Dread Glock Ascending

Last night, heading out of Lincoln Center in search of a bite to eat, my daughter and I were struck by a wild music bouncing around in the air outside Alice Tully Hall. Got up closer to the corner and we saw him: a gentleman of about my age (50-something) in graying dreadlocks, playing the hell out of a glockenspiel. It was something out of the weird world of free jazz, a kind of pseudo-major-scale bebop, with stuttering rhythms like the uneven stop and start and shuffling feet and murmur of the small crowd flowing around him.

It sounded like a tribute to Varese, like a flower on his tomb. We had just come out of the "Varese: (R)evolution" concert at Avery Fisher and Varese posters were draped all over the place at Lincoln Center, particularly at Alice Tully, where Part One of the Varese concerts had been the night before. With that exquisitely monstrous music still in our heads--huge full orchestra, a dozen percussionists--here comes this street performer, testifying to the same powerful vision of beauty one note at a time. Maybe he had been there too, at the concert. Or maybe he just knew--his hand on a lever of truth. The way I knew before I ever walked into the concert hall (where I had it all, all my faith reaffirmed). The way hopefully my daughter will know now for the rest of her life. And he wanted to share it.

Reminded me of the old days, before New York became a shopping mall. Something found on the street, letting the tinkling craziness wash over us and the whole city and the hot night. Oddly beautiful moments that come with no packaging, no explanation, no currency equivalent, and that you know you'll remember for the rest of your life.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Varese Tonight

Going tonight and tomorrow to hear the Varese (R)evolution pair of concerts at Lincoln Center, reviewing them together (I hope for the Asbury Park Press, although whether they'll be able to run it remains to be seen).

There was a nice tribute piece on Varese in the New York Times, singling out Ionisation as one of his most significant works.

Part 1 of the event, tonight, is at Alice Tully Hall featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble and So Percussion. Part 2 tomorrow night features the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall.

I'm in love with the modernism of the era that Varese represents, the 1920s in the U.S. There was an incredible inventiveness and richness to the ideas that were circulating in the "dissonant" school, including the work of Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Dane Rudhyar, George Antheil, Henry Cowell and many others. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of Stravinsky and the improvisatory style of Leo Ornstein, this stuff had little or nothing to do with Schoenberg's 12-tone technique that later overwhelmed the cultural notion of atonality and the use of dissonance. Varese was a spiritual leader of this movement, refusing to compromise his aesthetic even when the conservativism fostered by the Great Depression eliminated the opportunity for performances.

As a side note, it is striking to me how American Varese is. An immigrant and an iconoclast, he inspired a generation of composers all over the world, but American composers in particular. Frank Zappa is among the most notable, corresponding with Varese about the time the older composer was writing Deserts. Zappa was himself an iconoclast and a loner, like Varese. And he was also the son of immigrant parents and strongly aware of that fact.

That notion of displacement expressed through dissonance and experimentation, and of a unity, a translatability between the cultures of the world, has something to do with the styles that emerged in American life in the 20th Century. It fits in with psychological and cultural displacement found in the music of Charles Ives, considered the founder of whatever an American style is.

But I'm rambling now. More on all that some other time, I suppose. I have work to do if I'm going to make the train to New York later.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Don Giovanni

I'm excited to be going to the Opera New Jersey performance of Don Giovanni tomorrow afternoon with my daughter. Andrew Garland, pictured in the photo at left, will be playing the title role. I'll be the gray longhair with the pouting teenager on my arm. But, come to think of it, in a town like Princeton, that may not be enough information to single me out.

The opera is one of Mozart's finest, of the trio of collaborations with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte that also includes "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "Cosi fan tutti". These are all mature Mozart, setting stories told cleverly and often brilliantly by Da Ponte. "Don Giovanni" is the Don Juan legend, the story of a libertine nobleman who seduces scores of women and finally meets his fate at the hands of a murdered father's graveyard statue.

Da Ponte's colorful life brought him to the U.S., where he made many important contributions to the fledgling national culture, primarily through his expertise in Italian literature. (He was apparently the first to teach the works of Dante in America, among other things.)

But he is still remembered first and foremost as Mozart's librettist. He liked the notoriety and played it up, even crediting himself with discovering Mozart and introducing the composer to the world's audiences.

"I can never remember without exultation and complacency," he once wrote, "that it was to my perseverance and firmness alone that Europe and the world in great part owe the exquisite vocal compositions of the admirable genius."

Well, they are three really terrific operas, that much is certainly true. Mozart had written well over a dozen others before his collaborations with Da Ponte and none of them really captured the public's imagination in the same way.

So I'm excited to be going to see what promises to be a good production. Showtime is 2 p.m. at Princeton's McCarter Theatre, main stage.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Sustainability

Heading out this morning to a meeting with the Rider Sustainability Across Curriculum group at the Lawrenceville campus. Last fall I started teaching a Freshman Seminar at The College of New Jersey then titled Music and Environment (now Music and the Natural World). The idea was to increase sensitivity to environmental concerns by showing the intricate relationship of this aspect of human culture to our natural surroundings.

The idea for the course came out directly out of a discussion on sustainability and music theory curriculum on a Society of Music Theory list. The very beginnings of this discussion on SMT raised the hackles of many theorists and I certainly don't blame them.

