Clarity

It's a bit disturbing that, in spite of my current existence as a pianist, I've recently gravitated so heavily toward combos with no piano. First it was the Dave Holland Quintet, who open up their sound by substituting Steve Nelson's marimba and vibes. He tends to play thinner chords than a pianist--which makes sense, because he's got what, four mallets probably, versus a pianist's ten fingers--and also just play less, and even when he does the timbre is so different, higher and again, thinner, so it doesn't seem to saturate the spectrum as much as a piano.

And now it's the Ornette Coleman quartet. I finally got one of his records because I heard the SF Jazz Collective version of "Una Muy Bonita" and thought to myself, well, I've got to hear the original of that. So I picked up Change of the Century, and holy shit that's a beautiful rhythm section! It's straight up ecstatic, in places, to hear Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins crackling around one another--the interplay is so complex but it always rings, and there's no comping instrument to muck it up. I suppose a rhythm section of a chording instrument plus one other could have a similar effect, but as a million people have said by now, the absence of comping also frees the soloists to really stretch out melodically, which results in some just damn gorgeous solos, with a terrific off-beat sense of phrasing.

I realize Coleman's records where very path-breaking for the time, but it's unfortunate that he still has such a spiky reputation. He obviously deserves to be known as an innovator, but I find this stuff extremely easy to dive into, and there's no excuse for it taking this long for me to hear it.

UPDATE: Exhaustive Wikipedia research has yielded the fact that trumpeter Don Cherry is the father of pop musician Eagle-Eye Cherry, and that this is evidently actually his real name. Charlie Haden's daughter Petra has been involved with both that dog. and The Decemberists. Also, Haden is from Iowa. How about that.

UPDATE 2: All of that said, the piano is still pretty great too.

Reciprocity

So, I heard "Wagon Wheel" again today. Man, that song gives me fits. The thing is, it's fantastic. Just right. And everyone knows this. It's from this album packed with fun songs, but everyone knows that it's the best one--including the band themselves, who put it right at the end, almost as if to say, "wait 'til you hear this one."

It's just I-V-vi-IV. That's all it is. And that's all the rest of the songs on the record are too. So why is it better? We cannot hope to isolate this music's quality within its objective, quantifiable traits. The formalistic aspects that academics love to use to justify their instincts are just not sufficient in this case; there isn't enough there, objectively, to make analysis profitable. So what remains?

I was struck by a possible answer to this question a few months ago when I was sitting in a coffee shop in Austin reading David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous, and Radiohead's "No Surprises" comes on the speakers. And let me tell you, I felt a physical response. This music and I have memories together. It runs deep into my personal experience. I looked back down at the book I was reading and realized the answer was right there.

See, music is not a passive object. It's not inanimate. It's another entity with which we participate, like the people in our lives, like the places and possessions that become important to us. Our experience of music, like all perception for Abram, is not a one-way street. It's flowing, dynamic, open reciprocity. "No Surprises" spoke to me, and I spoke back. It spoke to me of my past and I told it of my present. We give to one another, and each time we meet, we are both different--although, as Abram points out with respect to a clay bowl, the rhythm of change in a supposedly static, "inanimate" object, or a musical recording, differs greatly from my own. But like anything you look upon regularly and to which you ascribe personal significance, animate or not, you and that entity have a relationship, and it develops each time you give one another your attention.

The same with "Wagon Wheel." It's so excellent in part because it reminds everyone of that great spring break trip or that summer they spent working in x state with mountains. The quality is not solely a property of the music; it's also an attribute that the listener brings to the experience and receives in turn from the song. What other explanation could there be for such disparate evaluations of artistic worth?

Every time you move toward subjective conceptions of value, you run the risk of throwing the objective traits out the window entirely, of ending up in a postmodern abyss where there can be no positive statements about art. But it isn't all subjective, of course. Abram's clay bowl is in his house because he, assumedly, saw it in an artisan's shop and picked it out based primarily on its perceptible aesthetic characteristics. The music we let in, we do initially let in because of objective qualities like melodic catchiness, or whatever. But the experience is more complex than that, especially once you develop a history with a piece of art. It's relationship with you, as an entity in your life, becomes a much more potent testament to its worth than any attribute that can be drawn in a matrix or explained through roman numerals.

