Roger Bourland
writes about music and life

Yesterday Daniel and I got to see the first complete run-through of HOMER IN CYBERSPACE. I think we may have a hit on our hands. The pacing is excellent, the story is sexy, compelling and entertaining, everyone will like the music, the actors are terrific and everything will only get better as we still have 3 weeks to go.

You WILL cry at the end, so just be ready. Tickets WILL sell out.

UCLA’s Little Theater, Macgowan Hall
May 29th, 30th, 31st, June 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th @ 8:00 pm May 31st, June 7th @ 2:00 pm

$17 general admission, $15 seniors/faculty/staff/alumni
$7 students, group rates available
For tickets: 310.825.2101
or www.tickets.ucla.edu
Parking available at Structure 3 ($8)

Portable Concerto for viola and electronics was written through and NEA commission. Three composers (me, Gary Philo, and Wm Thomas McKinley) wrote pieces for three violists (Walter Trampler, Marcus Thompson, and James Dunham) who each were to play the all the pieces in different cities. It was Paul Reale who convinced me to not “write another piece for the viola graveyard” and to use synthesizers to back up the violist. Here I tap into my rock influences, and at this time I especially loved Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays music.. Here, Marcus Thompson plays on a Composers in Red Sneakers concert.

PORTABLE CONCERTO FOR VIOLA AND ELECTRONICS (1989)
by Roger Bourland
1. Desert Driving
2. Recent Dream and aria
3. Ride my car
Marcus Thompson, viola
Recorded by Christopher Stowens

[Violin shadow, photo © Roger Bourland]

I lived with my family in Albuquerque, New Mexico from 1960 to 1963. One of the memories I have of that time is the SMELL of spring. Spring in the desert. And later, when I lived in Wisconsin or Boston, every spring I would smell the western desert calling me back.

[I take the bus these days. Sick of paying so much at the tank, and you see a lot of stuff you don’t otherwise see. It seems a good source of blog stories, so here.]

On the way home today, the back of the bus was dominated by 5 boys, probably 14 to 15 years old. I didn’t ask for this, I had had a tough day and wanted to just nod off. But NOOOO. They dudes have to be loud and obnoxious. There was a girl with them — a strong girl — good thing, and the boys were shouting about her vagina to the whole bus. She played along and it bounced right off her. These all looked like kids of wealthy parents. They were very loud and bellicose most of the people didn’t want to sit next to them. I did.

The first dude that got out in Beverly Hills had to prove he was cool — his parents being the richest, so he pulled the window open from outside in cooperation with the long haired blonde boy inside. The bus driver was pissed and came back and cussed out the blonde boy. After the bus started going again, they had to prove they were still cool. The big latino boy encouraged blonde boy to listen to some music on his iPod,. He did. As he listened, the latino boy said “You’re gay!” to which the blonde boy bounced up and down in time to the music, but interpreted by his friends as “Yes I am.” They kept calling him gay, and he kept bouncing up and down to the music. They made him take his ear plugs out and explained what they were saying. He laughed, thought it was funny but was not upset. The taunters, the greco boy and the latino boy looked like FFA to me, er, future fags of America. One by one the boys got off at their separate stop and they became less and less powerful. The blonde boy got off at my stop and went south. His parents were probably lived in West Hollywood. Hmm.. Maybe they are lesbians, or gays?

I remember sitting at the lunch table as a senior in high school and a friend said to me, in front of everyone “You’re gay.” It was so shocking, I of course denied it, barely knowing what it was myself. They were right, and I was the last to know. The little scene on the bus brought all that up again. Teens can be so cruel to each other, but they are also so fragile.

I kept thinking during the ride, ‘I should tell those boys there is nothing wrong with being gay, and who the hell are you to be so crude to this girl in public.’ But no, I was the unwise observer of mankind, no energy to try to change these fragile youths.

Kids these days!

The doorbell rang this morning. I wasn’t expecting anyone so I peaked through the side window and saw a creature that resembled Cousin It in the Addams Family. My heart thumped not being sure what it was. I went to the door, opened it and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — you know, the guru that the Beatles, and Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys, and Mia Farrow and all those people went to in 1968 (7?).

-
Roger: Dude, I thought you died not too long ago.
Maharishi: (Smiling with a white flower in his hand.) I am standing in front of you am I not?
R: Uh, kinda. Please, come in.

(MMY floats across the doorstep, the way the South Park characters ambulate.)

M: A very beautiful home you have here.
R: Why, thank you Maharishi
M: Call me Maha
R: Got it, call me Roho
M You are trapped in the physical world and you are NOT a wise man.
R: (Taken aback) I don’t know what you mean.
M: You went out of town recently. You got out of your element, your community and your way of life, and you became intolerant.
R: I beg your pardon Maha?
M: I scanned your brain the entire time. Here are some exact quotes:

Ugh, I can’t believe how much cologne that man has on.
Look at those beautiful teenagers smoking, what idiots.
Can you believe he ate that entire plate of food?
This person is trapped in 1972.
Your view of the world is so myopic.
Your taste in clothes seems to have stopped in 1973.
It is so beautiful here!

