Mark Carlson and I attended a concert given by the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA). My high school days are a very long time ago (1967-71), and I don’t spend any time around high schools these days, so I was prepared for a culture shock.
From a school of 579 students in music, art, and dance, we heard a GALA concert (read: everyone plays) with 203 high school musicians. WOW!
We heard a jazz band, a gospel choir, an opera excerpt, three piano soloists interspersed, the concert choir, a very large orchestra (!!!), and saw inspired and gifted teachers and leaders. The performances, yes they are young, were on a very high level. I am thrilled that LA can have such a terrific institution, and I encourage all donors to consider making a donation.
Mark and I sat through the 3 and a half hour concert without ever getting bored. It was so fascinating to watch and focus on individual young musicians, seeing their energy and musicality, seeing who are the young Elvises or Madonnas, the Chet Bakers (yes! there was one) and the cool jazzers, already thick with attitude.
I was impressed that the audience listened in rapt attention to the three piano solos, all brilliantly played. I would have imagined that the parents would lean towards jazz and yawn at the classical: but no, these are parents who paid to have their kids go to an arts school. They LOVE the arts. Silly me.
This is a high school where ALL the students are in the arts. There is no Marching Band or football team. Sounds like a dream to those of us who didn’t have that luxury. They are all shapes and sizes and ethnicities. One of the most remarkable observations I made last night was that the students seemed really happy. Most just beamed a kind of happiness. After the curtain went down after the grand finale, we heard a huge WHOOOOOOO from behind the curtain of 203 deliriously happy students who just put on a great concert.
There was another level for me. Dr Dan Castro is the musical and organizational force behind this program. I was Dan’s Chair for his Masters and Doctoral degrees at UCLA. In front of a near sold out Luckman Theater on the Cal State LA campus, Dr Castro publicly thanked me for being a mentor and teacher. He also acknowledged Mark Carlson for whom he was a TA, and Jackie DjeDje, Chair of Ethnomusicology. UCLA got a warm applause from the appreciative audience, many obviously proud parents.
So, in a sense, I felt like a grandfather of the event, or better, a godfather. And to be thanked is always a nice thing.
This is NOT indicative of what we heard last night, I found this reading of a student arrangement of “Turning Japanese” [do they KNOW what that means??] scored for full orchestra.
I finally gave in and joined Linked In yesterday. A screen came up asking me whether I wanted to “link” with all the friends in my address book who already have Linked In accounts. I said ’sure, what the hell’ and it told me exactly how many that would be — and it was a large number. “Sure what the hell” I confirmed again.
Over the past two days I have received scads of emails from old friends and acquaintances, many from whom I have not heard for many years.
This very cool technology has afforded me little “hellos” from all my friends who agreed to be “linked” to me. And they heard from ME for the first time in a long time.
I know: that’s a terrifying thought to some; but little hellos are really OK.
I’m sure many of you have heard this tune, not knowing what it was. I figured it out after watching THE THIRD MAN (1949) directed by Carol Reed, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.
What is amusing to me is how Reed chose to use Anton Karas, the Viennese zither player, to score the entire film. The program notes on YouTube say:
Release dates, September 2, 1949 UK 2 January 1950 USA
The distinctive musical score was composed and played on the zither by Anton Karas. A single, “The Third Man Theme”, released in 1950 (Decca in UK, London Records in USA) became a best-seller, and later an LP was released.
Before the production came to Vienna, Karas was an unknown wine bar performer. Reed and Howard fell in love with Karas’ zither after hearing him play inside a café. Karas agreed to record some of his own compositions on a reel-to-reel tape machine that Reed set up in the bedroom of his hotel; one of these was later to become the Harry Lime Theme and become a popular hit. The exposure made Karas an international star after the movie was released.
Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “Has there ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed’s ‘The Third Man’?”
And I would say that never an introduction to the sadness reality was presented so well.
While musics plays, various documentary-style shots of post-war, divided, fragmented and occupied Vienna (a ‘frontier’ city dividing East and West – and governed by four Allied forces) are surveyed, an anonymous voice-over delivers a first-person prologue. Director Carol Reed in the original UK version. Joseph Cotten delivers prologue in US version.
I have trouble sitting anywhere in the same place for a long time. That means long flights, plays, operas, movies, and concerts. It has something to do with my long torso.
For that reason, and a few others, I find myself preferring smaller portions of everything: food, material possessions, and music. Many times I find half a concert just perfect, especially when new music is involved. Sometimes you just don’t want the tasting menu; you just want to hear the new piece (or whatever you prefer). It’s like being a member of the clean plate club. Sorry, but I never have been. I eat until I’m full. And ditto with music.
It is common to have music on for parties and I find myself musically exhausted with all that music playing all the time. I guess I just haven’t figured out how to tune it out. Ditto with music and sex: I can’t do it.
POSTSCRIPT: The concert actually had another new piece by Globokar for male topless percussionist, Joseph Pereira, who played his body as a percussion instrument. We were all amazed and entertained, although I doubt anyone needs to ever hear the piece again. The performance of “Eight Songs” was astounding, and especially the baritone, Thomas Meglioranza. The audience gave him five standing ovations. I decided my plate was full and happily left at intermission. Funny thing though: as I was leaving, David Lefkowitz waived me over to introduce me to someone. It was one of Schoenberg’s sons (Ronald) and his wife. Oops.
