The Fredösphere

One more reminder that US copyright law is broken, and that the RIAA is run by a bunch of krazy kooklas.

Labels: Culture

I emerge from my blogging hibernation with an important message.

The kids and I saw Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium with the Maharincess' friend Lydia and her dad, my good friend, Thad.  The movie was good enough, although I've never been much of a fan of Peter Panesque paeans to pre-pubescent precipitancy.  Nevertheless, it was clearly worth the price of admission, considering we were at a one-dollar movie theater that had no truth-in-labeling issues--a ticket really cost only one buck.

What got my attention was Natalie Portman's scene at the climax.  She plays a young woman whose precocious talent as a pianist was sidetracked when she took a job as a clerk in a magic toy store.  She and the store are transformed when she accepts her new role as store owner; she understands a toy store may be as worthy an object of her creative efforts as a concert stage.  (Fine, fine; I'm not buying it, but whatever, it's just a movie.)  What happens in that scene is that Portman waves her arms as various toys in the store come to life.  The strings are cued and the soundtrack soars...and suddenly you realize Portman is conducting the music.  More precisely, Portman is portraying someone who is conducting music.  And she's doing it very, very badly.

This is hardly the first time I've seen this phenomenon.  Actors are asked to fake all kinds of stuff; why is conducting, of all things, so commonly botched?  Why, on the other hand, are musicians so commonly (although not universally) able to do it?  In particular, is there something about experience in ensemble playing that provides the missing, uh, magic?  I really want to know.  Why isn't conducting like falling off a log for these people?

Labels: movie

Ian Moss has a new blog, with an emphasis on arts management to go along with the composing.

Dark Roasted Blend has one of its gallaries of gorgeous retro-future art.  This time the subject is cities.  (Hat tip Gravity Lens.)

I've been looking for a good video of the Four Bettys for a while now.  I found one with them singing "So Happy Together," but they really deserve something with better sound quality.  Meanwhile, enjoy.  Female barbershop quartets use a two-staff system with treble clef on the top for the tenor and lead and bass clef (transposed up an octave) for the baritone and bass.  This way, arrangements for men's groups can be adopted effortlessly by women's groups, and vice versa.  One more factoid:  as best I can tell, the term "beauty shop quartet" has become moribund; perhaps stillborn is the better metaphor.  One is inclined to be impressed by the female bass (really, a female with something like the range of a male tenor) but don't overlook the difficulty of singing the soprano part, which can get very high, but must always stay under the lead in terms of volume.  Unlike with men's groups, there's no falsetto to solve that problem.

Labels: BarbershopHarmony, Composer, Futurism

Hosanna!  My buddy Alan gave me the news.  Carol Barnett's The World Beloved:  A Bluegrass Mass has been recorded by VocalEssence.  Give the Sanctus a listen.  (Stephen Paulus' The Day is Done and Eric Whitacre's Water Night have sample tracks available as well.)

Labels: Composer, OldTyme, vocal

I'll see your Messiah Organist On Crack and raise you an O Holy Night.  (Find it in the list titled "A Stockingful Annoying Tunes.")  Far more polished, but hardly annoyance-free, is the Billy Gilman version, which with its neglect of the second verse and its throaty warble reminded me, implausibly, of Mahalia Jackson's rendition, without the endearing grammatical errors ("from yonders break a new and glorious morn").

Labels: fun, vocal

Conductor Kenneth Kiesler chose a theme of death and rebirth implicitly in his marriage of Evan Chambers' new song cycle The Old Burying Ground with The Rite of Spring in last night's concert by the University of Michigan Orchestras.  Chambers' premiere was a thrilling experience, with fine performances by soprano Jenifer Larson and Nicholas Phan, the latter with a surprisingly potent tenor voice.  Folk stylings were supplied by Tim Eriksen, whose reedy tones brought the right kind of melancholy to this setting of tombstone epitaphs.  Vocally, he fit right in; visually, he seemed uncomfortable.  Eriksen looked like a man who was still trying to figure out how a folk singer ought to behave on a classical concert stage.  No doubt he'll sort things out by the time they take the show on the road.

At half time the wifeösphere and I realized it would be impossible for us to stay to the end of Le Sacre, so we declared victory and pulled out.  It was a painful decision, and with it I felt the last reserves of my bohemian cred leaking away, but we simply could not expect the family watching our kids to stay up so late.  So we left, with the words of the old spiritual "Ain't got time to be reborn" in our heads.

