Feast of Music

Jazz in the Park

Ravi Coltrane and Groove Collective, Celebrate Brooklyn, 6/29/07    

Summergarden

I have fond memories of going to MoMA's annual Summergarden series growing up with my family, where Juilliard's new music specialist Joel Sachs has been responsible for the programming ever since its founding in 1971. After the museum's renovation was completed in 2005, the concerts were split between new music (7/8, 7/22, 8/5, 8/19) and jazz (7/15, 7/29, 8/12, 8/26), featuring members of the New Juilliard Ensemble and Jazz at Lincoln Center, respectively. What's most remarkable is that each concert in the series will feature a premiere: a worthy tribute from the high altar of modern art. (Not to mention they'll be played amongst Richard Serra's monumental steel sculptures.) Concerts are at 8pm each Sunday in July and August; doors at 7pm. Admission is free.

Art Songs on the L.E.S.

The talented singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane, who describes his material as "somewhere between Shostakovich and Rufus Wainwright," is all about bringing art music to the masses. Perhaps best known for his Craigslistlieder, in which he literally sets ads from the popular listings site to music, he is currently at work on a new musical theater piece about the Prophet Muhammad, to be premiered at this summer's Williamstown Theater Festival. Last night at Pianos, he performed songs from the rest of his catalogue, along with regular percussionist Richie Barshay. Some of the material slid towards the soft and sentimental, but his musicianship was consistently outstanding. Particularly strong were the Alban Berg-like "Brocade", about a Brooklyn boy with girl troubles, and "The Long Walk Home," which Kahane described as his "Ligeti piece" and featured an incredible approximation of the composer's notoriously difficult piano work. 

After a set by Bjork-like singer Bell - an excellent pianist in her own right - the two performed a wild excerpt from another of Kahane's musical theater pieces in which they donned cross-dressing costumes and sang what sounded like an old English vaudeville number. (It's set in London and has something to do with the inventor of Eugenics.) The mostly-young crowd seemed perplexed by the display, well outside their usual indie rock aesthetic. They closed out with a subdued cover of The Arcade Fire's "Rebellion," which brought everyone back to familiar turf.

More Summer Music

Lincoln Center Out of Doors released their schedule this past week, with over 100 free shows on the various plazas of Lincoln Center from August 2-27. Musical highlights include: the Dave Brubeck Quartet (8/5), Pauline Oliveros (8/21), Kristjian Jarvi's Absolute Ensemble (8/25), and an 85th birthday tribute to Charles Mingus, featuring Gunther Schuller conducting the Mingus Big Band (8/26).

Free Jazz

If you were to ask someone where you could hear some "free" jazz yesterday, most folks probably would have told you to check out the 12th annual Vision Festival over at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, founded as an avant-garde alternative to the more establishment JVC Jazz Festival. (The Vision Festival closes tonight; JVC runs through next Sunday.) Free jazz isn't up my personal alley, but I did hear some terrific jazz - that happened to be free - yesterday afternoon at J&R Music World. Ron Carter and his quartet (Stephen Scott, piano, Payton Crossley, drums, & Rolando Morales, percussion) played a full set to a packed room, as well as a live radio audience over WBGO 88.1FM.

Carter is literally a living history book of jazz, having played with everyone from Art Farmer, Thelonious Monk, Freddie Hubbard, and, most importantly, Miles Davis from 1963-68. Carter's new album, Dear Miles, is a tribute to those years, which he spoke about with WBGO host Monifa Brown, saying that it was like going to work in a lab.

"We didn't know we were doing some of the most important work in the history of jazz. We just put on our labcoats and went to work. But, everyday, someone would contribute something new. So, that was special."

The quartet, all dressed in dark suits, white shirts and ties, played with elegance and precision, with an emphasis on rhythm. But they weren't afraid to let their hair down: after an impossibly long volley between Carter and Scott, all Morales could do was lean back and laugh out loud. You got the feeling they could have kept going like that all night, were it not for Brown finally taking over the mic to close the program.

For those with the cash, Carter will be playing in his own 70th birthday tribute this Wednesday at Carnegie Hall, playing with some of the great musicians with whom he's shared a stage over the past 45 years: he'll play in a quartet with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, & Billy Cobham, followed by a trio with Mulgrew Miller & Russell Malone, a duo with Jim Hall, and then finally his regular quartet. Tickets available on Carnegie's website.

