April 12, 2007
April 06, 2007
On Virtuosity
[program note from a recent solo recital]
Virtuosity is generally defined in terms of technical prowess: thundering scales, incandescent figurations, overwhelming power... Virtuosity is a game between the performer and the audience. The former flaunts his technique via feats of strength while maintaining a suggestion of disaster awaiting around the bend.
This display is fundamentally one of showmanship. In the heat of the moment, one forgets that performing musicians are not slovenly bohemians, but trained professionals. Sure, the shaggy hair is part of our allure, but it’s hard to find time for a haircut when you have to spend all your free time practicing. We rehearse and work through our music so much that by the time you hear us, even the gnarliest passages have been reduced to child’s play. Once on stage, it’s our job to make them look hard again.
True virtuosity, to me, is making the hard sound easy. Virtuosity is the vocals on a Beach Boys album. Virtuosity is Aki Takahashi playing Morton Feldman. This virtuosity is not about flaunting your abilities to an audience, but rather presenting them in a kind of unassuming clarity. Listeners are invited to take them for exactly what they’re worth, but not forced to go further than that (that’s not to say you’re not allowed to show off your strengths, but you’re also forced to recognize when they give out).
As a pianist, music is something I have to pick up and feel in my fingers before I can know if it’s any good. Where other players blow, breathe, and drag horsehairs, we touch and caress. I try to play so you can get as close as possible to that kind of tactile engagement with sound.
The relationship I have with my instrument has been one of the biggest influences on the general nature of my music. My idea of development isn’t concocting a new guise for an intervallic motive, it’s playing something again to see if it still sounds good. How does it feel – how does it make you feel – the next time you hear it? The relationships created by these constant recontextualizations against past experience have a subtle complexity.
Though I often draw inspiration from non-musical experiences and forms, I do not want my music to be something you engage distantly and abstractly. I find our culture is all too dominated by ideas of things. One goes to a knick-knack-filled restaurant to eat an idea of a meal, puts on chic earbuds to listen to an idea of music, and in extreme cases, passes through life only knowing ideas of friendships. I want my music to be something you can only engage through an essential thing-ness. I genuinely want to create an experience that doesn’t need to go any deeper than its acoustic surface.
The program I selected is meant to show off the range of expression and potential for a deeper performer-audience relationship that’s possible with an “anti-virtuosity.” The pieces wedged between my own are meant to be entertaining diversions (they’re pop songs after all), but they’re also meant to be examples of music that has influenced my compositional technique and aesthetics.
PROGRAM:
"Rednecks" — Randy Newman
Frayed Shirt — Adam Baratz
"All My Little Words" — Stephin Merritt
I Can Turn It On and Off — Baratz
"I Think I Need a New Heart" — Merritt
Mix Tape — Baratz
"Help Me" — Joni Mitchell
"Just Like This Train" — Mitchell
Departing Figure — Baratz
"You Can Leave Your Hat On" — Newman
Scores, as usual, available on request.
Virtuosity is generally defined in terms of technical prowess: thundering scales, incandescent figurations, overwhelming power... Virtuosity is a game between the performer and the audience. The former flaunts his technique via feats of strength while maintaining a suggestion of disaster awaiting around the bend.
This display is fundamentally one of showmanship. In the heat of the moment, one forgets that performing musicians are not slovenly bohemians, but trained professionals. Sure, the shaggy hair is part of our allure, but it’s hard to find time for a haircut when you have to spend all your free time practicing. We rehearse and work through our music so much that by the time you hear us, even the gnarliest passages have been reduced to child’s play. Once on stage, it’s our job to make them look hard again.
True virtuosity, to me, is making the hard sound easy. Virtuosity is the vocals on a Beach Boys album. Virtuosity is Aki Takahashi playing Morton Feldman. This virtuosity is not about flaunting your abilities to an audience, but rather presenting them in a kind of unassuming clarity. Listeners are invited to take them for exactly what they’re worth, but not forced to go further than that (that’s not to say you’re not allowed to show off your strengths, but you’re also forced to recognize when they give out).
As a pianist, music is something I have to pick up and feel in my fingers before I can know if it’s any good. Where other players blow, breathe, and drag horsehairs, we touch and caress. I try to play so you can get as close as possible to that kind of tactile engagement with sound.
The relationship I have with my instrument has been one of the biggest influences on the general nature of my music. My idea of development isn’t concocting a new guise for an intervallic motive, it’s playing something again to see if it still sounds good. How does it feel – how does it make you feel – the next time you hear it? The relationships created by these constant recontextualizations against past experience have a subtle complexity.