Last night's concert was a clubby affair, since we sat next to our friends Victor Volkman and his wife Marian, and behind Michelle Mustert and her husband Jen Canlas.  Michelle is the daughter of Merle Mustert, a long-time force to be reckoned with in the choral music scene of Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Michelle introduced us to her friend Midori Koga, who accompanied Evan Chambers on piano for the chamber premiere of The Old Burying Ground.

See my prior post for more information about Evan Chambers.

Labels: Composer, vocal

Tonight I'll hear for the first time Le Sacre performed live.  Lisa Hirsch has links regarding the Joffrey Ballet's reconstruction of Nijinsky's original choreography.  She says it looks like nothing she's seen before.  I was surprised that some of the native costumes look very Native American -- I guess there's something to that whole Bering Land Bridge idea after all.

Stravinsky's quiet opening music was originally performed in darkness before a closed curtain (or so I recall reading somewhere).  This video adopts the modern practice of beginning with credits shown over the opening music.  It's amusing to think audiences trained to watch movies rather than listen to orchestras would doubtless accept this opening docilely.  They would profess boredom with the exact same music in a concert hall setting.  The addition of a display of names of people they don't care about is sufficient to pacify them.  Mirabile dictu!

Hey, visuals entertain me too.  Foot stomping gives motivation to the thump-thump-thump-thump-thump music, and Nijinsky uses little tilts of the head to explain Stravinsky's woodwind flourishes.  Now if only someone would revive Daphnis et Cloé somewhere I could watch it, I would be happy.

Labels: Culture

Composer Evan Chambers came to the Ann Arbor library last night to talk about his new work, The Old Burying Ground.  He's the chair of the composing department at the University of Michigan, and his work will receive its premiere this coming Monday by the UM Symphony Orchestra and three vocal soloists.  The featured performer will be a folk singer known for his singing in the movie Cold Mountain and whose name is...is...aw, shucks, I can't remember if it was Tim Eriksen or one of the others.

For last night's presentation, Chambers sang a few songs himself, accompanied by his wife, the pianist (and ethomusicologist) Suzanne Camino, and poet Keith Taylor, who was commissioned to write a poem inspired by the epitaphs which make up the text of Chambers' work.  Chambers apologized in advance for his untrained voice.  Indeed, his intense vocal production--inspired by folk singers from Ireland, Albania, and the American South--left him hoarse after only a few songs, so it would seem no singing career is imminent.  Nevertheless, the audience found his singing compelling.  He inhabited the music in a way that is rare, using his composer's advantage to the fullest.  It's thrilling, really, to find a composer of high-brow music who sings; Samuel Barber was another, and who else?  One expects a composer to be a pianist first and foremost.  (Evan Chambers also plays the Irish fiddle, and was raised in a home steeped in 60s folk music.)  Chambers' website has sound files of him singing these songs.

After next week's program (which will also include The Rite of Spring) the orchestra will take the show on the road, culminating in a performance at Carnegie Hall on February 28.  I hope Alex Ross is marking his calendar.

Labels: Composer

Thanks to an anonymous visitor who left a thoughtful response to one of my Haydn jeremiads.  I'm glad he or she was not provoked by my needlessly provocative attack on Haydn, which are always intended (but often do not appear) to be delivered with at least 50% of my tongue in my cheek.

It's not that I don't dislike Haydn, it's just that I recognize this is purely a question of taste.  Haydn is an excellent craftsman in the shaping of melodies; it's just that I am always listening for a certain harmonic structure (which I attempted to define in that link above) which Haydn lacks, for reasons Anonymous makes clear.  Also, the forms Haydn helped develop seem primitive in his hands--all those literal repeats don't hold my atrophied attention.

It's sad, really.  Driving home from Saturday night's inaugural Vivo concert, sponsored by the Common Cup coffeehouse at the University Lutheran Chapel, the wifeösphere expressed a timid opinion that she actually liked the Haydn symphony (conducted by the eager young maestro Brett Luginbill).  I had to assure her enjoyment was completely legit, and that she is in good company.  It helps to hear Haydn played live, in a space just the right size to make a 20ish-piece orchestra ring out loud and clear.  The Chapel makes a chamber group sound loud.  Loud is good.

Some day I'll learn to write about music without mentioning my irrelevant whims.  Meanwhile, for a more coherent essayist, see Daniel Wolf describing the role of passagework in music.

Labels: Composition