Monthly Archives: March 2017

When WGN Americas drama Underground debuted last winter, it seemed like a cultural outlier. Stories from the Underground Railroad had long been relegated to nonfiction or the broad and simplistic brushstrokes of children's books. Even as stories about the horrors of oppression (12 Years a Slave) and the civil rights movement (42, Selma, All the Way) entered the mainstream, the Underground Railroad remained overlooked.

Lately, however, slaves flight to freedom has became a jumping off point for an array of creative endeavors. A few weeks after Underground, with its soundtrack curated by executive producer John Legend, came Barbara Hambly's mystery novel, Drinking Gourd, and Robert Morgan's escape saga, Chasing the North Star. Last summer Ben Winters counterfactual noir novel, Underground Airlines, hit bestseller lists; then came Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, the year's National Book Award winner for fiction.

In the fall, the surreal and subversive Underground Railroad Game opened to rapturous reviews off-Broadway. (The New York Times called it in-all-ways sensational.) Set in the present, the play depicts two teachers, one white and one black, stumbling along the treacherous path of educating children about slavery and racial oppression.

The topic hasn't been explored enough so I'm not surprised people are finding new and different angles, says Underground co-creator Joe Pokaski.

This month brings a new season of Underground, the opening of the National Park Services Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center in Cambridge, Md., and Through Darkness to Light, a photographic essay of the Underground Railroad by Jeanine Michna-Bales. The Underground River, a novel by Martha Conway, hits in June, and Viola Davis is developing a Tubman film for HBO.

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The Underground Railroad came at a time when our country was so polarized that there was no understanding on either side so the fascination with it now might be because we're back in that situation, says Michna-Bales, adding that the movement also blurred lines, bringing together white and black, and people from different religions and socioeconomic groups, while also giving women previously unheard of roles in public life. Her pictures aim to provide a first-person perspective on what a slave would have seen on the long and dangerous journey north.

Many more slaves actually attempted escape without the aid of the Underground Railroad, at least initially. The phrase Underground Railroad first appeared around 1839 but slaves had, naturally, been trying to escape since the implementation of this horrific institution. Many initially tried for Mexico or the Caribbean. Historians estimate that the railroad helped 30,000 to 100,000 (of the millions of enslaved blacks) to escape to Canada. But for the most part the railroad really ventured only about 100 miles into the South, so the first season of the TV series and Morgan's novel also explore the experience of slaves running without outside help.

Underground co-creator Misha Green puts all these new works in the larger context of publishers and producers recognizing the value artistically and commercially in stories about minorities, from the Roots remake to Oscar best-picture winner Moonlight. She points particularly to ones with characters seizing control of their own narrative, whether thats Straight Outta Compton or Hidden Figures. Indeed, last year also begat a movie (Birth of a Nation) and a play (Nathan Alan Davis Nat Turner in Jerusalem) about Turner's slave uprising.

Author Morgan, a professor at Cornell University, says the trend's roots stretch back decades.

Fiction is the way we learn about others, he says, pointing to waves of groups laying down their markers, from Southern writers in the 1930s to Jewish writers in the decades after World War II. The original 'Roots' was the building block and writers like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and August Wilson then paved the way, he says, so that these Underground Railroad stories are a natural evolution.

I think it's a good thing any time people are interested in history, says Eric Foner, a leading scholar of 19th century America, whose 2015 book, Gateway to Freedom, focused on the Underground Railroad. Foner understands artists taking liberties with the facts, and he admires Whitehead's fantastical creation of an actual railroad that runs underground. It's fantasy but Whitehead also gives a kaleidoscope of black history. It's very informed.

Most of the current projects began a few years ago, so Green says the zeitgeist partially reflects the rise of the tea party and birther movement followed by the spate of police shootings and the birth of Black Lives Matter.

These stories, like police brutality, have always existed but now the public might finally be primed and open to step outside its own orthodoxy and turn its gaze to them, adds Underground Railroad Game co-writer and costar Jennifer Kidwell.

