fantasia: on some vegetables + on a ground + for 7 (count 'em) trumpets

Choral musicians are notoriously busy during the krissmiss season and this vocalist is no exception. I mention this only because this entry is more about clearing the stable of bloggable nonsense I have saved up than anything else. I worked a solid 17 days in a row up until last Thursday and, since I now have the time to look back on some things that I wanted to write about, I think I can cobble together an entry here.

First I’d like to mention what has become my favorite restaurant ever: Barbette. It’s a beautiful French bistro nestled about three blocks away from my rented Uptown real estate at the corner of Lake & Irving and the food is par excellence. I’ve only eaten there maybe four or five times (which is a lot since I am always on the lookout for a new place to try) but every single time has been amazing.

Now I’m not completely sure how to make a really great risotto (I’m told it’s easy but time-consuming) but the best I’ve ever had is at Barbette. I picked my sister, Caitlin, up from the airport last week and took her there to have dinner. The vegetarian option that night was the aforementioned risotto (with wild mushrooms) and gotdamn! it was good.


(Quick side note: the vegetarian option the last time I went there was the Croque Madame. This translates roughly to “Mrs. Crunch” but I decided to call my beautiful grilled Gruyère sandwich a “madame sandwich” because it sounded a whole lot better.)

I think I should mention briefly that I sometimes feel like I talk about the fact that I’m a vegetarian a lot. I’ve met plenty of people that are what I call “vegetarian douchebags” and I'm hyper-sensitive to not coming off like this amongst mixed company (hopefully I‘ve succeeded).

In any case, the reason I talk about being herbivorous a lot is that every really-good-but-also-vegetarian meal seems like a huge discovery for me; almost like a secret I found that the world doesn’t know yet but totally should.

But, sue me, I’m from the Midwest. We like meat here. When I told my grandmother (bless her heart) that I stopped eating meat she just said something like, “Oh, then we’ll make some tofu for you next time you’re here for Thanksgiving.” And I hate tofu (but love my grandmother). But this demonstrates a fundamental-but-probably-involuntary ignorance of meatless cuisine…which can be pretty tasty.

Vegetarian food is notoriously well-seasoned. I’m sure there’s a learned person’s reason for that but, in my estimation, the food tastes so complex because the meat flavor is gone and, due to the fact that the taste of just-plain-vegetables can be pretty tame, you have to make up for that with a unique-to-the-dish combination of spices. This is what I love about it. There’s a thousand different aromas and tastes rolling around in a good vegetarian meal compared to a plate of meat and potatoes (a culinary experience that, while admittedly delicious, is so commonplace that it has its own cliché).

Now, don’t get me wrong…because I think a nice steak or a kickass chicken marsala is just about the best thing ever. And, frankly, I cheat every once in a while with a bite from a sympathetic friend’s plate to remind me that what I’m missing is not that big of a deal. But, in the end, meat pretty much tastes like meat no matter what you put on or around it.

(Side note: that sweeping generalization is not completely true. There is an entire world out there of competitive barbecuing where people make a living by cooking the same cuts of meat that end up tasting wildly different from one another. And that’s totally awesome.)

So, with all that being said, here’s my latest find. I had a few people over for dinner recently and, since I’m in my “soup phase” right now, I decided to troll the Internets for a good recipe I could cook.

Voila! Bourou-Bourou from the Greek island of Corfu: boil some chopped vegetables in water and combine with some tomato paste (the only ingredient that isn’t fresh) and pasta.
The secret ingredient, however, is a bit of red pepper flakes. This is literally the only spice other than salt and pepper that goes into this thing but it totally makes the dish.

Alright, so that was the culinary half of this entry. The other thing I wanted to mention is that I attended a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Concert last Thursday with a whole heap of composers (Jocelyn Hagen, Daniel Nass, Abbie Betinis and J. David Moore…you should all commission them) that consisted of nothing more than pieces written by John Harbison.

The playing was (obviously) incredible but I had a hard time taking anything from the music. It may be because I have a hard time perceiving structure if the music is on the fringes of tonality but I also think it’s because most of the pieces on the program (except for his Fantasia on a Ground) was--shall we say--more sentence-centered than paragraph-centered. And by this, I mean that there were almost no musical ideas that spun themselves out over a long period of time. In fact, one of the lengthier works on the program (at circa 25 minutes), Umbrian Landscapes with Saint, consisted of no less than 12 different movements with nine ritornellos.

