There's little in common between Les Paul, the 91-year-old guitarist-inventor-ranconteur, in residence at Iridium on Monday nights for the past 10 years, and Grendel, the operatic extravaganza that had a four night premier at the Lincoln Center Festival. But both being onstage during a single midsummer week, they demonstrate how vast the range of NYC's music is.
Les Paul, a legend to anyone interested in American jazz and pop, guitars and studio wizardry, is a modest, laconic man. Grendel, to which broad and adventurous listeners like jazzers might turn for a taste of new, ambitious music theater, was monstrously grand.
To Les Paul, laughter and music are a bonded balm. In his easy-going stage shows with an expert though self-deprecating quartet he exhibits the casual yet generous wit of an old-school radio host. No shock jock, he perches on a stool, plays old favorites, talks about his days with Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, jokes with the band and, during the set I saw, interviewed the mayor of Waukesha onstage without embarrassing the man. He's a mensch, and everybody who comes leaves happy.
Grendel, poor thing, as written by poet J.D. McClatchy and portrayed by Eric Owens, was a kvetchy, stag-horned lonely bass, a black man in a rag-picker's overcoat with two hours of atonal angst composed by Eliot Goldenthal to sing. A large supporting cast includes three Shadow Grendels, a harpist-bard, a dancing Beowulf and a hot soprano ice-queen who delivers a stunning aria while gliding in slo-mo across the stage.
Director Julie Taymor's fantastic stagecraft is really the reason to see Grendel, but must contemporary opera also be tuneless? I s'pose so. Goldenthal, best known for film soundtracks, wrote lots of backgrounds and special effects and relentless vocal lines, yet his score seldom works up fervor to equal the potential poignancy or power of the opera's themes. McClatchy's libretto gives Grendel soul-searching and rage, plus vaudeville schtick. It's opera; please, more shock and awe, fewer dumb jokes.
Still, Grendel did up fiercely what jazz and most world, rock or pop doesn't even attempt by presenting an extended, multi-layered narrative in something like a coherent, original form. It's never been jazz's function to provide lengthy spectacle. Fact is, we don't come to our idiomatic genres for excess so much as essence. We want intimacy and familiarity refreshed by performances acknowledging the immediate occasion.
The greats of jazz have often been outsized personalities with striking, expressive concepts, but even when they've been quiet or shy or troubled, they've captured our attentions without the extras. Their music, like Les Paul's, speaks to us directly and addresses us where we live: in clubs, ballrooms, house parties, street parades and the Internet.
Praise Lincoln Center and all other presenters with resources to put on $2.8 million multi-media shows, 20 years in preparation. Trust the Les Pauls, wicked clever and musical, too, to send everyone home happy.