Even as these stories make history more accessible to mainstream audiences, theyre refusing to whitewash the grim realities, striving instead to demolish the traditional narrative. This is not your grandfather's history that helps paint a rosier picture of historical atrocities, says Scott Sheppard, co-writer and costar of Underground Railroad Game, which will tour to as-yet-undetermined destinations in late 2017 and 2018.

We often use narratives as balms to sooth our concerns and fears about where we are now, Sheppard adds. The number of escaped slaves is minuscule compared to the systematic destruction of the millions of lives throughout slavery's history, so we want to remove that layer of romanticism and make everyone question their beliefs and values in as destabilizing a way as possible.

The effects of and resistance to that oppression and the lasting legacy are a foundation of who we are as a people.

Ben Winters, author of "Underground Airlines"

Underground may be slickly produced adventure TV yet one main character after another gets recaptured or killed. In Drinking Gourd, protagonist Benjamin January, a thoughtful and well-educated free black man, reflects on how he has come to hate virtually every white person, especially after learning the white abolitionist he encounters rapes the girls he helps to freedom. Whitehead's and Winters' novels are even darker.

Underground Airlines takes place in the present but imagines a world that had no Civil War, where slavery was only gradually abolished and where it still thrives in four Southern states. I'm hoping the book is a reminder of the presence of the past in our lives, says Winters, who connects a nation built on slavery to the institutionalized racism that persisted through Reconstruction and Jim Crow and that continues today. My alternative history isn't alternative enough.

Underground Railroad Game also ties the sins of America's past squarely to the present day.

Our play explores the myths of the white savior and of romanticized American history, Kidwell says. We just happened to set it against the Underground Railroad.

That is a recurring theme in interviews with the writers, especially those who are white.

It's important that these stories are not, 'Oh, these nice white people are helping these poor black slaves get away and are instead about free blacks and slaves taking agency, Hambly says.

In Winters novel, the idea of whites as nobles rescuing the helpless is derisively called the Mockingbird mentality, in reference to Harper Lee's Atticus Finch.

We are not just telling a black story, Winters says. Slavery is a story about white America; it's about the role that people who looked like me played and still play in oppressing people who look different. The effects of and resistance to that oppression and the lasting legacy are a foundation of who we are as a people.

Although these works were all conceived before Donald Trumps election, the current climate will influence the audiences perceptions. I reread my own book in November and it read differently, says Conway, whose book is about a Northern white woman dipping her toe in the water of activism. It's about how people change and how she went from being a bystander to a participant.

They will resonate differently, says musician Legend, who not only served as music curator and executive producer on Underground but also plays Frederick Douglass this season. We have a president who doesnt know anything about American history or black history, and people are starting to realize how important it is to understand our history so we can fight back.

Follow The Times arts team @culturemonster.

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A powerful symbol of resistance, the Underground Railroad inspires ... - Los Angeles Times

Rather than challenge racists, Mark Rutte has boosted their confidence. Geert Wilders and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters

In the Netherlands, the defeat of Geert Wilders anti-EU, anti-immigration, anti-Islam Freedom party is a pyrrhic victory. The cost of this victory was that the countrys centre-right party appropriated the rhetoric of Wilders to beat him. Mark Rutte, who leads the VVD party, which won the largest number of seats in the election, talked of something wrong with our country and claimed the silent majority would no longer tolerate immigrants who come and abuse our freedom.

Rather than challenge racists, Rutte has boosted their confidence, pouring arsenic into the water supply of Dutch politics. Hes been happy to play the tough guy as prime minister in the last week of the election campaign Rutte burnished his populist credentials through a fractious dispute with Turkey. He calculated it was in the interests of the Dutch prime minister to be tough on Turkey, and in the interests of the Turkish president to be tough on the Netherlands. He happily sparked a mini-international crisis for the sake of votes. Rutte said stopping Wilders was about stopping the wrong sort of populism. The Dutch prime minister will learn that he cant run the rhetoric of reaction; it will end up running him.