Though I often draw inspiration from non-musical experiences and forms, I do not want my music to be something you engage distantly and abstractly. I find our culture is all too dominated by ideas of things. One goes to a knick-knack-filled restaurant to eat an idea of a meal, puts on chic earbuds to listen to an idea of music, and in extreme cases, passes through life only knowing ideas of friendships. I want my music to be something you can only engage through an essential thing-ness. I genuinely want to create an experience that doesn’t need to go any deeper than its acoustic surface.
The program I selected is meant to show off the range of expression and potential for a deeper performer-audience relationship that’s possible with an “anti-virtuosity.” The pieces wedged between my own are meant to be entertaining diversions (they’re pop songs after all), but they’re also meant to be examples of music that has influenced my compositional technique and aesthetics.
PROGRAM:
"Rednecks" — Randy Newman
Frayed Shirt — Adam Baratz
"All My Little Words" — Stephin Merritt
I Can Turn It On and Off — Baratz
"I Think I Need a New Heart" — Merritt
Mix Tape — Baratz
"Help Me" — Joni Mitchell
"Just Like This Train" — Mitchell
Departing Figure — Baratz
"You Can Leave Your Hat On" — Newman
Scores, as usual, available on request.
April 03, 2007
Post-Minimalist Weekend Post
I stepped out of my usual composerly circles to join the musicology department for a symposium with Robert Fink (UCLA). As predicted, he essentially did highlights from Repeating Ourselves. Since I'd read the book before, what I learned from the session was tangential to the actual presentation, but is still a interesting important point: if I want to sit around a table where the majority of those present are intelligent and assertive women, musicology functions are a sure bet.
Saturday was Steve Reich Day, with a symposium in the afternoon and a concert in the evening. The centerpiece of the symposium was hearing his newish Daniel Variations. After castigating a big chunk of us for not knowing who Daniel Pearl was ("Well, you should."), he explained how he met Pearl's father and was asked to write a piece about Pearl. The piece sets fragmentary texts from Pearl's writings and the biblical Book of Daniel (which involves a conflict between Jews and Babylonians).
Following the listening, was an extended Q&A. Not a lot of new info for anyone who hasn't read any interviews with or writings by Reich, but he made one interesting comment that stuck with me. Asked about the efficacy of politicized art, he said he had no illusions about saving the world. "Guernica" didn't prevent Dresden and Tokyo, but it made Guernica part of our vocabulary.
The concert in the evening covered his whole career: Drumming (Part One), Cello Counterpoint, Different Trains, and Sextet. Drumming changed a lot live. Thanks to Kilbourn Hall's natural wetness, there was some harmonies hung in the air after each attack. You could follow the cellular transformations, courtesy of having the visual of the performers. The drums were left standing on-stage before and after the piece, à la gamelan.
Cello Counterpoint was done with 8 live cellists, though with some amplification to balance out the lines. It bore a striking resemblance, harmonically and structurally to Triple Quartet. I had a similar bout of déjà vu (but not quite as strong) during Sextet, with the point of comparison being Music for 18 Musicians. Self-plagiarism doesn't offend me that much, but why has Reich dodged the bullet on this one when Glass has gotten so much flack?
I would like to use this page to inaugurate the "Different Trains...Not So Much a Fan" Club. First of all, kudos to Reich for making a 180-degree turn on his early aesthetic and turning out a text-based piece of program music (love those violins doubling the taped train whistles). The speech-as-music bit is fun, but not fun enough to steal the title for "Best Setting of the Word 'Chicago'" from Harry Partch.
My real problem with the piece is with the content of the program. The "different trains" conceit is reasonably clever, but not 27' clever. There's just not enough behind it to propel the piece for that duration. It doesn't present any major challenges to my ethical imagination. I know more than I want to know about the inhumanity of the Holocaust. Nuremberg more than adequately documented that. By 1988, I'd hope that an artist could have gone deeper into the material.
For me, Sophie's Choice is the exemplar of asking the hard questions on this terrain. Styron was willing (I'd say he even went out of his way) to find humanity among Nazis. Because of that, the eponymous choice becomes much, much more than you'd suspect. Reich only deals with one side of the situation in his quartet, and in turn is only able to present a victim's story. Targets of genocide deserve to have more than their victimization preserved.
***
[UPDATE: I neglected one important tidbit, which was that the Reich concert had a basically full house. When the usher came out to do the fire exit spiel, we got "Good eve— wow" instead of the usual "Good evening and welcome to Kilbourn Hall."]
***
Pictures from the show, courtesy of John Lam:
Drumming
Cello Counterpoint
Different Trains
Sextet
Saturday was Steve Reich Day, with a symposium in the afternoon and a concert in the evening. The centerpiece of the symposium was hearing his newish Daniel Variations. After castigating a big chunk of us for not knowing who Daniel Pearl was ("Well, you should."), he explained how he met Pearl's father and was asked to write a piece about Pearl. The piece sets fragmentary texts from Pearl's writings and the biblical Book of Daniel (which involves a conflict between Jews and Babylonians).
