van dammage

There are only a few movies that I could say belong in the "I could watch them any time of day on any day of the year and be totally happy" group. Some folks might say that these reside on the ubiquitous Desert Island List but I'm not really sure that mine would qualify as "good enough" to be there. Others might call it their Guilty Pleasures List but, as someone wisely pointed out to me recently, the things which make up that assemblage eventually lose their guilt and just become "pleasures." like The Final Countdown (and I liked that song even before GOB showed up with a knife in his teeth and a deck of cards fanned out in front of his face). But that's a discussion for another time.

All that being said, here's how well my 16-year-old sister, Emma, knows me. She spent $5 at the bargain DVD bin and bought me one of my favorite movies of all time which, for some reason or another, I didn't own until now. 1988's most lasting contribution to the world: Bloodsport.

Let me qualify that statement, though. I am not a Jean Claude Van Damme fan by any stretch of the imagination. Timecop, anyone? I love the fact that this one starts out with, "In the year 2004, time travel is a reality."

Or how about Street Fighter? This one takes place in the futuristic and kickass world of 1994.


But we're not talking about that crap, right? This is Bloodsport, here. I love this movie for the simple reason that it's just plain, eat-your-popcorn-and-grin-for-90-minutes, own-it-for-the-hedonistic-joy-of-it-all, watch-JCVD-desperately-try-to-act, who-cares-if-it's-loosely-inspired-by-a-true-story, great cinema. This movie takes itself so unbelievably seriously that's it's just fun to sit through. In fact, as I said before, I could sit through this movie on any day of the year simply by being asked (most often by TBS or TNT). The fight scenes aren't that bad either and, apparently, they scored a bunch of extra points with the martial arts community by showcasing many different styles.

I have no idea how these movies choose me and, as a matter of fact, there are only 3 others on the list: Big Trouble in Little China, The Hunt for Red October and Sneakers (the last 2 of which sport amazing scores by Basil Poledouris and James Horner, respectively). Add Bloodsport to that and you've got strange bedfellows, indeed.















But whatever. See that face? He makes that at least half a dozen times (the same number of times, incidentally, he performs a full split...usually shirtless) during the proceedings. My favorite is when he does it before breaking the bottom brick in a pile (or, rather, making it explode out of the huge stack with the sheer force of his palm and eyeballs).

Here's a video of him training with his shidoshi (or whatever). I particularly enjoy the climactic part near the end where he's tied up and being tortured on some sort of crude stretcher by the sensei guy. Instead of watching the rope explode in slow motion because the Muscles from Brussels has the strength of 10 normal dudes, he simply crumples to the ground and waits to be untied after this incredible feat of macho libre. Way to go, Mr. Director. Total missed opportunity.

So there's my gratuitous, post-Christmas blog. I also got some other cool stuff (3rd season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, anyone?) but this was the only thing that warranted blog inclusion...it's just soooooo awesome. And lest anyone accuse me of not freaking working, I'll just say that I've got 2 out of the 4 French tunes in the can and a third just a soprano solo's transcription away. I saved the biggest poem for last but I've got a cool harmonic progression in mind to play around with at the keyboard.

Take that.

the making of americans

Jocelyn and I went to see the world premiere of the opera, The Making of Americans, last night at the Walker Art Center and it was easily the most avant-garde theatre experience I've ever been through. It was the dramatic realization of Gertrude Stein's novel of the same name (which should tell you something right there) by Boston-based "experimental theatre" director Jay Scheib and New York-based composer Anthony Gatto (not to be confused with the juggler of the same name).

This is not to say that it was bad, per se, but when local baritone Bradley Greenwald (holy crap he is amazing...here's a great article about him) lifted a nearly full-sized, silver-coated tree trunk above his head and then spun around while singing I think my traditionalist brain checked out for the duration. The visual nail in the coffin happened later when the tenor and soprano who played newlyweds had sex on stage while singing at top speed and high volume right in each other's faces. My sense of humor couldn't ignore what was happening at that point (I thought it was hilarious...so sue me) and I lost all concentration on what was going on.

Okay, so it wasn't my proverbial cup of tea. I've certainly been to "weird" stuff like this before, but I think that type of theatre eventually becomes a caricature of itself when the novelty wears off and I find it extremely difficult to look beyond that. But that's okay because it was impeccably performed and we had a great chat about it on the drive home. The music was well-written and I was really surprised by the expressive capabilities of the small ensemble accompanying the vocalists (string quartet, 2 wind players, 2 percussionists and a piano). The music was written in such a way as to provide a real urgency to what you were watching and hearing.

My favorite part of the entire production was the set design. It all took place inside this house or outside in the "front yard". There were cameras inside that the actors periodically engaged and the images they captured were then processed (sometimes a lot) and projected onto the large screen above the musicians. Way cool.

So here's the problem I think I ultimately had with what I saw: it was rich rich rich rich with metaphors...like over-the-top, ice-cream-sundae-with-crème brulée-on-top-with-a-side-of-sweetened-condensed-milk rich with metaphor. They were in everything the actors did on stage (how they moved, what they sang and how they sang it, where they looked, what props they interacted with, etc.). When you were finally able to figure out just exactly what was going on through all that metaphorical haze it was like coming up for a breath of fresh air. Then you gradually sank back down into the metaphor soup again and, when you were finally able to realize you were down in that stew again, it was too late to figure out what you had missed. (I have my suspicions that the original novel is mostly to blame for this.)