And I hate collage.

This is not to say that I didn’t learn a whole lot from listening to a peerless orchestra play insanely difficult music that, since I’m primarily a vocalist, is far beyond the realm of my comfort zone.

So that was that, I suppose. I would love to see/hear his opera, The Great Gatsby, some time since it’s a form that I appreciate more.

On a different note, Jocelyn recently gave me the Mix of You-Have-to-Hear-This and, included with many other gems, was Eric Ewazen's Fantasia for Seven Trumpets. It is hands-down the most metallic piece I've ever heard not-played by a percussion ensemble. Buy it now.

Happy holidays!

a composer divided against himself + la musique de Jésus

I'm kind of picky when it comes to writing on anything but an acoustic piano so, since I'm away from said instruments today, I've decided to do some engraving on the o-PAY-ra in stead. A wonderful choir from California has commissioned what will be the very first performance of any kind for We, The Boys to take place next June. We'll be doing a suite of three movements from the largess that is my melodrama and, seeing as how two of the movements are already written and I've been trying to keep ahead of my deadlines (fingers crossed), I decided that starting on this would probably not be a bad thing. I'm notoriously abstract random--like way, way, way abstract random--and I need to have concrete, don't-f*ck-around deadlines which inspire enough guilt that I get my shit together and actually write.

So that's what I'm doing. Today is the piano part for the first movement: an aria for the character of Howard that is completely written and essentially needs to be given a compelling arrangement for choir and piano. No problem.

The weird thing about this process is that the piece was written in two "sessions" over the course of a year. The vocal part was composed in the summer of 2008 in both the Twin Cities as well as Decorah, Iowa and the piano part got its polish in June/July '09 in the practice huts at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. So, although there was only one composer at the helm of this particular aria, it sometimes feels to me like there are three distinct sensibilités at work.

I write fairly quickly and rarely, if ever, do I have to keep my creative focus over such a long period of time (id est over two years). Writing this opera has become like an endurance trial and trusting my initial instinct--a huge part of my personal writing process--is sometimes a little dodgy. So I've got winter '09 Josh looking at vocal lines written by summer '08 Josh combined with piano parts by summer '09 Josh and we're all sort of staring at each other across the table waiting to see who's going to cave first:

winter '09: this vocal line might need to be changed for the sake of the singer.

summer '08: but that's what i wanted in the first place. it's got a little quiver in it that makes it effervescent.

summer '09: he thinks that, by using obscure words like "quiver" and "effervescent," he'll be able to impress you with his intelligence enough so that you'll acquiesce.

summer '08: you just said "acquiesce!"

winter '09: settle down, fellas. we're all in this together. do you want to go have a glass of wine or something? i know a great dessert bar down the street that has bottomless glasses of wine for $10 at happy hour.

summer '08: that sounds amazing!

summer '09: totally. let's go.

winter '09: alright, you two go on ahead and i'll pack up. i'll be there in a few hours. order me the house white and be prepared to talk about that berlioz memoir that we're reading when i get there.

summer '08/'09: awesome!

And that's how you get shit done here at joshuashank.com, folks. Ignore the person that wrote it initially and trust yourself in the moment. (And it helps if you can get those other two Joshs wicked drunk so they don't bother you.)

In other news, it's the holiday season and the Jesus music is as ubiquitous as McD's and Starb's. There are some really good rants out there by composers about the crappy/syrupy/vapid music that plays seemingly on a loop this time of year and, instead of this, I'd like to make my contribution to the I'm-a-serious-composer-and-my-tastes-are-super-refined-and-should-be-considered-more-esteemed-than-JCPenney's-music-people's's-choices pool.

I don't mind the crap. I just don't listen to it and, instead, look out for stuff that I really, really like.

Case in point: the Apollo's Fire baroque orchestra out of Cleveland. Madre de Dios they are amazing! Steve Staruch played a few tracks off of their Noels & Caroles from the Olde World on MPR a few days ago and I immediately ordered the album and scoured YouTube for some live videos. There isn't, like, a mother load or anything but there was an insanely beautiful performance of Vivaldi's "La Folia" (Watch around 4'19" or so when the principal cellist and his hair start doing some great off-the-string stuff.):

The tag line readeth thus: "The folia is an ancient dance from Portugal, where young girls engaged in the 'folly' of a wild dance of abandonment. The Folia dance traditionally gets faster and wilder toward the end. This arrangement by [artistic director/conductor] Jeannette Sorrell is a concerto grosso, after Vivaldi's triosonata, La Folia."