Following the listening, was an extended Q&A. Not a lot of new info for anyone who hasn't read any interviews with or writings by Reich, but he made one interesting comment that stuck with me. Asked about the efficacy of politicized art, he said he had no illusions about saving the world. "Guernica" didn't prevent Dresden and Tokyo, but it made Guernica part of our vocabulary.
The concert in the evening covered his whole career: Drumming (Part One), Cello Counterpoint, Different Trains, and Sextet. Drumming changed a lot live. Thanks to Kilbourn Hall's natural wetness, there was some harmonies hung in the air after each attack. You could follow the cellular transformations, courtesy of having the visual of the performers. The drums were left standing on-stage before and after the piece, à la gamelan.
Cello Counterpoint was done with 8 live cellists, though with some amplification to balance out the lines. It bore a striking resemblance, harmonically and structurally to Triple Quartet. I had a similar bout of déjà vu (but not quite as strong) during Sextet, with the point of comparison being Music for 18 Musicians. Self-plagiarism doesn't offend me that much, but why has Reich dodged the bullet on this one when Glass has gotten so much flack?
I would like to use this page to inaugurate the "Different Trains...Not So Much a Fan" Club. First of all, kudos to Reich for making a 180-degree turn on his early aesthetic and turning out a text-based piece of program music (love those violins doubling the taped train whistles). The speech-as-music bit is fun, but not fun enough to steal the title for "Best Setting of the Word 'Chicago'" from Harry Partch.
My real problem with the piece is with the content of the program. The "different trains" conceit is reasonably clever, but not 27' clever. There's just not enough behind it to propel the piece for that duration. It doesn't present any major challenges to my ethical imagination. I know more than I want to know about the inhumanity of the Holocaust. Nuremberg more than adequately documented that. By 1988, I'd hope that an artist could have gone deeper into the material.
For me, Sophie's Choice is the exemplar of asking the hard questions on this terrain. Styron was willing (I'd say he even went out of his way) to find humanity among Nazis. Because of that, the eponymous choice becomes much, much more than you'd suspect. Reich only deals with one side of the situation in his quartet, and in turn is only able to present a victim's story. Targets of genocide deserve to have more than their victimization preserved.
***
[UPDATE: I neglected one important tidbit, which was that the Reich concert had a basically full house. When the usher came out to do the fire exit spiel, we got "Good eve— wow" instead of the usual "Good evening and welcome to Kilbourn Hall."]
***
Pictures from the show, courtesy of John Lam:
Drumming
Cello Counterpoint
Different Trains
Sextet
March 28, 2007
Minimalist Weekend in Rochester
Two events of note over the next few days:
- Robert Fink presents a talk called Flowing and Zapping: Minimalism as Television, 1965-1995. I suspect it'll be a condensed version of Repeating Ourselves (a thoughtful, entertaining, and recommended read). If he's as funny in person as he is in print, it'll probably be a good hour and a half.
- OMG STEVE RECICH.
March 21, 2007
Senior Recital
One would've thought that I could've squeezed in at least one post during my spring break, but that turned out to be false. Among other things, I was busy finishing some music to be played at my senior recital. As the tagline at the top says "composer/pianist," that's exactly what the recital will be all about. The focus will be on my own music, but with little interludes in the form of some of my influences from the pop-ular repertory. I doubt the program will contain any major surprises for longtime readers of this blog:
Four of my piano piecesIt will be taking place on March 30th at 8pm in the Hawkins-Carlson Room of the Rush Rhees Library, U. of Rochester (that was a mouthful). When you walk into the library's main lobby, it's the first room on the right.
Two songs by Stephin Merritt (from 69LS vol. 1)
Two songs by Randy Newman (from Sail Away and Good Old Boys)
Two instrumental transcriptions of songs by Joni Mitchell (from Court & Spark)
March 11, 2007
Late Night Reading
I find the attitude of rock musicians over the past 20 years kind of funny, the whole I'm-a-rebel stance. The truth of the matter is, most rock bands are classical musicians and they don’t know it. Because it’s "This song starts with this drumbeat, at this time; halfway through, the guitar comes in, playing this part, with all down strokes on the fifth, with a clean sound; at this point you turn on your distortion and you play the barre chord, and then it’s muted at this point . . ." And every time they play the song, it’s the same thing. That’s classical music!Jon Brion on us shlubs
March 05, 2007
New Album Soon?
Please say soon. At any rate, it's good to know that Charles Ives won't be the last serious composer to make good use of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean."
