Mysteries Abysmal

Facebach

Craig's Liszt Time Out Chicago, May 8-14. Several months ago I was kicking around on MySpace when I came across this guy's page. Intrigued by the flute writing in his composition Enwrapt, I shot this Evan Kuchar fellow a message and asked him if he was playing anywhere. He and his ensemble, Anomie, are slowly getting off the ground by playing Friday nights at Danny's Tavern, a suprisingly classical friendly space Marc Geelhoed wrote about back in 2005. I met him for coffee one morning, learned his story and then took him upstairs to the Time Out offices to get his photo taken. Looking back, I think the piece is less about Kuchar and more about the possibilities that come to you by turning on the computer.

(photo of Anomie, taken from their MySpace page.)

Cinco de Muti

(Today's Sun-Times (5/6/08), and that ain't page 6, baby)

Riccardo Muti has accepted the CSO post and his much anticipated tenure will begin in 2010. Andrew Patner has all the goods on his blog and here's the New York Times' story from Daniel Wakin. The CSO's just added a page (or a shrine) to their site including a letter from president Deborah Card. Here's a snippet from Patner's article in the Sun-Times:

"At 69 in the fall of 2010, the vibrant Muti, known for his youthful appearance, will be the oldest incoming music director in the orchestra’s history. The legendary Fritz Reiner was 64 when he came to Chicago in 1953."

Although it's difficult to ignore, I'm not too concerned about Muti's age: he'll live 'til he's 100. Last September's performance of Prokofiev's 3rd at Orchestra Hall proved that. This is an amazing get and the CSO continues to outdo itself. update: I wrote a few cursory thoughts on the hire earlier this morning, which have now been loaded to TOC's blog. Mutimania is officially swingin'. update 2: Thank god for Andrew, as he's added more greatly great material on his blog.

Dolly sweet

Senior editor Novid Parsi of Time Out Chicago has had some real interview gems in the "Over & Out" section of the magazine, which is also called "the last word of the week." John Mahoney (Barton Fink, Frasier) and Tracy Morgan immediately come to mind, and this week it was Dolly Parton. I found her response to the following question both saddeningly honest and brilliant.

On your new album you sing, "I've always been misunderstood because of how I look." How much has that misunderstanding been of your own making?

It’s all been of my own making. I’m not a natural beauty, and as a poor country girl, you long to be beautiful. You don’t know style, you don’t have taste, so you tend to go on the more gaudy side. But that’s how I still feel most comfortable. And I know a lot of people look at me and think, Well, you just look like a whore. I know that I’m not, but it’s how I look. But it’s the way I choose to look.

Intended ambiguity

MG of DS* has called on me to serve Blogistan. The rules of the meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I keep a few books in one of the "decorative" shelfs on my junky Value City desk, and the closest to me was William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity. I fear this passage will set most of you to snoozing:

This, though historically important, seems poetically rather trivial, but the book which may be said to have been the origin of Elizabethan literature has a more complex and more certainly intended ambiguity. In the Shepheardes Calendar the same shepherds appear in precisely the three capacities that are treated of in Herbert's poem, as lovers, as courtiers, and as divines. And in the Faerie Queene, by the process I have just considered, this variety of meaning has been blurred into generalisation, and you can read all kinds of political and religious interpretations, indeed and interpretations that come naturally to you, into a story offered as interesting in itself, and as giving an abstracted vision of all the conflicts of humanity.

Speaking of ambiguity, rule #3 should be omitted and instead, #4 should say "post sentences 6-8."

I call on Remember the Midwest, Avant/Chicago, Gerry Fisher, Stephen Marc Beaudoin, and NPR's Margaret Kelley.

*my mind played a trick on me and wrongfully initialed Deceptively Simple as DC.  Shoot, no OC reference this time.

