File Under?

I was dismayed by some postings on the Society for Music Theory’s email list today. In addressing the topic “Sustainability in Music Theory,” scholars weighed in with various suggestions as to how we might be more “environmentally conscious.” Among the posters were proponents of using only text materials, recordings, and readings that were online, overhead projections instead of handouts, various methods to avoid paper grading, and electronic keyboards instead of pianos.

I’m all for environmentally responsible behavior. It’s true that educators can and should be more responsible about wasteful activities and needless consumption. Some of the teaching tools my colleagues reported on are excellent supplements to the traditional “chalkboard, stereo, and piano” classrooms I encountered as a student. But don’t people realize that computers have their own bunch of toxins to contribute to landfills? What about Ipods, Blackberries, overhead projectors, and yes, electronic keyboards? Are all of these being recycled and/or disposed of in environmentally responsible ways? Given the pace of technological obsolescence, how often will we need to update our classrooms? I’m not suggesting that we refrain from using any of these tools, but let’s not fool ourselves that the high tech solution is inherently better for the environment.

Before we start phasing out books and pianos in favor of the latest tools, isn’t it worthwhile to consider the quality and importance of the resources that we’re using, be they a computer, a book, or a baby grand piano? To suggest that an electronic keyboard is “good enough” for all music classrooms is to miss the many aesthetic differences between it and a piano. Sure, for keyboard harmony class, it is very convenient to have a dozen keyboard stations lined up for student use; but what about a song literature class or a course in piano repertoire? And, in an era in which students are reading more and more online content, isn’t worthwhile to encourage them to browse the stacks occasionally?

Sometimes I wonder if “greening” isn’t being used as a convenient excuse by corporations and institutions to cut costs and sell new products. A case in point is the recording industry, with whom I deal on a routine basis. In the past couple of years, in the name of “going green,” record labels and PR firms are increasingly refraining from sending review copies of CDs, preferring instead that reviewers use trackable digital downloads or streaming media. While I’d like to believe this is due to a concern over the environment, it’s pretty clear that they don’t mind shipping and selling millions of hard copies of their product. They’re entitled to send as few review copies as they want to whomever they like, but I for one would like to be able to evaluate a real copy of a recording, not an MP3 or streaming file. And I don’t think that makes me a Luddite or unsympathetic to environmental causes. Sometimes, quality should count for something.
 

Festival

Come, Arrow, Come!

Language of Stone 005

Talk about taking it on the road (before the tour!): Brooklynite sisters Alexis and Lindsay Powell recorded their first collaboration at Battle Tapes in Nashville, TN, for Philly-based label Language of Stone, which is distributed by Chicago’s Drag City imprint! Come, Arrow, Come! demonstrates similar fluidity. The Powells incorporate psychedelic, folk, and pastoral prog influences into a rock recording that entertains both in its ambling jams and its celebratory vocal choruses. Abetted by another familial duo, instrumentalists Jamin and Jake Orrall, and drummer Matt Martin, the sisters’ voices match deliciously, and they wisely choose to sing together for much of the CD. From the trippily hypnotic “Zebulon” to the more rustic “Boxcar,” to the craggily homespun yet winsome, “Come Outside!,” on which the Powells are content to harmonize over a rhythm machine, this is a fine debut.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!

Anti Records (www.anti.com)

Nick Cave likes to keep listeners guessing. After his previous full length, Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus, provided an expansive exploration of the Anglophilic side of his musical personality, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, is a jaunty road trip through America’s pop-cultural past. Cave’s investigations span the visual as well as the aural; he now sports rock’s most outstanding mustache and hair/costumes redolent of 70s. But Cave and the Bad Seeds are not interested in stylistic troping or kitsch; rather, their channeling of an era’s artifacts proves to be an eminently resonant creative sounding-board.

Like his label-mate (here in the States) Tom Waits, Cave is a songwriter well-steeped in literary genres; one cannot imagine either of them creating quite the same songs without the considerable influence of the Beats: Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg. Indeed, Cave’s 2003 novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, is post-beat in a visceral way that reminds one of Nick Tosches’s In the Hand of Dante. Lazarus is a worthy musical extension of Cave’s literary activities: its vivid lyrics and hard-hitting music are the indie rock answer to the au courant trend towards a facile reinterpretation of the seventies in pop culture.  

Thus, the title track evinces a peppy exterior, but explores the darker side of its protaganist’s rebirth. Namely, wouldn’t being raised from the dead really mess with your head? Meanwhile, the Bukowskian “Today’s Lesson” juxtaposes a celebratory chorus about a night on the town with the lurid details of a considerably less enjoyable day-to-day existence. Musically, this is depicted by a struggle between traditional rock instruments – brash lead guitars and four-to-the-floor drums – and a more avant-garde insertion of noisy squalls and James Johnson’s free-wheeling organ lines. Lest one think that all this sounds too deeply thought over for accessible pop music, songs like “Hold on to Yourself” and “Midnight Man” marry similarly rich, multilayered lyrics with attractive, memorable vocal melodies. Lazarus demonstrates that Cave and the Bad Seeds are able  to rock, entertain, and provoke, irrespective of the subtext.

Tanglewood Moments: “Yes, THAT Phil Lesh”

If you were in the audience on Wednesday night after the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, conducted by Oliver Knussen, gave a luminous and revelatory performance of Elliott Carter’s Concerto for Orchestra, you might have noticed an interesting fellow attendee. During the considerable applause following the concert’s conclusion, conductor Oliver Knussen gave each section of the orchestra acknowledgment in turn, pointing out the various solos that members had executed.

During the bass section’s bow, a gentleman in a light jacket popped up, vigorously applauding the double bass contingent: It was Phil Lesh, bassist for the Grateful Dead! Lesh has a classical pedigree of his own: he studied composition with Luciano Berio at Mills College. It must have been such a thrill for the string players, once they were clued in as to who was paying them homage!

Lesh’s enthusiasm was well deserved. One of the best moments in the concerto, one which can’t hope to be captured on recording, was when a solo line began at the back desk of the double basses and wended its way forward. I’ve never heard this passage, nor for that matter the whole piece, better performed. Kudos to Knussen, the TMC students, and Phil Lesh!

If you haven’t checked out the NYT’s coverage of Tanglewood, you really should.

Posted on the NY Times arts blog:

Dear Mr. Kozinn,

I just wanted to say how much I’ve enjoyed your coverage of the Festival of Contemporary Music. I was up for FCM as well, reviewing it for Tempo and blogging about it for Sequenza 21 (www.sequenza21.com/carey), and I’m thrilled that the NY Times has given it so much attention.

In the past, reading about Carter, Babbitt, and other modernists in the Times has sometimes been a frustrating experience; it’s nice to see these excellent Carter performances written about with so much insight and sympathy.

I had a similar experience this week to your conversation with Mike from Birmingham (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/tanglewood-contemporary-festival-applause-beyond-the-polite/#comment-47741), a new convert to contemporary music. Having breakfast in the lobby of the Econo Lodge in Lenox, I overheard two octagenerians from Queens discussing the Tuesday night performance.

“He’s a hundred years old – can you believe it?”

“It’s not the kind of concert I’d usually go to, but once you were there, it was really astonishing! We went to both shows – the 5 PM and the 8 o’clock!”

To a NJ couple in line for breakfast, “You have to go to Tanglewood this week. They’re doing all-Carter. Elliott Carter: he’s a hundred and he’s still composing!”

Will wonders ever cease?

Best,

Christian Carey

Westminster Choir College

Aaron Copland

Piano Concerto; Tender Land (Suite); Old American Songs

Benjamin Pasternack, Piano; St. Charles Singers; Elgin Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Hanson

Naxos 8.559297 (www.naxos.com)

After hearing the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music this past week, with its traversal of some 47 pieces by Elliott Carter, I was eager to explore some of the connections between Carter and other composers upon my return. One of the figures I most wanted to revisit was Aaron Copland. Pieces like the 1943 Elegy, played movingly at the festival in a recently reworked transcription for cello and piano by Fred Sherry and Charles Rosen, remind one of Carter’s early flirtations with the “Americana” style popularized by composers such as Copland and Roy Harris. In a moment of syncronicity, this CD arrived for review the day I got back to New Jersey from Massachusetts.

Benjamin Pasternack has become something of a Copland specialist — he’s also recorded the Piano Sonata and Piano Fantasy for Naxos (8.559199). His interpretation of the Piano Concerto assays both the jazz-inflected passages of the solo part and its more modernist (Stravinskyian) flourishes with equal facility. This is also true of the Elgin Symphony (www.elginsymphony.org), an Illinois-based group that sounds as American as apple pie under the skilful baton of Robert Hanson. Although one may miss the voices in the Tender Land suite, this instrumental reworking of music from Copland’s opera is a terrific showpiece for the symphony, particularly its climactic third movement: “The Promise of Living.”

One can still get their “vocal fix” with this CD; the St. Charles Singers (www.stcharlessingsers.com) perform both sets of Old American Songs. The group gives a movingly tender (no pun intended) rendition of “Long Time Ago.” They are also able to negotiate the deceptively tricky syncopations between voices and accompaniment in “Simple Gifts,” clearly enunciating this Shaker anthem (Copland famously also employed this tune in Appalachian Spring). Other highlights are their fleet, good-humored performances of “Ching-a-ring Chaw” and “I bought me a Cat.” Baritone Nathaniel Stampley is an appealingly waggish soloist on “The Boatmen’s Dance” and “The Dodger.” The choral/orchestral version of “At the River,” arranged by R. Wilding-White, sounds positively glorious.