In an earnest, fitfully engaging, though overstuffed show at the University of California, Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, pianist and emcee Lara Downes assembled a cast of fellow performers to address the titular theme This Land: Reflections on America.
In addition to the musicians — New Orleans poet and vocalist Tarriona “Tank” Ball, the Texas fiddle-and-banjo quartet Invoke, the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, and legendary singer/songwriter Judy Collins — everyday Americans Downes has met on her travels offered recorded remarks about their notions of freedom, justice, and liberty as the nation’s 250th birthday approaches. The Saturday, May 9 production closed the Cal Performances spring season.
Downes, who spent much of the evening at the keyboard, was This Land’s musical pillar. Both on her own and in sensitive partnering with the other musicians, she enriched everything she touched. Whether digging into a set of complex variations, swinging into ragtime mode, or moving gracefully in a singer’s groove, she displayed her formidable, discriminating performance chops.
That was apparent right away, in the heightening chord progressions and fresh harmonies she brought to Paul Simon’s “America.” When the four amiable and versatile members of Invoke joined her for Willie Nelson’s “Changing Skies,” the byplay was lithe and lively. Downes riffed slyly on an offer tossed in by the double bass. Here and elsewhere banjo player Nick Montopoli made his instrument sing — a welcome change from the customary finger-picking and strumming.
The show’s longest and craggiest number came next, featuring Iranian American composer Kian Ravei’s piano solo Variations on This Land Is Your Land, played with range and intensity by Downes. Stated briefly, the strophic Woody Guthrie melody was submitted to a sequence of inventive and increasingly stormy reckonings. They began with a witty, pixilated variation of single widely spaced notes and ended close to turbulent Charles Ives territory, the original coast-to-coast celebratory tune by then barely detectable.
Was Ravei interrogating the aspirational notion that “This land belongs to you and me?” Just what is meant by “you and me,” one couldn’t help thinking, in a purported union that has and continues to marginalize, victimize, and terrorize certain groups and individuals?
Downes, who hosts the NPR program AMPLIFY with Lara Downes, and who plans to mount a multipart “Declaration Project” at New York’s Lincoln Center in July, was not about to let clouds linger for very long. Both in her programming and her occasional remarks to the audience, she emphasized the need for hope and high spirits, especially in troubled times. Her bright, multicolored dress matched the mood.
So did her interview subjects, whose photographs were projected on a screen as their recorded statements rolled. One after another offered anodyne remarks about freedom, justice, and the pursuit of happiness that might as well have been scripted by artificial intelligence. Only the child who vowed, “I’m never going to give up on my dreams of football” sounded spontaneous and authentic.
If the sum effect of these Reflections on America was thinly upbeat — the show closed with a trifecta of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” “Oh Happy Day,” and an audience singalong of “This Little Light of Mine” — there was some shadowy depth of field. Downes and Invoke joined forces for a mordant, slow-paced account of Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More.” Downes made a case for the Black composer Margaret Bonds (1913-1972), on her own in “Troubled Water” and with the Interfaith Choir in the spiritual-infused number “Hold On.” Ball contributed a pair of fiery protest poems, partly spoken and partly sung.
Collins, resplendent in a dark sequined costume, got a big cheer from the crowd when she came onstage after intermission. Audience members old enough to remember her in her luminous prime must have felt a special pulse of sentimental recollection. Collins fed it with remarks about her decades-long friendship with Joan Baez and crushing on Leonard Cohen when they first met. At 87, unsurprisingly, her singing voice is a tattered ghost of what it was. She made her way through two of her own songs and one by Cohen – the memory-tugging “Suzanne By The River.”
As the two-and-half-hour mark approached, Downes and Invoke seemed as vital as ever. Their variegated lights were shining on.
