The Standing Room

Beyond Medulla: On John Adams's Transmigration

In the midst of all this Medulla hoopla, I completely forgot that Nonesuch released John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls today as well.  "Transmigration" is Adams's Pulitzer-winning commission from the New York Philharmonic to commemorate those who died on 9/11 -- a >20-minute work for orchestra, choruses (adult & children together) and a taped surround soundtrack created by Mark Grey.  The texts are tiny excerpts of very personal remembrances from relatives and friends, pulled primarily from the missing persons signs that were posted in the aftermath:

What I discovered about the language of these messages was that it was invariably of the most simple and direct kind. No one stunned by the shock of a sudden loss like this has time nor inclination to speak or write with eloquent or flowerly language. Rather one speaks in the plainest words imaginable.

The NY Phil and Andante did an interview with John, who writes and speaks so eloquently and insightfully about music and its intersections with life that I sometimes come away amazed at how deaf to the world I am.

My desire in writing this piece is to achieve in musical terms the same sort of feeling one gets upon entering one of those old, majestic cathedrals in France or Italy. When you walk into the Chartres Cathedral, for example, you experience an immediate sense of something otherworldly. You feel you are in the presence of many souls, generations upon generations of them, and you sense their collected energy as if they were all congregated or clustered in that one spot. And even though you might be with a group of people, or the cathedral itself filled with other churchgoers or tourists, you feel very much alone with your thoughts and you find them focussed in a most extraordinary and spiritual way. I want to avoid words like "requiem" or "memorial" when describing this piece because they too easily suggest conventions that this piece doesn’t share. If pressed, I’d probably call the piece a "memory space". It’s a place where you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions. ... "Transmigration" means "the movement from one place to another" or "the transition from one state of being to another." It could apply to populations of people, to migrations of species, to changes of chemical composition, or to the passage of cells through a membrane. But in this case I mean it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don't just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience transformed.

I still haven't heard this piece, even though it premiered in 2002 as the NY Phil's season opener.  The Pacific Chorale performed it last year in Orange County, but those concerts coincided with some performances of my own in San Francisco. As far as I can tell, no performances are scheduled for SF -- but at least we have Doctor Atomic at the SF Opera to look forward to.  By the way, NPR did a story on Transmigration if you're interested.