Dealing with the populists who deal in fear offers three options: ignore, co-opt or confront. The surging force in rightwing politics is a form of ethno-populism, driven by heightened concerns over immigration and terrorism. When the right adopts the far-rights language and policies, the only victory is for the hardliners. Supping with the devil can mean you enter the room as a guest and end up as dessert. Look at France, where Marine Le Pen could end up in the second round of the presidential election leading a party with no significant presence in the National Assembly. She would then have a chance to peel off members of the centre-right Republican party by offering the premiership and other ministerial posts in her putative government.

Power is enormously seductive. Just ask Donald Trump. He first upended the US Republican establishment and now sits atop it. In the White House Trump models himself on Americas first populist president, Andrew Jackson. Jacksonian America is a paranoid place: under siege, with its values undermined either by an elite cabal or by immigrants and its future under threat by arms of government that oppress voters rather than protect them. Even US neoconservatives, who thought they were advancing a liberal agenda through war, recoil from the noxious racism.

If recent history is any guide, trying to ignore rightwing populists and the issues they raise does not work

Trump, Wilders and Le Pen are all part of a pitchfork rebellion on the right. It is a historically novel conservative movement. Margaret Thatcher would never have attacked the British intelligence services, nor would Ronald Reagan have traduced the family of a US soldier killed in action.

If recent history is any guide, trying to ignore rightwing populists and the issues they raise does not work. The policy flip-flops over immigration while Ed Miliband was leading Labour revealed to voters a vacillating streak over an issue that was rising to the top of their concerns; the party lost ground. The Dutch Labour party in this election framed their anti-migration arguments as protecting workers but the partys real problem was that it was in coalition with the centre-right government until 2014 and pushed through painful cuts to pensions and healthcare. Voters have not forgiven it.

What is lacking here is context. Technology has helped populists frame their messages to appear more in tune with the zeitgeist than established political parties, at a time when globalization has made many feel insecure about their position in society.

Political parties, and the system of representative government, grew out of a more restrained politics, where voters decided which package of policies they wanted. With the rise of social media and single-issue campaigning, parties lost their monopoly on information. This at a time when people are more and more interested in single issues, causes and individual campaigns. These lend themselves to rightwing demagoguery, which trades in unsubstantiated claims.

The change in politics is happening as poorer workers see their governments not bothering to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Ahead of them are white-collar workers, who are frightened of being downsized themselves and are wary of paying taxes to provide benefits for anyone else.

In the Netherlands, which appears a competitive and productive economy, real household consumption is still lower than a decade ago. Only last year, the head of the governments think-tank said prosperity was not being widely shared and a yawning gap was opening up between old and young, white and non-white as well as lowly-qualified and highly qualified people. Kim Putters of the Dutch Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP) warned people were being left powerless and sought control over their lives. Sound familiar?

This is the bumpy terrain over which the populist tweeters including Le Pen, Wilders and Trump ride. They play on the idea that the system has failed and once elected only they will deal with problems: the non-whites, non-Christians and other cultural deviants along with the smug bureaucrats, lawyers and professors. Populist movements want to overturn constitutional governments so that the groups they define as enemies of the people can be targeted. Thats why they need to be confronted. Thats why the progressive success story of the Dutch elections was the Green Left party, whose leader Jesse Klaver preached the virtues of an open, fair society: stand for your principles, he told voters. Be straight. Be pro-refugee. Be pro-European. With 14 seats, he can play kingmaker in coalition talks.

Klaver, the 30-year-old son of an absentee Moroccan father and part-Indonesian mother, was canny enough to use social media and rallies to build support, but his breakthrough was largely down to the fact he was the anti-Wilders candidate. Klaver, who looks like Canadas Justin Trudeau and sounds like Americas Bernie Sanders, sold an optimistic vision of tolerance, equality and environmentalism, through a slick, web-driven campaign strategy. His message to Wilders: I want my country back. He was given to slapping bigots down, saying he had had enough of hate. In TV debates he told Wilders that Islam wasnt the problem in Holland, Wilders was. Klavers right: the way to take on the far-right is not to imitate racists but to fight them.