The only bad part about that video is that you can't buy the track anywhere. Luckily, the album I mentioned above is available on iTunes and it kicks ass. They go for a land speed record and burn through "Patapan" in 49 seconds flat and their principal soprano soloist, Sandra Simon, joins them on a few tracks with some amazing results (especially "Noël Nouvelet").

But this comes as no surprise to anyone who knows my musical tastes...because I lurv fast-ish Baroque-ish music. The composers weren't afraid to just get into a good groove and go and go and go. It plays directly into the hands of my reptilian brain that wants nothing more than to gyrate to fat beats.

Mahalo.

warning: wonky post ahead OR i heart smart conductors

I went to work with the Women's Chorus at the University of Minnesota last week on their performance of “Snow by Morning” and had a totally great time. It's an older piece and, although I'm a little ashamed to admit it, I had to be reminded of how it went beforehand. (I wonder if other composers have this problem.) Luckily I had a few minutes to sit down at a piano before I got up to wave my limbs at singers and accompanist under the watchful eye of their conductor. I had a blast and the singers followed me perfectly (although I have a sneaking suspicion that it was their talent as performers that’s to blame for this supposed success rather than my conducting abilities.)

Kathy Saltzman Romey is the conductor of the Women's Chorus (as well as the Grammy-nominated Minnesota Chorale) and her interpretation was unlike anything I think I've heard in a long time with regards to that piece. She stretched the tempi out and slowed the pace way down here and there and, in one case, eased into a faster tempo by way of a stringendo that reminded me of a locomotive slowly starting up. Of course none of this was in the score, but that didn't stop the choir from advocating her vision of the work at all. It's one of those rare moments where the conductor finds things to do with a piece that I didn't think were there. Usually ensembles call me in to shed light on what they’re working on. It almost never works in reverse. It was such a pleasure to "re-discover" that piece as I hadn't heard it live since 2002.

But, with regards to Dr. Romey's interpretation, I also think tempos have to be flexible. Experiences like this sometimes make me wonder if other composers are this non-proprietary about their pieces. Are there others out there who throw tantrums about their metronome markings or is that the exception to the proverbial rule?

For my part I think I have a pretty good understanding that a marking I've written isn't necessarily the last word on my piece as long as the choir sounds like they're making it work. I've always thought there's a weird balance that singers have to strike between tempos and the different articulations they have to use in order to make what they're singing sound good. That balance can come into play because of a variety of reasons (conductor preference, size of the ensemble or the reverb in the performance space are just a few that come to mind) but a piece sometimes lives or dies by it.

I faced an extreme example of this back in 2003 when the US Air Force Singing Sergeants gave the premiere of "Musica animam tangens" at the ACDA national convention in New York City. They took the main part of the piece in what felt like an incredibly fast 2 (compared to the relatively slow tempo I had written) simply because they're a smaller choir (20 at the most, I think) and the length of the phrases at the written tempo would have sounded anemic. At the time I was at a loss as to what to do until I just settled down a bit and actually started to hear what they were doing with it (which was awesome).

But what if a conductor isn't that smart or a choir isn't good enough to make the changeover? I have a friend whose piece was recorded by a professional choir (which shall remain nameless) and the conductor took the tempo faster than what she had written. However, he had the choir sing the piece as if it was 10-15 beats slower and the imbalance between the tempo and the articulations made it sound like it was the composer's fault that the piece was so uninteresting. How could she possibly have fixed that in the score?

And that just brings us back to indicating the tempo with a metronome marking and hoping for the best. Or maybe I should just put an asterisk next to it that says something like:

“This is sort of how fast I want you to perform it but you can go slower or faster if you need to. Just make it sound good so I don’t look like an idiot if I’m there and I have to stand up in front of an audience.”

There’s nothing worse than having to be recognized as the composer of a piece immediately after it receives a horrible performance. I like to think that the audience is sympathetic towards me in those cases rather than caustic...but I’ve also sat in that audience and watched other composers stand up and face that exact situation and probably not been on my best behavior.

Yeah, so I guess it’s an endless cycle. But food for thought nonetheless and I suppose the end result is this:

“I love smart conductors”

And--just because this has been an incredibly wonky blog post--I give you Serious Cat

the perfect iTunes stocking stuffer for the winter celebrative season

Do you know a Joshua Shank fan? Well, then you can buy them what they've always wanted for the low, low price of $1.98: world premiere recordings of my carol arrangements which recently popped up on iTunes performed by two of Minnesota's 10,000 choirs.