February 25, 2007
Leveling Up
When practicing an instrument or writing music, it usually seems like the amount of time you have to put to improve at the skill in question is disproportionate to your improvement rate. You might have to write half a dozen bum pieces before you can use some little idea you had, you have to play a few Mozart sonatas before you're happy with the tone quality for any of them, etc., etc.... I'd be genuinely surprised if someone with creative inclinations has not had this kind of experience.
There always seems to be a well-demarcated line between frustration and ownership with me and these problems. Progress can be difficult to feel. One day you leave the practice room pulling your hair out, the next you come back and something's clicked. Taking time out to rationalize the situation can sometimes help you get your bearings, but nothing really substitutes for those long hours spent in the trenches. Those times may make you wonder why you even bother, but you know the answer when you get one of those little epiphanies.
There always seems to be a well-demarcated line between frustration and ownership with me and these problems. Progress can be difficult to feel. One day you leave the practice room pulling your hair out, the next you come back and something's clicked. Taking time out to rationalize the situation can sometimes help you get your bearings, but nothing really substitutes for those long hours spent in the trenches. Those times may make you wonder why you even bother, but you know the answer when you get one of those little epiphanies.
Tenney on Form
A second use of [form] that is, again often encountered in musical discussions is illustrated by such terms of "sonata-form," "ABA-form," "rondo-form," etc., which refer to specific formal types, generally associated with particular styles or historical periods. And although each of these formal types may be characterized by certain intrinsic formal features, common to all examples of the type, and constituting the original basis for classification, they tend to represent, in each case, not so much a form, but a formula, and are not, therefore relevant to the problems I am concerned with here.James Tenney, Meta (+) Hodos
I read a description of this book somewhere that was along the lines of "the most important 20th century theory book that no one's read" (though a search has revealed that someone is sharing a copy via BitTorrent). It is, indeed, pretty kickass, particularly considering it was his Master's Thesis. Whereas music theory tends to posit abstract structures and work towards the score and the listening experience, Tenney starts with the listening experience and works in the other direction. He tries to articulate how people process sounds, what gets us to group them together and divide them out. He does not assume that people hear a piece with a set of structural expectations. When he makes analogies, the vocabulary of visual art is used frequently ("figure" and "ground" as terms for structural importance, etc.).
As you might guess, American experimentalists provide most of the musical examples. Ives and Varèse get the most attention, but early Schoenberg (yay op11) and Webern make brief appearances. The analytical highlight for me was the discussion of how dynamics shape the opening of Density 21.5, implying a rhythm in an otherwise "static" pitch (way more interesting than aggregate completion).
Some Tenney links:
Daniel Wolf's very thorough review of Meta (+) Hodos
"John Cage and the Theory of Harmony"
Tenney Bibliography
Tenney Slideshow with "Raggedy Ann"
February 17, 2007
February 14, 2007
Some Facebook Groups Concerning Music
- All Hail Brad Lubman!
- Baroque Opera is Way Happenin'
- Christa Ludwig, awesomest Singer Ever
- Down with Equal Temperament
- Franz Liszt 4 Life
- French Music Lovers
- Got Perfect Pitch?
- I Live By the Sonata Principle
- I love Elliott Carter and Polyrhythmic Syncopation!!
- I'm A Fermata...Hold Me
- I'm Glad Pluto's No Longer a Planet; It Makes Gustav Holst's Suite Complete
- I'm such a music freak that I harmonize with the fire alarm...
- I wish I were an +6 chord so you could bring resolution to my raised member
- Mahler Is A Bad Ass!!!
- Modal Majority
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Accompanists
- Scriabin Is THE Bad Ass!!!
- We Bang Steinways!
- you know Louis Andriessen would be MIND-BLOWING in bed
February 11, 2007
Kronos Quartet, 2/7/07
Kronos's show at Eastman Theatre featured only pieces that were commissioned by them or arranged exclusively for them. It brought out what I see as the very best and very worst of the group. I have tremendous respect for them as dedicated advocates of new music. They played one of their under 30 commissions with the same commitment they gave to their proven showpieces. I'm still unsure, though, about their "world music" projects and pop covers. I understand they program this music along with Steve Reich and Michael Gordon to show that they think it's just as good. However, underneath the colored lights and amplification, I'm still sitting in the neo-classical temple of Eastman Theatre listening to a string quartet. It's hard to get away from the feeling that they're engaged in some old-fashioned exoticism.
The program opened with Potassium, a Michael Gordon piece. Its amplified glissandi would be familiar to anyone who has heard Weather, but it is by no means a rehash of that piece. It uses a large-scale ABA form similar to Reich's Triple Quartet. There's a very narrow range of ensemble relationships (lots of staggered entrance glissandi), but a wide range of timbres and harmonies come out. It's a very physical piece. You feel like a chemical element is being synthesized before you, but no soft metal like potassium. You'd need some high-powered lasers to work with whatever Gordon had in mind.
