Autumnal canines

Well, it's an iPod day on the blog. Sam's post made me think back to my drive from Washington DC home to Richmond earlier today, with the iPod on shuffle. A gem I hadn't listened to in a while; Coltrane and Hartman doing "Autumn Serenade", which seemed particularly fitting as I drove past the just-past-peak foliage lining I-95.

To add to the autumnal mood; my dogs frolicking in leaves when I returned:





And, of course, chewing on sticks:

Cloudy Day Shuffle

We haven't done an iPod playlist in quite a while, and for some reason, gray, wintry days always put me in the mood to curl up with a book and some tunes, so I'll hit shuffle on my machine and throw out the first five songs that come up...

1. Floating - The Lowlands. "I'll be swaying in the wind just like a suspension bridge, so glad to be hangin' out with the sky." Lyrics don't come much sunnier than that, do they? This Philadelphia-based bluegrass band (I know that sounds odd, but Philly actually has a massive folk music scene) doesn't tour a lot anymore, but I love their sound, and their energy. One thing that always endears a musician of any genre to me is when s/he looks and sounds like s/he's having a blast on stage. It's something rock and folk musicians are great at, but a majority of classical musicians could do a lot better with.

2. Barfly Blues - Martin Zellar & the Hardways. And just like that, the sunshine is gone like a thief in the night, courtesy of Minnesota's own Martin Zellar. I wasn't around the Cities in the days when the Gear Daddies ruled the clubs, but Zellar's solo stuff is right up my alley. Dark and brooding with just a hint of optimism forever peeking through, he also personifies a kind of music that, growing up on the oh-so-hip East Coast, I had assumed was dead forever - good, honest, straight-ahead blue-collar rock 'n roll. As it turns out, all those bands just moved to Minneapolis, and judging from the recent national success of groups like The Hold Steady, the genre seems to be making a comeback. Good news for me...

3. Golden Slumbers - The Beatles. Ohhhhhhhh. God, I love this song. And this whole album. Has there ever been a better front-to-back effort than Abbey Road? The way the B-side is basically one continuous song, the hilariously inappropriate lyrics of Maxwell's Silver Hammer, the sweet opening hook of Here Comes the Sun, and that perfect little 20-second bonus cut at the end: "Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl / someday I'm gonna make her mine..." Whenever I hear from a fellow classical musician that he doesn't bother to listen to any other genres, because they just aren't interesting or intellectual enough, my first response is always to strap him down to whatever's available, and start up Abbey Road.

4. I'm Talking - Doomtree. Okay, I know from experience that whenever I start talking or writing about hip-hop to a classical music audience, I'm fighting a losing battle. Most of you are already rolling your eyes into next week. But on the heels of last week's FutureClassics concert, I am dead serious when I say that this Twin Cities-based hip-hop collective is doing things every bit as innovative as the composers on that bill. In fact, this particular track begins with a sample that I swear comes from a Pierre Boulez piece that I can't quite identify, before exploding into some of the most rhythmically original and well-conceived lyrical bursts you'll hear anywhere. "I came, I saw, I played Contra / You sang the song / we saved the saga turned opera / The world is off-beat / but the beat don't stop me / It goes on the backbeat / Born to the concrete / Watch me / keep walking."

5. Tenderness on the Block - Shawn Colvin. Just a sweet, sad, simple song to round out this playlist. Before she made it on MTV in the late '90s with Sunny Came Home, Colvin was a fixture on the folk circuit, covering everyone from John Prine to Sting, and penning some truly beautiful tunes of her own as well. I believe this song was originally by Warren Zevon. It's not particularly profound music, but it's guaranteed to put you in a better mood than you were in before it came on.

Cutting remarks

Some last-minute work before we have to return the tile-cutter to Home Depot (truth be told, I'm wary of anything with spinning blades and happily let Paul do all the cutting). We wanted to retile the floor, too, but doesn't look like we'll be able to get around to that before I leave for Minnesota on Saturday.

Day 5: Tavener, The Bridegroom followed by Public Enemy, He got game

Who says an iPod can't have a sense of humor (and an ironic one at that)?

Listening to Public Enemy took me back to the mid-90's and the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop beef, Biggie vs. Tupac, Bad Boy vs. Death Row, etc. Imagine my delight to discover (with thanks again to Alex Ross) a monster summer jam devoted to calling out the likes of James Levine, the Kronos quartet and eight blackbird from the new-music duo Hybrid Groove Project. Holla!

