Sequenza21

The rabid right has worked itself into a state over Ken Burns’ extraordinarily fair, balanced and altogether pro-American documentary series, The War.  Partly it’s the fact that it is on PBS and it it is an article of faith among conservatives that PBS is run by a bunch of commie, pinko surrender monkeys who use taxpayer dollars to grind out streams of anti-American propaganda.  Forget the fact that most of money comes from such dubious sources as General Motors, Anheiser-Busch, Bank of America and generous foundations established by thoughtful capitalists of the past.  Keep those kids away from PBS; they might see a gay cartoon character.   

Another part of the problem is that Burns himself has said he wasn’t making a celebratory documentary and that he took care to frame his subject (in the words of one veteran) as a “necessary” war, not a “good” war.  This infuriates the true belivers to whom war, any war that America gets involved in, is a good war simply because we’re in it.  Saying anything to contrary is like, well, suggesting that Ronald Reagan was human-born and put his pants on one-leg at a time.

On the lack of celebratory zeal front, the most curious offering came from Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal who was particularly offended by the downbeat original music created for the series by Wynton Marsalis:

The dolorous jazz arrangements by Wynton Marsalis that run throughout the film were, the credits tell us, created especially for this production. Who would doubt it? Don’t ask about the background music for D-Day. Moving on, we see the archival footage of U.S. soldiers advancing through German streets — it is 1945, the troops are among the first Americans to have made it across the Rhine, and victory is, if not in sight, close at hand. By way of an accompaniment to this moment, we hear on the soundtrack some faintly mournful twitterings.

I’m not a huge fan of Marsalis as a composer and I think Burns overused him in his previous jazz films but it seems to me that in this case his restrained, thoughtful, unobtrusive musical texture is a perfect fit for the intimate, personal and very emotional stories the subjects are telling.  When Burns moves away from the personal to the sweep of history view he inevitably turns to familiar tunes by Artie Shaw or Glenn Miller or other period music that serve as a kind of shorthand for the American experience of the World War II.  And, Burns best efforts notwithstanding, that music is always sad, nostalgic, and, yes, celebratory for those of us whose lives touched the war. 

Rabinowitz has some particularly nasty words of America’s current queen of pop:  “When it comes to the dolorous, to be sure, there’s nothing quite equal to the effect of the dreadful “American Anthem” (1999, sung here by Norah Jones), whose sodden notes sound at regular intervals.”  True, the song is sappy but then so was “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and Alice Faye.  Sometimes, sappy is right.

The War is an incredible tribute to the Americans who lived through it and to those who fought and died.  By focusing on the little stories that were epic to those who lived them, the film touches the heart in ways that banal glorification can’t.  Inevitably, it celebrates the resilience of the American character, even if it’s trying not to. 

This is a case of people listening to what Burns said he was doing and not watching what he has actually done.

Two contemporary African-American composers shared the spotlight with Bach, Turina, Ellington, and Piazzolla at the Sphinx Organization Gala at Carnegie Hall last night. Cellist Tahirah Whittington held a sold-out Stern captive with Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s “Perpetual Motion” from his Lamentations Suite for solo cello. A fierce, prolonged flourish perfect for a charismatic performer, its aggression contrasted nicely with the similarly Bluegrass-inspired Delights and Dances for string quartet and string orchestra by Michael Abels. Performed by the Harlem Quartet, Delights is a pleasant work which Edgar Meyer fans will find plenty congenial. The zippy, high-flying finale had the audience on their feet (though not this reviewer), and one left the hall grateful for the good work Sphinx does. Congratulations to them on their tenth anniversary.

During the summer the music programming stays pretty much with the established and conventional, if not with the outright light and popular.  I missed about the only performance of contemporary music at the Bowl, and the programming of the concerts by the lawn of the Huntington Gardens by the Southwest Chamber musicians was much more traditional than usual so that the one real treat was Elissa Johnston singing the Berio “Folk Songs” as part of a delightful program of Debussy supplemented by Lou Harrison and the Berio songs.  But now we’re ready to have more music of today.

Arranging our calendars for contemporary music always begins with the Phil, which is appropriate since it was those long-ago concerts conducted by Mehta in which he cajoled us in the audience to really try to hear those sounds of Berio and Crumb and Boulez and Messiaen (not to mention Schoenberg, Webern and Berg).  With my wife and me, those words from the conductor took root. 

The major series in this season’s L.A. Philharmonic programs is a Sibelius cycle, conducted by Salonen, in commemoration of his death 50 years ago (or is it for the 80th year of regret at his silence).  That series will include the seven symphonies in five programs, four by orchestra and one by chamber strings, plus an additional program of Salonen conducting the Sibelius Institute youth orchestra), beginning October 12 and ending October 26.  Supplementing the Sibelius will be three new or recent works:  another revival of Salonen’s “Wing on Wing”; a premiere of a new work by Steven Stucky, “Radical Light”; and John Estacio’s orchestration of “Seven Songs by Sibelius” (2006), sung by Ben Heppner.  The programs will be taken by Salonen and the orchestra to London and Paris in November.  The chamber concert will combine the Sibelius String Quartet with Carl Nielsen’s idiosyncratic “Serenata in Vano” (1914) for clarinet, bassoon, horn, cello, and double bass; and with the string quartet of Grieg and Aulis Sallinen‘s third quartet (1969).