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Geert Wilders was beaten, but at the cost of fuelling racism in the Netherlands - The Guardian

Something There...

You should see Beauty and the Beastthis weekend. Even if you're a homophobe.

The film, finally released Friday, is still the same tale as old as timerefreshingly so, if you're a purist of the animated feature; questionably so, if that makes you wonder why Disney bothered with a live adaptation at all.

But there is, as you no doubt have heard, something there that wasn't there before: HOMOSEXUALITY!

No doubt the biggest controversy in the film world these past few weeks has surrounded a so-called "exclusively gay moment" that director Bill Condon has included in this feature. It would mark the first time there was an obviously gay character in a family Disney film.

The sidekick character LeFou, played by Josh Gad, would be struggling with his feelings for his strapping Alpha hero, Luke Evans's Gaston.

LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston," Condon said, in an interview with Attitude magazine.

He's confused about what he wants, he continued. It's somebody who's just realizing that he has these feelings. And Josh makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that's what has its payoff at the end, which I don't want to give away.

(We will give it away. SPOILERS below.)

The reveal made instant headlines.

Some cheered the progress toward inclusivity and representation. Some questioned the optics of making LeFou, a buffoonish, flamboyant, and nefarious joke character, the choice for the landmark moment. But the loudest, most ridiculous headlines detailed the backlash: boycotts, bans, and, most recently, Disney's refusal to edit out the moment in order to appease Malaysian censors.

Truth be told, the most exclusively gay moment in this new Beauty and the Beast is my dramatic eye roll after seeing the actual thing.

After all of the hullaballoo, you might expect LeFou to make his entrance in a codpiece while lip-synching to a Barbra Streisand show tune. Instead, you end up scrutinizing each scene like Tim Gunn inspecting a seam on Project Runway. And you breathe your Gunn-ian exasperated sigh after more and more time passes with nothing particularly gay happening.

Sure, LeFou offers a lingering gaze or two at Gaston, at one point even asking his strapping bud why he isn't happy with just the two of them palling around. At another point, he gets carried away in song and nuzzles himself into the crook of Gaston's neck, but the moment is too swept up in the musical comedy sequence to register as "gay."

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You begin to get annoyed, wondering if that's itif a slightly homophobic joke about Gaston being uncomfortable with LeFou hugging him is the moment. With so many red herrings by that point, you're not going to be satisfied until you see LeFou deep-throating a candlestick. Certainly you won't be satisfied with the actual moment when it arrives.

It comes during the grand finale, in the ballroom dance at the end of the film when everyone is human again.

It's one of those old-timey dances, where the men twirl the women and they change partners. In a roughly three-second cut, LeFou twirls his partner, but instead of another woman twirling into his personal space, it's a man. And they look at each other. And then the camera moves away.

If you had hopes and dreams about finally seeing gay inclusivity in a Disney film, you're furious.

If you had hopes and dreams of blaming Disney and its pro-gay agenda for the destruction of family and family entertainment, well, you're furious, too. Can you really hang a pitchfork campaign on a moment so slight that, were it not for weeks of press leading up to it, you probably wouldn't have even noticed?

Things like this are often called nontroversiesscandals that erupt over nothingbut this is more than that.

It exposes the giddy gusto with which the media will create a news vacuum, and suck us all into its void of hot takes and think pieces and talking-head arguments. Even after the film screened for critics and the gay emperor was exposed without his clothes, we still reported and debated that now-naked gay emperor.

Condon gave a statement regretting that so much ado had been made about the "exclusively gay moment." Actor Dan Stevens, who plays the Beast, decried to The Daily Beast that, I presume somebody somewhere thought it would drive a lot of traffic to their site, thats usually how these things start. For the love of god, even the voice actor who voiced LeFou in the animated film weighed in on the sexuality.