It's been a Adamsful month if you add in the Cabrillo concert I mentioned, which featured John's Dharma at Big Sur, a concerto for electric violinist Tracy Silverman.  He plays an electric six-string violin that goes down into cello range, and though he does a lot of improvisation with Terry Riley's All-Stars, this piece is completely notated.  Yet he managed to make it come off as an extended 25-minute cinematic improvisation with orchestra.  To hear this piece, which is so directly influenced by the California coast, in Santa Cruz was a pleasure.  Terry, one of the inspirations for the work was there and seemed happy; I suspect Lou Harrison, the other major influence, would have been too.

~~~~~~

And what post would be complete without some Björk news?  The post office delivered our New Yorker today!  I look forward to reading it as I head over to Berkeley on BART this evening, so that I won't need to park.  I got yet ANOTHER ticket yesterday even though I was parked legally, again issued by Officer J.T.  This tyrannical evildoer is out of control and must be eliminated.  The challenge begins.

Oh, shit: Another load of Dave Matthews news

Reports are that Comrade E- happened to catch a temporary post I put up last week about the Dave Matthews Band, and was upset when I took it down.  Well, today's new developments warrant putting it back up!  To recap, here's an article from E! online:

Dave Matthews Band's Big Stink by Josh Grossberg Aug 25, 2004, 10:30 AM PT

... The state of Illinois has filed a lawsuit against the Dave Matthews Band for allegedly dumping up to 800 pounds of liquid human waste from its tour bus into the Chicago River earlier this month.

The suit, filed on Tuesday by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, claims that a bus rented by the usually eco-friendly group was traveling cross town to the band's hotel on Aug. 8 when it pulled up alongside a metal grating on the Kinzie Street Bridge. That's when, the suit claims, bus driver Stefan A. Wohl emptied the contents of the vehicle's septic tank into the river.

And that was bad news for Chicago's First Lady, a passing tour boat filled with 100 people on an architecture sightseeing cruise that was doused by the falling excrement.

No one was seriously hurt by the raining waste. The boat's captain made a U-turn and headed back to the dock, where reeking passengers were given refunds and the ship was thoroughly cleaned and sanitized.

Madigan seeks more than $70,000 in civil penalties from the Dave Matthews Band and their driver for violating the state's water pollution and public nuisance laws.

"This incident may be unique, but that does not lessen the environmental or public health risks posed by the release of at least 800 pounds of liquid human waste into a busy waterway and onto a crowded tour boat," Madigan said in a statement.

For more backstory, we turn to Chicagoist, the Windy City version of the 'Fist.  (Thanks again to Mme H- for pointing this out.)  This entry from August 10 says that not only did the sewage rain onto the boat, but it "splashed ... into the mouths and eyes of tourists."  A subsequent entry from August 25, the delightfully titled Splash onto Me, has some photos of the bus and boat.

Today, the Dave Matthews Band has announced on their website that they will provide DNA evidence to help authorities determine the source of the sewage. You can read a straightforward news account from CBS2 Chicago, or you can just read today's commentary from the folks at Chicagoist.  (No, you are most certainly not the only ones who find all this talk about dumping fucking hilarious, I assure you!)  I'll leave the scatological puns to the headline writers.  In the meantime, enjoy your breakfast. 

PSA: A Bjork / Medulla information clearinghouse

Ever since Google's spiders found TSR a few days ago and started sending visitors my way, it has been abundantly clear that the world is desperate to know more about Bjork's new album Medúlla -- people seem to be particularly interested in "bjork oceania video". Being happy to oblige my visitors, I thought I would put together a collection of Medulla links as a community service. (For the Google searcher in Romania who was hoping to find "Ruslana's pussy" here at TSR, I'm sorry I can't help. But if it's any consolation, here's a faked photo of Gov. Jim McGreevey naked -- so scary; don't say you haven't been warned.) Medulla releases internationally on Monday, and in the US on Tuesday. But in the meantime:

The obvious place to start is bjork.com, which has a special Medúlla page set up. Let the main bjork.com page load fully, though; there's a flash thing that gets overlaid with some music. The Medulla page is so full of stuff that you may not even notice all the links. The main thing is the Medúlla Player in the top right corner. The player has audio excerpts of all the tracks, but you can also hear excerpts at launch.yahoo.com and at Atlantic Records.) If you have more time, listen to the album in its entirety at XFM (registration required) and at MTV.

The Medulla Player has complete versions of the videos to Oceania (the song she did at the Olympics) and Nature Is Ancient, but you can get a better quality version of the Oceania video at Björk's label, One Little Indian. The video directory there has links to a variety of videos, including Oceania and a fantastic excerpt from the Making of Medúlla DVD documentary of Bjork recording Oceania. The shop at One Little Indian also describes five different formats in which Medulla will be released: standard CD, double vinyl, hybrid SACD/CD, the making of Medúlla DVD documentary, and DVD audio.