M: So, with the exception of that last line, you are an intolerant, un-evolved dolt in addition to not being a wise man.

I stood up, and he disappeared And where he was standing, George Harrison appeared, playing a sitar, the gourd cradled in the hollow of his bare foot. His eyes looked really dilated, which made him look really cute. He didn’t say anything, just looked up at me for a few seconds, bobbed his head a few times with the music, and then went back into his inner world. I closed my eyes and nodded forward.

The door opened and my assistant walked in:

“Your 11 o’clock appointment is here.”

“Send him in Moneypenny” I thought to myself. “Someday I will learn to tolerate all the shortcomings of my earth co-habitants.”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Send him in Moneypenny.” Her eyes glanced to to the ceiling.

The Beatles (George Harrison) - Blue Jay Way from the Magical Mystery Tour movie

Rufus wants us all to participate in a “turn your electricity off” on June 21. He has a webpage describing what is behind this effort, and it is laudable.

And while you’re at it, you can purchase a bust of Rufus for your piano, or your famous composer bust collection.

Tonight I went to a concert, and after the second piece on the 2nd half, I was FULL. I had a hard time listening to more. The music went in my brain, but I didn’t aggressively take it in as I did when I was fresh. It wasn’t that the music was bad, it was just that I couldn’t take any more.

As I said a while back, short concerts are effective in many ways. In a way, every piece is like a drug, ok, call it a unique biochemical experience, or set of experiences that vary, depending on your “mood,” the time of day, how busy you are, how sad you are, how happy you are, how anxious you are, how sleepy you are. Presenting too much music, at least for me, is like mixing alcohol. Bad programming is like milk and grapefruit, olives and ice cream — yes, they are both foods, but they don’t really belong together, or even next to each other in meal. I cherish the rasa (aesthetic flavor) of hearing a single piece. And if there are multiple pieces, I appreciate thoughtful, effective, and complementary programming. I dare add another component — appreciation capacity — how much can an audience really take in until it is “full?”

If concerts would be one hour and 15 minutes max, our social life could be more active. Meaning, we could go out for drinks after the concert, or eat dinner, see a movie, or go somewhere because the night is still young. AND you are high on the music you’ve just heard.

Three cheers for short concerts!

I first heard Ketjak in Fellini’s SATYRICON and then later when I studied Indonesian music as an undergraduate. Last year I heard a riveting realization of Ketjak in the film BARAKA. (see below) I love the first performance (above) for its raw power. I was taught that this was an example of hocketing, or rhythmically making sure that notes fill up all the cracks when performed by a lot of people. A lot of the guys bouncing along in this performance are playing microsyncopations and have to stay TOTALLY focused to keep with it. The composer (?) gives them periodic breaks. In the BARAKA performance, the leader has such remarkable facial expressions.

Here are the program notes provided for the YouTube post.

A thin slice of the larger ouvre of Balinese music, the Ketjak, or Kecak, was developed in the 1930s using ancient dance and chant forms, and portions of the Vedic epic, the Ramayana. People starting hearing about this more recently because of the excellent film “Baraka,”and clips of that are posted around. This clip is old footage from the 70s, and has a great monkey. We used to listen to this stuff for hours back in the 60s, cranked up to top volume, while we watched the walls crawling with psychedelic hieroglyphics.

There is some dispute about the comments of the narrator at the beginning. Most of the “corrections” that people have posted are so riddled with profanity I’ve had to remove them - apparently it’s a touchy subject..

I guess we should take the narration with a grain of salt, however…

What started out as a little AIDS research fund-raiser for Michael Dean’s bike ride from LA to SF, turned into a concert of little Bourland pieces, at our home last night, a “Bourlandaise” as someone put it. In a moment of clarity, after nearly being blown off the road by an 18-wheeler, Michael, 40 year old husband and father of two realized that he could have someone younger do the ride, and Ricky Hoyt stepped in. (Ricky was in the LoCal Composers Ensemble, a composers collective at UCLA for a few year that included Lucas Richman, Carl Pritzkat, Jake Heggie, Richard Raphael, and Charles Benesh. He is now Unitarian minister.)

Susan McClary played “Whyte Minuet” from my Preludes (1974), a piece that I wrote for a music history class in lieu of a paper. She said it sounded French. After all: it Is Bourland, not Borland.

