Music vs. Theater

The last bit of video from the concert has been posted. Liana, Stephanie, Evan, and Lucas did a great job with the quartet and I’ll be forever grateful to Mark Casey for finding them last year.

The quartet got a great response at the concert and is consistently the piece that people have singled out in subsequent conversations. I’m quite happy with the way it’s turned out and I’m still hoping that it will have a life of its own. So far, though, contemporary chamber music doesn’t seem to be a “If you write it, they will come” sort of endeavor. Still, I’m more confident than ever that this piece does not suck.

Here are the links to the videos (and program notes) for each individual movement.

Movement 1 – On the Rails

Movement 2 – Tango a la Peachy

Movement 3 – Off the Rails

The video excerpts from Alice are finally up. We’ve got the Chamber of Doors, Lullaby, and The Mad Tea Party (complete with me in mouse ears and whiskers.) This is more showtune-y than more recent stuff, but sometimes that’s just how I roll.

After more wrestling with iMovie than I expected (why are video codecs so ridiculously convoluted. What year is this?) I’m starting to post video from last month’s concert on the webs. I’m starting out with the big premiere of poems set to music, or at least the poems that are in the public domain, since the synchronization rights for the others were, shall we say, way out of my price range.

So if you visit the “Listen” page for A Brief History of Love and Poetry you’ll see the videos embedded in there.

In the days to come I’ll be posting the bits from Alice as well as the string quartet.

Cecily BETTER wear those boots tonight.

Those of you who went to my recital last month (and also read the program notes) know that one of the primary inspirations for composing my string quartet came from my friendship with Cecily Ward from the Cypress String Quartet. The Cypress is unique in their commitment to the existing repertoire while providing a steady stream of new commissions for the genre. Their Call and Response program is a perfect embodiment of that ethos. They commission a composer to ‘respond’ to a piece (or pieces) already in the canon, thus creating a new work which has an explicit connection to a tradition. (The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is doing something similar with their “New Brandenburg” project.)

This year’s composer is Jeffery Cotton and the premiere is tonight. I desperately want to go, but my a cappella group is having call backs at my house, so it’s kinda urgent that I’m there. Sigh.

Tonight: 5/5/2011
Cypress String Quartet
Herbst Theater (SF)
8pm (pre concert talk 7:15)

Last month, inspired by a post on Chloe Veltman’s blog Lies Like Truth, I wrote a response addressing the melismatic, overwrought style of singing that seems to have been in vogue since the 1990s. Chloe read my piece and invited me to collaborate on an episode of her radio show VoiceBox dedicated to this subject that will air tonight on KALW. (And available streaming from KALW’s website for the next seven days.)

Preparing for this show forced me to clarify my thinking about the technique. For one thing, I’ve decided that we don’t really have a good label for it. Read the rest of this entry →

I think it started with Whitney Houston. Then Mariah Carey. And then it spread to any R&B singer with a record deal. And then American Idol. And now, just about every YouTube video you see.

It’s melisma. In singing, it’s any discrete changing of pitch while sustaining a single syllable. A common technique in baroque vocal music as well as ancient church practices of all western religions, it has become the hallmark of virtuosity. “Good” singing has become measured in extraneous flourishes, grace notes, and the extending of a phrase well past any reasonable proportion.

So what is there to do? Read the rest of this entry →

It’s a new song from the Richter Scales!

Followers of my blog are familiar with how my good friend Mark Casey surprised me on my last birthday with a premiere performance of my string quartet.  This year I managed to surprise him with an original song based on his life as the only person in his zip code who would dare make a case for Sarah Palin occupying a national office (and have enough command of the facts to make you buy it.  For a few minutes at least.)

