Vegetabulous II (or, perhaps more accurately, Fruitabulous)

As promised, another installment in my food/instrument/Japanese madness series.

The Sound Of One Ear Chewing

Sarah has written before about the unmistakable link between musicians and cooking, and this past Sunday, as I was scouring the wires for orchestra news to plug into ArtsJournal's weekend edition, I came across a piece from Paul Horsley, music critic of the Kansas City Star, which really attempts to get at the heart of the matter.

Horsley, I suspect, started out writing this article as one of those humanizing personality pieces in which the arts reporter shows his subject to be just a regular guy, no matter how formal he may look on stage in tux and tails. But in the course of writing about a dinner party among musicians of the Kansas City Symphony, he must have had his interest piqued enough to do some serious research into whether there might actually be a connection between the way our brains process music and food...

"Most musicians agree that their discipline often fosters a highly sophisticated sense of taste... Numerous members of the Kansas City Symphony are so passionate about cuisine, it’s like a second profession."

That's all well and good, and my anecdotal experience would suggest that it is probably true of most orchestra rosters these days. But Horsley's not content with the anecdotal...

"Sensory perception happens in the brain’s cortex, the gray covering of the brain, and each sense activates a different area. For hearing, those areas are on the sides of the brain. Taste and smell are more deeply planted... We do know, however, that eating is a multisensory activity, and thus it involves the orbitofrontal cortex, which responds to enjoyable sensations and works to produce in us our sense of enjoyment when we experience these."

Heavy stuff, and certainly more than I ever think about while spending a rather unreasonable percentage of my downtime baking homemade bread, curing my own Canadian bacon, perfecting pan sauces, and trying desperately to come up with a perfect summer soup that will wow even my brother, a professional cook in Oregon. But I love the idea that there may be more to my and my colleagues' obsession with food than simple gluttony. Who knows, maybe the next major cultural crossover won't be between disparate musical genres, but between the acts of listening and eating...

(Oh, wait. Aaron Kernis and the Italian futurists already took care of that, didn't they?)

Vegetabulous (or, how some people might have too much time on their hands), Part I

Hmmmmm, another odd food/music thing from the Japanese...

Bach stock

Bach-infused miso (soybean paste, the basis of that sushi restaurant favorite, miso soup). I kid you not. I'm not sure what else to say about this; I'll just let all of you ponder.

Foodstuff, part deux

Remember the Dudamel Dog menu I posted a few months back? Here is the 'dog itself, in its full glory. Check out the whole story here.

Prokofiev and profiteroles

A rare evening off tonight allowed me a foray to Broders' Pasta Bar for a tasty Sunday dinner. I went with my friend Steve Copes, concertmaster of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and admitted foodie. He's a great restaurant guide as well as a terrific cook - the kind who whips up homemade gnocchi, pressed herbed chicken and poached pears for a random weeknight meal, just because. We bumped into MN Orchestra violinists Dave Brubaker and Aaron Janse enjoying a leisurely meal. As they were leaving we compared our dishes and Aaron waxed poetic on the marvels of guanciale, which made me smile.

I've always wondered about the strong correlation between being a musician and being a foodie. Part of it comes, I'm convinced, from a musician's understanding of careful preparation yielding an aesthetically pleasing result; we appreciate the composition of beautiful ingredients under skillful hands into an artistic expression of flavor and aroma. It's a creativity that we grasp innately as something very close to our own work.

It's not surprising, then, that many musicians are also quite accomplished cooks. MN Orchestra bassist Dave Williamson is infamous for his "cooking parties", where he opens his home to dozens of colleagues to cook up a storm in his kitchen (often emptying his pantry in the process). In fact, many members of the bass section are excellent cooks - give acting principal bass Fora Baltacigil any ingredient and he'll come up with some toothsome concoction fragrant with spices and redolent of his native Turkey. Violinist Mike Sutton makes a mean Ethiopian wots, complete with injera. And Sam makes some of the best roast chicken ever (thanks for bringing me some that day, Sam!).

I read far more reviews for restaurants than I'll ever be able to actually go to, impatiently wait for new episodes of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and devour (pun intended!) books like Bill Buford's Heat. Maybe musicians' foodie tendencies come from our intense focus on our work, which is most often a long-term venture (the results of practice can take weeks to manifest) and our need to have a hobby that is visceral, where the results are immediate and gratifying. Or maybe it is simply the pleasure of sharing a table with our friends and colleagues, and the delight of good food, good drink and good company that often continues far into the night...