It was the quarterly visit from Matias and Jenny, with baby Katie (18 months) this weekend. As I’ve said before, having visitors in your home makes it feel like a vacation. The energy was dominated by Katie, who is now running and learning words at an amazing rate. Daniel, her godfather, was called “Tito Dan” (Tagalog for Uncle Dan) and that seems to have given away to “Daniel” pronounced quite well. And my name is now Rajhzi, as RoJER seems too tricky to say now. She chases the dogs — they tolerate it and growl from time to time, but nothing more. The entire house becomes Katie’s playpen, which is fun, although the silence of this morning is deafening, now that they have returned to Sunnyvale.
Lynn Harrell, photo by Christian Steiner
You’ve already read about part of the weekend (see “The New Couch”) and the remainder was also entertaining. Daniel and I were invited to Dale and Don’s for lunch on Sunday. I got to meet Lynn Harrell for the first time and his wife, Helen. Lynn is a real sweetheart and a true gentleman. We chatted about where he had been teaching for the past 15 years and confessed to missing it. We also are both in intergenerational relationships, and we couldn’t help but share stories about that. Rachael Worby was there too and it was fun to catch up with her.
Although full from the lunch, we had an early reservation at Mozza with M&J. On the way in I nearly knocked over Elvis Costello. Sitting across from me there was Lisa Loeb. We were surrounded by all kinds of celebrities, most of whom I could not recognize, but then the Grammys had just gotten out, so such is LA life.
Today I go in and talk about 3rd species counterpoint, visit with some students, and tonight go to the Green Umbrella series to hear two old/new warhorses– “Eight Songs for Mad King” and “Pierrot Lunaire” with my concert pal, Ronnie Rubin.
More rain headed towards SoCal and that’s a good thing.
A new commission is in the works where I’ll be composing a new piece for Vladimir Chernov. What a joy!!
While I go feed my dogs and birds and brush my teeth, here is a gem from Lynn, the Faure Elegie, Op.24.
Over the past 10 years we inherited four couches–all off white. The oldest used to belong to Michael Crichton (he wrote The Andromeda Strain on it), who gave it to Martin Nathan, who then gave it to my former partner and me. Bruce bought a Lady Kenmore sewing machine and reupholstered it. 20 years later it is now filled with old cotton and dust mite carcasses and needs a major reupholstering. The 2nd white couch was sold to us by Royana and Hal who didn’t have room for it in their new apartment. Then Bridget moved to Maine and gave us HER old white couch that wasn’t really very comfortable, but useful. Finally Ronnie gave us her little couch with the weird stains on it and rotting plastic zippers.
We have never bought our own couch, so we decided last week it was time to do so. We bought a corner couch that is amazingly comfortable. We finally have a place where people can comfortably congregate: even invade each other’s personal space by sitting so closely. I like.
The couch passed several tests this weekend: red wine was spilled on it two nights in a row (the material is wine proof). Last night, several of our friends had been out Karaoke-ing until 3:30 in the morning and, rather than driving home drunk, they crashed at our house. I woke up at 6 am to find three people sound asleep on the couch. All praised it for its great comfort. It will be great for writing melodies in my sketchbook.
I stumbled across a video clip from Nov.13, 1993. It was from a West Hollywood City Council meeting where the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles was receiving a commendation from the city. I was there as I was the Chairman of the Board at the time. Jon Bailey, the music director, was eloquent in summing up the chorus’s mission.
This just in from Mark Carlson. A dynamite piece for harp and a dynamite performance by Mr Griffiths.
The talented young Benjamin Creighton Griffiths performs “Fire Dance” from Petite Suite by David Watkins in a concert at the World Harp Congress in Amsterdam, July 2008.
There is a melodic principle, or tendency in melodies from the Renaissance; we teach it in counterpoint exercises known as species counterpoint. The rule I’m thinking about right now is that of gravity. After the melody leaps up––say the interval of a fourth to an octave––the tones after said leap must recover in the opposite direction, usually a step, but occasionally a third. (Think the first three note of “Somewhere O-[ver the Rainbow] and you’ll hear the principle: leap up, and then recover. That’s the melodic principle of gravity.
I teach this principle by likening it to gravity. Think of a ball. Throw it as high as you can up into the air. Then it stops and falls back to the earth. The height from the ground to that turn-around point is like the range of an instrument. A ball can’t be thrown up and then hover. So melody defies this and CAN hover, but the voice must eventually come down, as the tones in our sentences fall down. The opposite would keep a high note for a climactic dramatic purpose.
Rarely do tunes just ramp up and down a scale. They sashay and tease, jump and recover, and hover for effect. We breathe in sympathy to that tune and breathe when it does. Stravinsky once complained about the organ: “The monster never breathes.”
P.S. Susan reminds me that good organist DO know how to breathe. Which reminds me of our mutual late teacher, Elliott Forbes who, at Harvard when he taught species counterpoint, referred to the whole leap-recover thing like this: “From time to time one takes a lusty jump into sin and leaps–never larger than an octave–and one atones for that sin by recovering by step in the opposite direction.” I never thought of him as a hard core Christian, but I love the notion of melodic leaping as a lusty leap–it makes composing that much more erotic.
Image: “Runner” by Roger Bourland. Ink and guauche on silk paper.
Over the past 10 years we inherited four couches–all off white. The oldest used to belong to Michael Crichton (he wrote The Andromeda Strain on it), who gave it to Martin Nathan, who then gave it to my former partner and me. Bruce bought a Lady Kenmore sewing machine and reupholstered it. 20 years later it is now filled with old cotton and dust mite carcasses and needs a major reupholstering. The 2nd white couch was sold to us by Royana and Hal who didn’t have room for it in their new apartment. Then Bridget moved to Maine and gave us HER old white couch that wasn’t really very comfortable, but useful. Finally Ronnie gave us her little couch with the weird stains on it and rotting plastic zippers.