First you've got The Singers--Minnesota Choral Artists giving a great rendition of "Go, Tell It On the Mountain" from their CD, Shout the Glad Tidings. I've had this album on repeat since they recorded it back in 2004 and it's finally available for easy download. It also includes some great arrangements by Jocelyn Hagen (the soli quartet part on "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" will kick your ass every time) and Abbie Betinis ("The Babe of Bethlehem") but my favorite track is an almost-never-heard piece by Jack Jarrett called "Go, Pretty Child." He manages to set the words "stomacher" and "mellifluous" without sounding weird or pretentious and, since I had to look that first one up, that probably wasn't easy.

The Choral Arts Ensemble also just released a great album of holiday/Christmas/what-have-you music called Joy to the World which includes a recording of probably the last piece I'll ever use the Basque language in (although, to be fair, most of it is in English). They precede my work immediately with John Rutter's "Good Ale" and, being a lover of that piece's namesake, I'll just recommend that one and say "enough said."

And if that wasn't good enough, these choirs are conducted by identical twin brothers. How cool is that? The choral world has it's own Minnesota twins.

Happy Festivus!

spring has sprung + currently listening

The deadlines keep rolling closer and, with a bit of luck, I won't be missing any of them for this season. I finished up the piece for Brownsburg High School, Spring, this past week and I think it's going to be really, really good. It's quite a bit simpler than the winter and Autumn movements of the cycle but I think that flows from the poetry by Sara Teasdale rather than any sort of compositional decision I made.

I used her poem, Twilight, to fill out part of the dramatic narrative and was extremely tempted to quote a musical device from the craptacle (that's my combination of the words "crap" and "spectacle") movie that came out last year but, alas, it slipped my mind. I plan on moving to the Pacific Northwest and brooding about this for a few weeks before coming back to the Midwest where brooding is discouraged from birth.

But I digress.

I'm still just under two weeks ahead of schedule in my grand scheme of commissions this season so I have the feeling that I'll be working quite a bit on my piece for The Singers in the coming weeks. I had originally set myself a February 1 deadline for that piece but I think I'm going to aim closer to early January instead. Some end-of-the-year projects have presented themselves recently and I need to get cracking on them if I want to--oh, I don't know--not go insane.

I've limited my iTunes habit to 4 albums a month (one a week) and so far I've been doing okay. I made some good buys recently that you should totally check out. First off we've got a great album by Jay Farrar (of Son Volt) and Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie) called One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Music from Kerouac's Big Sur. It uses passages from Jack Kerouac's novel, Big Sur, set to music and it's pretty much been on a loop in my Uptown apartment when I'm not watching old episodes of thirtysomething on DVD (remember that show?).

I've never been a huge fan of Kerouac (although this blog used to be named after one of his techniques for "modern prose") but I did try to get through On The Road at some point. Having listened to this album for a while I may have to go and visit Big Sur now because I'm definitely intrigued.




















There are some interesting songs on the album and, although I'm more a fan of the ones that Gibbard sings, it's all pretty good. I like the title track in its straightforward telling of a story but my personal favorite is "The Void." It uses this strangely-constructed melody over some bluesy, modal stuff that gets completely hypnotic and reminds me of chant. Here's a shaky, YouTube video from a live show the two of them did last October.

Then, in a huge departure from those songs, I've had Lady GaGa's new album, The Fame Monster, going for the past few weeks during my hi-speed morning burn down I-35W. Waking up before 6am is tough unless you have a fresh cup of coffee in hand and "Bad Romance" pounding out of your speakers at 55mph. (Combine that with an occasional buttermilk scone from the bakery next door and you've got a possible Combustible Edison.)

God this album is so good. "Alejandro" and "Teeth" are my personal favorites but I love the part in "Bad Romance" where she mysteriously starts singing in French. It's impossible to resist.

Is it bad that this thing has only been out for a few weeks but I can't wait until she comes out with a new album? I think I'm about to unrepentantly become a fan.

On to the next composition. I'm looking to use a really great Wendell Berry text for what I'm writing for The Singers and I think I've got some good stuff in mind (including an orchestration trick that I've known about for a while but haven't had occasion to use quite yet).