All that being said, I'm really glad I was able to attend the performance (1 of only 2 they're doing in the Twin Cities). There was some music that I just didn't like and there was other music that was supremely beautiful (particularly the finale to the first act). Cheers to Mr. Gatto for a fantastic premiere! I hope I'm as lucky some day. I'll get back to We, The Boys when this French set is done.

the pioneer press and Arvo Pärt

The Singers are performing my arrangement of Gabriel's Message for their "What Sweeter Music" series this December (and doing an amazing job as always) and Ron Hawley of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press gave a fantastic review earlier this week. It's not much, but he was complimentary and, frankly, that's all I can ask for when someone writes a widely-read opinion of any of my pieces. You can check out the entire thing here (he was very good to the choir as a whole) but here's what he had to say about my piece:

"...and a terrific arrangement of a Basque carol, 'Gabriel's Message,' by ensemble member Joshua Shank opened with a massive, dramatically built chord that flowed into an energetic four-part carol rendition."

I love the use of the word "massive". I'm 5'7" but, according to one of the Midwest's most widely-read newspapers, I can be massive and dramatic.

Mr. Hawley was nice enough to include it in the same sentence as Z. Randall Stroope's "All My Heart This Night Rejoices" (they're paired together) which I think was the best compliment of all. Being a true composer-in-residence with this choir over the past five years has been a total blessing and I can't wait to hear their reading of To Sing You To Sleep for the next concert series.

MPR woke me up this morning with the "Prayer" from Arvo Pärt's Kanon Pokajanen and I've been in a great mood all day. I wonder if there is some sort of alarm clock I can buy that only plays his choral works around 5:15am every morning. Either way I'm going to dig out my Pärt recordings and listen to them again. I've been hitting a lot of Poulenc lately and it's high time to calm back down. Thanks, Arvo!

french music

I've been hard at work on these French pieces for Chapman over the last 2 weeks and I'm having a fricking blast (I wrote one entire movement in a single sitting the day after Thanksgiving). Why have I never set anything in this language before? It's actually easier than writing in English.

That being said, it's been a challenge because what's coming out is really different from anything else I've ever done before. I actually wrote in a functional fully-diminished seventh chord the other day and completely fell in love with it (if you've got a keyboard in front of you it's Bb-Db-E-G and resolves out to Ab-C-Eb-Ab). It's got such a harsh, prickly edge to it that it makes me scrunch up my face and one of my eyelids flutters when I play it on the piano. That can't be bad, right?

One of the interesting things I'm finding in regards to my own creative process is how theory can sometimes intrude upon what I find fun when I'm improvising. Case in point: my setting of Rimbaud's "Ma Boheme" was coming along fine at the keyboard and I was really digging what was coming out. It was actually exhilarating (if I can use that term) because it was just a whole lot of garish fun to play around with. Big, bull-in-a-china-shop music that makes you smile while you perform it. Then I went back later and all I saw was the theoretical analysis of what I had written. For instance, I remember feeling really unoriginal that I had just written a V7 chord that--surprise!--resolves to a I chord.

So there is this weird balance I've had to strike between writing something I like and something that I don't feel is derivative of anything. In fact, I think I've hit a major hurdle with the concept of being able to put away my ability to look at a piece of music and see how it functions without hearing it (I'm not bragging here...it's just what I went to school to learn is all) while at the same time writing. So "yea" for that, I guess.

Here's an obligatory picture of the Eiffel Tower from the archives.

happy thanksgiving (in french)

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm blogging from Shank Family HQ in Northfield, Minnesota. I woke up and ran the town's traditional Thanksgiving 5k, the Turkey Trot, this morning and even though my 51-year-old-father-with-a-bum-knee smoked me by 2 minutes I still had a blast (and even ran into another choral composer in the process).

After a bunch of reading and language research I finally started on the new French pieces for Chapman University. The entire thing will end up being a multi-movement set using some great texts by 19th-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Guillaume Apollinaire. In the spirit of my "language year" I decided to go way out of the box with regards to the type of poetry I set and, frankly, some of it is pretty out there.

If you've never heard of Rimbaud I highly suggest you look him up. He essentially changed the face of poetry and artistic expression with his works (two of his more high-profile, self-confessed fans are Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan...perhaps you've heard of them?). The kicker is that he wrote it all between the ages of 16 and 19 and then dropped off the proverbial map. Not exactly a lightweight.















One of my favorite Rimbaud quotes has to do with his method for writing poetry. He describes it as a "long, intimidating, immense and rational derangement of all the senses. The sufferings are enormous, but one must be strong, be born a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet."

Shine on, brother.

And then there's Guillaume Apollinaire. Not only did this guy coin the term "surrealism" (you're welcome, Salvador Dali) but he was accused of and arrested for stealing the Mona Lisa. He was eventually exonerated after a week in jail (during which he wrote some great poems) but not after trying to implicate his friend, Pablo Picasso in the theft.