"Oh Mother, the Handsome Man Tortures Me" is an Iraqi song, author unknown. The notes state that the arrangement they used is "based on a recording produced sometime during the Saddam period between the 1980s and 2002." The cello played a syncopated bass line that kept you on your toes. A fragment of the original recording was played as the song finished up.
"Raga Mishra Bhairavi" is an arrangement of sarangi music by Ram Narayan. The viola took its place here. The stage was dark so I couldn't quite tell, but it looked like John Sherba grabbed an electric sitar for this one.
Dan Visconti's Love Bleeds Radiant came in through the Kronos: Under 30 Project. My anal critic self thought it suffered from the typical young composer syndrome of too-many-ideas, but my adventurous programming self was intrigued by the idea of touring with something that's untested and uncertain. It gets that critical dialogue going between performer and audience instead of composer self and anal critic self. Maybe it's bad for every item on a concert program to be a proven masterpiece.
"Flugufrelsarinn," a Sigur Rós song, followed. I thought it was a very convincing arrangement that kept a lot of the band's sound intact. On the other hand, a friend who knows the band better than I do criticized the arrangement for not being loyal enough to the original.
Derek Charke, a new name to me, contributed Cercle du Nord III. It had a minimalist pulse but followed a seemingly programmatic form. There were occasional pre-recorded interjections of speech which were unfortuantely (intentionally?) hard to make out. I had trouble making sense of everything with only one hearing, but I can give it the compliment that I wanted to give it a second one.
"Lullaby" and "Tusen Tanakar (A Thousand Thoughts)" fell into Kronos's direct, sentimental style. Either you care or you don't.
The program closed with Reich's Triple Quartet. On recording, it seems like perhaps his most traditional piece. Three fast-slow-fast movements, arch forms, and large scale harmonic movement based on mediant relationships. In person, it seems as radical as any other. Throughout his career, Reich has found ways to get people to play their instruments in unusual ways. They're not necessarily original methods (sharing instruments comes from his study of Ghanaian drumming), but he always integrates convincingly into into his personal musical language.
Here he takes what is normally the most "intimate" of genres and turns a group into one cog in a larger machine: a live quartet plays against a tape of two others. When seen live, the combination creates a startling juxtaposition of the active and inactive (much like the usual fast music/slow music at the same time in other Reich). The music itself is incredibly lively, begging you to dance along with it. However, when 2/3 of the musicians are canned, the stage picture doesn't have enough energy to match. In addition, the group appeared intentionally deadened. Their gestures felt perfunctory and the lighting staying consistently dimmed and uncolored (both in big contrast to everything else that night). I always thought of the piece as good workout music, but in person the active/inactive juxtaposition is very unsettling. I wonder if I would feel the same way about the piece if it was performed by three live quartets.
Three encores ensued: "Beloved, O Beloved" from their Bollywood album (ebullient music, I'd like to hear the rest now), a Star-Spangled Banner à la Hendrix (the lighting projected distorted instrumental shapes on the side walls, the interpretation was about as radical as it was in '69), and "Lux Aeternum" from Requiem for a Dream (music that reminds you how "serious" the movie was).
The program opened with Potassium, a Michael Gordon piece. Its amplified glissandi would be familiar to anyone who has heard Weather, but it is by no means a rehash of that piece. It uses a large-scale ABA form similar to Reich's Triple Quartet. There's a very narrow range of ensemble relationships (lots of staggered entrance glissandi), but a wide range of timbres and harmonies come out. It's a very physical piece. You feel like a chemical element is being synthesized before you, but no soft metal like potassium. You'd need some high-powered lasers to work with whatever Gordon had in mind.
"Oh Mother, the Handsome Man Tortures Me" is an Iraqi song, author unknown. The notes state that the arrangement they used is "based on a recording produced sometime during the Saddam period between the 1980s and 2002." The cello played a syncopated bass line that kept you on your toes. A fragment of the original recording was played as the song finished up.
"Raga Mishra Bhairavi" is an arrangement of sarangi music by Ram Narayan. The viola took its place here. The stage was dark so I couldn't quite tell, but it looked like John Sherba grabbed an electric sitar for this one.
Dan Visconti's Love Bleeds Radiant came in through the Kronos: Under 30 Project. My anal critic self thought it suffered from the typical young composer syndrome of too-many-ideas, but my adventurous programming self was intrigued by the idea of touring with something that's untested and uncertain. It gets that critical dialogue going between performer and audience instead of composer self and anal critic self. Maybe it's bad for every item on a concert program to be a proven masterpiece.
"Flugufrelsarinn," a Sigur Rós song, followed. I thought it was a very convincing arrangement that kept a lot of the band's sound intact. On the other hand, a friend who knows the band better than I do criticized the arrangement for not being loyal enough to the original.
