Singing A Song of Rumsfeld

Kathleen Herd Masser
Mirror contributing writer
  
   Great statesmen are remembered as much for their words as for their deeds.
   Cicero: “Let war yield to peace, laurels to paeans.” Winston Churchill: “I do not resent criticism, even when, for the sake of emphasis, it parts for the time with reality.” John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”
   Donald Rumsfeld: “Once in a while, I’m standing here, doing something, and I think, ‘What in the world am I doing here?’ It’s a big surprise.”
   If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, eloquence is in the ear of the listener. And the words of the U.S. Secretary of Defense have struck a chord with a pair of talented, if irreverent, California musicians.
   He looks the part of an Asian-American Noel Coward, an unapologetic aristocrat in a stylish tuxedo. She calls to mind a Miss America finalist, resplendent in strapless red satin, dark hair falling on fair shoulders.
   His hands hover over the keyboard of a quaint, upright piano. When they land, the notes slide back in time to a posh salon of a more sophisticated age. Her mouth opens. In tones as clear and urgent as those of Maria Callas, she lets loose a string of arpeggios that roll and dip and wriggle through the theater.
   He is Bryant Kong, composer, pianist, humorist and single-handed resurrectionist of what he calls “neglected classical repertoire.” Between performing in solo piano and chamber music concerts, he has won degrees from Carleton College and UCLA (Anderson School MBA) and a medal in international track and field at Gay Games V in Amsterdam.
   She is Elender Wall, screen actress and opera singer, most recently cast as Mistress Quickly in Gordon Getty’s Plump Jack and the Fairy Godmother in Michael Matsumoto’s Cinderella in Extremis. A professional belly dancer, Wall co-authored a college physics textbook and is a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and San Francisco State University (in physics).
   On Sunday, the pair celebrated the release of their first CD, The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld and Other Fresh American Art Songs, with a concert at Edgemar Center for the Arts.
   Opera is often incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with the genre. But with lyrics lifted from Lewis Carroll and Mother Goose, Kong and Wall demand little more of their audience than an open mind and sense of humor.
   “We seek to do in music what The Simpsons did in television,” explains Kong. “Take a sophisticated product that rewards audiences for paying attention out into a mainstream arena largely occupied by generic background fare.”
   Not all of the show is political. The pair also offers cabaret numbers that border on vaudeville, like the Song of Black Max (As Told by the de Kooning Boys), which includes a verse about syphilis. The nursery rhymes are equally obscure, having been expunged from Mother Goose for their violent nature: “Hush, you squalling thing . . . He’ll beat you, beat you, beat you. He’ll beat you all to pap. He’ll hit you, hit you, hit you. Every morsel. Snap. Snap. Snap.” (From Baby, baby, naughty baby.)
   The seven Rumsfeld songs – which Wall calls “our main event” – come from a book by Hart Seely in which the author has arranged the secretary’s words in poem structure. Kong set them to music.
   For now, the clever composer has no plans to expand the duo’s political repertoire.
   “Different forms of speech lend themselves to different types of music,” Kong says. “George Bush can hardly put two sentences together. We think he’s perfect as he is – as a desk calendar.”
   To hear snippets from the CD, visit www.stuffedpenguin.com. For information about upcoming programs at the Edgemar Center for the Arts, call (310) 399-3666 or visit www.edgemar.com.