Michael and Maria sang 5 songs together. Michael previewed 3 of the “Four Gay Songs” for bass and piano, and Maria sang 2 of “Four Apartsongs.” John Hall’s “Dinosaur” from HIDDEN LEGACIES is still as poignant and witty as it was in 1992. My love song for Daniel, “My Mind Eye Sighs” put a lump in many lovers’ throat, but it was Jim Kelly’s devastating “Farewell” to his life partner, Jim Layne, that brought everyone to tears.

Walter Ponce played a piano piece that was fashioned from a short film I scored (APOLOGIA) called “Moderato for Walter.” Dog barks from a late arrival popped his otherwise magical spell.

Mark Carlson played “Shasta” I piece I dedicated to Mark and his late partner Charlie from 1991 for flute and electronics bringing back memories of visiting Mount Shasta and camping in northern California.

Jennifer Snow, who also faithfully accompanied the Deans, accompanied her husband Jens Lindemann in a premier of two pieces for trumpet and piano drawn from HOMER IN CYBERSPACE. Mel and Jean Shapiro were there, and Mel’s eyes popped out of his head when he heard Jens’s fabulous tone in “Nina” and “I used to be beautiful.” Jennifer asked what the text for “I used to be beautiful” was, and I decided that I would just sing the song for her, which I did, and then they turned around and did the instrumental version of it.

All agreed that, in this generation of iPod delivered music, this in-your-face chamber music felt good.

When a plant dies does it think, “Ok I’m going to die now, or I am dying, or I’m about to be killed”? Or is there any “I”. Has anyone updated that fun book “The Secret Life of Plants” where the author attached various plants to EEG and/or EKG and did various things to it or in front of it and allegedly got responses from the plant?

I don’t ask this because I need something else to feel guilty about, but it makes me think about different kinds of life forms, one that spreads itself around, but there is no “I” and the other where there is an “I” like a fish, or a dog, or me.

Old memories.

I’ll never forget when Henry Mancini told us that composing is very much like being a plumber. “It’s a job, I get hired to write music for a film and I do my job.” The vision of the composer on a mountain top conversing with the gods is a cool one, but not at all what happens.

Ideas come to us in a variety of different ways. It can be that the text evokes and demands that a melody be written in such a way. Or a melodic idea may come first. Who plays that melody can come with the idea or be a separate one. Sometimes a rhythmic idea pops into our head and drives us into action. Sometimes a series of chords inspires us. There may be a melody on top of those chords, and maybe not.

There are things like variations, inventions, falling bass lines, rondos, sonatas, song forms, and such where pre-fab composition can take place and we flex our technique and developmental muscles. For me, at least in vocal music, the text ALWAYS comes first. My job is to make sure that the people in the back can hear the text. I don’t repeat texts over and over as Handel would, I use it conversationally and in a declamatory fashion, meaning I want the words heard and respected. The rhythm of the sentences should be believable, and if not, eccentric for a reason.

So the text causes the rhythm and the melody to come into existence. Once I have my melody, I create a scaffolding throughout the song. Along the way I may write in bass notes, or accompanimental ideas, complete or partial. I also usually write out that main line in pencil, unless I’m in a rush, as I have for the past 10 months. Most of the melodies of the songs in Act 1 of HOMER IN CYBERSPACE were written in pencil and then transferred to the computer (I use Sibelius for notating my music).

Yesterday I had to get a lot of music written. Luck was on my side as I got a huge amount done. I had three scenes where music is sounding in the background (underscore) very much like film music, and four numbers where there was some kind of dancing going on. None of the music involved singing. The work rhythm that I used was as follows:

Read, savor, and imagine the scene.
Compose until you get the number done.
Lie down and read the next scene, fall asleep for 10 to 15 minutes.
Get up, have a snack, throw the ball for the dogs.
Repeat until you decide to stop.

Today is a school day, so I may have an hour this afternoon, and a few hours on Saturday and Sunday morning. The end of music for HOMER is near, after this weekend it should just be a little “snip, snip here, snip, snip there and a couple of tra la las.”

But as Mike always says: anything following the word “should” is usually BS.

I have the day to try and catch up as I still have seven numbers to finish: 4 dance numbers, and 3 underscore cues.

There will be more edits and tweaks over the next few weeks.
If you are planning on attending one of the eight performances, get your tickets now as it will sell out.

The UCLA Department of Theater Presents

Homer in Cyberspace
The Ray Bolger Musical Theater Production

Book by
Mel Shapiro and Daniel Keleher

Music by Roger Bourland

Lyrics by Mel Shapiro
Additional lyrics by Daniel Keleher

Direction by Mel Shapiro

UCLA’s Little Theater, Macgowan Hall
May 29th, 30th, 31st, June 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th @ 8:00 pm May 31st, June 7th @ 2:00 pm

$17 general admission, $15 seniors/faculty/staff/alumni
$7 students, group rates available
For tickets: 310.825.2101
or www.tickets.ucla.edu
Parking available at Structure 3 ($8)