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.