Almost done

As you can see, the tiling is done; all that's left to do is grout, seal and install a door.

Day 3: Dead Milkmen, RC's Mom

Huh? you say. For those of you who aren't from Philadelphia, didn't go to college in the 90's or are not aficionados of the punk rock scene, you probably wouldn't know the Dead Milkmen. Even if you did, you might not remember this track, the second off of 1988's Beezlebubba, which includes the following lyrics:

Gonna beat my wife
Look out!

Wife beatin'
Mistreatin'
Wife slappin'
It happens


(Sung in a soul/funk style).

At first, I didn't recognize the song (or who it was by), and was thus a little horrified (I'm not big on domestic violence, to say the least). And I was a bit confused, as I figured it had to be an ironic commentary on something, but I couldn't remember the context. Then I recognized the deconstructed funk groove and the James Brown-esque caterwauling as the creation of the idiosyncratically humorous punksters that are the Dead Milkmen. And I remembered the context; in 1988, Brown was briefly jailed for, yes, beating his wife (this was in his violent PCP phase), so the song is indeed an ironic commentary.

It made me think of how some music is so topical as to be rendered unlistenable unless it's within a specific context. The Dead Milkmen track is odd, derivative and offensive unless you understood when and about whom it was written (and then you might still find it offensive, but that's just a matter of taste!). So, in a way, it doesn't really stand up to the test of time.

Is the test of truly great music whether it can be taken simply as music, out of any existing context? I thought immediately of pieces like Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique; if we detached the music from the narrative of the artist's opium induced haze and obsession with his beloved, does the music stand up? For me, it certainly does; there is a musical progression that's both organic and logical that takes place over the course of the movements, from the yearning of the first two movements to the ominous rumbles at the end of the third that foreshadow the increasingly violent and macabre expression of the fourth and fifth movements. Sure, it's more fun to listen to that last movement imagining witches cackling and skeletons doing a grotesque round dance, but the music would work on its own regardless.

That's narrative context; what about historic context? Do we need to know that Beethoven had conceived of his Eroica Symphony as an homage to Napoleon (or even that he had Republican leanings) to enjoy the music? I think not. And that is, in large part, what makes that music great; it needs no context, because it is empirically powerful and moving.

As a more modern example, I thought of the film scores and event-specific pieces written by John Williams (and if you haven't figured it out over the last 8 months of this blog, I'm a huge Williams fan). His film music is magic in the context of the movie it was written for, but I find them just as inventive and evocative as pure music. And I don't need to know that "Summon the Heroes" was written for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics; it's just a great orchestral fanfare, however you look at it. It's timeless.

Sinatra is timeless, as are the Beatles; I think Billy Joel is timeless, Elvis Costello. I suppose some of this is a matter of taste, but I feel like it goes beyond that; the best music of any genre has a freshness and an immediacy about it that exists regardless of when or for what reasons it was initially created. I'm not a big reggae fan, but I find a lot of Bob Marley to be utterly timeless. I wonder what music others think have stood the test of time?

More construction

Progress has been made!!



As you can see, all the cement board is now up and the seams are sealed.

Musically, today, we switched to my iPod, which yielded, around hour 2:37 (during cement board measuring):

Day 2: Minoru Miki, Danses Concertantes I

Miki is the Japanese composer who has probably done most to seamlesly meld traditional instruments (such as the koto and shakuhachi) with a Western neo-classical idiom. One of his most notable works was commissioned by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1981, Kyu-no Kyoku - "Symphony for Two Worlds". It's a piece that I'm quite familiar with as I was present for all performances of the piece during its American premiere with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur.

Actually, I was acting as coordinator and translator during a North American tour by Pro Musica Nipponia, a traditional instrument ensemble founded by Miki in 1964, and our first stop was NYC. Part of the Philharmonic gig included a couple of Young People's concerts, where I was onstage, ostensibly to translate for the Japanese musicians - they were doing instrument demos and I was translating to English for the young audience. A funny moment, though, during an orchestra demonstration for "Peter and the Wolf" - Masur insisted on talking during the demos, and his heavily-inflected English made the word "duck" (the oboe solo in "Peter") sound remarkably liked "dog", much to the confusion and consternation of both audience and orchestra. I eventually jumped in and ad libbed a little discussion of how the timbre of the oboe was similar to the nasal quack of a duck - the orchestra looked at me with relief, the kids got it, but Masur looked at me as if to say "But that's what I just said!".