The bjork.com site also has a description of the album, which they call a bio, and an interview by Valur Gunnarsson with Bjork about the album where she's gives her blessing to Internet piracy -- which is a good thing, because floating around the peer-to-peer networks is an unreleased version of Oceania with Kelis. You can hear it here, but who knows how long it'll be up. The version at sobjork has already been taken down.

If you're looking for lyrics, you can start at bjork.com's lyrics page, which for now only has lyrics to Oceania and Sonnets/Unrealities IX. You can find more lyrics scattered in the 4um forum posts (registration required) and on allbjork's main page.

For Medulla-related press, Grapewire has a collection of links. There are also some nice article scans at Söfft Chevaliers, but the link they have there to the famously undigitized Alex Ross article in the New Yorker is incorrect: that's just the Icelandic music discography he wrote for the online version of the magazine. The only place I've been able to find the actual article, titled "Björk's Saga", is at @forums, where we must pay homage to the industrious folks who typed in this enormous article -- in shifts! -- so we could all enjoy it while waiting for the New Yorker to send us the issue that the post office LOST. (Damn you, USPS!!!)

In general there's interesting news and info at @forums and Söfft Chevaliers (in French). That's where I read that BBC Radio 3's Mixing It interviewed Björk last week, though it seems like it's no longer available online. If anyone finds it, please let us all know below in a comment.

Then there are all the guest artists she collaborated with on this project, including Rahzel, Dokaka, Arto Lindsay, Tanya Tagaq Gilles, Ile Aiye, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Mike Patton and Matmos. It's a little hard to see, but supposedly there are videos of Rahzel, Mike Patton, and Dokaka on the Medulla page. They're big files, and the server was too slow for me to download them.

If you have more questions for Bjork, see if it's been asked already in the Q&A section, where she's supposedly answering questions herself. And if you've gotten this far, you should take the Björk obsessiveness quiz.

Of course this makes no claim to being exhaustive, so if there's anything you think we should be aware of, please post it in a comment below.  I hope this is helpful, and have fun Bjork surfing.

Olympic Moments: Short people get reason to live

We may never be elected President of the United States, but every four years below-average-heighted men do get a chance to claim the international stage as Olympic athletes.  How much more can we hear about 6'6" rowers and swimmers with wingspans the length of my sofa? The real news story as far as I'm concerned is that these low-riding guys -- who, let's face it, are probably filtered out of 99% of match.com searches -- can go to the Olympics and be among the best athletes in the world. Sometimes being compact works to your advantage. So as these Olympics come to a close, mad props (as the kids say) go out to these men and their colleagues:

Alexandre Despatie -- Silver, 3m springboard; 5'6" (CAN)

Stephen Abas -- Silver, freestyle 55kg wrestling; 5'5" (USA)

Jordan Jovtchev -- Silver, rings (men's gymnastics); 5'4" (BUL)

And even though only Thomas Bimis (GRE) qualifies for this post (arbitrary max height 5'7"), these photos from when he (hugger) and Nikolaos Siranidis (huggee) won the gold medal in synchronized 3m springboard diving are just too charming to ignore:

 

Huzzah for the short guys! Today I am proud to say, "I am a Short American."

Apocalypse now: Twelve Girls Band enters Billboard chart

Today the Twelve Girls Band's album "Eastern Energy" entered the Billboard Top 200 Chart at number 62.

Surely someone else must be disturbed by this.

If you haven't seen their TV commercial (transcript below) or been to one of their reportedly sold-out shows, they are "one dozen beautiful young [Chinese] women, all in their twenties," who play "an array of exotic and ancient musical instruments. ... Each member is conservatory trained and a veteran of top orchestras."

They do covers of Coldplay tunes on erhu.  They also do some Enya and music from Riverdance.

Actually, it's not even that that I find most disturbing. Nor is it the fact that they have supposedly sold more than 2 million albums in Japan alone. It's the "limited-edition, 24-panel, full-color, Twelve Girls Band pocket photo album" that you get free when you call the number on your TV screen. What kind of person needs to carry a fold-up photo album of 12 nubile Chinese girls in their pocket? Eeek.

The Twelve Girls Band's Yahoo group is very excited about the Girls' current tour of the US. Gentlemen like Michael (mychinapassion at yahoo.com), M. Perry (E_Bear), and M. Henderson, who peppers his posts with Chinese, are ardent fans. But I am most curious about M. Ross from Texas, whose profile lists among his interests Romance, Relationships, Heartbreak, Older Men for Younger Women, Interracial, Dating, Breaking Up, Male Genitalia, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Korea (South), Submission, Adult, and Role Playing. Oh, and Space Exploration.

All this Asian fetishism reminded me for some reason of the delightful game at All Look Same. After you're done with that, you can also test your gaydar (both men and women) at OK Cupid. (Apparently I'm much better at identifying men than women.) And if you still haven't gotten yourself fired, try your hand at Dog Toy or Marital Aid.

If you want to hear a real pipa player kick ass, check out Wu Man. And if you haven't seen the Twelve Girls Band's commercial, watch more TV! In the meantime, here's the transcript, which is read by a British guy with a hushed yet discomfitingly excited voice.