(From left: Stephen Scott, Ron Carter, Rolando Morales, Payton Crossley)

Bluegrass in Brooklyn

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Celebrate Brooklyn, June 22, 2007

(From Left: fiddler Dewey Brown, mandolin player Nathan Stanley (Ralph's grandson), lead guitarist James Shelton, and me)

Season Finale

I made is back in time for the Philharmonic last night, with an early 20th Century German program led by music director Lorin Maazel, in their final subscription concert of the season. The first half of the program featured American soprano Deborah Voigt, who is possibly the leading Strauss and Wagner soprano of our time; she will sing the title role in next season's Metropolitan Opera production of Tristan und Isolde, and will sing Brunnhilde in the Met's new Ring production in the 2008-09 season, a role I saw her debut two summers ago at Tanglewood, where she sang Act III from Gotterdammerung. (She also sang the role of Sieglinde in Act I of Die Walkure.)

Last night, her clear, high soprano was on full display in four songs by Richard Strauss, all orchestrated by the composer. Only one of the songs - the haunting "Morgen" ("Morning") - had been performed before by the Philharmonic. Of the other songs, "Lied der Frauen" ("Song of the Women") was particularly transfixing, with it's drawn out, Wagnerian ending. But, Voigt saved her best for last, letting her massive Earth-Mother voice rip in the ecstatic "Celebration of Spring." As an encore, she Sang a fifth Strauss song, "Erzeihung" ("Education"), which was slightly less dynamic but no less wondrous.

Gustav Mahler was only four years older than Strauss, and the two great composers were close. (You can read an interesting anecdote about them on the day of the premiere of Strauss' Salome in this excerpt from Alex Ross' upcoming book The Rest Is Noise.) Strauss, who outlived Mahler by nearly 40 years, would later return the favor Mahler had shown him by conducting several of his symphonies, but to the best of my knowledge, he never conducted the Seventh, which concluded last night's program. This huge work, lasting nearly an hour-and-a-half, begins darkly and slowly unfolds over five movements, tracing the imaginary journey of a wanderer through a dark landscape. I was put off by the uncertain brass section, particularly the horns and trombones, which were wobbly, if not downright off in the early movements. They seemed to finally pull it together in the fanfare-laced finale, but an orchestra of this caliber - and this payscale - should be able to nail those notes from the first downbeat. I can't even begine to imagine how Mahler - a former NYP music director himself - would have reacted had he been on the podium.

The Philharmonic will be playing their populist Summertime Classics series for the next couple of weeks, and then they're off to the Bravo Vail Music Festival before returning in July for the annual free parks concerts in July. Let's hope the mountain air blows some wind into those tattered sails...

Park It Here

Dining during the opera is an old tradition, going back at least as far as the 18th Century. At Venice's La Fenice, for example, patrons with private boxes were known to eat and drink throughout the performance, even going so far as to close the stage-facing curtain. Opera was seen much less as a serious artistic experience than as a social night out.

Of course, you won't see that these days at the Met, where box seats go for $800 and up and well-heeled patrons usually take their meals on the Grand Terrace. But, when I go to see the Met Opera in the park - especially in my own local Eden of Prospect Park - the opera itself is secondary to the experience of enjoying a warm summer evening outdoors with friends, catching up on their goings-on while sharing a bottle of wine or two. Or three.

And, in the best of circumstances, it is an opportunity for people to experience opera for the first time, without the forbidding formalities of the Met, or even City Opera. You don't have to know who James Morris is. Or who Charles Gounod is. Or even who Faust was. For example, my friend and former co-worker Pete, whose wife is an aspiring singer in her own right, told me he thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and would love to see "the real thing" sometime. Now, if that isn't music to the Met's ears...

Also with me was my good friend Pat, with whom I've been to the Met on numerous occasions (usually in standing room), including at least half-a-dozen performances by American bass James Morris, either as Wotan in Wagner's Ring, Hans Sachs in Wagner's Die Meistersinger, or Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca. (That only leaves 51 roles in which we haven't seen him.) Last night, he sang a dastardly Mephistopheles, offering up a terrific demonic laugh in Act Four where he mocks Faust's beloved Marguerite, sung ably by soprano Ellie Dehn in her first Met appearance. (I'm looking forward to her official Met debut next season in Philip Glass' Satyagraha.) Also excellent were veteran tenor Fernando de la Mora as Faust and baritone Sebastian Catana as Marguerite's protective brother, Valentin. The Met Orchestra sounded great as always, even through the tinny stage-based amplification. (They didn't bring the usual satellite speaker setup this time.)