A second wave of press began mocking anyone who found the "gay moment" controversial. One comedy website's headline, in particularOutrage at Inclusion of Gay Character in Film About Woman-Buffalo Romancewent viral.

We became a goddamn singing candelabra, making a spectacle out of these non-news moments, parading them across the zeitgeist like dancing dishes and vaudeville teapots, inviting anti-gay and family-fretting critics to be our guest and feast on them.

And they are, happily. It's proof of a fallacy in terms of how much progress we think we've made in terms of LGBT acceptance and normalization and, more, an essential stop to making an effort like this again any time soon. (And, for the love of Lumiere, this was the smallest of small efforts.)

One character, who isnt a romantic lead in any way shape or form (and in fact might actually contribute to negative gay stereotypes), is given a hint of sexuality that reflects the real worldnot to mention, the real world of many Disney fansand it is treated with a hysteria akin to a terrorist bombing on the House of Mouse.

Were living in a time where the mere gesture of giving Cinderella or Belle a modicum of agency or feminist energy in these live-action updates is fretted over as if the decision may change the world as we know it. Given the backlash to LeFous groundbreaking three seconds of a man twirling into his general vicinity, its unlikely that any major studio will attempt something like this with a family film again.

Remember when there was a campaign to make Elsa a lesbian in the planned Frozen sequel? Well you canwait for itlet that one go. (Ba-da-ching.)

Its a shame, too, because Disney should by this point correct, or at least clarify, its alternately progressive and problematic history with gay themes.

For a LGBT, and especially questioning, community whose childhoods are so often defined by being a funny girldifferent from the rest of us and wondering when will my reflection show who I am inside, the messaging, the whimsical escape, and, for the love of Minnie, the camp of it all made the Disney vault a safe space.

For most of us, our first drag show was watching Ursula in The Little Mermaid. The Lion Kings Scar, Herculess Hades, Pocahontass Ratcliffe, Aladdins Jafar: these are all characters who are coded gay, meaning that they exhibit traits that are clues to their homosexuality, but not explicitly acknowledged. Elsas Let It Go in Frozen is considered a gay anthem.

But for all the erstwhile gayness of these animated musicals, theyre equally problematic. Gay panic, stereotypes, closeting, and equating homosexuality with perversion are as present in these films as any celebration of otherness or flamboyance.

For the oversell of the LeFou moment, maybe at least it was going to be a step forward for Disney.

LGBT rights groups like GLAAD have taken to speaking up against anti-Beauty and the Beast bans, saying, Film is one of Americas biggest exports, which is why LGBTQ representation in all-ages programming is incredibly important. These portrayals both help real LGBTQ youth to recognize they are not alone and know their identity is valid when they see someone they can recognize themselves in on-screen, especially in countries where being LGBTQ is criminalized.

Thats certainly true and valid, but mostly we still feel annoyed that this moment doesnt even seem worth the fuss of supporting. If Disney was going to take a step like this, make it one that deserves championing.

For all the strides we keep hearing are being made in terms of LGBTQ characters and portrayals in mainstream entertainment, this moment and the controversy surrounding it is a stark reminder of how dire the situation still is.

Even when ABC, for example, goes to the effort of airing the When We Rise miniseries about the gay civil rights movement in the U.S., its ratings are horrendous, hinting that an audience isnt willing to watch. Oh, and by the way, there still has not been an out gay actor whom Hollywood can unequivocally see as a leading man, in the classic sense.

For now, we can take comfort in knowing that this is hardly the gayest thing to happen to Beauty and the Beast. I present you to Disney Worlds dancing Gaston:

By the way, if homosexuality is all it takes to ruin your Disney entertainment experience, then I suggest you steer clear of Disney World in general, where Peter Pan is dating Prince Charming but cheating on him with Buzz Lightyear.

But dont worry. LeFou, apparently, is still single.

