“A spotlight pushes like a wave across the room, lifting up glints of highball glasses, lacquered fingernails, and cuff links in its wake, along with bluish pinwheel galaxies of Old Gold and Chesterfield smoke. It washes onto the stage, where a gleaming woman stands at a microphone, waiting.”… [read more at the Broad Street Review]
The latest word is that Etta James is doing much better. Her “At Last” is an icon to me; I write about it in the Broad Street Review.
The website passed 50,000 hits a few weeks ago. Researching the significance of 50,000, I discover from Wikipedia that it is the number between 49,999 and 50,001. Deciding to end my fact-finding there, I’ll report, then, that it seems like a lot, all things considered. It very well may not be. I have little idea what things, in fact, ought to be considered, so I’ll leave it there.
Since I finished two big composing deadlines and am about to start on another, I thought it was time to brush up the site. I changed templates to a cleaner, simpler one. It’s so clean, in fact, that it eliminates the sidebar on all but the homepage, yikes. So I beefed up the every-page top menu, hoping to make it easier to find music, writings, other things.
Nellie and Martina wanted me to keep the picture of the guy carrying the log, so it’s still there in the header, in rotation with shots of me looking at you or not looking at you.
Now on to ASCAP reporting (months in abeyance) and database updating for Now is the Time.
Mélomanie rehearsed my new dance suite, The Nobility of Women, Monday night for the first time. More of a read-through, it gave us a chance to get to know the eight dances, lock some tempos in, and identify possible issues. The 20-minute work takes its name from the 1600 dance instruction manual Nobiltà di Dame by Fabritio Caroso.
The name of the book alone captivated me. Although there is no other significant connection between it and my music, I imagined a piece that would grow out of a work with that name. The players in Mélomanie are all skilled in Baroque and new music, and I’ve enjoyed writing for historical instruments in the past. The sound-world is entrancing, and I’ve tried to compose a work that would release the beauties of these fabulous instruments.
It was a lovely first hearing. I sat between Douglas, the cellist, and Tracy and Mark’s Christmas tree, a great way to listen to a rehearsal!
I’m delighted to have the opportunity to write for my daughter Priscilla again, this time on Baroque oboe, a first for me. Listening to her and all these wonderful players has been a joy and an enlightenment. Also a first: writing for Baroque flute, viola da gamba, and harpsichord. Baroque cello and violin I had a go at previously with The Waking Sun, the setting of Seneca which premiered this past summer with The Crossing and Tempesta di Mare.
Oh, the dances: Overture, Allemande, Branle, Musette, Canario, Sarabande, Branle Reprise, Ciaccona. Among the other music on the program is some Telemann Tafelmusik and a work by Mark Hagerty inspired by Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters” (Priscilla’s playing modern oboe on that).
I’m looking forward to the performances, which are on January 14th and 15th in Wilmington and Philadelphia. More later as we get deeper into it.
My impromptu interview with Yannick Nézet-Séguin from last month is available here on the WRTI site. And hey, here’s another photo, taken through the broadcast studio window (you can make out some reflection). To my left, Cecil B. Moore Avenue. Behind Yannick is the news broadcast booth, I remember Joe Irrizary being behind the glass, preparing for his 11:57:30 airtime. I’m checking, and… yes, the correct sliders on the broadcast console are up, whew. No, it’s not a board, it’s a console. There’s a very good reason for that. No, I don’t know the reason, and don’t tell the production manager, because he told me the reason once, and I’ve forgotten, okay? Okay. There’s also a very good reason they placed that huge window between the hallway and the broadcast studio. It’s to make brand-new on-air hosts as nervous as possible. And it works like a charm!
First published in the Broad Street Review, 14 August 2011, and slightly edited since.
“No tights,” I said. I would dress up as an Elizabethan king, but I was not going to wear tights at the re-opening of Shakespeare Park. It’s the bit of land across Vine Street from the Free Library of Philadelphia’s front door. I didn’t know until last year that it was called Shakespeare Park. I knew the sculpture there, devoted to The Bard; I often ate lunch at a bench facing it, with Bob Gallagher (the poet and actor who would’ve been perfect for this job), and later, Sid (whose love of literature has inspired me for years).
The Library is in the midst of major renovations at Central, on Vine between 19th and 20th, and included in the project was an overhaul of the Park, fallen on hard times. New landscaping, lighting, benches, plantings, and irrigation has transformed it into an archetype of an urban oasis. Today was the day the protective fences would come down, and the Library’s President and Director would mark the occasion with brief words. I was to introduce her.
“I’m sure you won’t have to wear tights,” an Administrator assured me. Then I was handed over to the Development people, whose agenda the Administrator was innocent of. They wanted me to be, you know, like a King Henry. “King James, surely?,” I said, “if you’re talking Shakespeare,” but privately I was glad they didn’t insist on Elizabeth herself. Game, I am, but no dress.
Well, the costume came in, tunic, belt, chain, bloomers, and… tights. But at this point, in for a dime, in for a dollar, and besides, the bloomers are downright modest. Shoes? “I have brown loafers and black dress shoes, you know, like wingtips.” “Oh, they’ll be perfect.” Oh. Kay. Then there was this crown. Wow, they really did mean a king. At this, I decided to throw down the not-included gauntlet. “C’mon, let’s lose the crown. No crown.” “OK, fine,” they readily agreed. What did they care. They had a guy from staff willing to dress up in a Shakespeare costume.