The second major series of the season is in January, a series named “Concrete Frequency” to explore the intersections and interactions of contemporary music and contemporary city life.  David Robertson will be conductor/curator of the series, consisting of three subscription programs, plus a new music series program, plus symposia, films, and an evening devoted to urban-inspired music, hip-hop dance, and graffitti art (yes, in Walt Disney Concert Hall).  The program for the Green Umbrella (new music) concert isn’t yet announced, but the programs for the three orchestra concerts are a delight, ranging from Zappa, Crumb, Varese, and Copland in the first program; to Berio (Sequenza X), Feldman, Benjamin, Zimmermann and Ives in the second program; to the premiere of a new work by Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison, preceded by the Boulez “explosante fixe” (I think the version of 1991-1993).  January 4 through January 15 would be a good time to travel to Los Angeles and experience the Phil in Disney.

Other highlights of the Phil’s season include the performance (and recording) of Salonen’s “Piano Concerto” in a program with the premiere of Stucky’s arrangement of “Les Noces”; the premiere of Knussen’s “Cello Concerto”; Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Messiaen’s “Oiseaux exotiques”; Dudamel conducting Salonen’s “Insomnia”; the Britten “War Requiem”; and the Strauss “Metamorphosen” and Berio’s orchestration of Bach’s “Contrapuntus XIX” in the opening concert.

And then we have the five programs of the Green Umbrella series of new music.  There will be an evening with focus on Kaija Saariaho, plus Dallapiccola.  There will be an evening to focus on Steven Stucky, including two West Coast premieres, plus the West Coast premieres of James Matheson’s “Songs of Desire, Love, and Loss” and Susan Botti’s “Jabberwocky”.  There will be an evening with Ursula Oppens as soloist performing the premiere of Harold Meltzer’s “Piano Concerto”, plus the premiere of a new work by Gabriela Frank, plus Carter’s “Dialogues”, plus Ginastera’s “Cantata para America Magica”.  There will be an evening of the music of a Los Angeles favorite, Thomas Ades, including a premiere that includes videos of Tal Rosner.  That’s in addition to the “Concrete Frequency” concert to be announced.  And then Terry Riley is coming to Disney for a performance on the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ, which will include a new work created for the occasion.  And the Kronos Quartet will appear with a concert including the Inuit singer, Tanya Tagaq, music by Sigur Ros and Xploding Plastix, and the premiere of a work by Derek Charke.  Get your tickets now!

In subsequent posts I’ll discuss the coming series of the Monday Evening Concerts, PianoSpheres, Jacaranda, Southwest Chamber, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.  Contemporary music is clearly alive and growing in Los Angeles.

Last week I went to Corey Dargel’s new postmodern cabaret show “Removable Parts,” and it was excellent.  I call it “postmodern cabaret” because I’m not sure what else to call it—it was a series of songs on the theme of voluntary amputation, and they were performed by Corey and Kathleen Supové who performed in character as a sort of dysfunctional cabaret act.

The songs were delightful—intelligently composed and quirky, moving in fits and starts, building up grooves and then taking them apart, stealing from and recontextualizing various pop, rock, and classical idioms.  The lyrics and dialogue were witty, treading that fine line between sad and funny.  In the second song, “Hooked for Life,” Corey sings about wishing that he could have his arms amputated and replaced with metal hooks, in part because then you would have to hug him because you’d feel sorry for him, and in the middle of this somewhat sad and grotesque imagery he observes that “you’d be hooked for life” and promptly apologizes for the pun.  And somehow it’s these witticisms, the melancholy self-mockery and the harsh words between “Corey” and “Kathy,” (“You may be the kindest pianist, but you’re definitely not the smartest”) that end up humanizing the very real condition with which they are dealing.

For indeed, the desire for amputation is a symptom of a genuine condition called Body Integrity Identity Disorder, or BIID.  The condition results in a belief that one’s body configuration is incorrect—that, for instance, my correct configuration is with no left arm.  BIID is as difficult to grapple with philosophically as it is to comprehend psychologically, and the show makes no attempt to answer the questions.  Rather, we are taken on a journey from the apparently absurd—“apparently” because this is, after all, a real condition—to a sense of recognition, empathy, and a measure of understanding.  How different, after all, is it to want to remove a “superfluous” leg than to want to remove, as “Kathy” does, “excess” bodyfat?

In the end, though, a show like this lives and dies on the quality of the music, and the music did not disappoint.  Corey’s great talent is the integration of fragmented and disjointed ideas into a cohesive whole.  He writes beautiful, leaping melody lines.  His lyrics often seem more like prose than like poetry, and yet in the grand tradition of songwriters like Morrisey he makes them flow as naturally as any good lyrics do, except that in the absence of forced rhymes and rhythms their confessional nature often comes through more strongly.  The music is generally groove based, in a consistent time signature, but the rhythms push and pull against that background with disjointed piano figures clashing with disjointed kick and snare action and processed samples.  My favorite song of the evening, “Fingers,” is in a quick 7/8, and the melody integrates smoothly and cleanly with the meter, but when I try to count it out and figure out how to sing it I quickly lose track due to the subtlety of the syncopation.  These disparate elements are always tightly controlled, and while they push at the edges of the structure they never break it.

If you missed seeing the show in person, I understand that excerpts will also be featured  on WNYC’s “Spinning On Air” program at some point in the near future.  After that, you’ll just have to hope for a CD or a DVD release.