Go here to read the rest:

Beauty and the Beast's Big Gay Nightmare: How One Dumb Scene Sparked Global Furor - Daily Beast

Most concerts by the new-music chamber choir the Crossing have a few listeners wondering out loud at the end where the group has been all these years.

Answer: Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, easily accessed by two SEPTA train lines, but still a psychological distance from Center City. And when not there, the Crossing might be in the wading pool outside Lincoln Center, singing through megaphones or inside Los Angeles' Disney Hall, navigating some of the most explosive and intricate music being written today. And, now, having just recorded music for an installation to open in May at the Wild Center in the Adirondack Mountains, the Crossing will be heard there for the next three years.

The more serious question at the 4 p.m. Sunday Chestnut Hill concert will be how could founder Donald Nally have foreseen the relevance of the new work he presents today -- Zealot Canticles by Lansing D. McLoskey -- based on the writings of Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka? The piece peers into the fanatical mind-set, not with well-honed poetry, but with blunt prose, like "I am right, you are wrong, I am right, you are dead."

Answer: Nally, 56, is so tapped into social issues that relevance of some sort is likely to surface at any time. Because choral works are created more quickly than symphonies and operas, composers can much more readily respond to the zeitgeist. So open-ended is the choral medium (literally, as the size of the Crossing ranges from eight to 32 voices) that it has acquired a Wild West quality -- relatively lawless and ready for anything.

So it is on the Crossing website (www.crossingchoir.com), with 40 or so SoundCloud and other digital links to its performances of composers from Philadelphia to Riga, and in three new commercially released CD sets.Seemingly out of nowhere, the group issued Clay Jug, a quite satisfying work by composer Edie Hill on the Navona label. Edie who? She's a Minneapolis composer of music that purposefully juxtaposes singing, humming, flute, marimba, and much else.

Many great, original compositional voices first came my way out of the group's 40-some world premieres and 30-some U.S. premieres, including Ted Hearne and Eriks Esenvalds. Crossing premieres have also revealed dramatic new sides of local composers Robert Maggio, Kile Smith, and James Primosch.

Few people at the turn of the current century could have seen this coming: New choral music was often written to accommodate amateurs and was heard mostly within the choral subculture, except for professional groups, such as the Philadelphia Singers Chorale, which kept busy with pieces such as the Mozart Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Now, this musical stepchild has evolved into a rock star, not just with the Crossing (founded in 2005 just as a collection of vocal professionals who wanted to sing together), but with superchoirs all over the world that have become focal points of important new music.

That and a few other key trends have come together here: Respect for the neo-tonality movement, among composers as well as listeners, meant voice-friendly music was taken more seriously. The Baltic republics, whosetradition of singing festivals was a key part of their liberation from Russia,have been producing mind-blowing sounds never previously imagined in choral music. Soyou understand Nally's nonchalance when the Rolling Stones tapped the Crossing for a 2013 local performance of "You Can't Always Get What You Want": It was the oldest and easiest music the group had ever sung.

Nally's own progression began with the mainstream Choral Arts Philadelphia, and, amid prestigious positions with the Welsh National Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago, he increasingly asked all who were within earshot about giving it all up and devoting more time to the Crossing. I told him no, he shouldn't. He heard "yes." I'm glad of that.

He subsequently landed a job at Northwestern University -- as director of choral ensembles -- that readily supports his new-music habit and allows him to train a "new music Jedi" generation of singers who can deal with anything.

To maintain artistic freedom, the Crossing went for years without much infrastructure, such as a board of directors. Rather than programming crowd pleasers by Eric Whitacre, Nally discovered Santa Ratniece, the 39-year-old Latvian whose "My Soul Will Sink Into You" was the highlight of last year's Seven Responses concerts with its clouds of near-hallucinatory, painfully ecstatic choral sound containing the words of a 13th-century saint. His relatively high success rate with new music isn't just luck. He persuades composers to drop or significantly revise large portions of movements that don't work.