   

See Obama run

Here's a short video of the senator playing a pickup game of hoops with the '08 Final Four squad the UNC 'Heels. Poor fellow looked as lost out there as Scott Hastings or a Dwayne Schintzius, but boy does the man play with heart. Give him the ball!--Bryant

Strokin'

by Ab Manning

A musician I know recently cracked that the phenomenon of not liking a pop song after one listen, but loving it after ten, is really just a trick the mind plays to adapt to its environment (like if you can't escape it on the radio), and does not necessarily indicate real quality in the song. I'm hoping that's not true, since my revelation of the past year is that repeated, obsessive listening to music has helped me discover many things I shrugged off in years past. Like Brahms 1, whose name I like to drop. And how about loving a song after one shot and hating it after ten?

As for current music, my hat's off to all the people who keep it going, and I'm always surprised to find out how much is out there. The Breeders are back with a new record - that's Kim and Kelley Deal and whoever they're playing with now. I'll recommend that without hearing it yet because I like everything they do.

Also got an email from my alma mater, the University of Iowa, with all the "who's been published where" and for what stuff. I followed the piece about David Lang winning the Pulitzer for 'The Little Match Girl Passion'. Googling on I found that he's involved with 'Bang on a Can' which I gather is a group or festival promoting new music in NYC. From there one can find Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) on You Tube playing with the 'Bang on a Can' all-stars in 'Stroking Piece #1', composed by Moore I think. It's a 13 minute piece with guitars, drums, cello, keyboard, stand-up bass and about a 4-foot long clarinet. I enjoyed 'Stroking' well enough - very Velvety Underground.

I declare today DedalusDay

27 April: Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

--Bryant

The dabbler

by Ab Manning

I listened to classical music for a few years as a teenager and got to know the Greatest Hits. I've returned after a 30-year hiatus and discovered Brahms' 1st symphony (which I will talk about eventually), but am still a dilettante, or dabbler. Here are the periods of classical music according to Dabbler scholars.

The Cavern (before 1700): All music before 1700 was choral music, and sung in the bellies of cavernous cathedrals. While every piece is initially haunting, that wears off quickly because the music is pretty stiff. But this is where Classical music got its chops together. (Note that in Dabbler culture the Beatles have replaced the Bible as the source of references that everyone is assumed to know - hear John saying 'told you so?').

The Math (1700 - 1755): Music that's got lots of patterns, but the emotional effects run mostly from pleasant to tedious. And although the Toccata and Fugue in D minor was clearly written by some crazy mutha', the period attempted a union of music and math that should not appropriately occur until the end of history.

The Hummer (1755-1827 or whenever Beethoven died): The great period in Classical music history. You can hum most of the music (remember: 'music' refers to what the Dabbler knows)

The Roanoke (1828 - 1855?) Another great period, with hummable classics like Mendelsohn's 4th symphony, his violin concerto, and a few piano pieces you can actually play, like Traumerei and the Prelude in B minor. But, like the ill-fated Virginia settlement, this period, and hummable music, vanished without a trace (mostly).

The Windbag (1855 - 1900): Long works that feel twice as long. And except for Tchaikovsky, the New World Symphony, and something by Wagner that got into 'Apocalypse Now', no hummable music. Oh yeah, the 2001 Space Odyssey theme.

The Aurtistic (1900 - present): You've heard that it's art, but you suspect all the composers were autistic, (Copland recovered). Or that they returned to math because they couldn't think of anything else to do. You do know Paul listened to Stockhausen, but you worry that if you spend $ 17 on a CD of string quarterts played in helicopters you'll feel like a sap when you find out you can't actually hear the quartets. Your impression is not so much that popular music's David knocked down the Classical Goliath, as that Goliath retreated from the field with a terrifying case of self-doubt or some disease of excessive self-analysis (how'd the Bible get in here?). You're also anxious and therefore ripe for discovering that something in this music will eventually appeal to you. Then you have another 100 years to catch up on.

