bobby mcferrin and cantus

I went to see Bobby McFerrin and Cantus last night at Orchestra Hall and it was unbelievable. Cantus is one of our local treasures--the only other full-time, classical vocal chamber ensemble in the US other than Chanticleer--and I relish every time I get to hear them (or go caroling around Minneapolis with them and some other friends every December). But we're here to talk about Robert McFerrin, Jr.

The man's instrument is the vocal equivalent of a Stradivarius. I tried multiple times to describe it while writing this entry but, after a few aborted thoughts, there's no other way to do it than this:

His range is incredible! And how he puts the song together is genius. It's a fully-formed, multiple-part song in his mind and, using his voice, he gets little snippets of each as it advances. Because of this technique your mind can essentially hear all the parts at once even though he's only able to physically sing one note at a time (although you get the sense that he could sing all of them simultaneously if he wanted to). How the hell does he do that? Unbelievable.

But the truly jaw-dropping part of the concert was when he sang the first prelude from the Bach cello suites while the audience sang Gounod's Ave Maria over the top. What the hell. Who does that! I'm so glad YouTube had this.A cellist friend of mine was there with me and, afterwards, he just leaned over and whispered a four-letter word in amazement. The audience at Orchestra Hall put up a pretty good rendition of the Ave Maria as well.

And just because I didn't talk about his collaborations with Cantus during the program enough in this entry, here's a video of them singing McFerrin's Psalm 23 (Dedicated to My Mother). I love this town.

leonard bernstein kicks mASS

I went to the culminating concert of the Minnesota Orchestra's Bernstein Festival last night. Since Osmo Vänskä programs everything but "business as usual", he decided that the orchestra would fully stage Bernstein's massive MASS (pun intended). This was one of the most interesting things I've ever seen.

It was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1971 to help celebrate the opening of Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center and, in true Bernstein fashion, it's anything but just a regular Catholic mass. (Check out the wikipedia entry on it if you're interested.) Since it's scored for augmented orchestra, SATB chorus, boys chorus, dancers and a singing/dancing group of street performers it's obviously not staged very often...and rarely by performers of the caliber I saw last night.

There were over 250 people on stage with the combined forces of the Minnesota Orchestra, the Minnesota Chorale, the Minnesota Boychoir and the James Sewell Ballet alongside the 20 singers/actors in the "Street Chorus". They actually had to extend the stage 21 feet into the seats in order to accomodate all of the performers (the furthest they've ever done since Orchestra Hall opened in 1974).

But the star of the show was undoubtedly the Celebrant (portrayed by local baritone Raymond Ayers). I'm hard-pressed to think of a more demanding role than this and he pulled it off perfectly. Think of your lead role in any Broadway musical, then take away any sort of conventional plot, add a whole bunch of other stuff (like the fact that he has to play the piano at one point) and then bring in the fact that he carries almost the entire thing on his shoulders. I can't even begin to think about how much he must have had to memorize.

Here's a YouTube video of the "Agnus Dei" movement from a performance in Latvia. Bernstein leaves out all the reverence and mutates the Latin into a vicious, taunting invocation. The video ends before the proceedings turn really sour on the Celebrant (the guy in the robes) and they start whipping him while the entire orchestra and rock band play a blues riff that adds to the violence. It drives him so out of his sorts that he smashes the sacrament on the floor. Either way, you can tell there is a lot of intensity that permeates any production of this piece.


I'm a huge Bernstein fan (Chichester Psalms, his symphonies...even Prelude, Fugue and Riffs) and I've known this piece since I performed the "Sanctus" back in 2000. Needless to say, it was great to see it so beautifully staged and performed. I had no idea something could be so violent, affirming, sarcastic, compelling, taunting and beautiful at the same time. I was really pissed that I couldn't get a few black market snapshots off.

Oh well.

We miss you, Maestro Bernstein.






I wonder if he would still be alive today if he hadn't been a lifelong, heavy smoker.

the greatest band to walk the earth

Last Monday I had the privilege...nay, the honor...of catching AC/DC in concert last Monday along with about 20,000 other people at Saint Paul's Xcel Energy Center. This was--and will most likely remain--the best concert experience I've ever had. To say it was incredible is nowhere near describing this event. To say it was loud is not even close to the decibel level of the audience and, of course, the five guys on stage. I can't even imagine what kind of show could possibly dethrone this one from the top of the proverbial podium...and it was just up the road from me.