The trio of new Crossing recordings, however, show how new recording techniques are badly needed for capturing unprecedented sounds. Hearne's Sound from the Bench, which comes out this week on the Cantaloupe label, represents a breakthrough, having been produced almost in the manner of a pop album, in a recording studio rather than in a church with microphones. The barely controlled chaos of Hearne's opening moments take on a more revealing sense of control than chaos in a piece that explores how the U.S. judicial system has increasingly granted corporations power over an unsuspecting human population.

The church acoustic in which the piece was first heard inevitably had a homogenizing effect on Hearne's poly-stylistic richness, whose words are set to harmonies that sound like an ironic version of the Beach Boys one minute and strident hellish voices in another. In Chestnut Hill, the electric guitar writing seemed a bit aimless. On the recording produced by Nick Tipp, guitars make perfect sense. I always respected Sound from the Bench; now I welcome it into my life.

The two-disc Seven Responses set on the Innova label documents the Crossing's biggest project to date -- seven composers examined the crucifixion of Christ -- but it was recorded in a single day at St. Peter's Church in Malvern. Ratniece's alternate harmonic planet truly needs surround sound to reveal all that's there. David T. Little's piece "dress in magic amulets" has percussion suggesting the nails used in the crucifixion, but faulty sound balance blunts the effect.

Caroline Shaw's meditation on compassion, "To the Hands," is yet another case of a piece growing into its own timeliness. Its fifth movement text consists mainly of statistics about displaced persons.

Some pieces haven't yet found their legs: Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen's "Ad-cor" breaks into provocatively ironic speech -- "My body screams for sentimentality" -- though finding the right delivery for that remains elusive. But let's have some perspective here: These are significant works that are often heard only here (and, in the case of Seven Responses, New York's Mostly Mozart Festival). And there's maybe no wrong way to get the music beyond those city limits.

The Crossing premieres the "Zealot Canticles" at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, 8855 Germantown Ave. Tickets: $20-$35. Information: http://www.crossingchoir.com.

Published: March 16, 2017 1:38 PM EDT

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The Crossing: Changing the world, one concert at a time - Philly.com

The presidential election might not even be the most important election in France this year, argues Paul Smith a professor in Francophone studies, because what comes after could be far more crucial.

The 2017 presidential election wont be the first time the French have looked out across the political landscape and seen a fractured field.

In 2002, there were no fewer than 16 candidates standing in the first round of the presidential election. Back then, the field was so fractured that the Socialist prime ministerLionel Jospinwas eliminated from the contest. Voters were then left with a choice between the sitting, right-wing president, Jacques Chirac, and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far right Front National (FN).

Of course, Chirac proceeded tocrush Le Pen, 82% to 18%, in the run-off. In the process, he forced the three competing parties of the right and centre right into an electoral alliance, then a single party, the UMP, which later became the Republicans.

The 2002 election is regarded as a turning point in the political history of theFifth Republic(the regime created by Charles de Gaulle in 1958). Not only was the outcome unexpected, but it was the first in which the president was elected for a new five-year term (reduced from seven) shortly before elections to the lower house, the National Assembly.

Initially, this was a simple coincidence of the electoral calendar but it now means the French are summoned, barely a month after electing a new president, to provide him or her with a majority in the National Assembly. One entirely predictable consequence of this has been the relegation of National Assembly elections to almost secondary status and high rates of abstention among those who didnt vote for the new head of state.

Its worth knowing this detail, because while the main focus currently is on the 2017 presidential candidates and their programmes, rallies and public utterances, and the who was paying whom and for what, behind the scenes there are also feverish negotiations going on over who will stand in the 577 constituencies in Junes assembly election.

In a system where political parties are weak and prone to fragmentation, the value of the support of a potentially victorious presidential candidate is a powerful lever.

(Emmanuel Macron. Photo: AFP)

By the same token, experience suggests that defeated presidential candidates do not make good rallying points for their parties when the parliamentary vote rolls around. EvenMarine Le Pencould only turn her 17% of the vote in the 2012 presidential election into two seats in the assembly neither of them for her.

