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Pianist Bruce Vogt will present Saturday Night at The Movies and Songs of Consolation for our Distracted Times at a pair of performances slated for this coming weekend.
Vogt will be performing as part of the Kingston Road Village Concert Series. Both performances are at Kingston Road United Church, 975 Kingston Rd.
On Saturday, Feb. 21, Vogt will present Saturday Night at The Movies at which he will play the piano to accompany four classic short films. The films are by Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Saturday Night at The Movies starts at 7:30 p.m. And, yes, there will be popcorn!
On Sunday, Feb. 22, at 2 p.m., Vogt will present Songs of Consolation for our Distracted Times. The concert will feature works by Debussy, Schubert, Rameau and Chopin.
A professor of piano at the University of Victoria, Vogt has toured internationally as both a soloist and chamber musician.
Vogt was kind enough to send the following to Beach Metro Community News in advance of his upcoming performances this weekend. It is a “fictional interview” of Vogt by “AI generated music critic” Dr. Thomas Gradgrind.
Below is the fictional Gradgrind’s fictional interview:
On Tuesday, January 12th, I called upon the self-styled iconoclast musician, Bruce Vogt. He welcomed me to his home, which consists of a fourth-floor garret in a factory building, one which restores Wurlitzer organs (and which is over top of the city’s flagship Tim Hortons).
The living space is dominated by bookshelves everywhere and on the far wall there is an enormous cartoon portrait of Frédéric Chopin and Buster Keaton eyeing each other warily.
After accepting his offer for some rather unappetizing hot liquid he insisted was black tea, I sat down with him for the following interview.
TG: Your recital programme has a rather dark title. You refer to ‘these distracted times.’ What are you referring to?
BV: What am I not referring to!? To the distraction of violence throughout the world. To the distraction of ‘Alternative truths’ applied to almost everything of substance. And then there are the constant online distractions which we all succumb to, to some degree.
TG: And your recital will provide consolation?
BV: I’d like to hope that these compositions – written in other dark times in our world’s histories – will indeed provide consolation. And perhaps it can be consoling to be reminded of our civilizations’ many great cultural achievements – in music as in all the arts.
TG: I hope you’ll excuse me for saying this. But it may be confusing for many – it’s a bit confusing to me – that you can, on the one hand, play music of such seriousness and depth. And then turn around and improvise for what? A bunch of old comic films from more than 100 years ago. Some might wonder how serious you are in the end.
Before responding, Vogt sighed, shook his head in disbelief and could be heard muttering: ‘give me strength’… And then, after a prolonged deep breath he exhaled and began.
BV: Let me try to enlighten you! First of all, these “bunch of old comic films” – as you call them – were created by some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. And comedy, at its greatest – which it is with these films – can be very much as serious as dramatic art. These films come from a golden age of film-making. A period when film, lacking dialogue, experimented in all sorts of wonderful ways with visual potential.
TG: But on the one hand, you are offering a recital of carefully prepared notated music. Presumably you spent many months – perhaps more – preparing that programme. And then you are simply going to turn around and improvise…
BV: [interrupting]: Simply improvise?! You think improvising is always simple?. These films always had musical accompaniments and often the accompanist on piano or organ would be obliged to improvise. My preparation is not in preparing a score, but in getting to know the films intimately through repeated viewings. And more generally, it’s about getting to know the language of the period. Popular music, early jazz, light classics, parlour songs. But whether playing a recital or playing for these films, it’s my goal to disappear – into the music in the case of a recital. Into the film in the case of accompanying.
TG: But how do you see yourself in the end? A serious interpreter of great art? Or are you more a servant to a bunch of old movies?
BV: [Heatedly] Being a servant to great art?!!! – it’s clear you are not ready to understand what a great artist Chaplin is. Keaton. Harold Lloyd. Come and see these films and then perhaps you can begin to abandon your tiresome prejudices.
TG: I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ll certainly look forward with great enthusiasm to the recital. And maybe I’ll bring my kids to the movies the night before.
BV: Perhaps your kids can lead you to enlightenment. A daunting task I’m afraid. But one of the joys of these films is in their powerful appeal to people of all ages and levels of experience with film. Whether aficionados or casual film viewers. It seems no one is immune to their joyful seductive power. You, of course, may be a rare exception.
TG: Well, this has been of real interest. Thank you for your time.
BV: You’re welcome – and I trust you are feeling somewhat more enlightened.
And with that he turned away from me and picked up a book – a large volume called: The Silent Clowns. I was left to make my own way down the many stairways and out into the snow-covered night.
For ticket information on Vogt’s performances this weekend, please go to https://www.eventbrite.ca/o/kingston-road-village-concert-series-17790346760