Self-reliance

I've been meaning to post about this for a while now, but when I saw the Trimpin documentary (mandatory) back in March I was struck by a photo of Conlon Nancarrow at work. I don't remember if this is the one, but it has the same effect:

Fans of American classical music (the real stuff) have sometimes been guilty of fetishizing the archetype of the solitary artist. Nancarrow, of course, is often cited as exhibit A in this regard. There is no doubt that many, if not most, of our highly creative composers have met with widespread ignorance or hostility. I question the maverick myth, though--so many of these figures met and interacted and self-consciously developed their work with the others' in mind. Nonetheless I find something stirring in these solitary composer photos, showing these artists at work, ignoring general ignorance, just doing their thing and not giving a damn what people think. And that's so American, right? The self-made man? Transcendentalism and inner law? This shot of Julius Eastman has the same qualities, I think:

That represents more positive American qualities than fireworks, I'd say. On that note, check out Paste Magazine's list of 12 patriotic songs better than "God Bless the USA." They even include Appalachian Spring, although as usual I'm forced to advocate the lesser-known original chamber instrumentation (which I listened to this morning, actually) over the orchestral suite.

Get Rich Quick

My friend Ian Dicke has posted the recording of me playing his piece for piano and electronics, Get Rich Quick. It's a very well-written piece that also has the rare and valuable attribute of being funny. Check it out.

Misc.

Some interesting thoughts related to Michael Jackson: Trevor Hunter at Newmusicbox, Mark Richardson at Pitchfork.

Also on Newmusicbox is a preview of The Listen, a new book by composer and fellow IWU alum and Peter Gilbert and Christopher Jon Honett. Looks like an interesting project, I'm looking forward to reading more.

On another totally unrelated note, I thought for no reason yesterday about the "Tips for Beginners" FAQ on the Austin Symphony's website, which is a really cute, easily mocked, but also kind of well done classical concert primer. My favorite question: "Why don't the musicians smile when they play?" It also includes some good classical music links. I would, however, be happy if no one ever used the word "Maestro" in seriousness ever again. Yuck.

Summertime

Grand Lake has a summer Thursday night live music series: each week, some goofy little folk group of some sort is set up in the gazebo when I arrive for call. They're constantly playing to tiny and passive audiences of around ten to twenty people, including the two guys who are selling popcorn. The effort is made yet more quixotic by the mercurial mountain weather, which has delivered rain every Thursday thus far--and not all day, mind you, just in time for the music. The first week it was in the forties out there and the few spectators were under blankets; last week the rain was insignificant enough that most of the audience was in lawn chairs. Tonight, though, was seriously wet, and only a small coterie was present, popcorn in hand, protected under the awnings of the library.

I don't know where they find these bands, but each one of them suggests a wealth of stories that I'd really like to hear--or at least that's what I think at first, before I become irritated by their music/stage banter/both and go inside. The first week it was a Christian family band from Nebraska, complete with a battery of golden-haired, mandolin-playing youngsters; tonight it was a trio of guitar, piano and drums playing "Summertime" and "Proud Mary" in the chilly mist. The primary singer in these bands is never who you expect, in fact is generally the last person on the stage you think to look at.

I'll admit it, though, my heart grows three sizes when I see these groups out there week after week. God knows where they come from or who's continued to encourage their pursuits. I wonder if all of their audiences are as vaguely disinterested as the ones here. I myself rarely tolerate much more than a song and a half, but I'm still just so glad to see those people out there. Because playing music, learning to physically play an instrument and then want to play it in front of people, rain and apathy be damned, is a weird, irrational thing to do, but there are times when weird irrationality is vital, and this happens to be a manifestation of it that I particularly believe in.

I'm thinking of the Peter Garland quotation I put on here a year ago May, describing continued human expression, in the face of the horrors of the twentieth century, as "heroic." The twentieth century, with its mass war-induced recognition of human brutality, is over. For Americans, at least, that awareness and introspection has cooled and hardened into ironic detachment--into a steady state of impassivity where pursuits, generally speaking, are often considered frivolous if not entirely futile.

There's not a damn reason to play music. It'll never be as polished as a studio recording, and you'll never be as good as the ten thousand other people who already play that instrument. And besides, there's already muzak coming over the speakers in here, don't you hear? If you start playing, someone's going to have to walk over and turn it down. All the more reason to keep playing. Just picking up an instrument is becoming an act of defiance. So pick the thing up, right now, and take it outside. Like Ed Abbey said: "Don't drop it on your foot--throw it at something big and glassy. What do you have to lose?"

