Review: How the Wisdom of Elders Influenced Musicians Davone Tines and Jennifer Koh in EVERYTHING RISES at BAM

In EVERYTHING RISES--a one-hour performance piece from African American bass-baritone Davone Tines and Korean American violinist Jennifer Koh that had its East Coast premiere last week as part of BAM's Next Wave series--we see these two virtuoso musicians take control of their careers.

With the aid of director Alexander Gedeon; music and libretto by Ken Ueno (and, of course, the input of the performers); and dramaturg Kee-Yoon Nahm, we go inside the creative processes and comfort levels of Tines and Koh that let them perform as they want, not as they are wanted.

It reminded me of the panel discussion that preceded BLACK LODGE at the recent Philadelphia Opera 022 Festival, in which composer David T. Little talked about the difference between art and entertainment. With art, you tell the audience what you want them to hear; with entertainment, you give them what they want to hear. In the performance at the intimate BAM Fisher space, the emphasis was certainly on art.

Here, we see Tines--who was just named BAM's latest artist-in-residence--and Koh morph from being followers to leaders, from being forced into the mold of the Eurocentric classical music world they inherited as fledglings to one where they have control over what they play, what they wear, how they look at what they're doing and how audiences see them.

(I went in more familiar with Tines, whom I interviewed when he did a musical-theatre/opera piece based on Langston Hughes' poem, THE BLACK CLOWN, at Mostly Mozart in 2019. Even at that time, pre-Covid, he estimated that he spent 75% of his time with new works, creating a number of major roles.)

Of course, they haven't done this by themselves. There are composers and writers, directors and dramaturgs who have provided tools for them. Ueno's score, for instance, skillfully weaves elements of Asian and Western music with more modern genres, but I thought his resetting of the Billie Holliday classic, "Strange Fruit," not really necessary, though the lyrics remain as devastating as ever.

Yet for Tines and Koh, these quintessential interpreters, it is the memories of family matriarchs--his grandmother, her mother--who have provided the emotional heft to their careers (and, indeed, the evening), through memories and family history. These two strong women, Alma Lee Gibbs Tines and Gertrude Soonja Lee Koh, are front and center in the piece through video, which is both a strength and weakness of the evening, making it often seem like a work in progress.

I felt that Tines and Koh, along with their collaborators, needed to figure out how to pay tribute to these women who paved the path for them, without allowing them to dominate the evening, as I thought they did. The elders' stories of discrimination and displacement made them an incredibly powerful presence in the performance. Yes, the performers had the opportunity to speak in their own voices about their own struggles but the stories of the matriarchs were, well, a hard act to follow.

EVERYTHING RISES was an interesting glimpse inside the price that musicians of color pay for being allowed to be who they are--and how that price stays with them even when they succeed.

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