Yeah, so that's pretty awesome.




















One of the texts I'm using is his Poème lu au mariage d’André Salmon ("Poem for the Marriage of André Salmon") and it's got one of my favorite lines about the result of creativity.

"Ni parce que fondés en poésie nous avons des droits sur les paroles qui forment et défont l’Univers"

Translated it means, "Nor because rooted in poetry we have the power of words forming and deforming the universe." I know it's a little dramatic but it's still pretty awesome. Percy Bysshe Shelley called poets the "unacknowledged legislators of the world" and I think that's what GA is getting after here: the sliver of self-importance that inhabits every creative venture.

Speaking of creative ventures, my family has (as a last resort) entrusted their only vegetarian to cook the turkey this year. So...we'll see how that turns out. Wish me bonne chance.

savion glover at orchestra hall

I went to go see Savion Glover at Orchestra Hall last Sunday and he was absolutely amazing. The set featured 2 other dancers and, having never seen a tap show before, I can safely say that should he ever come to town again I will definitely be getting a ticket. Each of the 3 dancers was stationed on a wooden box elevated above the stage with an acoustic mic pointed down at their feet and at no point was there any sort of "music" other than the rhythms they tapped out.

It was such an interesting show and I wish I had gotten some sort of illegal picture to show for myself. I've never actually sat through a 2-hour "concert" where there was only one color of sound to listen to. The advantage to this was that you started to pick out different timbres within the tap sound itself (which were amplified even more when the choreography would sync up between the 3 dancers) whether it was from where they hit on the box, the weight of their feet coming down or what part of their foot was hitting. And when Savion did finally sing during one of the pieces it became much more meaningful. He introduced himself as "Barack Obama" after intermission and the crowd totally flipped out. Even the kids got into that one...way cool.

Here's a video from YouTube that has excerpts from the program they danced. I got some good ideas to use for this upcoming 3-movement work in French I'm starting on for Chapman University.

god bless the U.S.A.

So, in case you haven't heard recently, George W. Bush appointed country and western singer Lee Greenwood to the National Council on the Arts. Yeah, that's right: the guy who is known pretty much solely for the fact that he wrote and recorded this song will now be one of the 14 people in the entire country who will decide whether or not artists get to have a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

As a rule I try not to mention politics on this thing but what the hell is that all about! Is that just the outgoing administration's way of sticking it to the Obama people? Was Toby Keith unavailable?

To make matters worse, he is the only one on the council who was selected by Bush (and confirmed by the Senate!) to serve one of the six-year terms. Obama will fill the rest of the council during the course of his first term but good ol' Lee Greenwood will be there for the entire thing. I mean, really? Really?!

Ah...well, whatever. I'm sure he's a perfectly decent guy and there will be 13 other people making decisions alongside him but, still...that one hurts a bit. I'm guessing there aren't any up-and-coming country and western acts out there that will be applying for NEA grants in the near future (or ever) so his credentials in this particular milieu are a little suspect (which is really the only issue I have with this appointment). Here's a decent article from the LA Times that explains it a little better and a great commentary in the Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert.

"What's that you say, artists of the United States of America? You want to spend hours and hours and hours writing grants in an impossibly difficult effort to further your career and the art you love so much? Now you must go through me, Lee Greenwood."

Love,
Lee Greenwood
XOXO

done! + the ninth

I put the finishing touches on Naalah (Cry of Grief) these past two days and sent it off to Texas. it's going to be a really fun piece to hear for the first time because it's so different from pretty much anything else I've written. I used a scale (D-Eb-F#-G-A-Bb-C) I've been in love with since I began to compose (in fact, the first piece I ever wrote, Tone Poem for Piano, Oboe and Cello features it almost exclusively) and I've just been waiting for the proper commission to really commit myself to using it. It's very reminiscent of an Arabic "maqam" so I decided that, since the text came from Pakistan, I would see what I could do with Ghalib's text as filtered by that scale.
















On a side note, if you are a fan of Beethoven's ninth you should check out the Minnesota Orchestra's Grammy-nominated recording. It is, by far, one of the most amazing things I've ever heard.

That being said, their version of the 5th is a paean to the gods. We've all heard the first movement (whether it be in a Looney Tunes episode or a concert hall)...until now. I played it for a professional cellist friend of mine and, afterwards, he claimed he had "never heard that piece before." I know I'm not a devotee of orchestral music but I swear there is something extraordinary about this reading. Osmo and Co. imbue it all with a vitality-or-life-force-or-quickening-or-whatever that I think only happens every once in a while. The proverbial gauntlet has been thrown.

But who cares, right? I'm done with this latest commission (and not a moment too soon) and I will be getting a little publicly and privately feuertrunken this weekend. After which it's on to the February premiere of To Sing You To Sleep as well as an extended work in French for Chapman University.

great review

The British classical music magazine Gramophone just wrote a wonderful review of Seattle Pro Musica's new CD, American Masterpieces, which features a stellar recording of winter. They included some really nice things about the piece as well as the choir's performance.