Internet radio renewed my faith in new music

You mean you can just listen to the stuff, and take it in, and enjoy it, without reading pompous bios/program notes, enduring (or participating in) absurd posturing, or getting embroiled in endless debates about its "quality"/relevance to society/theoretical and historical implications?  Revelatory.

Counterstream Radio

Iridian Radio

Other recommendations welcome!

Keeping up

I don't follow a whole lot of blogs. There are only a handful I read regularly, and a bunch more that I look at only occasionally. NPR's jazz site A Blog Supreme has recently jumped into the former category. It's easy to lampoon the weblog practice, but sites like ABS are so useful for keeping in touch with a certain scene or thread within music.

People who show up

I've been checking out Dave Hickey's essay collection Air Guitar. He's an art critic who also does and writes about music, hence the title, although it's a bit misleading--air guitar is his derogatory analogy for the act of writing criticism. It's been teaching me a great deal of new vocabulary words, which is great, but also the book is worth its price only for "Romancing the Looky-Loos," which is an essay that I feel like nailing to a bunch of doors. It's about the difference between spectators and participants, those who just happen across the concert versus those who are truly engaged. Spectators, or "civilians," were "people who did not live the life--people with no real passion for what was going on. They were just looking." (148)

Listen to this. "The butterfly effects of cultural eccentricity are of no interest to spectators; they either consume, or they critique...Beyond this hegemony of corporate and institutional consensus, however, beyond the purview of uncannily lifelike blockbusters like Jurassic Park and the Whitney Biennial, everything that grows in the domain of culture, that acquires constituencies and enters the realm of public esteem, does so through the accumulation of participatory investment by people who show up." (150)

The most enthralling thing about this book has been Hickey's conception of cultural levels--there is the controlling class, which consists, interestingly, of both academia and the corporate tastemakers, and then there is this vast underbelly of actual people at actual bars making actual art/music/whatever and actually talking about it. Art coming into existence through real-life, quotidian socialization. Hickey entered this level by dropping out of graduate school and opening an art gallery (in Austin, of course), and the ideas he's developed through the experience of dealing with art from commercial, academic, and critical vantages are deep and always surprising. Each essay begins with something and then goes somewhere different and more insightful than you expect it to. He also really knows how to write.

Labyrinths

1. Physics.

In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking muses on the apparent logic of the universe. Science is full of fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron, numbers we have observed and recorded--and it seems that even a very small variation in any of these settings would have precluded the development of intelligent life. This seems, for many, good evidence of a creator with logic that includes us: these careful calibrations that just happen to allow for our existence indicate that the universe was, on some level, intended for our occupancy.

2. Goblin Valley State Park, Utah.

The first time I went to Goblin Valley, I was convinced it was a naturally occurring playground. The intention seemed so clear. This isolated field full of eminently climbable structures of various sizes and levels, with such whimsical shapes, the magnitude of it so perfect for lighthearted exploration... this place could not have been meant for any other end than human play. I, as a visitor there, was the recipient of a divine gift, and I accepted it without hesitation.

Then I returned last week, and realized the truth to be more complex. Goblin Valley is not a perfect playground. It has dead ends and loose ground and difficult climbs, and if you're not careful you can get yourself hurt or stuck in a tough spot. Roaming around on the goblins, I noticed, creates a huge amount of destructive erosion, and the highest plateau was covered in cryptobiotic soil, some of which I'd surely unknowingly stomped during my previous visit. I still had a great time, but I was forced to admit that Goblin Valley was not made for my use, nor anyone else's. It is the same lesson the environmental movement has gradually managed to teach us with regard to the world at large.

So the beautiful places of the earth are not truly playgrounds for our enjoyment, at least not solely or primarily. They are not labyrinths designed for us. Last week I passed through a narrow canyon in Goblin Valley, thinking it had to be a sort of back entrance to the valley; ultimately, it led nowhere, and I was forced to backtrack. A labyrinth at least has an unequivocal center, and one or more definitive paths to reach it.

3. Art.

The labyrinths we create for ourselves, the ones we are meant to walk through and gain something from. Even in the most elusive works of modernism and the most insouciant of postmodernism, there is a center. All dead ends are intentional. I suspect, in opposition to John Cage, that the center and the creator are closely linked, but this is a multivalent question. 

