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MOTÈMA MUSIC TO REISSUE BETTINA JONIC'S GROUNDBREAKING LP, THE BITTER MIRROR, IN CD AND DIGITAL FORMATS
November 9 Release of Long Out-of-Print 1975 Album Features 22 Songs by Bertolt Brecht and Bob Dylan, Interpreted by Extraordinary Vocalist
"This is Brecht performed in the highest musical and theatrical order, Dylan as he has NEVER been heard before or since. The combination of the two is all Jonic."
Robert Shelton, The Times of London, 1975
Bettina Jonic's extraordinary and theatrical recording, The Bitter Mirror, was originally performed at the Royal Court Theater in London in 1975. This historically potent work of musical art resonates as powerfully today as it did when it first debuted. On November 9, 2010, Motèma Music will re-release this long out-of- print recording, making it available for the first time in CD and digital format. Jonic's brilliant juxtaposition of twenty-two incendiary compositions by Bob Dylan and Bertolt Brecht will also mark the second release in Motema's new audiophile series curated by Peabody-Award winning broadcaster Jim Luce. All 22 tracks will be available as high resolution downloads on HDtracks.com. A collectors' edition on 180 gram vinyl is also planned.
Jonic's detailed and dramatic explorations of Brecht have led prominent critics to suggest that that in certain ways she surpassed the better-known Lotte Lenya as a premier interpreter of Bertolt Brecht. She has received standout reviews in Europe, Great Britain and New York for the sheer power and intelligence of her approach. Critic Robert Shelton (famed for writing the glowing 1961 New York Times review Bob Dylan at Gerde's Folk City which gave the fledgling songwriter his first major break), noted in his Times of London review of 1975 Jonic's "rare sensibility'" and "uncommon intelligence," and lauded her "brilliant, innovating approach to the complex world of two seminal songwriters."
Such praise is not uncommon for Jonic, a world renowned operatic and theatrical performer and director, famed most for her interpretations of Straus, Mozart and Brecht, and for her seminal work with experimental theater guru Peter Brook and as the long time Director of Actor/Singer Development at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.
Andrew Porter of the Financial Times of London, once summed up Bettina's talents as follows: "As an opera singer she can really 'sing' the music: as a sensitive interpreter, she does not merely 'sing' it when it needs to be declaimed, acted, projected. She commands many moods, and she can set them with the droop of a shoulder, or one flash from her big, confiding eyes..." In review of Jonic's successful touring act, "The Musical World of Brecht," Dan Sullivan, of The New York Times extolled "She displayed a thoroughly trained and beautifully calibrated mezzo-soprano voice with a dramatic low register and a rich fine freedom even at the very top. A voice that could easily turn from Schubert to Hugo Wolf to Richard Straus." Sullivan also makes a point that in comparison to Lotte Lenya, Jonic had, in certain ways, an upper hand in handling the material.
Under the spell of Jonic's vocal mastery and radical interpretation, the words of these two key twentieth century lyricists, Brecht and Dylan, unite into a timeless voice against human atrocity holding up to life "The Bitter Mirror" so that we might truly consider the effects of both explicit and implicit participation in war, violence and bigotry. Thirty-five years after the release of The Bitter Mirror as an LP in 1975 - and nearly a century after Brecht began writing - the messages embodied in of these songs remain as urgent today they were in Brecht's Nazi-era Germany and Dylan's Viet Nam War-era America.
In her brief liner notes for The Bitter Mirror, Jonic writes "I conceived the idea for Brecht/Dylan in Lisbon, Portugal, during the events of April/May 1974. My hotel was situated between the secret police headquarters and the civil guard, and for three days was surrounded by tanks and fully armed troops, Ten days after the events I did my all Brecht evening. This was the first uncensored performance in Portugal in 48 years. And the texts were of such an actualité to the Portuguese that I felt I had to find a formula to take people out of the comfort of relating to the past, or someone else's 'flash points.' Thus was born Brecht/Dylan." The first performance of Brecht/Dylan, was staged on December 15, 1975 at the Royal Court Theater in London, and The Bitter Mirror was released as a two LP set the following year.
Around that same time, Jonic approached Dylan about performing The Bitter Mirror with her at the Edinburg Festival. Although Dylan declined, he did uncharacteristically take the time to personally send a hand-written note to Jonic, commenting "I like your idea and I wish you luck. If I can be of any help, let me know." Dylan worshipers may find Jonic's approach a bit blasphemous, but the fact that Dylan himself appreciated Bettina's concept hopefully will inspire them to open their minds so that they may appreciate the many layers of meaning and sensitivity that she brings to Dylan's poeticism.