~~~~~~

Discover the most innovative band to hit our shores in decades! This is the Twelve Girls Band.

"Eastern Energy," the debut album by Twelve Girls Band, features twelve of China's most gifted musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments, with a deliciously modern groove.

POWERFUL
MOVING
ENERGIZING
TRANSCENDENT

Twelve Girls Band has taken the world by storm. They've sold millions of records and performed to sold-out stadiums around the world.

Order "Eastern Energy" by Twelve Girls Band: 14 songs, over 1 hour of music, plus this DVD, which includes concert footage and a behind-the-scenes look into the Twelve Girls Band. Both music and DVD for only $19.98, and only through this TV offer, you will receive this limited-edition, 24-panel, full-color, Twelve Girls Band pocket photo album free.

"Eastern Energy" by Twelve Girls Band is a rhythmic inferno! Get swept away by the power of "Eastern Energy," featuring their inspiring version of the #1 smash hit, "Clocks."

Be a part of the international music sensation that has astonished the world. Twelve Girls Band -- get their new album today!

Call now to order "Eastern Energy" by Twelve Girls Band on CD and DVD for only $19.98 plus $4.95 shipping and handling, and get the photo album absolutely free. Or order online at www.twelvegirlsband.com, rush delivery available. Call now!

[A big xie-xie to Mme H- who captured this on her Tivo.]

[9-Person] Opera to [Millbrae] in [2] minutes

"I like the idea of someone commuting and suddenly there's an opera singer belting out an aria."