Blow wind, blow

I thought I'd let daddio take up residency on this blog for a few days. He requires no introduction, except for the fact he forced Bergman's Persona on us as kids (Though not the naughty parts). Pretentious ass. ;)

It was beautiful in Lansing today, and I found myself daydreaming at work of the place I long to be when the weather is nice - Detroit. Bryant and his sister Lindsay grew up in something like the Addam's family, and while most Lansing-ites can't wait to hit the road for the beaches on Lake Michigan or the northern lakes, our family was more likely to spread a picnic blanket in the park in front of the grand train station in Detroit. The one that's been empty for 20 years and whose windows are smashed out. The park in front is a small diamond and there's one bench in each of the 4 corners, but Detroiters are fond of parks and every afternoon the benches are occupied by citizens enjoying unidentified refreshments in miniature picnic baskets that look like brown paper bags.

Despite the snotty comments above, fact is we do like Detroit, and wish it didn't suffer so much. It's not like Chicago in which you can walk for miles around downtown and Lincoln Park without seeing blight. If you find yourself in a nice part of Detroit, it's probably an isolated "green zone" of a few square blocks, and you want to have safe transportation to get to the next "zone". But if you like American music of the last 50 years, how can you not root for Detroit? There's a working class sort I always liked that Michigan's cities seemed to have quite a few of. I recall one in the movie 'Roger and Me' by Michael Moore, which of course takes place in Flint, or Detroit, Jr. The guy being interviewed had just been laid off at GM and talked about driving home after the fact. "Wouldn't it Be Nice" by the Beach Boys was on the radio and he notes that ordinarily he would have been so happy to hear that song, but he was crying too hard this time to enjoy it. And what struck me is that he liked the Beach Boys, and I like a guy that the blue collar stereotype won't stick to. Like you wouldn't expect a guy who finished college to end so many sentences with prepositions.

So I will finish with a plug for blightbusters.org so you can see that Detroiters care and have pride. If I'm allowed back I will tell you all I know about Brahms' 1st symphony. --Ab Manning

Shoulda bought a Huffy

Murder by death

"Art is not about giving people what they want. It's about giving them something they don't know they want." - Joshua Fineberg

Maybe these words will help explain this upcoming art exhibit in London's East End.

Schadenfreude, maybe

I see it all the time: people will turn to classical music if they're bored with the current pop/rock scene. Even if this means that the music functions as Plan B or Plan x for most, it's still a heartening trend. I lurk on a few sports message boards that often provide spirited off-topic banter usually tilted towards the political, but here's a recent thread from a fellow seeking "classical music" recommendations. One guy named "Big Bank Hank" writes in with zeal: "Not exactly what you're looking for, but the interludes between, before and after opera "movements" generally give me a music boner." There were a few mildly surprising contributions, like a Gorecki 3rd plug, some Stravinsky and a Howard Hanson shout-out (probably from an Interlochen grad?). The thread's worth a skim if you don't mind wading through a few obligatory "skinflute" and "bowel movement" jokes.

Farrakhan got game?

This might be common knowledge, but I hadn't a clue that Farrakhan was an amateur concert violinist. Here's a brief video of him playing the Beethoven concerto a few years back, and Bernard Holland was on the scene when he played the Mendelssohn concerto in '93. Hannity never told me about that. Rumor has it that Louis and Condi are releasing a mystery sonata cycle this fall on Telarc.

Ripe peach

Googling "Maxon Crumb" the other day turned up a few pleasant surprises. The ascetic, deeply troubled brother of Robert still lives in the same SF dump as he did in the 1994 film; and as of 2006, he's even mingling with a lady friend. (Although sexual contact still sends him into seizures.) You should listen to this interview with him by SF Chronicle reporter Edward Guthmann. So much intelligence and talent like the rest of his brothers, but you can tell he just wasn't wired for this world. I like those kinds of people. (photo credit: Michael Macor)

Sorta into the wild

Movie review of Blindsight, Chicago Sun-Times, April 11