(Quick note before you scroll down: click on the pictures to get some more detail. Blogger shrinks these things down so much that you can't see the little things which, in most cases, are the best part of my poorly-composed attempts at photography.)

Let there be a stage.
















Let there be lights!
















Let there be rock!
















And the Gods of Rock saw that it was good.

How about this one: let there be a life-size locomotive that spits fire and smoke (sometimes alongside cannons and fireworks) at timed moments during the show.

Let there also be an enormous blow-up doll (with...uh..."endowments") for the song, Whole Lotta Rosie. Due to some roadies pulling tethers underneath her she also had a...shall we say..."relationship" with the band's engine. I mean look how big she is compared to the band. How they inflated and deflated this thing so quickly I will never understand.

And through it all, there was Angus Young. I heard his guitar riffs reverberate (literally) through the house courtesy of my superfan father while I was growing up and it was absolutely amazing to see this guy in action. He could be flashy if he wanted to but, instead, he was just ferocious...and that wins every time.

During his 7-minute guitar solo, he ran out to the circular lift at the end of the runway and soloed in the air for a few minutes. I love this photo (aside from the smudges on the lens) because you can see him almost as clearly in the jumbo-tron in the background.

The gods of rock smiled. And at $90 a ticket it was totally worth it.

great book, great soup

I've only been at the vegetarian thing since last August so I'm constantly on the lookout for good recipes. I think I found my absolute favorite book: Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.




















For those of us who are not the best cooks in the entire world (i.e. me) she lays out pretty much everything you need to know. This isn't just a book of recipes; when she says "cook on low heat" there's a specific entry on what that actually means, what something cooking at that temperature looks like, etc. It's incredibly thorough (thankfully).

I'm a huge fan of soups (I used to make a mean chicken noodle soup) and I've been searching for something I can make on a regular basis. I recently combined three of her various recipes for potato soup into one mutant concoction and flipped out over the results. I really miss a nice beef stew (á la Irish stew) and I think I've finally found a better-than-decent replacement that uses vegetable broth and no beef.

It uses a lot of leeks and, as it was my first encounter with this particular vegetable, I thought I would take a picture. Chopping these babies made me feel like a real chef. They're so much fancier than regular onions.
















Plus they're a whole lot more colorful than your run-of-the-mill yellow or white varieties.
















The piece de resistance. This was incredibly good (and worth the hour I spent chopping organic potatoes, leeks, carrots and mushrooms) and now has a permanent place in my culinary repertoire.

Next up on the menu: Abbie Betinis's recipe for vegetarian chili. She apparently found it in this book and, hands down, it is the best chili I have ever had...ever. You can bet it will make an appearance here.

miscellaneous trappings

If you regularly tune in to this site for thoughtful observations and my ongoing journey to write a perfect piece of music...then you'll (both) be roundly unsatisfied with this entry. I'm desperately trying to distract myself from these French pieces. Procrastination, I find, helps me get my ass in front of the piano in earnest so, in a sense, I'm just percolating the work that's about to happen this week. I'm so close to being done (3 of the 4 are completely finished and we've just decided to add a piano to the one left) and, frankly, I could use a little break.

That being said, I've been reading some good books lately. In discussions with my sister (who is a living repository of great things to read), I think I figured out that I'm not a tremendous fan of fiction. It's not that I don't like said genre (I was one of the kajillion people that read The Da Vinci Code in something like 2 days), I just like non-fiction better. I think it has something to do with my fascination with general knowledge. Fiction often talks about it in conjecture or in metaphor; I'd rather just know it. It's the same reason I love The West Wing. Make-believe President Josiah Bartlett just knows a sh*tload of stuff and that's incredibly interesting to me.

I'm about a third of the way through Mikal Gilmore's Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents. My mother heard him speak on NPR and thought that, knowing me as she does, I would enjoy reading it. Each chapter is about a different person who served as a huge contributor to one of the most influential eras in American history.




















He writes in a reverent but fair way about each person in question. I just finished the (extremely long) entry on George Harrison this morning but I've already made it through chapters on Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia among others.