The "imperfect" labyrinths of nature, with their glimmers of insight, their suggestions of divine logic, inspire us to create our own, embedded with meanings that we have drawn from the messy and sometimes ostensibly indifferent universe around us.

Modern walking labyrinths take one on a circuitous path, giving first a close glimpse of the center before branching off in every possible direction and traveling far before finally reaching it. Similarly, art cannot make its point too plainly or unambiguously. A certain air of mystery is required, a certain projection of what is there onto another, invisible plane. This is why I like the work of Rene Magritte, James Joyce, John Fahey, Charles Ives, and David Lynch, to name a few.

A teacher of mine once bought an abstract painting; he said he knew for sure that it was good art when two of his friends got into an argument about whether the painting conveyed exuberance or anger. A unanimous conclusion is not necessary, only the forceful impression that a conclusion is possible.

4. Another scientist.

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious." -- Albert Einstein

The Importance of Being Sesquipedalian

We're all aware by now that there is a ludicrous number of composers out there; this has not phased Richard Zarou, who in his ongoing podcast No Extra Notes provides a great snapshot of one composer each week, with brief interviews and musical samples. A composer a week seems daunting, but when they come in the digestible form of a twenty-minute podcast, it seems so reasonable. This week he features Milica Paranosic, who delightfully made the rest of us look a bit foolish by sounding, in her interview, like an actual artist. Her response, for example, to a question regarding her music's influences: "people, stories, events, children, games, languages, and my brother." What sort of music does she listen to? "I like fun music, I like music that makes me want to scream and run." I'm sure not all would agree, but to me these responses suggest artistic self-confidence. The rest of us, by contrast, hewed close to the general academic tendency of justifying our work by trying to analyze it. It's not that we weren't being honest--we just dressed it up with our best witty, erudite musings, and as a result it doesn't end up sounding as honest.

But then, I wonder, if we were all as terse as possible in describing our love of music and the reasons we do it, would all of our answers to Richard's questions be the same? 

Something, perhaps, along the lines of George Mallory's explanation of why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest: "Because it's there."

capital C, capital P

I closed out my MM years the last two nights with the Ears, Eyes, and Feet concert at UT, on which I played Ian Dicke's new piece Get Rich Quick for piano and prerecorded accompaniment, with six dancers onstage throwing shoes at each other. It was a blast, and I got to wear a top hat and spats--the latter being a wonderful old-school wardrobe item the existence of which I hadn't previously been aware. The greatest lessons are always unexpected, eh?

This semester culminated a general tendency during my UT years toward performance, specifically of new music and jazz, over what I've been calling "capital-C Composing." When I pulled into Austin in August '07 I was in the thrall of my most compositionally productive year--I pumped out pieces in '07 and the first half of '08 with no regard whatsoever for quality or editing. I had so many piece ideas that it was all I could do to tear through a first draft, throw it into Finale, and then move right on. I've slowed down since, probably healthily, partially because my time here has called my attention to a lot of questions that I hadn't previously considered. In some ways I consider the second year of my Master's--during which I only finished three new pieces--a running start into the leap I hope to now take.

Regardless of psychological issues, the central practical reason for my slower compositional pace was an increased devotion to playing. I have a hard time thinking I'll regret this choice; I had the opportunity to play a lot of new music with a lot of awesome performers this year, and that's not a chance I'll have as readily when I'm out of school. Composing, by contrast, I can do by myself in a shed somewhere (and plan to). But playing Eight Songs for a Mad King with the UT NME and John Duykers? Giving the second performance of Gabriela Frank's New Andean Songs? Rocking out Louis Andriessen's M is for Man, Music, Mozart with a crew of badass horn players? Spending a month combing over the details of Sebastian Currier's Vocalissimus? Not to mention doing Music for a Summer Evening with a group of dancers and a three-story set of scaffolding, and playing music by my composer friends, which is always particularly rewarding. These are experiences I was only able to have because of UT, specifically I suppose because of Dan Welcher and the New Music Ensemble, and I'm grateful for them.

One of my personal mantras has been, leaving school, that I want to regroup and develop a new approach to composing that grows organically from the playing of music. Living in Austin, where every party seems to include a jam session, has confirmed the necessity of this. For the moment it may involve moving away from scores, and toward putting together music for live performances or recordings. But largely I really don't know what the stylistic results of this new approach will be. I proceed not out of dedication to an abstract, unrealized ideal, but in pursuit of a particular energy whose ends I can't entirely envision. This is exciting.