Also worthy are Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque, with its shimmering textures (quite Lauridsen-like), and especially Joshua Shank's winter. The longest work here at 7'51", Shank's e.e. cummings setting is evocative and atmospheric, the 28-year-old composer distilling a sustained mood most impressively, with the chorus providing glowing advocacy."

Lawrence A. Johnson, Gramophone, October 2008

I love the last 5 words because he is completely on the mark. The choir just "gets it" and the result is an astonishing and intensely compelling performance that demands the audience to listen. It must have been no easy task and I'm incredibly grateful that Maestra Thomas decided to program it.

the luckiest

Ben Folds just put a song on iTunes from the show I went to last week (3 blog entries ago) as part of his The sounds of last night...this morning! series. How cool is that! I guess the Dave Matthews Band releasing the entire concert I attended (2 blog entries ago) wasn't enough for the gods of rock. I feel like a rock show good luck charm.

Cologne (Live at St. Paul, MN 10/17/08)

orange-mounts at orchestra hall

The University of St. Thomas Concert Choir performed "Orange-Mounts of More Soft Ascent" (from Color Madrigals) in Orchestra Hall last Sunday. I was able to hit downtown on one of the more beautiful October days in Minnesota I've seen in a long time.

It's probably one of the more visually stimulating concert halls in America (second best to this one, I suppose). It's hard to forget the first time you see those cubes in real life and it's always fun to return. As this was the first time I've ever had a piece performed there, I was understandably excited. I took this picture from the first tier balcony.

The Concert Choir sang the hell out of all 60 measures in a smidgen over 2 minutes (the first sopranos nailed the high 'B' at the end...it was painfully in tune) and the rest of the St. Thomas choirs and bands were fantastic. One of the wind ensembles even gave the world premiere of Scenes from Childhood by British composer Kit Turnbull so I wasn't the only one in attendance. He gave a great speech beforehand and the piece had one of the more interesting movement titles I've seen: "Ballet Shoes and Tutus".

It was great to hear "Orange-Mounts..." again and, after the concert, director Nathan Knoll and I took in a Guinness (or 2) at Brit's Pub across the street from Orchestra Hall. It's an authentic British pub in the middle of downtown Minneapolis known for the lawn bowling that takes place on a plot of grass on their roof (go figure that one out).

It's definitely autumn in Minnesota. It sort of creeps up on you but, all of the sudden, the trees go into protest and start changing all sorts of colors. Luckily it's quite beautiful and I have a camera.

so damn lucky

Dave Matthews Band just put out their newest live CD and, by some miracle, it's from the concert at Busch Stadium that I went to this summer. It's nice to have the keepsake because, frankly, there are a few gaps that need filling in due to the 8 hours on the road that day and a few glasses of the frosty brew that I had (at $9 a pop!). That being said, it's a great CD and if you've got it you can hear me cheering the band on in the shadow of the Arch (granted it's along with 34,999 other people but whatever).

I feel incredibly lucky that my very first DMB show was the one they decided to release. It's doubly nice to have because LeRoi Moore only played a few more concerts before he was sidelined by the ATV accident which ultimately killed him.

rockin' the (Twin Cities) suburbs

The day after Rufus came to town Ben Folds pulled in and gave a show at the Myth. Since the venue is in Maplewood (north of the Twin Cities center) we made it up to one of my favorite restaurants in the metro: Ingredients in White Bear Lake. I used to eat there all the time when I lived in town and it's great to get back every now and then. Their artichoke dip is to die for and still as good as I remember (if I could inject it intravenously and still manage to survive I would be a happy man for the rest of my life). They also offer a "Fancy on the Cheap" item on Fridays and Saturdays so I had this amazing bowl of mussels with chorizo, caramelized onions and fresh cilantro. It was a bit labor intensive but well worth the effort.
















Ben has long been one of my favorite artists. I remember enjoying "Brick" when it first came out (he was still with the Ben Folds Five at the time and I was in high school) but when a friend finally gave me the "you have to listen to this" talk a few years ago, I was an instant convert. That same friend subsequently loaned me a book of piano transcriptions which I learned and, frankly, they really helped me become a much better piano player (especially "Alice Childress").

BF is known partly for his sense of humor which is sometimes laced with biting sarcasm and, during "The Frown Song", out trotted 2 roadies with keytars(!) in giant frownie faces. It was one of the funnier moments of the concert.





You can watch a clip from the performance in question here. My favorite quote from the guy who posted it is, "Ben was rocking so hard people were passing out." I would just say that everyone was going nutz. His new album came out recently (for good measure, I reviewed it a few entries ago) and he played every song on it but "Errant Dog".

I'm so glad I finally got to see him live. Along with Rufus Wainwright (see previous entry) he is one of my all-time favorites and it's incredible that the first time that I got to see them both live was less then 24 hours apart.

Next up: AC/DC in January...

sanssouci

Rufus came to town this past week to play a show at the State Theatre so I hit the Hennepin theatre district with a few friends and had a blast. He is one of my favorite musicians writing in any genre right now and, as he played the show solo with only a piano or guitar, it was really interesting to see the songs I know so well (some of which are heavily arranged and orchestrated) stripped down to their skeletal structures.