I can't imagine the commuter would be as pleased. More articles here, here and here.

~~~~~~

'Flashmob - The Opera' -- BBC 3 to Mount Surprise Performance at London Train Station
Agence France-Presse - 25 August 2004

If the people won't go to the opera, bring the opera to them — and when they least expect it.

In a somewhat unorthodox addition to its autumn television schedules, the BBC has announced that next month it will surprise commuters by staging an opera at an unnamed London rail station, without any warning.

The 65-strong orchestra and three opera singers will swoop in unannounced, with selected members of the public joining in as a chorus after being contacted at the last minute by mobile phone text message.

The event, to be broadcast on the BBC 3 satellite channel, is based on the concept of "flashmobbing", an Internet craze in which people agree to converge in a public area and join in a seemingly random act.

"Flashmob — The Opera" had been specifically designed to make opera more appealing to younger audiences, said BBC 3 controller Stuart Murphy. "We were trying to work out how we could do something that is a big event and that audiences would find entertaining," he said.

"We want this to work for audiences who might only recognise opera music from TV adverts," he explained.

Murphy said he hoped the sudden appearance of the singing spectacle, which melds classic music from the likes of Madama Butterfly, Don Giovanni and La traviata with a new, modern love story, would "baffle commuters".

"I like the idea of someone commuting and suddenly there's an opera singer belting out an aria and a massive concert orchestra performing," he said, adding that it was unlikely people's commutes would be delayed.

"The train times will still be up on the screens so, unless they are monumentally stupid, I don't think they will miss their trains," he said.

The tyranny of parking wardens

Driving down 14th Street this evening, I witnessed a Cushman brazenly run a yellow light, making a left turn from the right lane, cutting off the cars that had been planning to go straight. And thus was my ire raised anew. It is appalling to me that I actually pay the salaries of these sadists who blatantly flout with impunity the laws they arbitrarily enforce on the rest of us. It truly makes me want to retch. Into a Cushman.

Of course this systematic abuse of privilege isn't limited to San Francisco. M. R- has recently returned from a short stint in London, and was kind enough to bring me a copy of an article by the "Motoring Editor" of the Evening Standard.  In the city of Westminster, parking wardens (but then why isn't it "Lovely Rita, Parking Warden"? strange) were actually being encouraged to exploit their abusive tendencies by the city, which had established a "champions' league" for whoever could issue the most tickets. The bastards were offered prizes, "including a car, colour TVs and holiday vouchers." At least San Francisco's DPT simply demanded quotas -- I mean, suggested goals -- to encourage their agents to abuse power.

But now in Westminster, the wardens are being denied bonuses if they're caught lying too often. According to the article, "some attendants were falsely claiming their hand-held computers were breaking down and issuing handwritten tickets instead," making it "easier to issue fraudulent tickets." They have been "accused of issuing high rates of bogus tickets with a catalogue of 'dirty tricks'" -- so many, in fact, that they were being assaulted by angry drivers at least once a day. But what's San Francisco's response? The SF Weekly publishes an infuriatingly stupid and inaccurate article actually sympathizing with the helmeted monsters! (If you want to know more about what sort of person actually chooses to don those helmets of shame, read this piece, also from the SF Weekly. Oh you poor "Parking Control Officers," always being beaten to a pulp by an abused public demanding retribution. I have no sympathy for you.)

M. R-, knowing that nothing makes me happier than new CDs, also brought back a copy of this album by Mariza, who seems to be the most popular fado singer in Portugal these days. A shout-out to to the peripatetic M. R-, who was last heard from whilst driving through Pocatello, Idaho.

CD bonanza

Today has been an exceptional day for records. After a couple weeks of waiting, my used copy of Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem -- yet another Cantaloupe release -- arrived in the mail from Amazon. I can't believe I hadn't heard of Toby Twining before a few weeks ago, and that I hadn't heard this hour-long piece for 10 singers without accompaniment until just this afternoon. Twining uses a variety of extended vocal techniques, from throat singing and overtone singing to yodeling. It was commissioned through Bang on a Can's People's Commissioning Fund in 2000, and recorded in 2002. The search begins for Twining's release titled "Shaman", which I understand was released a decade or so ago but has been out of print. If anyone has any tips, let me know.

That alone would have made for a nice day. But when I got home from a rehearsal this evening (1), there were two stacks of CDs waiting, from a couple of dear, wonderful friends who still have Access. There was a time when I had direct Access, but now I must get by with a little help from my friends. M. W-'s Access is to new releases from Universal Classics (Decca, Philips, Deutsche Grammophon). Being a fine singer himself, M. W- is well aware of my interest in vocal records and presented me with a wonderful selection of discs, mostly beautiful re-releases from Decca's Classic Recitals series with the original artwork. He also threw in new albums by Anna Netrebko, who was the funnest thing in last season's Boheme as Musetta, and Thomas Quasthoff, whose concerts with the SF Symphony next month I'm looking forward to. Plus an advance of Renee Fleming's new album! With friends like M. W-, who needs other friends?

Except of course if one also has a friend like M. E-, who has Access at Blue Note and was generous enough to send along what seems to be Kurt Elling's entire recorded output after I expressed some interest. Kurt Elling is going to be in town in March with Fred Hersch performing Fred's setting of Whitman's Leaves of Grass. San Francisco Performances' single-ticket sales for their 25th anniversary season started yesterday, and there are a huge number of things worth hearing.

Sincere thanks to Messrs. W- and E-! These packages have injected excitement and delight into my petty little life.

~~~~~~

(1) Wedged myself into a tiny little space on a steep hill. Why are there so many driveways in this town?

Silence!

The run of Testify: Real People and Religion -- a show that my partner, the Other M. C- (OMC), was in -- ended this weekend, and OMC's fellow cast members were invited chez C- for a closing-night cast party. The show was the culmination of Studio A.C.T.'s Theater of Testimony class, directed by the seemingly indefatiguable John Dixon. Inspired by the likes of Moises Kaufman's Laramie Project and Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues, the 12-person class chose a topic, conducted interviews with 50 people, transcribed their conversations, excerpted them and wove them into an 80-minute script, and mounted a fully staged, memorized production with a 5-show run -- in 10 weeks.

The subject they explored was religion and the role it plays (or doesn't play) in the lives of a range of Americans. Using the interview subjects' words verbatim, they presented a variety of voices taking about how religion intersected with their experiences. I drove downtown twice (1) to see the show, and found many of the stories they told to be affecting and the show to be impressively polished given the short time frame. I would be happy to see this again, expanded and refined. Even though it was a class, the ensemble had clearly grown close as a group through this intense development period, and OMC and I were happy to offer folks a chance to decompress after the experience.