Of course, at this, nobody—least of all, me—knew whom I was supposed to be. Stripped of a crown, I was not recognizably Henry or James or anyone else. I was not Shakespeare, as I would refer to him in my remarks. I was, simply, an Elizabethan male, or, as the tag attached to my tights stated, “Elizabethian.” (Privately I cast myself as a Friend of Shakespeare.)
What saved me from the slough of jaundice, however, was the real reason I took this on. My speech. Here it is, written by a very smart young staffer:
Hear ye, hear ye, and welcome to the Free Library’s re-opening of Shakespeare Park. The Bard himself knew of the importance and sanctity of finding nature in the midst of our busy existence. He wrote, “And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing.” Here to speak about this verdant space and its importance to the Free Library, is President and Director Siobhan A. Reardon. A hearty welcome to the good lady!”
That was it. That’s what sold me. Forty-five seconds, but good stuff. It is utterly remarkable that a city, that a functionary writing for a petty bureaucrat in a special collection in a department in a city, would present these words to the public. As if it were a normal and a good and an admirable thing that a city would do—in the course of its city-ness—that it would do for itself, for its citizens, for its visitors, for its indigent, and even for soi-disant poets and composers eating meatball sandwiches, looking up at a sculpture and not knowing that this place had a name.
I memorized it, parsed it, massaged and analyzed it, brooded, added breaks, lifts, laughs, moved and mixed them, practiced smiles, lifted eyebrows, waved hands, winked, gestured, barked, cooed, and tried to say Hear ye hear ye so it wouldn’t sound like Hear ye hear ye. And practiced it all again and again. How I ended up doing it at the time, I don’t know. But I felt those trees, I knew those brooks, and inside I pined and cried for public exemption. I didn’t care about tights or shoes, and even though I saw the looks of all the guys I work with who were thinking, “You’ve got. To. Be. Kidding,” I wasn’t embarrassed, not in the least.
When a reporter asked me afterward what I did, I said that I worked at the Fleisher Collection in the Library. “And you’re a Shakespearean actor, of course,” he replied.
I thought of Jacobi, and Branagh, and Olivier, and of my quasi-Irish-that-I-could-never-make-English accent, and of Robert Duvall asking Robert De Niro at the coffee counter in True Confessions if he wanted a piece of pie or something, and I thought of my Giant of Gath in Milton’s Samson Agonistes 35 years ago, the last time I did anything like this, and I almost fainted.
I did manage, “Well, today.” That was a lie—I’m no Shakespearean actor—but I’m telling you, it sure felt good to take the place of one, at least for 45 seconds.
A mother brought her little daughter up to me. The little girl wanted to meet Shakespeare.
Pictures at WHYY and the Free Library of Philadelphia.
My latest CD mini-review for WRTI, including podcast. You can read all my CD reviews here.
Musik Ekklesia: The Vanishing Nordic Chorale
It’s well past time to listen to historical instruments because they’re, well, historical. Or “informed,” or “accurate,” or whatever word we might use to feel scholastically correct. It’s time to listen because they sound beautiful.
Musik Ekklesia, “music for the church,” is an Indiana-based Baroque ensemble led by bassist and violonist Philip Spray. He’s rounded up some of the top period-instrument players—including Stanley Ritchie, violin, Wendy Gillespie, viol, and Kathryn Montoya, oboe—for this sparkling CD of surprising chorale arrangements.
It’s immediately surprising because in addition to the expected chorale setters Praetorius, Scheidt, Crüger, and the later J.S. Bach, who should show up but 20th-century Carl Nielsen? There’s also Grieg, and Mendelssohn’s deeply felt Verleih uns Frieden (Now grant us peace, Lord, in these troubled times), sung in Danish (Forlen os freden, Herre, nu). The light sweep and brilliance of the older instruments bring out new colors, which ought to make Mendelssohn, that lover of old music, smile.
The Lutheran chorale began in Germany but quickly spread to Scandinavian and other countries. They added their own tunes to the repertoire, and emigre enclaves in the U.S. continued those traditions. Musik Ekklesia brings the music all the way to today. There’s some Christmas music here, and even a brand-new work, an improvisation by the Budapest-born Bálint Karosi, Music Director of the First Lutheran Church of Boston, performing on its new 27-stop North German Baroque-style organ.
The times and instruments and composers spin, making any putative correctness happily unnecessary. It just sounds beautiful.
Most have now heard the tragic news of the passing of Samuel Hsu, our friend, colleague, and brother, on December 2nd. My… appreciation is such a weak word… some frail thoughts of mine on this truly great man are at the Broad Street Review.
The biggest problem in writing this was deleting things, keeping it under a thousand words. Collegium concerts, walks in Center City, pinball, encounters with street people, hearing him play, watching him play, sitting next to him as he played, and talking, talking, talking deep into the night, drinking tea, breathing and learning, always learning.
Rest in the Lord, Sam. See you before too long.