One of my favorite songs is "Nobody's Off the Hook" from his Release The Stars album and, thankfully, he performed it. On the album he is accompanied by a string quartet and a piano part that's been stripped down quite a bit from what he plays solo. The reason for this is that all the string parts (which get incredibly harmonically complex at times) have been lifted almost verbatim from the original song as he wrote it on the piano. Rufus isn't a "four chords" kind of guy (although he writes songs like this occasionally) and this is why I love his music so much. He actually wrote a really catchy song about Frederick the Great's summer palace in Potsdam which my dad informed me he heard playing in a grocery store in southern Minnesota recently.

It's so easy to get distracted by the beauty of the melody and words that, unfortunately, you miss the fact that his piano parts are far from simple arpeggiations of chords. Case in point: here's a YouTube rendition of that song from a live performance. Stick with it to the end and you'll hear some of the complexity I'm talking about.

And just to prove my point even further I'll include the fact that his very first opera, Prima Donna, will be premiering in England next summer. I'm so glad I finally got the opportunity to see him live. Hopefully he'll be back around sometime soon.

the arrow & the song in river falls

I drove over to River Falls, Wisconsin on Thursday to work with the River Falls High School Symphonic SSA Choir on The Arrow and The Song. The dry erase board in their classroom informed them to be on time for their session with "Maestro Shank" so it was a classy operation all around.
















Their director, Tony Mudra, commissioned The Minstrel Boy a few years ago and I've known him for years. They performed it really, really well and we had a blast working together talking about tone, poetry, phrasing and all that good stuff.
















Here's their "wacky" picture. Go Wildcats!

fingers crossed that this didn't happen to me

I was talking with some friends recently about this new piece in Urdu and how I've had to seek the outside expertise of a person who knows that particular language. On top of that I've also asked someone knowledgeable about the International Phonetic Alphabet to write it out as a resource for the performers. During this discussion someone mentioned that these two people could totally just be messing with me and I've been writing in gibberish for the last few months.

I'm paranoid enough as it is trying to speak phrases in a language so far-removed from my own without actually knowing exactly what I'm saying 100% of the time and that notion really didn't help. I've been extremely careful in how I approached working on this commission (I'll probably write something here about the process in the future since it was so unique) but, if one of my collaborators has a sick sense of humor or a bone to pick, it's not outside the realm of possibilities that this totally could have happened.

Apparently, the reason they thought of said hypothetical situation was an episode of Frasier where he speaks at his son's Bar Mitzvah. In it, Dr. Crane asks a friend to translate his speech into Hebrew for him so he can make it more meaningful for his son as well as the congregation. Unfortunately, this particular friend is mad at him for some reason and his way of getting back at Frasier is translating the speech into Klingon instead.

Hilarity obviously ensues and, luckily, I found the clip on YouTube. It's actually pretty funny.

(p.s. The kid at the end was totally me in middle school minus the yarmulke and knowledge of Klingon culture.)

ben folds + bon iver

I've been listening to the new Ben Folds album, Way to Normal, for the past week or so and I'm pretty sure I actually like it. I think it took me a while because it's laced with even more of his biting sarcasm than usual and there are a couple of songs (The Frown Song, Errant Dog and Free Coffee) that I just skip over altogether because the amount of gratuitous invective. However, I think that has more to do with the fact that there just isn't a good melody in any of those tracks. That being said, I bet those 3 songs are a blast to pound out on the keyboard.

This isn't to say that it's a bad album. Quite the contrary in fact. Cologne is one of his strongest and most beautiful songs ever (he unbelievably manages to work Lisa Marie Nowak's story into it) and his duet with Regina Spektor, You Don't Know Me, is a perfect piece of music in any genre. If you're a Folds fan you know all of this and probably own it but, if you're not, you should sample a few of these tracks before spending the $10 on iTunes.



Also, if you haven't read about what he did to stop the Internets from getting a leaked version of it you should read this article. It's creatively ingenious. I can't believe someone else didn't think of this first.

A friend recently gave me Bon Iver's album For Emma, Forever Ago and I think I just found one of my all-time favorite albums. "Bon Iver" is Justin Vernon's current nom de plume and, apparently, he just trucked a bunch of recording equipment out to his father's cabin in the northern Wisconsin woods and stayed for the winter (the name is actually the French translation of "good winter"). He wrote and recorded the entire thing by himself over the course of three months and it is absolutely amazing. I can't put my finger on it yet but I love this album. "Flume" and "The Wolves (Act I And II)" are absolute masterpieces. This guy might be the new reigning king of the slow, compelling crescendo.

french music and some pancakes

I went to a Minnesota Orchestra concert last night and, as it's been a while since I've been to Orchestra Hall to hear them, it occurred to me that I've never gotten any pictures from inside. Aside from Walt Disney Hall, this is probably the most visually interesting orchestra hall I've been to. The architect made a concerted effort to deformalize the concert-going experience in order to make it accessible to everyone. The outside lobby has 4 different tiers to lounge around on before the show.
















The windows facing Peavey Plaza (the orchestra's outdoor venue for the summer) make an interesting picture when they're set against the dark night sky and reflecting all the colors in the interior.
















