you were listening to K-T-R-U Houston 91.7fm | 27 . August . 2010

Okay. I’m not going to get all 19-yr-old-emotional-college-vegetarian-tom’s-of-maine-john-cage-peace-t-shirt-activist about this — Rice University selling off KTRU (student-run station) to KUHF.  But, Alma Mater, please — that was a little bit tacky.

I have, til now, had relatively few pangs of nostalgia for my college days — which I recall being sort of exuberantly stressful, exciting, and confusing.  But the recent announcement about KTRU reminded me of some real good old days behind a microphone in a musty studio lined with cd’s and records by bands whose names often involved jungle animals or some extraterrestrial metaphor.  I was possibly the least knowledgeable dj to walk through its bumper-sticker-smothered doors — but I did leave there with some vague knowledge of a vast array of composers/bands/artists.  Like Steve Reich. I only later learned that “that endless piece with people tapping on wood” (my parents often listened in online to my Saturday afternoon show) was something famous, called “Music for Pieces of Wood”, written in 1973. And like Bang on a Can.  And Gavin Bryars.  And Brian Eno.  And Pauline Oliveiros, John Zorn, Louis Andriessen, Lou Harrison, Ingram Marshall — and lots of Harry Partch.

I also remember playing, late at night during my rookie graveyard shift, several tracks of what was known at KTRU as “the balloon music cd” — one guy, one tenor balloon, one hour of melodic flatulence.  Hm…  In retrospect, that was probably a little too experimental for 50,000 watts of power, broadcasting to millions across the Houston metropolitan area…

Just found all my old playsheets, still online!! Amazing! Apparently the first track I ever played was “Little Atlas Heavyweight” by The Ex, on their album Dizzy Spells… What?

If anyone associated with Rice admin happens upon this post — please don’t sell that broadcast tower. I know you will anyway, but please don’t be so tacky about it, telling me it’s to fund “a new food service venture”. KTRU is a really meaningful project, to many people — and I would rather have Harry Partch than a better salad bar. Love, Caroline ’04

Speaking of cool new music in Houston, happening this Saturday Best wishes, Ted — and thanks for giving us all such a great work.

“larded onto Bach music” | 10 . August . 2010

Delightful use of the word “lard” in the NYTimes (8/8).  Alistair Macaulay: “The same three dancers delivered Hans van Manen’s ‘Solo’: each solo is a rapid and silly string of whimsically cute effects larded onto Bach music.”

First though, the work in question — (different performers):

So. I remember seeing this piece done at Ailey a few years ago, and I thought it was good, and beautifully danced (heart clifton brown).  But a little bit frustrating.  The crisp alignment with the music’s phrasing was inconsistent, and departures from it seemed kind of random.  I went back and found Macaulay’s review (12/3/07), in which he says more or less the same thing as the Colorado review:  “Mr. van Manen does give each dancer individualized material, though they have too many consciously quirky flourishes of head and arms and a too relentlessly left-right tick-tock phrasing to become serious”.  (I had a few other issues, as usual, with the production’s treatment of music.  Issue #1: a recording of the piece was used — even though it would only need a solo player; #2: the recording artist wasn’t mentioned in the program; #3: the music was listed as “Johann Sebastian Bach”, rather than the more informative “Corrente and Double from Partita No. 1 in b minor, 1720″. )

I watched Benjamin Millepied/Olivier Simola’s ciaccona (film) again the other day, and I actually liked it even more this time.  It’s not always wedded to the underlying harmonic structure, but it seems like it’s sensitive to something larger than that.  Here’s part 2 — the gut-wrenching section in D major…

Another recent find is a Forsythe version of the ciaccona, of which there’s not a complete version online. Here’s an excerpt from the end of “Steptext” (1985), and also a bit of the chaconne nested in his larger tanztheaterish work “Artifact” (1984) – excerpted here by a Dutch tv clip (see 1:40).

