Hats off to Clint Eastwood’s brave production, STRAIGHT NO CHASER(1988), about jazz musician Thelonius Monk. After watching this, I realize that Thelonius is as important as Schoenberg or Webern in terms of modernist composers.
It’s just he always has a rhythm section going so classical snobs can never truly accept him as an equal to any university trained classical composer. (Maybe that’s what Webern needs: a rhythm section. Hell, we could do disco Webern and it just might wake up sales. We could sell Webern T-shirts just like they did when Lenny went through his Mahler phase. It would be the style to be severe looking. Hermann Hesse is perfect. I digress….)
Thelonius was brilliant. But he seemed to have a severe condition that this documentary dared not speak of. Pardon me for offering an off the cuff diagnosis: I can’t help but think that Monk was severely autistic. I’m not a medical doctor or psychiatrist, I’ve read no other books on him, but I have been doing some study for doing the music for Graham Streeter’s new film that deals with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. I’ve learned that there is a huge spectrum. We learn in this movie from Thelonious Jr. that his father once paced for 4 days straight and then collapsed from exhaustion. In the movie we seem him pace many times, seeming to not be able to break his endless loops. While he does it he seems happy; grunting, chuckling, mumbling, singing… I never knew. Do we really need to know about composers lives? Well, I think so, but then I’m a composer.
Here is a 10 minute clip from the movie. You’ll see him turn in circles during the bass solo. The audience begins to laugh. I guess they didn’t understand. You hear important information from his son, Thelonius Jr here.
Monk usually insisted that the first take was the one true take. One sees in his aesthetic that there is no such thing as a boo boo, except for his song “Boo Boo’s Birthday.”
While attending the premiere of my FLIGHT INTO EGYPT at the Union Theological Seminary, I couldn’t help but see the enormous canvasses surrounding me. They were commissioned under the theme of the black madonna. I didn’t copy down the names or painters but had to share my cellphone snapshots.
Here is a press release for the premiere of my little chamber opera, FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. Wish me luck!
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Fri Oct 5 07:09:53 2007 Pacific Time
ADVISORY for Wednesday, Oct. 10
Musical Feast at Union Theological Seminary Features Premiere of Bourland’s ‘The Flight into Egypt’
NEW YORK, Oct. 5 (AScribe Newswire) — On Wednesday, October 10, at 7 p.m., Union Theological Seminary will be the site for the world premiere of composer Roger Bourland’s “The Flight into Egypt,” a short opera inspired by a play of the same name by the late Thornton Wilder.
The characters are Hepzibah (a donkey), Our Lady (Mary), and St. Joseph (her husband). The setting is The Holy Land and Egypt.
The performance is free and open to the public. It will take place in the Seminary’s historic James Chapel, 3041 Broadway (at 121st Street) in Manhattan.
“The Flight into Egypt” is one of the 16 short-short plays written by Thornton Wilder between 1915 and 1927 that collectively make up his first volume of published drama, “The Angel that Troubled the Waters and Other Plays” (1928). This slender volume, full of themes to be found in Wilder’s later fiction and drama, appeared the year after the staggering success of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Bridge of San Luis Rey.” The composer, as well as Tappan Wilder, nephew of Thornton Wilder and the literary executor of the Thornton Wilder Estate, will be present for the premiere and will be available to meet with reporters.
Union’s current musicians and artists in residence will also be presenting a choral and organ concert to celebrate the legacy of Union’s School of Sacred Music and its graduates, many of whom are returning to the Seminary October 11-12 with other alumni/ae for 2007 Reunions.
Union Theological Seminary, founded in 1836, is an independent, ecumenical graduate school of theology with the mission to educate men and women for ministries in the Christian faith, service in contemporary society, and study of the great issues of our time. The Seminary believes that the city remains a critical training ground for facing such issues. The Seminary is located in Morningside Heights and has ties with Columbia University and other educational institutions in New York City. For more information about Union, visit http://www.utsnyc.edu.
CONTACT: Joann Anand, Union Theological Seminary Media Relations, 212-280-1510, 212-731-9883 (after hours), newsbureau@uts.coumbia.edu
UCLA starts later than most schools; our first day was September 27. Although I’ve been Chair of the Music Department since July 1, that was all just practice. With students and faculty back everything is much busier.