The stairs up to the third floor take you really close to these interesting (and probably expensive) light fixtures.
















The concert highlighted French music by Ravel (Alborada del gracioso), Saint-Saëns (Piano Concert No. 2), Debussy (Sacred and Profane Dances) and Messiaen (L'Ascension). My favorite by far was the Debussy piece. It's scored for harp and strings and they used it to debut a new harp that was donated to the by some über-wealthy patrons. (I looked it up and it retails for around $30,000).

It was interesting to watch Osmo Vänskä conduct for the first time. He's been in the Cities for 5 years now and I've never had a chance to see him on the podium until now. He used a baton for the first half of the concert and then left it behind for the Debussy and the Messiaen.

Aside from seeing Osmo in action I also ran into Joe Dowling outside in the plaza. Having just been in his theater a few days ago it was providence.

After the concert it was some late night pancakes at the Uptown Diner.

laura ingalls wilder + fleet foxes

I went to the Guthrie this past Tuesday to watch their world premiere production of the musical version of Little House on the Prairie. It's been sold out for months so we had to wait in the rush line for a bit. Luckily, I had a Minneapolis Star Tribune to keep me company while I took the first shift waiting on the (surprisingly comfortable) lobby floor.

The new Guthrie has only been open since 2006 and this is the first time I've been able to go in. I went to the very last show in the old building which (since it was Hamlet) was beyond amazing and I've been looking forward to seeing the new building for quite a while now. When it first opened, it was an instant architectural phenom in the Midwest. It was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and the coolest part of the entire thing--at least in my estimation--is the enormous cantilevered bridge that sticks out over the Mississippi. You can see it in this stock picture I pulled from the Internets.















On a side note, I don't know how much this piece of real estate cost the theater but I think it's safe to say it was probably a lot. Not many new things get to be built right on the bank of the river these days. This image I found on Google shows just how close it is.












The thing jutting out of the building towards the river is nicknamed the "Endless Bridge" for some reason or another and, along the length of its interior, there are these little mirror-lined windows that frame some crazy views of the Minneapolis skyline. I didn't have time to take pictures of all of them so here's the one that overlooks Gold Medal Park. The white bridge in the background is the replacement for the 35W span that fell in August '07.
















Speaking of Gold Medal, the factory is immediately to the left of the outside observation deck on the end of the "endless" bridge. Here it is at sunset.
















After my shift in line was over I headed to the Cue restaurant attached to the theater. After all that sitting and reading it was nice to down a martini and some of the best fried crab cakes I've ever had...ever. This is the first meat I've had since going vegetarian in August and I am so glad I didn't waste an occasional meandering away from that diet on something less amazing.
















After dinner it was up to our seats in the spotlight balcony at the very, very, very back of the theater (which were surprisingly good). Despite the fact that it was a Tuesday night, the 700-seat proscenium stage theater was packed to the gills. When the tickets went on sale this summer the Guthrie apparently outsold their previous record by a whole lot. It caused such a stir that Variety even reported on it. Here's a pic I snapped at the end of intermission.









It was a decent musical. I'm not a huge fan of the genre (Andrew Lloyd Webber ruined it for everybody) and the main reason I went along was to see a student who is in the cast. Aside from his performance (which was incredible) I just felt myself getting bored with the quality of the art.

The staging, acting, lighting and set were wonderful but the music was somehow lacking and, although I will probably perjure myself in the future when it's a huge hit on Broadway, I think it was the composer's fault. Rachel Portman is the creator in question and I'm not really sure if she got the spirit of the novel. Don't get me wrong because she is an amazing composer (she is the first female composer to win an Academy Award for Best Orginal Score) but if you closed your eyes to listen you just forgot what you were looking at because the music sounded nothing like it should have in order to augment the story. In fact, aside from one short barn dance-ish thing, the score was never reminiscent of the folk music of the historical period the story was set in. (An article in the New York Times about the show confirms it when they use the phrase "largely unfamiliar with the books and television series" to describe her work on the show.)

In other words, while the staging and script and acting breathed of the time and place that the story was set, the music was just another Broadway score. Imagine if the music to Chicago sounded like the music from Wicked (one of the few modern Broadway scores I can stomach). This style of music works in the case of Wicked because the plot is set in another world but, with regards to Little House, there is a very specific cultural-musical thumbprint that has to happen in order to legitimize it all and, unfortunately, it just wasn't there.

That being said it will probably make a kajillion dollars due to the fact that Little House on the Prairie is such a successful brand (and for good reason).

This, however, speaks to how Broadway works and why I rarely enjoy modern musicals. Almost everything that has longevity is completely derivative of everything else. This helps marketability because, when the audience shows up, they essentially already know what to expect. The music (if it's good) is just an extra thing added to what should already be a decent theatrical experience. If the score isn't terrible then people will probably enjoy it. If it is terrible--as in the case of The Phantom of the Opera (which is maybe the most trite thing I've ever heard in terms of both music and a plot so diluted from the source material that it borders on the verge of ridiculous)--then the producers have to pump up the visuals in order to entertain. In this case you get an audience leaving that will probably say things like, "When that huge chandelier fell...that was so cool!" or maybe, as in the case of Les Misérables, "The rotating barricade that split apart and transformed like Optimus Prime...that was so cool!"