During the party, two interesting items came to light.  It turns out OMC was an exceedingly enigmatic personality to his fellow cast members, and a subject of much speculation.  Apparently due to some curious sartorial choices, someone began to float the theory that perhaps OMC was a homeless person. We don't know how this rumor could have developed -- I'm certain OMC bathed somewhat regularly (or at least occasionally) during the course of the class -- but we are looking forward to the years of amusement this provides.

M. D-, who coincidentally is as much of a Silence of the Lambs fanatic as OMC, revealed the other exciting piece of news: two brothers named Jon and Al Kaplan have created Silence! -- Silence of the Lambs, the Musical. I am particularly fond of Buffalo Bill and Catherine's duet, "Put the Fucking Lotion in the Basket", and Hannibal's aria from his first scene with Clarice -- a "Part of Your World"-esque cry of longing for a better life:

If I could smell her cunt
She'd help me taste humanity again
And if I promise not to eat her
Then perhaps she'd even be my friend
If I could smell her cunt
If I could smell her cunt

~~~~~~

(1) After suffering one particularly enervating experience, trying to find a free parking spot after 7pm on a weekday, I gave in and parked at Sutter Stockton. On my way to the theater, I encountered a tourist family arguing vigorously. As I passed them, I heard the father yell in exasperation, "Honey, parking is HARD!" Indeed. Welcome to San Francisco.

Music on the brain

It is not hyperbole to say that I love records. As Dan Savage has pointed out time and again, who can say why anyone has a fetish? The reality is you're stuck with what you've got, so you might as well enjoy yourself. I have no carnal designs on my shiny round friends, but the analogy isn't far off.

But even though music is omnipresent in the C- household's daily life, and I also enjoy a clever turn of the phrase from time to time, I am not so lost in my solipsistic, delusory cloud as to fancy myself a music writer. Woefully few have the ability to write interestingly and insightfully about what they hear. The rest of us just fall back on the crutch of criticism. Since I can't imagine that would be interesting to anyone, least of all myself, TSR simply presents a couple albums that are on this week's playlist.

And if that's too dull, here's some more weird news from New Jersey, plus a puerilely amusing headline.

Ever since hearing Julia Wolfe's "My Beautiful Scream," Louis Andriessen's been on my mind. I pulled out "Industry," a 1994 Sony release by the Bang on a Can All-Stars (who thankfully do not expose their midriffs in performance, no offense), which includes a couple of Andriessen tunes. The directors of Bang on a Can (Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe) included this statement in the notes:

When we first heard [Andriessen's] music in the early '80s, it completely resonated with us. The sounds were beautiful, made up of bold storkes, nothing subtle. It was rebellious and original but also intellectual. ... He was the first European composer we had encountered who was versed in the European modernist tradition but recognized that rock 'n' roll existed, who strongly acknowledged the existence of America. Hearing Louis's music live is a supremely amazing experience.

Hearing them play Andriessen's "Hoketus," where two groups of musicians toss notes back and forth at wickedcrazy speeds, for this recording is an incredible experience too. Looks like "Industry" is out of print, but it seems like maybe BoaC's gotten their masters back and re-released "Hoketus" on Cantaloupe as part of an all-Andriessen album titled Gigantic Dancing Human Machine, which is what Andriessen says Hoketus should be.

Because I am a cheap bastard, I usually cannot bear the thought of buying a CD new, when Amoeba (1) offers the potential to get the same thing used. But there's no guarantee that I'll find what I want in stock on any given visit. And so I always go to Amoeba with a wishlist on my Treo, and check the bins to see if anything has appeared. The downside to this economical method is that I am often pathetically behind the times, waiting for albums to arrive used. So it is with Panjabi MC's "Beware", which finally came in after a year of waiting.

~~~~~

(1) I don't know why it took five years of going to Amoeba before I started taking advantage of their validated parking! I think I was just too lazy to find out the details. In case you're interested, you can park in the Kezar lot, entrance on Stanyan and Frederick. Take your parking ticket with you. When you check out at Amoeba, give them the parking ticket and they'll put a little sticker on the back to give you a free hour. The only trouble is when they put out the "Special Event" sign, in which case you're screwed.