Check it out! Recently spotted on a City College ad posted in a MUNI train (Judah to ocean, as it were):
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole post. We're living in the third dynasty of Ur. The, ah, chief god is, ah, Nana. It was enormous and it was like silver (eeeeenoooormouuuuuus). Hashamayim m'saprim k'vod El! It's been a honeymoon honey honey honey huh honey honey uh oh, the Reich Tourette's is kicking in again can't take no mo'...
Strange that serialism never quite caught on like Sudoku.
12-tone matrix mousepad from CafePress
~~~~~~
Vingt Regards / I. Strange Bedfellows / II. A New Era, Indeed / III. Hommage à Paolo Conte / IV. Hommage à S. Bar. / V. They Speak According to the Book / VI. Overheard in New York / VII. In Rotation: August 2007 / VIII. LA Phil's New Housemate / IX. Apples and Amoebas / X. Sunday in the Park with Bert / XI. Epilogue / XII. Taking Stock
na - cho -qatsi (from the Hopi language). n. 1. Nacho life. 2. Life eating nachos. 3. Life eating crispy tortilla chips smothered in cheese. 4. A way of life that celebrates the consumption of nachos.
h/t M Keiser
Björk recently did a cover of my song, Gotham Lullaby... I haven't met her but she came to a concert of mine at Lincoln Center... The Lincoln Center Festival presented a three-concert retrospective of my music called Voice Travel. She was at the third one. I like her version of Gotham Lullaby a lot. It's really interesting, so I've been meaning to write to her a card to tell her that I liked it.
—Meredith Monk
TODAY, 3/16, 12PM Pacific: Meredith & Björk in conversation on Counterstream Radio
UPDATE: Listen to the archived program
Counterstream is brought to you by the tireless American Music Center
Audio of Björk & Brodsky performing Gotham Lullaby at Union Chapel, London, December 11, 1999 after the jump.
[N]o demos al dolor más territorio:
let's not give grief an even greater field.
no hay extensión como la que vivimos.
No expanse is greater than where we live.—from Sonnet XCII of Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets
The last iteration of "Amor... amor...", which closes Neruda Songs, had just faded when I reached my stop coming home tonight. I stepped out of the subway and found myself in a throng of protesters decrying our government's decision to escalate the war—against reasonable argument, against the clearly voiced desires of the electorate, against the wishes of those we claim to be helping, against common sense.
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's voice singing her husband's music made me consider how hard these two people fought to hold onto the joy in their life, openly and honestly celebrating their love, delighting in living, caressing and savoring the limited time together that fate had offered them. Together, two people created in the Neruda Songs an artifact of beauty, of universal poetry.
Even though the piece had ended, I didn't take my earbuds out when I came out of the station. I didn't want to let the sharp shouts of the protesters remind me that somehow we have given power to a deluded, callous man who is completely comfortable allowing other people to die for a vain cause. For pride. For ideology.
Two people chose to create in the face of a death they could not avoid; one person chooses to chase destruction when given the opportunity to prevent death and suffering. No demos al dolor más territorio.
Scene: Three guys standing at the bus stop outside Herbst Theatre following the Peabody Trio's impassioned and virtuosic performance, which included Thierry de Mey's fascinating hand-percussion piece Musique de Tables (must-see video).
Guy 1 and Guy 2: Clap clap clap, clap clap, clap, clap clap.
Guy 3: ... Clap clap, clap clap, clap, clap clap, clap.
Take that, New York and London, with your "City-wide Festivals" and your "4-hour Webcasts from the Whitney" and your "World Premieres of the Daniel Variations" and your "Remounting of The Cave"! We've got three guys standing on a sidewalk doing Clapping Music (must-see video #2, of a young Reich clapping) and me at home playing with giant Pez.
[Don't mind me; I'm still on hiatus]
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole blog post.
TSR, Ernie and Ernie all wish Steve Reich a very happy 70th birthday
Somehow, delightfully, I have become a ticket magnet of late: thanks to the varied and generous machinations of M. A— and Mlle T—, I found myself last week with three orchestra seats, including one on the center aisle! You know I don't mind standing, but it sure is nice to sit on a cushy chair occasionally.
Regular readers also know by now that I don't do reviews (if I'm big on something I'll just say so; reviews I leave to those better qualified and better paid) and I don't go sniping unless something really deserves to be called out. So here we go...