So then we have spectacle masquerading as substance. Perhaps if producers invested in pieces of art that didn't require such an enormous technical investment and went towards things that actually had some pathos to begin with (like Baz Luhrman's incredible production of La Bohème on Broadway), they would make money hand over fist and begin to ween theatergoers off of mediocrity.

But now I'm just starting to sound cranky. Oh well.

I just bought the new, eponymous album by Fleet Foxes and it is amazing. If you're a fan of rock bands that use a lot of vocal harmonies you've got to check these guys out. Their first release, the Sun Giant EP, was great and this new one certainly delivers. Of course the cover to the CD is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569) and any band that chooses to represent themselves with a Dutch Renaissance painting and is reminiscent of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young while still managing to sound original are okay with me.




"Oliver James" is probably the most beautiful song on the CD but the 1-2 punch of "White Winter Hymnal" and "Ragged Wood" is pretty good as well.

uh oh

You know something might be a little sideways when CNN starts a story like this:

"The National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure. As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure--the '1' in $10 trillion."

ned rorem

I finally finished Ned Rorem's Later Diaries (1961-1972). I went back to see when I had originally ordered it and it turns out that it took me 10 months to polish it off. As you might have guessed, it's not exactly light reading (the only kind I'm good at) and, looking back on it, I shouldn't have started with his third diary as he references the first two quite a bit.





















That being said I'm really, really glad I stuck with it to the end. He is an amazing composer (he won the Pulitzer in 1976 for his Air Music) and, although I don't know much of his music aside from a few random choral pieces, he is really good at articulating some of the things that I can't in terms of the experience and personal philosophy of being a composer. I ended up underlining half of the book and scrawling notes in the margin for myself and I think I'll go back and record what I highlighted so I can have it all in one place.

Here are a couple of things he said that were memorable enough to warrant a mark of some sort:

January 27, 1965

"Why do I write music? Because I want to hear it--it's as simple as that. Others may have more 'talent,' more 'sense of duty'. But I compose just from necessity, and no one else is making what I need."

September 3, 1965

"...the solitude of work, the silence of my own sounds."

January 1, 1970

"There is no immortality. Of that which we were, nothing remains. A Bach fugue is itself, it is not Bach. An equation of Einstein is itself, not Einstein. Chartres is itself, not generations of builders, nor love of the Lord, nor even that thrill of eternity small poets feel. Perfection is mute."

And lest I give the impression that the entire book is just pearl of wisdom after pearl of wisdom, I'll include this very diary-ish entry.

September 17, 1966

"Miss Marsh has come, spent the afternoon, gone. She wants more high notes. Music after all is made for instruments with practical limits. We lunched on red grapes and oatmeal cookies, spoke of her Moscow prize, walked around the lake, and agreed that Sun must be sung in a dress (a gown, as singers say) of gold chiffon. She shall have her high notes."

As good as all that is, those passages make it pretty clear why I think it took me so long to read. The thing about a published diary is that there is no plot propelling you through chapters and, because of this, it can be very easy to set the book down and forget about it for a while (i.e. almost a year). I've got his next diary sitting on the nightstand so we'll see how long it takes me to finish that.

Aside from that, the Urdu piece (which still doesn't have a title) is shaping up pretty well and I'm about to spend an afternoon tethered to my computer inputting notes: Finale, iTunes and strong coffee not far away. I wrote (what I think is) the final transition yesterday and, at the moment, it looks like I've hit the last stage of this project. There are a few notes here and there that have to be written for the oboe but the choral stuff, for the most part, is done. My original deadline is November 1 but I set a goal for myself to have it in the mail 2 weeks early so I could have some time off before this monumental French piece starts intruding on my sleep.

i love the onion

I love The Onion. I love it so much.

i'm never gonna dance again...

Someone recently sent me an mp3 of Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright singing a duet on "Careless Whisper" because, as this person knew, I'm a huge fan of them both. This is apparently the only song that they've ever performed together so I was psyched to hear it. I'm happy to report that it's really well done and extremely entertaining but, unfortunately, it has been lodged in my head for days and days and days.

I've had songs stuck in there before but never this long and, frankly, it's not funny anymore. J. Aaron McDermid told me once that he had Stevie Wonder's "That's What Friends Are For" running on a loop in his brain for something like 10 years and I hope that I haven't just been handed my own personal hell for the next decade.

I sat down at the piano to try and figure it out in an effort to exorcise it but that didn't work.

So then I printed out the lyrics to try and learn them to see if maybe that would do the trick. Nope.

Transposed it out of the original key. Nada.

Listened to the annoying, super-80s, dirty-sax original version by George Michael. Try again.

I need an old priest and a young priest...

the juliet letters

I went to a great production of The Juliet Letters last night at the Southern Theater. It's a song cycle that Elvis Costello wrote in collaboration with the Brodsky String Quartet and was inspired by letters people write and leave under Juliet's purported balcony in Verona, Italy. Someone began collecting them years ago and started answering them.













