Mmm, I’m having a summer flashback. In our trip to southern France, we ate at home several times. One of the highlights of those meals was Jenny and Daniel searing a demi-lobe of foie gras, with salad, a lovely Gigondas wine, stinky cheese, French bread, and ham. That was lunch.

Jenny was perpetually photogenic as she cooked. Nicely framed by the kitchen window, I snapped this Vermeerish picture.

Leon Kirchner © Jamie Cope

Leon was my teacher at Harvard between 1978 and 1983. I remember fondly our coffee breaks between classes; the composition seminar was slow but good. I preferred Earl Kim’s analysis seminars. Private lessons with Leon were always thrilling.

He guided my Masters degree which was “Sweet Alchemy” for orchestra, (commissioned by ALEA III). We had to play our own music at the piano, no matter what it was scored for, so I composed the piece so that I could play it, but also using my new tonal language. I played it for the seminar one day and his only comment was “Why do you have to write that harmonic stuff?” I replied that I was tired of thinking I had to grow up to become the next Elliott Carter, or Karlheinz Stockhausen. It’s not who I am, I insisted. He smiled and went on to the next composer. Leon used the same phrase–that harmonic stuff–when John Adams (who was also a Kirchner student) sent a cassette of “Shakers Loops.” Kirchner played it for our composition class.

Leon retired the year after I graduated for what I thought was a medical reason (his heart?). Of my professors at Harvard, Kirchner outlived Earl Kim, and Ivan Tcherepnin — Tison Street is alive and well in NYC. I mowed Leon’s lawn one summer. He introduced my to Randall Thompson in 1980 for whom I served as a personal assistant.

Leon always wished that he were better respected as a conductor. “Ah c’mon, you’ve had a great career” I replied.

I told him that I had figured out the style of this music: “It’s Russian Mysticism” out of the rib of Scriabin. He roared with laughter and we went back to our lesson.

In my first set of qualifying exams, Leon asked me what the iambic rhythmic figures were in the section just before the development in the B flat Sonata, first movement. I said I didn’t know. (I do now.) Because of this error, the committee (Leon) decided to give me a John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship to go to LA and investigate film music, and come back in a year to face a second set of oral exams where you will be expected to tell us the difference between Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven as exemplified by their complete string quartets, piano sonatas and symphonies.

I returned the following year and was grilled on Varese’s “Ameriques” and Debussy’ “La Mer.” Leon didn’t attend as he withdrew from all graduate teaching for a year — I have no idea why. I worked hard on that, and they didn’t even ask me about it.

It was Leon Kirchner who called Henri Lazarof to recommend me for the job at UCLA. That telephone call changed my life.

Farewell Leon. Thanks for everything. You had a wonderful life!

A man, who I’ll call Arthur, died in 2006 at age 60, leaving everything to his mother. He was a professor of zoology. In the case that he died before his mother, which he did, his mother was to give certain things to UCLA. Some were earmarked for the Music Department. His mother died recently and several boxes of stuff were left for us to come pick up. I went down and went through them. Several boxes of LPs, mostly old recordings of romantic violin music; lots of not terribly good paintings and odd photographs that he made; a photocopy of the manuscript of the Brahms Violin Concerto; framed pictures of Rodin sculptures, and other house pictures. Also, was a large book of his poems, writings, and philosophic musings — really, a kind of diary of his life. In his living trust, besides his violin and money, the most important item that is mentioned many times is his diary. I decided to take the diary home and read it, which I did this morning.

The poems were not very good poems, rather stream of consciousness observations of the world, and whatever was going on in his life at the end. There were many pages of scientific musings that, not being my area of expertise, may or may not be of interest to the scientific world. He includes an unanswered registered letter he wrote to Stephen Hawking in the ’70s. There is a chapter on his mid-life crisis, written on his 40th birthday. There are some photos in the book, but they are all of him, standing in front of statues or buildings around the world — and no one else. He doesn’t mention anyone else in the whole book except for a beautiful Spanish boy that he met in 1967 whose hand he had the pleasure of kissing.

The wizened, older Arthur revisits the wild and crazy younger Arthur with annotations in pencil, made and initialed by him later in life with comments like “not true” or “not the whole story.”

My guess is that Arthur was a big pot enthusiast, as most of the book seems like stoned ramblings. But where was his life? It all seemed inside his head. If this guy was a zoologist, you wouldn’t know it from any of his personal writings. If he was a professor, there is no evidence that he ever had a student in his life. This diary was his escape from everything and everyone. I did a search on his name and found only an appearance of his year of birth and year of death, and that a year before he died, he and his mother made a contribution in the memory of a friend to a their synagogue. Other than these two citations, he had no internet presence at all.