As all music majors know, music theory courses are routinely jammed with information. They are notorious for shoe-horning in every possible technique of historical Western music theory plus a handful of ethnomusicological bric-a-brac. On top of that they also usually entail some ear-training, sight-singing and often a piano keyboard mechanics component. While they may have become more condensed, music theory has been taught more or less the same way for hundreds of years.

So the very thought that you could rejigger the music theory curriculum to fit into an all-of-a-sudden academic trend like sustainability just seemed a bit outrageous. Further, the topic itself seems pretty removed from any direct connection with sustainability--what is there to be sustained in music? How does music theory affect the physical environment and how can recycling or solar energy improve it?

I point all this out because the discussion actually did become useful, once we began to brainstorm and talk about intersections of environmentalism and music that interested us. And the course, so far, has turned out to be one of the most exciting that I've taught.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Summer Series at Mason Gross

Error alert: Two of the dates were switched and a venue left out in this week's Music Notes column in the Asbury Park Press. The article describes the Mason Gross School of the Arts Summer Series and features an interview with the artistic director Julie Roth. The correct info:

The multimedia performance Meghaduta is this Sunday, June 27 in Nicholas Music Center. Nimbus Dance Works is July 7 in the New Theater. Both venues are located in the Mason Gross complex at 85 George St., New Brunswick. For more information visit the series website: www.masongross.rutgers.edu/music/summerseries/html.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Songwriters by the Sea at Axelrod

The Axelrod Performing Arts Center is hosting special Songwriters by the Sea 8 p.m. this Sunday. Jersey Shore stars Joe D’Urso (Stone Caravan) and Joe Rapolla (the Perfect Square) are hosts with a line-up of songwriters who have had hits of one sort or another. They will join the two Joes onstage to perform and talk about their work and their stories from decades in the music business.

As a special treat, Grammy-nominated virtuoso guitarist, Gary Lucas (Gods and Monsters) will be a featured guest. Lucas was recently named one of the top 100 greatest living guitarists by Classic Rock Magazine. As a solo artist he sells out concerts all over the world and has been called "the world's most popular avant-rock guitarist" by Britain's the Independent. "Grace," a major hit for late Gods and Monsters bandmate Jeff Buckley, was co-authored by Lucas. Le first came to public notice playing with the legendary Captain Beefheart (Don van Vliet) and he currently performs with Fast 'N Bulbous, a free-jazz band performing many Beefheart originals.

Lucas is also a film score composer and will be performing live excerpts from his soundtrack to the silent film "The Golem" at Axelrod on June 27, as part of the Jersey Shore Film Festival.

Other songwriters performing at Songwriters by the Sea will be Willie Nile, Dean Friedman, Mike Black and Linda Chorney. While this annual event attracts many of the same faces each year, some of the participants will be taking the stage for the first time. Tickets are $20 available through the Axelrod box office or by phone at 732-531-9106.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com
Information on "The Golem" performance listed in this blog post was corrected 11:44 a.m., about 1 1/2 hours after initially posting.

...there will your heart be also

What's missing in discussions on the subject of immigration is a tone of compassion. These are our neighbors and, as Arizona is only now discovering, an important part of our workforce and an important part of our lives. You would think we feel an obligation to do a little more than simply say, "Hey, what the hell are you doing here?"

These are neighbors that have left their families and risked their lives to come to the U.S. Millions of them. They aren't coming here for the view. They're not here on vacation. They're not here on a whim. They often had to go through hell to get here and they were willing only because it is the course of last resort.

During the final waves of immigration from Europe, most of us were people of relatively modest means. Our children's favorite toys were marbles and cloth dolls that cost pennies to manufacture and purchase. The immigrants then worked hard for low wages and built themselves up, generation on generation.

Now, one of the biggest arguments I hear about illegal Latino immigrants is how much they are costing us. Don't we have that to spare? Shouldn't we feel an obligation to make it easier for them to build themselves up, generation on generation? Shouldn't we appreciate their hard work? Yes, thousands more low-income people mean a strain on public schools and hospitals and maybe we'll have to pay more in property taxes as a result. Shouldn't we do that? Do our children really need new cell phones and computers and iPods and Wii's and Playstations and whatever the hell else? Are we so protective of our treasure that we have to build an impenetrable wall to guard it against our neighbors? At that point, do we have a functioning community anymore?

The arguments in favor of trying to wall off Mexico somehow, trying to prevent any of those folks from coming in illegally--those arguments have a nationalist fervor. America for Americans. But what it boils down to is simple frustration and greed. Greed for obvious reasons. Frustration because, in Arizona, illegal immigrants account for a large part of out-of-control organized crime. And yes, that can be tied directly to U.S. immigration policy. Toughening the policy might help in the short term--then again, it might not.

The U.S. shares thousands of miles of land border with Mexico. A shared coastline on two shores makes the problem of patrolling that border even tougher. What will help in the long term is making sure that Mexico and the southern U.S. achieve parity in the standard of living. We have a long way to go on that score. We're filthy rich and they're dirt poor. We have opportunity for everyone. They have opportunity for only a meager few. Once a greater parity has been achieved, all this will fade into memory. Like a bad dream.

How do we do that? Well, I suppose it would have to begin with a close look at why NAFTA failed to help Mexico. And then build from there.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com
[this article was originally posted around noon 5/21/10 and lightly edited at 3:29 p.m. EST.]