These are three really different approaches, to Bach, to ballet vocabulary, to theatrical appropriation of ye olde musicke, to ways of presenting dance (stage or screen), and to technical virtuosity.  I’m most interested these days in confronting and understanding that appropriation and perception of ye olde musicke, especially in modern dance.  The kind of thing where suddenly some (gorgeous, brilliant, complex) Schubert piano sonata comes on, and everyone is supposed to feel nostalgic and cry, but it could just as easily have been a Louis Jullien ditty, as far as the dramatic effect and intention were concerned…

As for Bach solo violin partitas in particular — I’m working on a couple of ideas with these myself, over the summer.  They’re pretty dorky, but fun little side projects.  To be continued…

And yes, I do wish Mark Morris had choreographed the B minor partita. Maybe some day.

schnapshotz | 9 . August . 2010

A few annotated photos from June/July…

- Roomful of Teeth residency at Mass MoCA
- recording Bang on a Can’s Shelter in New York
- working at EMIA in Kent, CT
- misc

Big W, little Y | 5 . August . 2010

I found this while researching Bessie Smith — for a future project involving Mellissa, Martha, and consecutive üümlauts.  One of my favorite songs, by one of my favorite [living] singers, adapted by — yes, again — Sesame Street.

Speaking of Yodel…

In other news, living it up monastically in the Berkshire foothills, accompanying grand jetés and coccyx balances at Earl Mosley’s dance institute in Kent, CT. Lots of little homemade projects in the works — to be revealed later… On the drive up, I had a Proustian moment, with the windows rolled down and the smell of slow-smoked barbeque peeling over the slope of route 22 heading north. My brother had just delivered a pulled pork feast for the 4th of July in North Carolina, so I couldn’t help turning in to Big W’s, just south of Wingdale, NY. The biggest sandwich I’ve ever eaten — behold:

living in a tin Can | 27 . June . 2010

April always gets credit for being the month of transition, thanks to the showers-to-flowers trope.  Though for me, June has historically been the time where things jump, flip over, and hit the ground running again.   e.g. . . Getting awesome new saddle shoes (1989).  Graduating from fourth grade (1992).  Going to Kinhaven (1997).  Leaving for a year’s exodus from the motherland (2004).  Moving (2007).  Moving (2008).  Moving (2009).  And moving (2010).

Time to move again, by the end of this month.  Boxes — bubble wrap — stairs — doors — keys — cash — a van — sweat — traffic — time — and that epic anvil, nostalgia.

The whole process coincides with rehearsals this week for the Bang on a Can marathon (tonight), singing Shelter.  It’s a shared musical project by Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang, with Deborah Artman (text) and Bill Morrison (film).  About an hour long, in seven movements, the piece operates with a wide aperture in considering the idea of shelter.  Sometimes it’s close up, reverently articulating the motions of entering one’s house (“…I pat my pockets for my keys/ I leave my shoes at the door/ I push aside the skin of the door/ I adjust my eyes to the dark…”).   Another movement expands into front-porch reverie, both romantic (“summer evening and lemonade”) and realist (“air conditioning and tv”).  The last movement I haven’t gotten yet.  It’s a vicious lament or a denial — I’m not sure (“No house/ No tower/ No temple/ No castle/ No dwelling built by human hands is eternal”) — loud and wild.  (The singers have been told we sound like aliens.)

One movement, with brutal homophony, catalogs the materials needed to build an American Home: “concrete/ twenty yards/ reinforced steel/ one thousand feet/ lumber/ one thousand/ two by tens two by sixes/ two by fours” … “plumbing fixtures/ electrical fixtures/ two tubs and a shower/ three sinks/ tile/ two hundred square feet/ oven/ refrigerator/ microwave/ kitchen countertops…” Today I emailed my movers with a very similar sounding rundown of the contents of my room — cataloging those things that constitute my dwelling place — bookshelves, 8x2x1; dresser, 6x3x2…

Ironic twist >> I’m moving everything out on the 29th.  We’re recording for Cantaloupe Records on the 30th.   Which means that on Wednesday I’ll be spending all day in a recording studio, singing about shelter and home, while all of my possessions will be in my car or in a 5×10′ storage unit on Flatbush Avenue.  Home?