I also recently finished Benjamin Ivry's eponymous book on Francis Poulenc. I've been singing his stuff since I was in college (seemingly on a yearly basis) and it was good to finally get to know the man himself. Every time I am made to learn a Poulenc choral piece I curse him for writing such difficult things (that eventually pay off, of course) because it's so easy to get pissed off at the person who is putting you through it all while you're practicing. However, once you get the harmonies in your ear and the awkward jumps in your voice, it's quite obvious that the man was a genius. And, as you can see, he had enormous ears. Is it any wonder he wrote The Story of Babar the Elephant?
















I just got Polyphony's massive recording of his Gloria. It's presented alongside a few motets-and-such for good measure and is, hands down, the best recording of that piece I have ever heard. The brass section of the Britten Sinfonia sounds like brass ought to. It's like riding one of those magnetic roller coasters that rockets you to 60mph in something like two seconds. Just brutal...but oh-so-good.
















I'm a lover of the local music scene and try to get out and see bands whenever I can (which is not often enough). At the moment that participation extends to listening to Adam Svec's session on Live Friday at Portland's KPSU radio station while I type. I've run into Adam off and on over the years and--alone or as the lead singer of The Glad Version--he maintains a permanent place on my list of favorite songwriters.













Take a listen if you've never heard him before. His first solo release, Enemy Swimmer, was fantastic.

I also just recently watched what may become one of my favorite movies of all time. It doesn't belong on the same list as the movie I mentioned a few entries ago but it is most certainly in for another viewing (and possible purchase). Battle Royale is a Japanese film released a couple of years ago and, for the purposes of this diatribe, I'll let amazon.com's description speak for itself:

Based on the novel by Koshun Takami, the film opens with a series of fleeting images of unruly Japanese schoolchildren, whose bad behavior provides a justification for the "punishments" that will ensue. Once the prequel has been dispensed with, the classmates are drugged and awaken on an island where they find they have been fitted with [exploding] dog collars that monitor their every move. Instructed by their old teacher with the aid of an upbeat MTV-style video, they are told of their fate: after an impartial lottery they have been chosen to fight each other in a three-day, no-rules contest, the "Battle Royale." Their only chance of survival is through the death of all their classmates.

How can that concept not yield enjoyable-on-some-level results! They also call it "A Clockwork Orange for the 21st century" but I completely disagree with that because I thought this movie was absolutely hilarious. About 15 minutes in I actually called the friend of mine who recommended it to thank him for making me watch it. He was surprised I found it so funny and I guess the only thing I can say about it is that they get teenage melodrama absolutely perfect...then they all kill each other.




















It's just so damn over-the-top. I can't imagine taking this movie seriously at all. It's like Lord of the Flies meets Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

I think that's all the gratuitous blogging for now. The two people who read this blog (that includes you, dad) will be pleased to know that there are a ton of more music-oriented entries coming down the pike very soon which will hopefully include photographs that I've actually taken.

manuscript

A choir director recently asked me to donate a handwritten version of the first verse of Gabriel's Message to a benefit auction for his ensemble. Since they're obviously a non-profit arts organization and he's been a supporter of mine for years I was happy to oblige. And besides that it seemed like an interesting exercise that might be , at the very least, a little blog-worthy. Here's what I came up with (click the picture for some more detail):




















I haven't produced a legible, handwritten score since I wrote The Boy Who Picked Up His Feet to Fly in 2001 (I owned Finale back then...I just wanted to see how it felt to write it all out) and the sensation of working through the cramps in my hands came back all over again. I think I learned my lesson on that first piece although, come to think of it, I may have written out Snow by Morning as well.

In any case, that got me curious to take a look at the original manuscript paper from when I was writing it in the fall of 2005 and, after a little searching, I found it. Apparently I was pretty happy with how it came out on the first try because, aside from the aborted idea on the bottom of the page, it's essentially the same as the published version.

I'm not sure how other composers work but, as you can see, there aren't any key signatures (aside from my "reminders") or time signatures. For this verse I decided to try and hold over every note of the melody and see what kind of cluster chord it created (how's that for a lot of alliteration?) and, at the end of the process, it wasn't bad. The result even had some cool text painting when the sopranos descend on "Down from heaven came".

So that's that. And just for good measure, here's a video of the Kingwood High School Chorale's performance of said piece at the Chapel at Villa De Matel in Houston. Go Mustangs!