highlight both through the conduits of Sean Shepherd and Sasha Cooke.
However, looking at these two reviews side-by-side (or at least in close proximity), it sort of looks like wedding announcements. The boy girl/boy girl symmetry intimates, on whatever minute level, the possibility of matching these artists up. Maybe that would be better imagery, like the Spaghetti Baby lawyer in Ugly Americans. Perhaps readers would be less immune to Hanan Alattar’s fierce beauty if it was combined with Michael Spyres’s boyish good looks and infantized (with, apparently, really long and creepy hair):
Or think of how compelling the Faust tale would be if Andrew Schroeder’s Doctor and Twyla Robinson’s Gretchen were morphed onstage, an ocular representative of their child born out of wedlock (and later killed by its mother when Faust dumps her):
Though I think hands-down the cutest coupling was Sasha and Sean. And damn would that kid be musical:
Start filling out the Juilliard apps now.