Why did you die at age 60, Arthur? Did you like people? What did you do when you traveled all over the world? Did you meet anyone, other than the people who took YOUR picture?

The most amazing part of reading the book was landing on the final page. He had an order form for the book. One copy would be $52; he then made a list of the prices if you purchase 5-10, 10-20, 20-50, and if you bought over 100 copies, they’d be $34 each. I couldn’t believe that he really imagined that this book had any commercial potential. But clearly, this was one of his most sacred and prized possessions. And it is now in my hands. I really don’t know what to do with it, but keep it, like I do so many other things, and show it to the appropriate person from time to time. What happen to the millions of other diaries that get left to be found by family or strangers?

I hope someone misses you, Arthur; and if not, I certainly am thankful for inheriting your strange little time capsule.

[Top picture: Self Portrait of the Arthur (no date); Lower picture: Arthur's Fantasy (1981)]

Some good friends had dinner with Kathleen Turner last week. The conversation that stood out was KT relating one of her pet peeves: fans complimenting her.

“OH MISS TURNER, I LOVE YOU!”

(In a grouchy voice) “You don’t love me, you don’t know me; you love my work.”

Tell it like it is girlfriend!

A raw, angry, and provocative must-see interview from XXXXX, music critic of many publications, who has seen the need for and income from his reviews plummet. Bloggers (I guess, like me, although I have no plans of replacing a music critic: they’d have to pay me to do that) are doing it for free. It’s a transition to a new way of thinking about music criticism. I’ll leave it to much smarter scholars than I to sort out what lies ahead. I know that my blog readership is higher than some well respected music critics, but I think that that is only the case because I’ve been doing it longer ON THE WEB. Bloggers who stick to it, build readership. My readership statistics show a very slow rise since January 2006. Any blogger or critic on the web who sticks to it, will show a gradual rise over the years.

via videosift.com

Yesterday, on my third day of staying home with the flu, I heard the mom next door trying to teach her son some Michael Jackson songs.

“Beat it… beat it…. beat it….” Hmm, not sure what the rest of the words are. Let’s try another. “Thriller…. thriller…. dum dum dum da da da de…” Hmm, don’t remember those words either. Let’s try “Billy Jean.. doo doo doo” Oh dear, I don’t seem to be remembering any of the words. Wait! I remember another: “We are the world, we are the doo doo..” I can’t remember that one either. Oh drat!

I couldn’t help out as I could never understand the words either.

A terrific cover by Neil Young of “A Day in the Life” with a walk-on cameo by Paul McCartney. Young seems profoundly moved at the end, almost tapping into the primal scream John so loved. He didn’t have the courage to smash his guitar, but he broke all the strings instead. It’s ok Neil, we understand.

Alan Tower and I fell out of touch for a while but reconnected this weekend. We have been friends since 1971, from the dorms in UW Madison and were able to spend five hours on Saturday night talking, eating, and playing music. He says I taught him guitar and was an early spiritual teacher as well. He’s surpassed me in both of those areas of late. His career is blooming, and he is fusing his cosmic philosophies and concern about the earth, into his musical persona.

One of the highlights of our visit was his asking me to sit down for a vibrational massage. He pulled out one of his triple chambered huacas (a custom made ocarina with roots in South America) and played right into my face. Later he sat me under a self-made wooden umbrella, designed to hear inside that space. He jerry-rigged a one octave pump organ with holes on a piece of wood, each with a little ivory lever that slides to the side. The more open the hole is, the louder. He pretuned the chord to be a 1-5-8 octave and fifth drone. I was encouraged to sing along, which I did. I tapped into my Tibetan Buddhist tendencies and started singing low tones. After a few minutes, I actually got down to a low G (sic).

Later we sang some Beatle songs, PERFECTLY in tune. Our blend was remarkable. All that singing was the perfect exorcism for a stressful week in the state of California in May 2009.

Today Volker Hauschka stopped by to chat about an upcoming collaboration with me on a new film by Graham Streeter (of CAGES fame). Volker is taking the prepared piano into a new realm, and it is quite often transcendent, hovering, beguiling, pretty to listen to, and original. His career seems to be taking off. Seeing this career explosion made me think about my own, and how life takes you in so many different directions.

Collaboration between two composers can be a tricky proposition, but we chatted and were direct about parameters, scenarios, royalties, and the creative freedom.

Here’s a taste: