When he went to work for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center a few years ago, Ronen Givony knew very little about classical music. Not himself a musician, but a passionate music fan, his tastes inclined to Indie-rock. He listened to Radiohead, David Byrne, Björk, and other, more obscure eclectics. At CMS he discovered classical music and was quickly smitten by old fogies like Bach, Mendelssohn, and Ligeti. Seeing his fellow Indie fans as a natural audience for classical music, he proposed a series of joint rock/classical concerts at Lincoln Center. He now works at Nonesuch.

For a series only slightly over a year old, Wordless Music has made astonishing waves. Givony’s brainchild, which he only anticipated lasting two or three concerts, ends up in the black from ticket sales alone and has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker. His programs aim to be half-classical, half-rock, though he estimates about 90% of the audience comes for the latter. While such a programming style may not meet the curatorial standards of Lincoln Center, he tries to create sensible musical pairings. When he was able to secure Beirut for a concert on September 20th, for instance, he thought programming some Osvaldo Golijov would complement the band’s Balkan, Levantine sounds. Other times, however, Givony scrapes together a half-hour of classical music and sees whatever decent band he can get. So far, so good.

Wordless Music’s 2007-2008 season opens this Friday at the Society for Ethical Culture. On the program is the Canadian group Do Make Say Think playing some of their own tunes, and The Electric Kompany, a rock quartet, playing music by Nick Didkovsky, Jacob TV, and Marc Mellits. Upcoming season highlights include the Icelandic band Mum – a longtime favorite of Givony’s, and the US premiere of Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver. Spring 2008 is still taking shape for the series, but, with ten concerts scheduled between Friday and mid January, Wordless Music will be making plenty of noise in the meantime.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only S21 reader pleased when Ennio Morricone received a lifetime achievement Oscar earlier this year.  Recently he chatted with CNN.  At one point he advises young composers to focus on writing absolute music:  if you’re a film composer without a film, you’re not really a composer at all. 

Which begs the question:  any film-less film composers peddling their misconceived craft these days?  Play nice, now.

Lincoln Center Festival presented last night the North American premiere of George Benjamin’s first opera, Into the Little Hill. Hill tells a version of the “Pied Piper of Hamelin” story, wherein a mysterious stranger drives the rats from an infested town with his beguiling music. When the mayor reneges on his promise to pay him, the stranger kidnaps the mayor’s little daughter. Martin Crimp’s libretto assigns all roles – the stranger, the mayor, the mayor’s wife, the little girl, the crowd, and the narration – to two singers, a soprano (Anu Komsi) and a contralto (Hilary Summers).

Benjamin and Crimp subtitle their work a “lyric tale,” a label that captures well the unusual storytelling. In that the singers switch between first and third-person points of view, and that each singer inhabits four different “roles,” Hill places considerable distance between us and the drama. If the result lacks emotional impact, the work is nonetheless fascinating and satisfyingly odd. Benjamin’s spare, clear music complements the literary high-jinks of the libretto by providing a sophisticated, cerebral setting of what is essentially an innocent fairy tale. While a certain awkwardness does emerge when the little girl sings tenderly about the rats, the apparent mismatch between style and story actually succeeds overall, because the aim of Benjamin and Crimp is less to make us sympathize with the characters on stage than to make us contemplate their fate.

Given the many complexities of the work, the 40-minute running time, though impractical from other points of view, is a smart musical decision. Hill moves steadily and never overwhelms us conceptually or musically. Midway, a haunting bass flute evokes the Piper’s music, and a cimbalom adds a magical touch to many passages throughout. Anu Komsi has about the most extraordinary high register a composer could dream of, and Hilary Summers’s stage presence is as sharp as her voice is dusky. The austere blocking and set design are of a piece with the musical and dramatic conception.

Before the opera, members of the Ensemble Modern performed Benjamin’s Viola, Viola and Three Miniatures. The viola duet of the first work anticipated the vocal duet that is Hill, and the third of the miniatures uncannily foreshadowed – in its long lines and pizzicato – the concluding passages of the opera.

Into the Little Hill receives performances again tonight and tomorrow, and, if you’re around, I’d recommend going.

Peter Maxwell Davies let loose some fightin’ words a few months ago at the annual meeting of Britain’s Incorporated Society of Musicians. Music education has been unavailable in schools for two generations; the hegemony of commercial music is unchecked; and students now graduate high school with vocabularies insufficient to express the complexity of experience. Surprised? It’s all the same trend. Let’s start teaching kids to notate music, sing Palestrina, and go to new music concerts. (So Max.)

A related personal anecdote: Around the same time Davies was giving this speech, I asked the faculty of the Harvard Music Department if the declining standards of musical literacy were affecting their tasks as music educators. They didn’t seem to think so.  

May 14^th, 2019

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) – President Bush looked tired as he sat down one last time in his famous beige easy chair in the Green Room of Lone Star Auditorium. His mind seemed elsewhere, and he was silent for a few minutes. Slightly impatient to begin our interview, however, I gently pointed out he was still holding his baton.

“Oh!” he said, giving it a fond look and setting it aside. “It’s gonna be hard to let go.”

Crawford audiences feel the same way. No one knew exactly what George W. Bush was going to do after two terms in the nation’s highest office. But one can’t help but think he knew all along. After nine seasons as founder, conductor, and Artistic Director of the Greater Crawford Symphony Orchestra, it’s hard to believe Bush won’t be with us next season. I asked if there was a defining moment of his tenure.

“Definitely the performance of Shostacovich’s Second Symphony in 2010. Many people didn’t understand what I was trying to say. But the audience did. Some board members left, but we stayed the course. 2012 I was pleased to curate a Hanns Eisler festival in the small hall, and when Fred [Rzewski] premiered his first piano concerto here the following season, I felt we had won the war.”

“People were surprised when you unionized the orchestra at Rzweski’s insistence.”

“I often surprise people. But they always know where I stand.”

“Are there any programming decisions you now regret?”

“Well – he’s gone now, so I guess I can admit I wasn’t happy with the first two movements of Rummy’s Beethoven’s Ninth, and I shouldn’t have let him lead the third. But we found another guy for the ‘Ode to Joy,’ so it all ended up okay. Then there was the Snoop Dog’s ‘Symphonic Rap Fantasy’ with President Obama. It was a better idea than it turned out to be. We thought people would be okay with Barack saying the ‘n’ word, but he wasn’t black enough. Overall, though, I’d say the cons have outweighed the pros.”

“What about Lowell Liebermann’s Flute Concerto for Tony Snow?”

“I loved Lowell’s work. But what really blew me away that night was Tony’s encore.”

“You’re referring to his rendition of Sciarrino’s ‘L’orizonte luminoso Di Aton’?”

“Yes – I mean we should have amplified it, but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“And what about Condoleezza Rice’s controversial tempo choice in Brahms’s first piano concerto?”

“A little slow. I’ll leave it at that.”

“A few seasons ago, despite approving the commission, you refused to conduct Tobias Picker’s opera ‘The Brave Pioneers.’ Would you comment on that now?”

“Well. I knew it was just gonna be a bunch of fluff. I’m happy people liked it, and it’s gone on to be a big success. But I’ve always been a leader who’s done what he thinks is right even when it’s not popular.”

“Like your continued support of General Manager Alberto Gonzalez and his handling of the firing of the entire bassoon section?”

“I’m not going to comment on that.”

“Are you looking forward to Vienna?”

“Yes – Doris Dörrie and I have been talking about a new production of Lulu in which Lulu’s followed by a giant raccoon for the first act and is strangled by an octopus at the end. Doris is a genius – and she’s a regular at the Ranch. As is Olga Neuwirth, who’s rewriting the score. I’ve never thought that third act worked. Meantime, though, I’ll have to suffer through a million performances of The Magic Flute. All that Masonic hocus-pocus.”

There came a knock at the door. A voice announced a very special guest was here to see Bush. Bush smiled. He knew already who it was.

“Hey gringo!” said a burly, red-shirted man, entering.

Bush jumped out of his chair and turned to me. “Have you met Hugo? He’s our next conductor. Those guys in Venezuela sure know how to train musicians!”

This Mother’s Day, show her you care.  Nothing says “Thanks Mom” like a high-octane concert of Lachenmann, Ades, Nono, Alex Mincek, and Kyle Hillbrand.  And — just your luck — such a beast is roaring our way with David Hanlon’s Hold the Applause concert at Gallerie Icosahedron this Sunday at 5:30pm.  Of course, if you don’t love your Mom — or you live outside the Eastern timezone — your presence can be excused.  Otherwise, troops, forward march!  The various links will give you all the details you need.

Thursday, May 3^rd: CUNY Composers Alliance. It’s more than collegial loyalty that compels me to mention last week’s student composers’ concert at the CUNY Graduate Center. We presented a great program of ambitious works ranging from a pocket violin concerto in the Romantic tradition, to a multi-media electronic sound-scape, to an insouciantly postmodern large-ensemble work, to gritty European modernism, and beyond. (There was also some tinkly, diatonic piano improvisation.) Programs do not get more pluralistic than this, and the performances were solid.

Friday, May 4^th: Serge Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, NYC Ballet. Ballet, take two. Certainly the more accessible of the two recent ballet visits, Peter Martins’s new choreography to Prokofiev’s standby struck me as beautiful and enjoyable, though not so imaginative as Ballanchine’s work from the week before. But I still wish I understood the semiotics of ballet better. I was on firmer ground evaluating the risotto at Café Fiorello’s afterwards: not bad, but overpriced and salty.

Saturday May 5^th: TALEA Ensemble at Juilliard. A potent new music ensemble/collective of composers and performers, TALEA’s debut program of works by Jonathan Harvey, Salvatore Sciarrino, Gérard Grisey, Anthony Cheung and Alexandre Lunsqui was serious business. Cheung’s “Ebbing Flow” (clarinet, violin, cello, and piano) avoided the sustained soupiness that seems to be the typical pitfall of spectralist (and spectralist-inspired) composers. Flautist Daria Binkowski was awe-inspiring in Harvey’s “Nataraja” and Sciarrino’s “L’orizonte luminoso Di Aton,” the latter requiring the flautist to inhale through the instrument. Grisey’s “Talea” closed the concert, and, while the piece is fierce and incredible, it struck me, surprisingly, as too short and unbalanced formally. Conductor Vince Lee kept the larger pieces under admirable control.

Sunday May 6^th: Tom Cipullo, Glory Denied. Brooklyn College Opera Theater. BC hosted the world premiere of Cipullo’s opera based on the wartime and post-wartime ordeals of Vietnam veteran Col. Jim Thompson, the longest-held US prisoner of the war. Cipullo’s music can veer into syrupy Lydian-land, but the first act holds up relatively well. The second act unfortunately sacrifices musical and dramatic continuity for applause-nabbing solo arias, and the show ends up lacking impact despite its loaded subject matter. As Thompson’s unfaithful wife Alyce, soprano Gretchen Mundinger, a Masters student, clearly showed she’s ready already for a bigger stage.

It’s starting to look like the end of the season, and there are even more concerts than usual here in the Center to Universe to feel bad about missing. My own concert-going tends to come in unpredictable binges, the most recent of which began last weekend, resumed last Wednesday, and ended this afternoon (and continues this coming weekend). It’s not all new music, but I thought I’d chime in anyhow to share some highlights.

Saturday, April 28^th: Doug Wright, Scot Frankel, Michael Korie, Grey Gardens. So The Mom was in town, we couldn’t get tickets to the Met, and we settled for a musical. I figured Grey Gardens, based partly on the 1975 documentary, would be the easiest thing to stomach. And, indeed, it is a fine show. Of course, this being a musical, there are too many moments whose raison d’etre is purely to press this or that emotional button, but this rendition of the dilapidated lives of some cousins of Jackie O’s is dramatically sound, has some very deft lyrics, and ingratiating music. Chirstine Ebersole in a duel role – she’s the mother in the first half, the daughter in the second half – should be the favorite for the Best Actress Tony.

Saturday, April 28^th (evening): Stravinsky: Apollo, Agon; Bizet, Symphony in C. NYC Ballet. Anyone else out there utterly lost by ballet? I’ve resolved to stretch my artistic horizons and get with the program. This season, the NYC Ballet is celebrating the 100^th birthday of its co-founder, Lincoln Kirstein. This trio of Ballanchine ballets was enjoyable, though Apollo, with its breathtaking evocations of chariots and flight, left the greatest impact on me. The whole house released a loving sigh when the curtain rose on the Bizet to reveal a stage of white-tutued ballerinas – evidently the ballet version of instant gratification.

Wednesday, May 2^nd: Jeff Nichols, Le trombe d’oro della solaritá (trumpet, horn, trombone, percussion, and double bass). Nichols is a professor of music at Queens College, and his fluid, chromatically saturated music deserves to be better known. At the end of the Eugenio Montale poem on which the piece is loosely based, rays of sunlight strike the speaker’s eyes. Over the course of the twenty-minute piece, Nichols musically prepares this image by slowly transforming harmonies comprised of stacked semitones into harmonies of stacked perfect fifths. The process is neither pedantically foregrounded nor academically obscured, and careful listeners will not find the dense musical language disorienting. A marimba cadenza at the end leaves the ears refreshed after much brass-heavy music.

Starting Wednesday night, the ICE is going to be all over town like it’s no one else’s business. Among the considerable damage they’re rendering is our own Evan Johnson’s piece Supplement for clarinet and electronics. Gareth Davis will be doing the honors at Rosenberg+Kaufman Fine Art this Friday.

The folks at Linked Musicians have been recognized as an “Official Honouree” by the “Webby” awards. Membership to Linked Musicians, which is free, enables you to find jobs, bands, and just generally link up with others dedicated to live music.  And they tell me a Webby is a big deal.  So — good going!

You theremin nuts will want to click here: WNPR’s presenting “Passion: The Theremin” tonight at 7 and 8pm.

Lastly: I turned in my dissertation proposal last Friday. Entitled “Strategies of Fragmentation in the Music of György Kurtág,” I’m sure this won’t be the last you’ll hear of it.  Wa, ha, ha!!!

And, yes, I’m posting this on Sunday: tomorrow morning I wake up at 6 a.m. to prep my final lecture this semester on Ligeti.

That is all.

The Guggenheim Foundation recently divulged its latest crop of worthies. Click here for a complete list of the winners by category. Editorial bias compels me to extend a special mention of Tania Leon, Paquito D’Rivera, and Dmitri Tymoczko (orbifolds — remember?  Quiz Monday, y’all.). 

The other music folks are, unfortunately, news to me.  Though something tells me they aren’t to many of you . . .