Miki is less-known outside of Japan; when we think of Japanese composers certainly the first who comes to mind is Toru Takemitsu, both for his concert music and his movie and TV soundtracks. And I have another personal connection here; I was narrator for a world premiere of a Takemitsu piece, Family Tree (conducted by Leonard Slatkin, who years later has become a mentor). Unfortunately Takemitsu, a composer I've revered for years, was too ill to attend the premiere, and I never got to meet him. But certainly a memorable week, yet again onstage with the New York Philharmonic, in front of a microphone.

So, for those of you who have asked me how I got to be so comfortable chatting onstage during our Inside the Classics shows, now you know - I've been doing it for years!

Constructing vacation

We've just begun our two weeks off between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the summer season (we have a week of outdoor concerts - Symphony for the Cities - before a month of Sommerfest). Sam's spending his vacation playing and coaching at Apple Hill. Mine was going to be a working vacation as well, but the set of concerts I was scheduled to guest conduct this week were scrubbed because the hosting orchestra very unfortunately had to cancel its summer season.

So, I find myself with an unscheduled week (unheard of!), which I guess I could spend sleeping in, eating takeout and playing XBox...or maybe learning Ariadne auf Naxos...but I'm really trying to get away from working/studying all the time - the brain needs to be stimulated in different ways, after all...

So, I've undertaken a construction project; begun yesterday and to continue through the next several days - I'm building a new shower in our master bathroom (and not by myself, fortunately; my husband Paul actually built said master bathroom from scratch 2 years ago, from wiring to plumbing to construction to toilet installation, so you could say he's pretty handy!). Here's the progress from yesterday:



The framing is done and the first few bits of cementboard are up. It's pretty time intensive work in close quarters, and a very long 10-hour day. What helps us while away the time (besides arguing whether the studs are plumb or not) is listening to our iPods on shuffle; we started yesterday with Paul's machine and its 3207 tracks.

I'm always curious what music people listen to, and the shuffle option on an iPod is perhaps the best way to get a cross section of someone's musical choices. So, here is the first in a series of musical musings on select iPod tracks (to accompany my construction photos.)

Day 1: Mahler 4, 3rd movement (which, incidentally, was preceded by Public Enemy's "Burn, Hollywood, burn")

Let me begin by saying I'm one of those people who love Mahler. Sam's written about people of my ilk and those who wouldn't think of sitting through a Mahler Symphony.

So, let me set the scene; we are drilling in cement board, and Mahler comes on. It's a quiet opening, barely audible over the screeching of the electric drill, but the tune was unmistakeable, the long-spinning string melody, and I had to stop construction and listen to the whole thing (it clocks in around 20 minutes - my husband was none too happy to be left alone with the cement board for so long). I remember how in college I would put on recordings of Mahler symphonies and absolutely wallow in them, in the true sense of the word - there is something immediately visceral about Mahler which compels me to emotionally wade into his music and which precludes participation in any other activity.

I have a theory that there are Mahler people and Bruckner people. I am absolutely not a Bruckner person (in fact, he's probably one of the few composers I really cannot conduct.) Both composer tend to be long-winded and grandiose. But for me, Bruckner, with his "cathedral of sound" and four-square phrasing, is too above earthly concerns, inhabiting an elevated spiritual space which seems utterly removed from the complexities of real life. Mahler, in contrast, seems obsessed (and often, manically depressed) by temporal matters in a way that speaks directly to my sense of our impenetrable and untidy existence. Bruckner gives us the metaphysical uplift; Mahler gives us the physical world, but in such a transcendent way.

My husband, the horn player, admits to enjoy playing Bruckner - but given a choice, he would listen to Mahler. I wonder if there are others who make this distinction?

7 Tracks For A Frozen Day

It's ten below zero in Minneapolis today, with a wind chill occasionally approaching -30. It seems like we've had a lot of days like that this winter, and it's usually around mid-February that I start to get really fed up with them. But today, the sun is shining spectacularly (in very un-February-like fashion) and thanks to the dusting of fresh snow we got on Saturday, my neighborhood actually looks fresh and clean for the first time in weeks.

It's winter days like this that inspire artists and musicians (for better or for worse,) and since I have the day off, I thought I'd put together a soundtrack to go with the sun-drenched deep freeze. All links in the playlist below will take you somewhere where you can hear at least a sample of the music...

1. February - Dar Williams. Okay, so I just got done saying that today is the antithesis of a normal, depressing, predictable February day, but there will certainly be plenty of those ahead, and no one's ever expressed the sheer mind-numbing hopelessness of this month better than Dar Williams. My favorite line comes at the end of the song: You stopped and you pointed and you said, "That's a crocus" / and I said, "What's a crocus?" / and you said, "It's a flower." / I tried to remember, but I said, "What's a flower?" / You said, "I still love you."

2. Hard Weather Makes Good Wood - John Howell Morrison. The eMusic review of this excellent piece for string quartet and tape says that it sounds like Moby collaborating with John Adams. That sounds about right to me, and the performance it gets on this little-known CD is a deeply committed one, played by some of the best young musicians in the Twin Cities.

3. It's Going To Snow - Jeff Louie. Jeff is about as unusual as singer-songwriters come. His songs tend to be far more musically complex than most folk/rock types, to the extent that they can actually be disconcerting, since you're hearing chords that you would normally expect to hear only in classical or jazz. (No surprise that he started out playing classical violin and piano - he and I actually went to music camp together for several years.) This is one of my favorite songs of his, and it nicely captures the bleakness of winter, and of relationships that don't work out.

4. Symphony No. 5 (first movement) - Jean Sibelius. The mournful horn call that opens what I think of as Sibelius's best work sounds like it should be coming from miles away across a still, silent, snow-covered field. The uneasy rolling wind lines that emerge from it paint a perfect portrait of Nordic winter, and the movement develops excruciatingly slowly, just like this season. Eventually, the pain and bleakness are too much to bear, and the music explodes into a furious scramble, which ends abuptly, like the entire orchestra ran into a brick wall.

5. Snow Day - Lisa Loeb. I've always liked Lisa Loeb for some reason. She's not exactly the type of singer I gravitate to in general, but something about the slight edginess of her lyrics when paired with her syrupy sweet voice works for me. I don't think this song is really about snow, or winter, but it's catchy as hell, and in the middle of the longest season, it's nice to have a peppy pop song or two to lift your spirits.

6. January - At The Fireside , from The Seasons' Digest - Alexander Raskatov. Gidon Kremer's group of talented young European musicians, Kremerata Baltica, regularly turns out some of the best and most interesting recordings on the market, and their album, "The Russian Seasons" includes this gem for solo violin, strings, percussion, and prepared piano. Raskatov's description of the January movement reads simply: "It's terribly cold outside. An old clock strikes midnight."

7. Snow is Gone - Josh Ritter. It isn't. It won't be for a good while yet. But no song can jolt me out of the winter doldrums like this one. It's what I listen to on my iPod right before going on stage for any big performance, and it never fails to fire me up. I'm singing for the love of it / Have mercy on the man who sings to be adored...

Jovian Comets

I love procrastinating. So that others can join me in my time-wasting today, via Soho the Dog, a wonderful little meme/questionnaire.

The Rules:

1. Put your iTunes/ music player on Shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER WHAT


1. If someone says ‘Is this OK?’ you say?
Distilled (Blonde Redhead)
Like vodka, baby.

2. What would best describe your personality?
Honky-Tonk Interlude from Rodeo (Copland – Morton Gould and his Orchestra)
And may it be a long a fruitful interlude.

3. What do you like in a guy?
Just a Thought (Gnarls Barkley)
But not too many more – leave the thinking to us girls.

4. How do you feel today?
X & Y (Coldplay)
Maybe tomorrow will be an A& B day

5. What is your life’s purpose?
What You Waiting For? (Gwen Stefani)
I think the point is not to wait at all

6. What is your motto?
Artist’s Life (Strauss - Welser-Most/LSO)
More praxis than motto, but sure

7. What do your friends think of you?
Une Annee Sans Lumiere (The Arcade Fire)
God, I hope not…

8. What do you think of your parents?
I am the highway (Audioslave)
But you are the Autobahn

9. What do you think about very often?
Hedwig’s Theme from "Harry Potter" (Williams)
I don’t know how to explain this one. Except to say I do a fair amount of Pops conducting. Which inevitably involves something by John Willliams.

10. What does 2+2=?
Bogoroditse Devo from All-Night Vigil Op. 37 (Rachmaninov – St. Petersburg Chamber Choir)
I miss those simpler days when my biggest concern was math homework, which used to keep me up all night.