Derek Charke, a new name to me, contributed Cercle du Nord III. It had a minimalist pulse but followed a seemingly programmatic form. There were occasional pre-recorded interjections of speech which were unfortuantely (intentionally?) hard to make out. I had trouble making sense of everything with only one hearing, but I can give it the compliment that I wanted to give it a second one.
"Lullaby" and "Tusen Tanakar (A Thousand Thoughts)" fell into Kronos's direct, sentimental style. Either you care or you don't.
The program closed with Reich's Triple Quartet. On recording, it seems like perhaps his most traditional piece. Three fast-slow-fast movements, arch forms, and large scale harmonic movement based on mediant relationships. In person, it seems as radical as any other. Throughout his career, Reich has found ways to get people to play their instruments in unusual ways. They're not necessarily original methods (sharing instruments comes from his study of Ghanaian drumming), but he always integrates convincingly into into his personal musical language.
Here he takes what is normally the most "intimate" of genres and turns a group into one cog in a larger machine: a live quartet plays against a tape of two others. When seen live, the combination creates a startling juxtaposition of the active and inactive (much like the usual fast music/slow music at the same time in other Reich). The music itself is incredibly lively, begging you to dance along with it. However, when 2/3 of the musicians are canned, the stage picture doesn't have enough energy to match. In addition, the group appeared intentionally deadened. Their gestures felt perfunctory and the lighting staying consistently dimmed and uncolored (both in big contrast to everything else that night). I always thought of the piece as good workout music, but in person the active/inactive juxtaposition is very unsettling. I wonder if I would feel the same way about the piece if it was performed by three live quartets.
Three encores ensued: "Beloved, O Beloved" from their Bollywood album (ebullient music, I'd like to hear the rest now), a Star-Spangled Banner à la Hendrix (the lighting projected distorted instrumental shapes on the side walls, the interpretation was about as radical as it was in '69), and "Lux Aeternum" from Requiem for a Dream (music that reminds you how "serious" the movie was).
February 09, 2007
Upcoming Show
Eastman Musica Nova
Kilbourn Hall
Monday, February 12, 2007
8pm
Program:
David Lang - Sweet Air
Caleb Burhans - Amidst Neptune
Vinko Globokar - La Ronde
David Lang - Increase
***
I'll be there playing piano on Sweet Air, "HarpsyKorg" on Increase, and singing on La Ronde (it's one of those anarchist open instrumention pieces). It'll be a short program: an hour or so, no intermission.
Kilbourn Hall
Monday, February 12, 2007
8pm
Program:
David Lang - Sweet Air
Caleb Burhans - Amidst Neptune
Vinko Globokar - La Ronde
David Lang - Increase
***
I'll be there playing piano on Sweet Air, "HarpsyKorg" on Increase, and singing on La Ronde (it's one of those anarchist open instrumention pieces). It'll be a short program: an hour or so, no intermission.
January 27, 2007
Sestina d'Inverno
I first met this poem of Anthony Hecht's in a high school English class (Hecht formerly taught English at the U. of R. — go Yellowjackets!). Honestly, anyone who doesn't like snow should quit their whining and go live somewhere else. Some of us are trying to enjoy this weather!
Here in this bleak city of Rochester,
Where there are twenty-seven words for "snow,"
Not all of them polite, the wayward mind
Basks in some Yucatan of its own making,
Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon island
Alive with lemon tints and burnished natives,
And O that we were there. But here the natives
Of this grey, sunless city of Rochester
Have sown whole mines of salt about their land
(Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snow
Comes down as if The Flood were in the making.
Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind
An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,
Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose natives
Blend coriander, cayenne, mint in making
Roasts that would gladden the Earl of Rochester
With sinfulness, and melt a polar snow.
It might be well to remember that an island
Was blessed heaven once, more than an island,
The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.
In that kind climate the mere thought of snow
Was but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,
Unable to conceive of Rochester,
Made love, and were acrobatic in the making.
Dream as we may, there is far more to making
Do than some wistful reverie of an island,
Especially now when hope lies with the Rochester
Gas and Electric Co., which doesn't mind
Such profitable weather, while the natives
Sink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow.
The one thing indisputable here is snow,
The single verity of heaven's making,
Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives,
And the torn hoarding-posters of some island.
Under our igloo skies the frozen mind
Holds to one truth: it is grey, and called Rochester.
No island fantasy survives Rochester,
Where to the natives destiny is snow
That is neither to our mind nor of our making.
Here in this bleak city of Rochester,
Where there are twenty-seven words for "snow,"
Not all of them polite, the wayward mind
Basks in some Yucatan of its own making,
Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon island
Alive with lemon tints and burnished natives,
And O that we were there. But here the natives
Of this grey, sunless city of Rochester
Have sown whole mines of salt about their land
(Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snow
Comes down as if The Flood were in the making.
Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind
An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,
Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose natives
Blend coriander, cayenne, mint in making
Roasts that would gladden the Earl of Rochester
With sinfulness, and melt a polar snow.
It might be well to remember that an island
Was blessed heaven once, more than an island,
The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.
In that kind climate the mere thought of snow
Was but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,
Unable to conceive of Rochester,
Made love, and were acrobatic in the making.
Dream as we may, there is far more to making
Do than some wistful reverie of an island,
Especially now when hope lies with the Rochester
Gas and Electric Co., which doesn't mind
Such profitable weather, while the natives
Sink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow.
The one thing indisputable here is snow,
The single verity of heaven's making,
Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives,
And the torn hoarding-posters of some island.
Under our igloo skies the frozen mind
Holds to one truth: it is grey, and called Rochester.
No island fantasy survives Rochester,
Where to the natives destiny is snow
That is neither to our mind nor of our making.
January 22, 2007
Raise your hand if...
Composers are accustomed to the question of "What kind of music do you write?" Pianists have probably gotten this one a few times:
"I'm a musician."
"What do you play?"
"Piano."
"Oh. I could never do two things at the same time."
January 16, 2007
Delayed Reaction
My multi-week odyssey to find a brick-and-mortar store with a copy of Ys to sell me came to a close yesterday. The album is no revolution or revelation, just ("just") very honest and well put together. The symbolism (or would it be allegory?) is rather heavy, but the core is a confessional treatment of a romance. I'm still waiting for my decoder ring to arrive in the mail, but the music is very affecting, clear in its own way.
I don't buy into the criticisms of Newsom's singing. She sounds very in control of her instrument, carefully choosing when it cracks and flutters. She's able to conjure a sound which I can only compare to a squeaking rubber balloon, but for some reason sounds quite beautiful to my ears.
The main thing I was left wondering about after my first listen was the album's extreme "consonance." Her words are mellifluous and consistently rhymed, the orchestral backings are always lush. It's a choice, but I'd be curious to hear some of the songs with a little more grit .
***
DJA requests that we abolish the use of the adjective "pretentious" in our critical discourse. I agree, and myself would add "twee" to that list. I can't read about Belle & Sebastian's latest without getting hit in the face by this one. It's certainly apropos for much hipster-friendly music, but can we nip this one in the bud?
***
I feel I should toss in a few words on why I bothered reacting to an album that's already been heavily lauded and desired. I'm usually suspicious of reviews that appear too soon after a new product enters the marketplace. They feel too attached to the PR mechanism of the vendor. In the rush to get the first review on the block, publications are just handing out free publicity. I'd prefer that critics take as long as they want to publish a piece, even passing on something if they don't feel like anything should be said. If I "have" to know how good something is as soon as it's available, I'll buy it myself (or make friends with someone who feels that same need). When we live in a society that's trying to sell us something at every street corner, do we really need to contribute to the problem?
I don't buy into the criticisms of Newsom's singing. She sounds very in control of her instrument, carefully choosing when it cracks and flutters. She's able to conjure a sound which I can only compare to a squeaking rubber balloon, but for some reason sounds quite beautiful to my ears.
The main thing I was left wondering about after my first listen was the album's extreme "consonance." Her words are mellifluous and consistently rhymed, the orchestral backings are always lush. It's a choice, but I'd be curious to hear some of the songs with a little more grit .
***
DJA requests that we abolish the use of the adjective "pretentious" in our critical discourse. I agree, and myself would add "twee" to that list. I can't read about Belle & Sebastian's latest without getting hit in the face by this one. It's certainly apropos for much hipster-friendly music, but can we nip this one in the bud?
***
I feel I should toss in a few words on why I bothered reacting to an album that's already been heavily lauded and desired. I'm usually suspicious of reviews that appear too soon after a new product enters the marketplace. They feel too attached to the PR mechanism of the vendor. In the rush to get the first review on the block, publications are just handing out free publicity. I'd prefer that critics take as long as they want to publish a piece, even passing on something if they don't feel like anything should be said. If I "have" to know how good something is as soon as it's available, I'll buy it myself (or make friends with someone who feels that same need). When we live in a society that's trying to sell us something at every street corner, do we really need to contribute to the problem?
January 09, 2007
Love
Love is the newest release by "The Beatles," rather, the newest officially sanctioned release of Beatles material. In case you haven't already heard what it's about, it's a set of Beatles-on-Beatles mash-up action performed by George Martin & Son. The album got a good consideration in strictly musical terms by AllMusic, so I'll direct you there if you want the standard review.