Tomorrow, I'll be out of town on business, but hopefully most New Yorkers will get to enjoy at least some of Make Music New York, the annual musical celebration of the summer solstice which is making it's NYC debut 25 years after the Paris founding. I hope to make it back in time to see the NY Philharmonic in their final subscription concert of the season, performing Mahler's 7th Symphony and songs by Richard Strauss, featuring soprano Deborah Voigt, who sang Strauss' Die äegyptische Helena at the Met in March. Should be epic.

Final Thoughts

The Emerson String Quartet's cycle of the complete Beethoven quartets at Carnegie has been distinguished by presenting these masterworks in context, alongside everyone from Bach, to Brahms, to Bartok. But, the task left to Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho was unfair by almost any standard: compose a brand new work and have it premiered on the final concert of the cycle, sandwiched by what are likely the twin pillars of the entire string quartet repertoire: Beethoven's Op. 131 and Op. 135. Miraculously, Saariaho not only rose to the occasion, she presented a work of haunting, penetrating beauty. Terra Memoria was written in memory of the departed, but also for the memories themselves, which she indicates had a transformative impact on her compositional process.

Without any disrespect to Saariaho, the late Beethoven quartets are, simply put, one of the singular achievements in all of art. For those who consider the string quartet lightweight dinner music, here's how seriously Beethoven took the genre: after completing the Diabelli Variations, the Missa Solemnis, and the 9th Symphony, he spent the last two-and-a-half years of his life composing nothing but music for string quartet. Some have speculated that the radical, almost otherworldly soundscape of these late works was only possible because Beethoven could not hear what he was writing. But the Op. 135 gives the lie to that assumption: the music is tonal, almost conventional in structure, with only the final movement - famed for it's "Muss Es Sein? Es Muss Sein!" inscription - venturing into the exotic. The Emerson played it with their usual poise and precision, though for me it didn't quite measure up to the transporting experience I had hearing the Juilliard Quartet play it at the People's Symphony in 2005. (Speaking of which, it's about time the Emerson boys made an appearance at WIHS.)

 

Even more profound was the Op. 131, which concluded the program, and the cycle. Sprawling over seven movements with only minimal pauses, this was Beethoven's own favorite quartet: a masterpiece of innovation and grandeur. The Emerson played it at full tilt, absorbing even the most minimal of Beethoven's markings.

As an encore, the Emerson offered the alternate ending to the Op. 130, written as a replacement for the monumental but unpopular original, better known as the Grosse Fuge. (According to the program, Beethoven was sitting in a local biesl during the premiere performance, and when he heard of the audience's less-than-enthusiastic response to the final movement, he shouted: "Cattle! Asses!") Gene Drucker reminded us that no Beethoven cycle would be complete without a performance of the alternate ending, and that it was the last thing Beethoven ever wrote. The audience responded with an appropriately long and wild ovation.

Postscript: I was glad to see that I was far from the only sub-40 patron attendance: there were plenty of well-heeled youngsters, most of whom were overly-enthusiastic about what they heard. Makes one wish you heard this music more often...

TV On the SummerStage

The sun came out for Television yesterday at Summerstage, and they played a terrific set, lasting just over an hour. Sadly guitarist Richard Lloyd did not play, in what was supposed to be his final gig with the band: apparently, he's in intensive care with pneumonia.(Lloyd has a history of health issues, mostly related to his hard-living lifestyle.)  Fortunately, he was ably replaced by Jimmy Ripp, who has been playing off and on with the band for over a decade.

Under the warm afternoon sun, the concert had the feel of a late 60's happening, with long, complex jams between singer/guitarist Tom Verlaine and Ripp. Verlaine was in excellent form, sounding like a mix of David Byrne and Neil Young on their best days, ably picking up most of Lloyd's best riffs.

They played most of their hits, including "Little Johnny Jewel" and ended with an epic performance of "Marquee Moon", hitting all the breaks with surgical precision. The crowd went nuts and desperately wanted an encore, but by that point the concert had already run well over.

Heading out, I bumped into my friend Charlie, who told me he's hoping to be at tonight's final Emerson concert of their Beethoven cycle at Carnegie, featuring there last two quartets and the world premiere of Kaija Saariaho's Terra Memoria.  Hope to see you there, Charlie.