It's also always hard to say what will happen when I get back to Colorado again. I have a history of writing big pieces in Grand Lake; my two orchestra pieces were drafted during my two summers in the mountains. Maybe I'll catch that bug again. For now, I have three pieces in the works for friends, about which more details soon. So for at least the next couple months I'll still have a foot in "capital-C composing." I think it'll feel a lot different outside the confines of school. One older composer describing my generation used the metaphor of a drunk falling asleep on a pool table, then rolling off in the middle of the night; when he eventually woke up, the room still dark, he thought he was still on the table, and so began to crawl about tentatively, feeling for its edges. It's a bizarre analogy, but for some reason I really like it.

Also, the Austin Chronicle recently did an interesting piece on our local composers, academic and non-. There has been a good amount of press recently examining our growing new-music scene, and the energy seems to be positive and productive.

I leave Austin in a few days, at least for the summer; my schedule after that is a bit uncertain. I do plan to be back here, but nonetheless things are shifting, and it is time to say thank you to everyone who has been a part of these two confusing, enriching years. I think I spent most of my time here just getting my bearings, but that's been a pattern in life, really--each phase seems to end around the time I get comfortable with it. At least this keeps me on my toes. And the seeds planted in each phase can still come to blossom in the next. Cheers to that.

Disconnect

Great musical weekend in Austin. My teacher Dan Welcher's Fifth Symphony received a very successful and well-received premiere by the Austin Symphony: you can read a review by local critic Jeanne Claire van Ryzin here. She has some insightful and complimentary things to say about the piece, and also makes a crucial comment about the concert program, which also featured Sarah Chang playing Bruch's Violin Concerto no. 1, followed by Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien:

"If anything, this weekend’s program, while noteworthy, revealed ASO’s greater disconnect from the very musical culture of its place and time. Little if anything was done by the ASO management to specifically market Welcher’s piece to Austin audiences. It shouldn’t have had to share the limelight with a celebrated soloist. And that strategy is curious, because a premiere by an Austin composer would have been an obvious means for ASO to connect with potential new and younger Austin audiences who wouldn’t normally connect with most of the symphonic repertoire ASO typically offers."

Exactly. EXACTLY. Illustration: this was the only ASO concert that my fellow composition students and I have attended en masse, and get this--almost all of us left at intermission, after Welcher's piece. If you're not even connecting to the younger generation of composition students, forget about connecting to the younger generation of general listeners.

On an unrelated note, the following day I had a curious one-two of musical inspiration. A cellist friend introduced me to Schnittke's Piano Quintet and we listened to it and discussed it, and then immediately after, I went to hear Sonny Rollins play at the UT PAC. Man, that guy is a walking advertisement for yoga, still playing like that at age 78. The whole evening prompted some thoughts about notated music versus improvised. The advantages of one occasionally charm me into thinking that it's the ideal approach. I realized this weekend that it's much like going between the city and the wilderness--each one makes you appreciate the other. Perhaps it's not a matter of choosing one exclusively, but simply finding a balance.

Colorado

The countdown is on: two more weeks in Austin, a quick jaunt through the Midwest, and I'm on my way back to this rock.


Only two concerts remain. A week from today, May 5, the New Music Ensemble plays Static and Vocalissimus by Sebastian Currier and Shot in the Dark by Travis Jeffords: webcast here. Friday and Saturday, May 8-9, is Ears, Eyes, and Feet, the collaborative concert between the UT Electronic Music Studios and dance department. I'm playing Ian Dicke's new piece for piano and electronics, Get Rich Quick.

Being compelled

I've been on a fairly consistent diet for nearly three years of mostly emotionally reserved music--contemporary classical and, for the last year, more jazz. Some of this music is of course emotionally rich, but it leaves a lot more for the listener to fill in than, say, indie pop, with its anthemic I-IV rockouts which are probably, on some level, my lifeblood. I think of Louis Andriessen, who wrote once that he did not find Mahler's music compelling, because he was always being compelled by it. By comparison to the "new music" in which I've lately been immersed, the pop music of my high school and early college years comes like an injection of adrenaline. An evening of listening to this music after weeks or months of denial feels like a cup of strong coffee after a period of abstinence from caffeine: I immediately recognize the energizing power of this substance, but it also leaves me wondering if it can really be healthy to drink it on a regular basis, and I have a difficult time concentrating afterward.