(No, I’m not really homeless. Spending some relaxing time at my family’s home in North Carolina, and moving to Princeton in September. Temporarily drifting.)

I do like Junes, and upheaval. But I also really loved my Brooklyn apartment, and cooking.  One of my last domestic activities in this place before moving — late lunch of arugula, broiled lamb, strawberries, and kiwi…

macabrilliosity | 31 . May . 2010

Totally brilliant this weekend — Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, via the New York Phil. Maybe I’m just more attracted to theatrical gestures these days, but that was one of the greatest “concerts” I’ve been to. Presented semi-staged in Avery Fischer, the whole production translated Ligeti’s grand scheme better (I think) than what full staging could have offered — really going for the irony and meta-ness of it all (as “anti-anti-opera” — Richard Steinitz), from the personally engaged orchestra players (Dicterow cracked a smile) to the delicately hilarious live animation happening in the corner. Omg, puppets. More puppetry in opera, pretty please.

And that’s all I have to say about that.  (Er…)

In kind of a similar, macabrillious, neo-Baroque, makeup-caked, Gaga-esque vein — though in Brooklyn rather than Lincoln Center — Company XIV‘s Le Cirque Féerique. It’s commedia dell’arte with some contemporary snap — exaggerated period gesture to guide the narrative (they take you through six or seven fairy tales — Grimm, Andersen…) and charged modern dance moves to keep things interesting. And WIGS. Some very serious 18th century wigs.  Love it.

Coming up soon — round two of the Roomful of Teeth mega-session up in Massachusetts.  This is one of the most interesting ensembles starting up now, and it’s like nothing you’ve/I’ve ever heard.  The premise for the group is essentially > take 8 classically trained singers with killer pitch, rhythm and sight-reading skills; introduce a wide range of vocal techniques both foreign and domestic (Tuvan throat singing, belting, yodeling…); commission composers to write new music for this expanded sound set; stir, drink & repeat.  While there is a dangerous risk of kitschy pastiche or disrespectful appropriation of the traditions of other cultures, I think the yield from last year’s project managed to avoid that pitfall and to really reimagine vocal ensemble writing as orchestration, treating voices as nimble players capable of being a contrabassoon, then clarinet, then piccolo.

Read more & listen to samples here.  Support the group here.

Lena Horne (1917-2010) | 11 . May . 2010

Beautiful singer. I knew her first only from her conversations with Grover but have since heard/seen more…

Any opportunity to include a Sesame Street video.

Speaking of shy –

holbein, monteiro, and a volcano | 6 . May . 2010

Somewhere in the weeks since I last posted, there was a volcano in Iceland, days of extreme heat and cold, and the first exciting thunderstorm of the season. Apocalyptic signals aside — it’s fascinating to really consider these undulations of spring weather and the spastic texture of the earth’s crust. (Makes for better pondering than sovereign debt and the fragility of the airline industry.)

One of the performance casualties from Eyjafjallajokull (I had to cut/paste that) was the cancellation of the American premiere of Louis Andriessen’s “Life” — a piece for the Bang on a Can folks, with a beautiful video component by Marijke van Warmerdam. I was in The Hague last month visiting HC and friends, and I got to see BoaC perform this shortly before they became stranded in Europe, missing their Carnegie show. It’s a really affecting piece — hope the performance will be rescheduled here soon.

I don’t pretend to know anything about Portuguese cinema, or really anything in particular about films, but I went to see the creepy fairy tale Silvestre last week at BAM, which is featuring a run of films by João César Monteiro.  I think I decided to go just because of the wild color saturation of the film’s promo photo, and its reminiscence of Holbein and Cranach portraits and St. Vincent’s latest album.  And because BAM is a five minute walk down the street… Awesome.

In other news, played a fun concert with the Red Light Ensemble on Tuesday, at Symphony Space (Nimoy).  A portrait of composer Nils Vigeland, with some bits of Ives and Feldman to map the celebration.   My deltoids made it into the New York Times…