As their reviewer says, the juxtapositions are pretty tame. The main interest in Love isn't the new relationships, but the restored quality of the source material. Us younguns know the Beatles primarily through the shoddy remaster jobs of their albums which date to the early years of the CD. A good song's a good song no matter how rough the recording is. However, a band that spent so much time in the studio is going to get shortchanged by technology that takes a giant step backwards from their original working conditions.
Something about hearing the masters handled with such care makes the songs sound fresh again. The vocals in general were the main event for me. The expressive nuances can be heard more clearly, the madrigal-y quality of the backing vocals get a lot more attention. "Help" becomes intense, "I Am the Walrus" is shocking and weird instead of well-worn.
This album prompts a tricky question: what does it take for a piece of music to be "new?" What kind of status do recordings have as musical artifacts? I can't say I've gotten a lot of listens out of this one (the songs are ultimately well-worn with me), but the initial impact was significant. The quality of sound made its own statement. There was something new-enough in that experience for me.
As their reviewer says, the juxtapositions are pretty tame. The main interest in Love isn't the new relationships, but the restored quality of the source material. Us younguns know the Beatles primarily through the shoddy remaster jobs of their albums which date to the early years of the CD. A good song's a good song no matter how rough the recording is. However, a band that spent so much time in the studio is going to get shortchanged by technology that takes a giant step backwards from their original working conditions.
Something about hearing the masters handled with such care makes the songs sound fresh again. The vocals in general were the main event for me. The expressive nuances can be heard more clearly, the madrigal-y quality of the backing vocals get a lot more attention. "Help" becomes intense, "I Am the Walrus" is shocking and weird instead of well-worn.
This album prompts a tricky question: what does it take for a piece of music to be "new?" What kind of status do recordings have as musical artifacts? I can't say I've gotten a lot of listens out of this one (the songs are ultimately well-worn with me), but the initial impact was significant. The quality of sound made its own statement. There was something new-enough in that experience for me.
Yuk yuk yuk
This moment occurs at the top of the very last page of a 30'-ish multi-movement piece, Peter Garland's Jornada Del Muerto (piano solo). If you're going to wander through the desert for the while, I guess it behooves you to come away from the experience with a healthy sense of humor...
January 03, 2007
RSS Feed
I was playing with the tags feature in the new version of Blogger, which has caused some older posts to float to the top of my RSS feed. Apologies for any confusions.
Being Serious
One of the best parts of school vacation is spending time reading cookbooks. Reading a recipe is a lot like score reading. You're looking at instructions for performance, not the work itself. Like score reading, when you do it enough, you start to get a sense of what a recipe will taste like without having to prepare the dish. Also like score reading, while you may get the gist of the flavors, it's no substitute for actually eating.
I'm currently browsing through the book based on the French Laundry. High dining, to say the least. Not something I'll do every night, but it shares some secrets that will work with more pedestrian fare. One thing this book does well is communicate Thomas Keller's attitude towards food and cooking:
I'm currently browsing through the book based on the French Laundry. High dining, to say the least. Not something I'll do every night, but it shares some secrets that will work with more pedestrian fare. One thing this book does well is communicate Thomas Keller's attitude towards food and cooking:
Unlike meat and poultry, fish is not regulated for quality and it's not inspected, which is why quality ranges are huge. How can you know when fish wasn't handled right? Was it dumped on the boat, is it bruised and beaten up? How was it caught—did it drown in a net, its gills filling with water, its flesh becoming waterlogged? Once caught, was it properly iced?. . . Our fish is packed in ice or seaweed and stored in our walk-in cooler in the same position it swims—not haphazardly, and not on its side. The flesh is too easily damaged. This is what I mean by treating your products with respect.
Not only does he ask all the questions, but it's essential for him to know all the answers. However, he's no Alton Brown-style food scientist. Alton will get a costumed cohort when he wants to describe the different cuts of meat from an animal. Keller rolls up his sleeves:
One day, I asked my rabbit purveyor to show me how to kill, skin, and eviscerate a rabbit. I had never done this, and I figured if I was going to cook rabbit, I should know it from its live state through the slaughtering, skinning, and butchering, and then the cooking. The guy showed up with twelve live rabbits.
It's not that he thinks it would be fun to do, he considers it part of his personal education. Interestingly, the book is pretty low on arrogance. He seems constantly determined to make the best food he can. Talking about how great he is would just take time away from that.
Finally, Keller's thoughts on "performance practice":
These recipes, although exact documents of the way food is prepared at the French Laundry, are only guidelines. You're not going to be able to duplicate the dish that I made. You may create something that in composition resembles what I made, but more important—and this is my greatest hope—you're going to create something that you have deep respect and feelings and passions for. And you know what? It's going to be more satisfying than anything I could ever make for you.
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