Tuesday: Ballo
First, congratulations to soprano Erin Wood for a creditable showing as Amelia; I don't envy any singer who has to step in for Deborah Voigt, and especially when she has to step into a production as dreadful as this one.
Apparently in Sweden, entire rooms full of people stand in place for 20 minutes at a stretch without moving, regardless of whether they're singing. In Sweden, conversations with more than two people are held with everyone standing still in straight lines and facing in the same direction. In Sweden, the lack of sunlight has so sapped the energy out of its people that all tempos have become completely lifeless and bogged down, such that even passionate illicit secret love duets become opportunities to think about whether there's any fried chicken left in the refrigerator when you get home. In Sweden, all action stops not just for applause, but for the two seconds after the applause is over to ensure that all dramatic tension dissipates entirely.In Sweden, giant-flag-waving color guards wait in the wings of witches' dens just in case a King drops by for a reading. And in Sweden, witches wear wigs that make them look like Toni Morrison.
There's no point in talking about the singing, because I can't imagine that any of them were able to sing the way they really wanted to due to the lack of a rudder either on stage or in the pit. I couldn't really hear them anyway because the orchestra consistently
overbalanced the singers and the singers were consistently placed too
far upstage. But again, good on Erin Wood for her SF Opera debut; she has a Myspace page if you want to hear a respectable live Liebestod recording.
Thursday: Berlioz, Foss & Brahms
OK. If you're going to program a piece like Lukas Foss's Time Cycle, how on earth is that helped by introducing it with a ridiculous Berlioz overture? I hadn't heard Time Cycle before, and frankly I would have appreciated the chance to open up my ears before settling in with it. Surely there is something out there that could have led us into Foss's language better than Berlioz. Ives or Copland, maybe? Wagner or Strauss, even! Because poor Dawn Upshaw was up there trying to bring out as much lyricism as she could, sounding half a step removed from Berg, but meanwhile the orchestra's tick tocking away, pretty clearly just trying to play the dynamics accurately, and the audience's slouching grumpily about being ambused with modernism again.
As for Brahms 4, it was curiously aggressive and bland at the same time. The third movement was pumped up so out of proportion to everything around it that it was more manic than giocoso, yet the harrowing silences that should have followed the braaass-TRI-PL-ET! figures in the fourth movement carried no weight at all. Oh, and this note at the end of the second movement?
Um, that needs to be a little bit higher. No, higher still. Closer... Um, it's still not quite lining up... Just a little bit oh never mind, the movement's over.
A warm welcome to our new principal flutist (my concertmate Hannibal mentioned something about having you over for dinner)
Saturday: Rigoletto
And now that I've used up all of my bile, listen up: it's worth your time to hear Paolo Gavanelli and Mary Dunleavy as Rigoletto and Gilda. Their scenes together are lovely, if you can get past the shoebox diorama set. Dunleavy is a charming and affecting Gilda whose acting never slipped into melodrama, and who sang with the light of a young woman in love yet still with plenty of heft. If I go back for another show, I'll look forward to hearing her correct that little bit of pitchiness, as the kids say, in the stuff above the staff, which I'm guessing was just due to opening-night jitters.
As for Gavanelli: bravo, signor. The role sounds like a natural fit, and he sang powerfully, consistenly and richly throughout. This guy, I'd like to hear more of, and you should try to catch him before he finishes his run on October 15. Now, if we could just find a Duke who sounds as virile as Rigoletto, we'd have a cast...
I. A Land that I Heard of Once
An enchanting fairy-tale moment before an enchanting fairy-tale opera, amidst tailgating operamanes quaffing dolcetto and chowing on caprese salads (but those tomatoes sure were tasty) [Santa Fe Opera parking lot]
II. Clouds for Detective L- (A Tempest before The Tempest)
Am I a purist?
I guess that's the surest
Explanation for why
That libretto set my
Poor teeth a-grindin',
With rhymes you might find in
A middle schooler's cahier.
For more fun, try my way:
Come on-a my place
To watch Powder Her Face.
[At the crest of Ten Thousand Waves]
III. Georgia on My Mind
"It's my private mountain. God told me if I painted it often enough, I could have it." -Georgia O'Keeffe [view of Pedernal from Ghost Ranch]
Photo of Stockhausen at Disneyland (1966) by Betty Freeman
Recent Comments