"Our chance to re-release of The Bitter Mirror this year on Motèma is the result of a bit of 'Google serendipity.'" explains Jana Herzen, A&R director and President of Motèma, who is a performer in her own right. "Last year, I developed an urge to create an arrangement of Brecht's 'Pirate Jenny' for solo guitar and voice, so I Googled the words 'Brecht Pirate Jenny' in order to find the lyrics and was astounded to see Bettina Jonic's name come up on my screen. My heart jumped. I had not seen Bettina in over 30 years.. She had been my very first acting and vocal coach, and was highly influential to my development as a performer and producer. I had met Bettina through Morag Hood, a leading London actress whom I often refer to as my 'art mother' (as opposed to my real mother who is a scientist.)" It was Morag (and through her, Bettina) who really gave me my initiation into the world of professional theater when I spent a year with them in London in 1976."
The Bitter Mirror marks Motèma's first re-issue and also the label's first foray into a form that unites elements of theater, cabaret, jazz and opera with the folk music and 'broadsheet' traditions that influenced both Brecht and Dylan.
Herzen goes on to explain that when she clicked on the Google link showing Bettina's name, she found herself at an obscure post on a Bob Dylan fan site in search of anyone who might be interested in a re-issue of a one woman show of songs by Brecht and Dylan. Thirty-five years earlier Herzen had heard songs from the show while sitting in Bettina's Covent Garden studio, but she regretted that she'd never actually had the chance to see the show. "Excited at the chance to at least hear the recording, I wrote back to her son-in-law, who had posted the query, and suggested that he mention me to Bettina, and let her know that I now had a label, and perhaps I might well be interested in putting out a re-issue. A day later, an email arrived from Bettina, and a fascinating chain of correspondence ensued, in which we caught up with each other, and I learned that Bettina continues to perform and write and is in the throes of completing a memoir, titled 'With and Without Sam ' in which she poetically documents three-decades of friendship and artistic companionship with the great wordsmith, Samuel Beckett.
"In short order, when a copy of The Bitter Mirror LP arrived in the mail, I found myself deeply moved by the beauty of her phenomenal performance and also by the top notch recording quality, and I realized it would be a perfect time for the world at large to get a chance to hear this great work."
In this tumultuous century, already marked by the destruction of the World Trade Center, two major wars in the Middle East, and countless international conflicts, it is sadly clear that the harsh realities reflected in The Bitter Mirror are unremitting. The timeless messages of outrage and protest, conveyed in the words of Bertolt Brecht and Bob Dylan, as distilled to a potent essence by Jonic, sadly illustrate the oft-cited truth spoken by 19th century critic, journalist and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr: "The more things change, the more they remain the same."
Herzen concludes, "The only hope for evolution beyond violence is to awaken true compassion. One path to that lofty goal is through deep introspection and fearless moral inventory that can lead the path to true insight. Jonic's The Bitter Mirror is designed to reveal that very path, and Motèma is proud to bring it out, and shine it up so it may effectively reflect a fresh light on our times."
More about Bettina Jonic
Raised in Los Angeles by Croatian parents, Bettina Jonic studied ballet for 10 years in California with Theodore Kosloff and Bronislava Nijenska, and music and singing at the Mozarteum in Salzburg,Vienna's Academy of Music and the Paris Conservatory of Music. She made her singing debut at the Festival d'Aix en Provence, and went on to work in various international opera houses, where she specialized in the work of Mozart and Richard Strauss, and to perform at festivals in Edinburgh, Holland, Adelaide and Paris. She extended her singing career through the works of Bertolt Brecht, becoming the doyenne of a new generation of Brechtian interpreters.
Her developmental work includes her own Actors Work Group in London, and collaborations with Peter Brook in Lisbon and Paris, the latter being a production of The Tragedy of Carmen in the 1981-82 season at the Thèatre des Bouffes du Nord. She created Actor/Singer Development at the Royal Opera House in 1980, and under the aegis of the ROH, founded "The Little Garden" in 1985, to further accommodate this work. This led to the establishment of an International Actor/Singer Performance Research Centre in 1988. Performances included Macbeth (with Monstrous Regiment at the Donmar), Othello/Otello, and Ghost Games with Lulu (ROH).
Jonic has written the text for various music/theatre pieces including Lorca (Edinburgh Festival),The Wheel (Camden Festival) andThe Ladies (The Little Garden production at the Artaud Theatre). In addition to The Bitter Mirror, she has created many original works for herself, including Brecht and His Composers, Marie Antoinette meets Elinor Rigby, Denim Blues, Anna of the Seven Deadly Sins, A French Love Affair, and Journey into Exile. She has had two poetry collections published: Briefs (Covent Garden Press) and Deja Vu(Arfuyen Press, Paris). Jonic is in the final stages of writing With and Without Sam:Volumes One and Two, based on the letters she received from Samuel Beckett, with whom she maintained a long friendship. An excerpt from With and Without Sam was published in the summer of 2010 in the prestigious literary publication, The London Magazine.
Her creative force is on going and vital - she is currently at work on two new projects: a juxtaposition of Beckett's Happy Days with Austrian composer Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck (Beckett used the Berg as his template when writing Happy Days) and a fusion of Oscar Wilde's moving essay on spirituality and suffering (written while he was in Redding Gaol), De Profundis with Beckett's final prose piece, Stirrings Still.
Motèma is slated to record both projects in 2011, for release in association with Jonic's memoire about Beckett.