Although the topic of the song was set from the beginning, the structure was much less clear.  The original title was “The Nicest Republican You’ll Ever Know” with the vague concept of a Republican having a hard time getting a date in San Francisco, but I couldn’t quite get a full song out of it. I had a lot of gags, but no arc, no strong chorus, no song. Then, while driving back from LA (where our previous video, I Got Mail, was playing at the Feel Good Film Festival) I had the idea that this would work well as an barbershop quartet. Read the rest of this entry →

If Garrison Keillor went to Burning Man, what would it sound like?

That question popped into my head last Sunday as I was driving to get brunch with some fellow Black Rock Rangers in preparation for this year’s burn. The radio was tuned to A Prairie Home Companion and I found myself thinking… why hasn’t anyone done A Playa Home Companion? That would be a perfect thing for BMIR to play on a quiet midmorning as people are nursing their wounds from the night before.

So… I did it. I dashed out a quick prototype to see what it would sound like. I was aiming for wistfully amusing and not laugh out loud funny. It starts out a little slow, but picks up towards the middle. And I’m quite happy with the ending.

If you’re not familiar with Burning Man, it might not make much sense. And if you’re not familiar with A Prairie Home Companion, it also might not make much sense.

Or maybe it just doesn’t make much sense.

Regardless, here’s the News From Black Rock City, where the town is round, the earth is flat, and the burn was better last year.

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Or right click to save it to your computer for future listening: Playa Home Companion

Owen Pallett‘s new album Heartland is just fantastic. I was introduced to his work by Sequenza21 and after listening to a couple of tracks I made a special trip to Aquarius Records to pay full price for the CD (hooray for supporting artists and local record stores). It was that compelling.

A month later, the album is still gorgeous. Rhythmically complex, richly textured, an intriguing mix of electronica and acoustic instruments, affecting modal melodies. I’m so happy that this music is being made. Just listen to the opening track “Midnight Directives”

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The snare drum rhythm that kicks in around 0:53 bears more than a passing resemblance to Bjork’s Hunter. After a few listens I became very enamored of the complex pizzicato line at 1:15. Eventually I started searching YouTube to see if there was a video to go along with it. Here’s what I found.

OMG.  Ya see.  I hadn’t realized he was a loop artist. I mean, I remember seeing it mentioned, but hearing the album, the looping aspect of things just didn’t register. The material was too rich, too interesting to just be another looper. Sure, when he’s doing the solo performance bit, the textures aren’t as varied as the fully orchestrated album cuts, but still. He’s completely shattered my previous beliefs about what loop musicians can and can’t do.

I wonder how this piece was conceived. Was it a solo piece first? If that’s the case, than the tape delayed pizzicato line must have been one of the original elements, as opposed to the pretty textural addition that I believed it was after hearing the album track.

If you’re in San Francisco, Owen Pallett is playing at the Independent tomorrow, May 5. Tickets are only $16.  I’m going to try to make it, but I’ve got a rehearsal up in Petaluma that evening. Hopefully I’ll get out in time.

Here’s one more video from Owen Pallett. It feels a wee bit like an underbaked casserole of images and ideas, but it’s still a fun watch. Especially when Alison Pill shows up. Oh my god is she adorable.

I wrote one more #operaplot tweet today. It’s for Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. But as a rap. I thought that would be particularly appropriate, since the whole show is about Oedipus’s hubris, which seems to fit right into the rap genre.  So this is what I came up with…

Oedipus Rex

See how I snuck the latin in there?

The problem is, it wouldn’t leave my head. I kept on singing the damn thing all day. So tonight, instead of promoting my string quartet, or working on my opera, (or packing for my trip to LA tomorrow), I spent my precious few free hours after rehearsal trying to produce a passable hip hop track.

So, with my sincere apologies, I will subject you to the results.

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ed: I think I mispronounced the “ego” at the very beginning.  (Should be aego, not eego).  My latin teacher would kill me.  If I had ever taken latin.

If you’d like to read my other #operaplots, you can find them here and here.  I also made a fairly ridiculous attempt to classify the many hundreds of #operaplots that others have written.