I decided that I wanted to create a better sense of community in our department. To that end, Daniel and I decided to throw a potluck party at our home for the entire music faculty and staff last Saturday. It was a huge success; it was good to hang out outside of our music building. The talent in cooking was evident in the amazing spread and variety in the dishes people brought.
On Wednesday, I called a town hall meeting for students, faculty and staff. The UCLA Marching Band provided pizzas and the Music Department provided the beverages. I played Oprah for the first half, and then fielded questions from students during the 2nd half. We had the meeting out in our courtyard, all standing around — preferable to me at a lectern with them sitting in chairs. I had a wireless microphone and wandered about the courtyard while I spoke, invading people’s space.
First I welcomed the students back to school, and then introduced the faculty and staff members that were there. “Music is a social art, so if you don’t like people, you’re in the wrong business” I reminded them. “Get off the campus from time to time. Go to a concert, a museum, the beach, to a gallery… Recharge your batteries.”
Health is an important issue for us all, especially students who have a grueling class schedule. “Get enough sleep. Don’t kid yourselves into thinking you can get by on 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Undergraduates especially need to get 8 hours. And if you have the flu or a cold, stay home. Don’t come to school and cough all over everyone, getting everyone else sick. If you must come to class and you have a cough, bring a large handkerchief and always cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze.” Here I knew I was boarding on sounding like a nagging parent, but I didn’t care and pressed on. “Educate yourselves about meningitis. It has many of the symptoms of a severe flu, but it is highly contagious, and can kill you in 24 hours.” I asked “How many of you have had the vaccination for meningitis?” About 20 raised their hands. “Watch for a very stiff neck, a high temperature, a severe headache, and nausea. This is common in young children and college students. Watch out for each other. My partner has had it, and last year one of our undergraduate composition majors had it. Both fortunately survived.”
They looked mildly stunned, but I was glad to have voiced my concerns. I also brought up the issue of carpal tunnel syndrome and physical ailments due to the strains of playing instruments. Several faculty members offered up helpful advice.
After a good session of questions from the students, we finished up the pizzas and were finished by 6:00. The sense of community seems to be growing. I started a listserv for music students for their own use. I hope they use it. It’s not as cool as MySpace or Facebook (where I have more friends than I know what to do with of late).
Yesterday I held my first faculty meeting as chair. People said I did a good job keeping things moving, so a good sign. I had my gavel and Chair’s wand there but didn’t have to use either, except for calling a chatty group of people to order at the beginning.
Today I catch up a bit on my blog and get back to work on HOMER IN CYBERSPACE. Those three events being over, I look forward to getting some kind of rhythm going to balance my chair’s duties and my own creative work — something that all my colleagues urged by to tend to.
And just to balance things out, here is young Glenn Gould playing an excerpt from the Bach Partita No.2 originally shown on the documentary television program “The Art of the Piano.”
A late and thrilling performance by the master wizard pianist Glenn Gould. For those who don’t know this work, it was Bach’s last work and was a collection of Fugues based roughly on one theme, or “subject.” The instrumentation was never specified but is traditionally played by keyboards, and is sometimes arranged for chamber ensembles.
One of the “joys” or habits many of us newspaper readers have is reading the obits, learning of someone’s passing, and offering up a personal sigh of appreciation of how they touched our lives. One such man showed up in today’s paper: Mahlon Clark, who died at age 84 in Los Angeles. Doesn’t sound familiar? Think: clarinet player in Henri Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk.” Doesn’t ring a bell? Ok, here is a video I found on YouTube that will remind you. Thanks Mr Clark, your clarinet playing has made millions of people happy.
The next musician I salute in today’s obit section is Randy Van Horne who died at age 83. Randy was the founder of the Randy Horne Singers. Doesn’t ring a bell? Randy’s group sang the theme music to “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons” and other memorable cartoon music in the 1960s. Those of us who grew up with this music have that first choral chord etched in our memories: FLINTstones… And for those of you who don’t know it, here is the opening of “The Flintstones” with that unforgettable jazzy choral sound. Thank you Randy for being there in our lives, whether you knew it our not.
We had a big music department party at our house on Saturday. What fun. One of my colleagues, Vladimir Chernov, was there. I put this video on our new UCLA blog, and liked it some much I had to share it with my readers. I showed it to him. He had no idea it had been recorded, and had never seen it. What a voice!
Vladimir Chernov, now a professor in the Department of Music, sings the Neapolitan song, “Dicitincello vuje” with the Terem Quartet at the Metropolitan Opera.
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