Le Pens success between then and now has come through the intervening local and European elections and these have been as much about rejecting Hollandisme as they are an endorsement of her.

So far, there are five main presidential candidates in the 2017 race. They are, from left to right,Jean-Luc Mlenchon(heading a movement called La France insoumise), Benot Hamon (for the Socialists),Emmanuel Macron(who has established his own movement called En Marche!), Franois Fillon (for the Republicans), and Le Pen (for the Front National/Rassemblement Bleu Marine).

The ecologist Yannick Jadot may or may not run. Last week, his electors authorised him to negotiate a joint platform with Hamon and Mlenchon, which would, in due course, also cover the matter of an alliance for the general election. Hamon is receptive, but Mlenchon is not and, to be honest, never has been. Mlenchon left the Socialists in 2008, objecting to its drift towards social democracy. His singular goal, ever since, has been to destroy the party and recreate a new left under his leadership.

The Socialist party is straining to hold itself together. Party secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadlis has warned that anyone defecting to support Macron in the election will be expelled, and thus forfeit support if they plan to stand in the general election. Those with a strong local power base will see that as a risk they can take in the interests of backing a candidate more likely to win but not all will.

(Benoit Hamon. AFP)

The Socialist position might change, of course, if Macron is elected to the Elyse and Hamon does not get a creditable score (at least 16%) in the first round. Even though he is the party candidate, he is not its leader and if Macron made the right noises, a broad centre and left electoral alliance is not out of the question.

Another possibility would be a simple form of what is known as dsistement rpublicain, whereby the parties of the left (though not Mlenchon) and Macronistes agree to stand down for whichever of them is better placed in a particular constituency. The circle that Macron has to square is that while he might get elected by himself, he cannot govern alone and no-one can predict how his pop-up party will fare amid the rough and tumble of a general election campaign.

To Macrons right, the Republican party has flipped around completely. One of the explanations for Fillons unexpected victory in the primary was that he paid attention to the partys grassroots. While Nicolas Sarkozy controlled the hierarchy, his former PM focused on getting out into the provinces and holding small-scale meetings with the the rank and file. But it is precisely here that unease is strongest now.

(Franois Fillon. AFP)

While Fillon is determined to fight on, even as theformal investigation into his financial conductcontinues, and the partys heavyweights have voiced solidarity, there is real concern in the constituencies that Fillon will not deliver the alternance (a change of majority) they expect and demand. For the Gaullist core of a movement that sees itself as the natural party of government, the prospect of five more years out of power is almost unbearable. If Fillon is eliminated, who will pick up the pieces? The failure to answer that question adequately after Sarkozys defeat in 2012 is just one of the reasons for Le Pens rise and rise.

(Marine Le Pen. AFP)

And yet, while the Front National can make a pretty strong claim to be le premier parti de France, its position is not as strong as it might be. Despite winning 25% of the national vote in the European elections of 2014, the same in departmental elections, and 28% in the regionals in late 2015, the FN remains a leadership without much structure, few candidates and desperately short of funds. The party has more local councillors than ever before, but membership remains low. The FN is being very coy about just how many candidates it thinks it can field.

It is almost impossible to imagine a president elected without a majority in the assembly. Its just as hard to imagine any other party being willing to join the FN in a coalition.

While a Le Pen victory in May might fit the Brexit/Trump zeitgeist, Le Pen might actually be better off losing the 2017 election. She could spend five years building a parliamentary base, which also comes with state funding on a per seat basis, and mount a challenge in 2022. If she makes the run-off and then fails to take 40% of the votes, on the other hand, its perfectly possible that shell be booted out as leader of her party.

However it turns out, the election to the fourth five-year presidential term risks pushing France ever deeper into an institutional turmoil than its instigators could ever have imagined when they stood on the cusp of the Fifth-and-a-half Republic back in 2002. It was all supposed to be so simple.

Paul Smith is an Associate Professor in French and Francophone studies at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

This article originally appeared on the website The Conversation. You can view the original by clicking here.

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