11. What do you think of your best friend?
Bedshaped (Keane)
But not pillow-topped

12. What do you think of the person you like?
Show me forgiveness (Bjork)
And he does, on a daily basis

13. What is your life story?
“Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’” from Dichterliebe, op. 48 (Schumann - Wunderlich/Giesen)
“Doch wenn du sprichst: Ich liebe dich!/ So muss ich weinen bitterlich.”

14. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Cold Water (Tom Waits)
Am I not pushing myself hard enough? Should I be aiming for ice??

15. What do you think when you see the person you like?
Red Cape Tango from Metropolis Symphony (Daugherty – Zinman/BSO)
And nothing is sexier than a tango

16. What do your parents think of you?
Why me, Lord? (Johnny Cash)
Because you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family

17. What will you dance to at your wedding?
Milkshake (Kelis)
It’ll bring all the boys to the yard; I can teach you, but I’d have to charge

18. What will they play at your funeral?
Pomp and Circumstance No. 1 (Elgar – Boult/LPO)
Fitting for a “graduation” from worldly matters

19. What is your hobby/interest?
I’m the drunk and you’re the star (New Buffalo)
See question #1.

20. What is your biggest secret?
Pieces of Me (Ashlee Simpson)
Uh…that I have Ashlee Simpson on my iPod?

21. What do you think of your friends?
Love unlimited (Fun Lovin’ Criminals)
And how they deserve it!

22. What should you post this as?
Jovian Comets (Buselli Wallarab Jazz Orchestra)

Two can play this game...

It would seem that Sarah's iPod and mine contain at least a few of the same indie rock faves, although I must confess that I don't keep much in the way of classical music on mine. In any case, I love comparing music collections, so I'm shuffling my iPod, and I'll throw out the first five tracks that come up...

Restless - Alison Krauss & Union Station. I don't think music gets any better than AKUS, especially in the years since dobro master Jerry Douglas joined the band. All country music should sound like this.

Number Six Driver - Eddie From Ohio. A wistful road song from an occasionally silly but endearing band I've loved since college. They're actually from Virginia, not Ohio, but they do at least have a drummer named Eddie. They show up in Minneapolis about once a year, usually at the Cedar, and put on one of the best live shows out there.

The Laws Have Changed - The New Pornographers. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I love this band like no other, and I've always thought that the album this song comes from is their most underrated. On the other hand, I've been trying to see them live for about three years, and every time they show up at First Ave, I buy the tickets, find friends to go with, and then am forced to cancel at the last minute because of some family emergency. Honestly. It's happened three times. I'm actually scared even to plan to see them now.

Two Lights - Five For Fighting. Yes, I have Five For Fighting on my iPod. A lot of it, actually. Does this somehow destroy any indie cred I've built up with EFO and the Pornographers? Don't care. John Ondrasik's voice is one of the most soothing things I know, and any band named after a hockey penalty is fine by me.

Wings - Josh Ritter. I actually went to college with Josh, back when he was starting to realize he might have some serious songwriting skills, and I was the entertainment manager of the local coffeehouse. Any time I had an open night on our schedule, he'd show up and sing, even if it was for only four or five people. I lost track of him after graduation, until the day my old friend Ellen Stanley (now of KFAI radio) handed me his second album, "Hello Starling," and said, "Remember Josh? You've gotta hear this." If there are still such things as the voice of a generation, Josh Ritter should be one. (They already know this in Ireland and the UK, where he's a bona fide star.)

Well, that was an enjoyable way to kill ten minutes on a snowy Sunday morning. Maybe we should make a regular thing of this iPod sharing business. In fact, I believe I'll create a tag for it, just in case. And if anyone wants to share their own list in the comments, fire away...

On the iPod

I travel. A LOT. One of the few things that make transit days like today tolerable is having my music library travel with me via my trusty iPod (Slingbox also makes traveling much more pleasant, particularly when I'm stuck on an interminable layover or delay in Atlanta or O'Hare).

What I’m listening to now:

Blonde Readhead - 23
Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach – Painted from Memory
Sigur Ros - Takk
Janacek – In the mist/Rudolph Firkusny
Serj Tankian – “The Unthinking Majority” from Elect the Dead
Takemitsu - How slow the wind, Knussen/London Sinfonietta

I’m having a moral debate with myself about downloading the new Radiohead album and how much I should pay for it.