I am not nor have I ever been a fan of Elvis Costello (his screechy vibrato annoys the hell out of me) but this was a great find. The album itself was put out in the early 90s and is just him and the quartet. Due to this, I'm assuming it doesn't really fit in with the rest of his catalog of works and how the record company let him release it I'll never know.

The cycle itself--in my humble opinion--doesn't really work as a piece of concert music just on its own but, every now and then, there is a song that grabs your attention and holds you in. Artistic Director Jake Endres sensed this potential, I think, and went about amplifying it with various things here and there that worked really well:

• Instead of one singer/actor, he split it into 4 different parts and added harmony in just the right spots.
• There were excerpts from the Shakespeare interspersed among the songs and it was really good to hear it again: "He jests at scars that never felt a wound."
• Her balcony is represented and, at the end of the show, she finally appears. They actually included the entire balcony scene amongst the proceedings (which was powerfully acted by the guy portraying the young man). It never fails to get me every time.
• Jake wrote some really fine new music to underscore some of the dialogue scenes. I'm not certain (and I don't own the original album for comparison) but I think he also wrote an entirely new movement that takes place in India. That particular letter was dated 2003 and the cycle was released in 1993 so I'm fairly certain that's true.

It was a great show and the staging was really cool (particularly the "Romeo's Seance" movement). It's only playing another couple of days so you should get out and see it if you get the chance. Here's a video of the original lineup performing the "Jacksons, Monk and Rowe" movement 15 years ago (complete with early-90s apparel) .


I've been diligently working on the choir/oboe commission.









I've selected a modal-ish scale reminiscent of music from east Asia and the middle east and it's been interesting to try and incorporate it with my own emerging harmonic language. It's jarring sometimes to try and combine them but I'm really enjoying the challenge of that as well as the language.

unintentional(?) humor

It seems that someone at CNN.com is playing a joke on somebody else at CNN.com. Here's their front page from about 2 minutes ago. Look at the headline underneath the picture. I didn't doctor that. It's totally for real.



It was too funny not to take a screenshot for posterity. That can't be a mistake. It seems someone from The Onion may have infiltrated their ranks.

new recording

Seattle Pro Musica just put out a stunning new recording featuring their performance of winter. It may be one of my favorite performances of anything I've ever written ever. Maestra Thomas and her singers are a treasure and I'm honored they would represent themselves with something I wrote.














Aside from my piece they've got some other really great stuff on it by Bernstein, Lauridsen (his Sa Nuit D'Ete is one of my favorites), a piece by the conductor herself, Barber's Reincarnations and the world premiere recording of John Muehleisen's Da Pacem (if you don't know his Snow for choir and trumpet you are missing out on a lot).

Everybody buy it!

the english language

I recently sat down with my old college friend, Moid Alwy, to go over the Urdu texts I’m setting for my next piece. He's originally from Pakistan but currently lives in the Twin Cities with his wife, Amanda, and their hilarious 2-year-old daughter, Kiran. We drank good beer and, over the course of a few hours (and more good beer), translated a 150-year-old text by Mirza Ghalib. It wasn't easy and, at one point, he actually called his mother in Karachi to get help on a particularly antiquated word that he didn’t know but it was a lot of fun and I’m really excited to start in on this new piece.

One of the interesting things you come to find out in translating something so far removed from English is how mechanical our language can be sometimes. I’m not knocking my mother tongue by any means but there have been way too many cases of “there isn’t a literal translation” for me to ignore the fact that English can be somewhat pedestrian when trying to describe things.

I’ll put an example to you:

When he and I were translating the fifth stanza of Deeda-e-tar he hit a word that he had a really hard time explaining. This word was "weeraanee" and resulted in this exchange taking place:

Moid: “It sort of means loneliness…but more than that. Kind of an eery kind, maybe? I’m not really sure how to describe it.”

Me: “There’s no literal English translation?”

Moid: “Yeah. It’s hard to describe. When all my family had finally left the house this was the word that my grandmother used to describe how she felt.”

Now, how about that? That is incredibly descriptive of the emotional context of that particular word. Why don’t we have something like that in English?

Then I started to remember all sorts of words from other languages that I’ve had lodged in my brain over the years that had very precise emotional descriptions but no literal translation:

Schadenfreude: this one is sort of well-known but it means taking pleasure in someone else’s pain. That's 6 words in English to just 1 in German.

Weltschmerz (German): the sort of pain felt by someone who understands that physical reality (i.e. the evils of the world) can never satisfy the Utopian desires of the mind. A ratio of 21 to 1.

Han: “a feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered.” 63 letters and spaces in English to just 3 letters in the original Korean.

Do we have any words like that in English? Something that explains another thing fairly precisely in terms of a definition but then colors it just a little bit more with something else. I’ve got two at the moment:

Ubiquitous: it means that something is everywhere but in a negative way. “Starbuck’s is ubiquitous.”

Pollyanna: someone who is optimistic but in an excessive or negative way.

I’m nowhere near the end of this thought but I figured I would eject it into the blogosphere and see what I get if anything. Thoughts?