Category Archives: music

advocacy, music

chamber music AIDS fundraising

I had dinner with my aunt and uncle tonight, and they told me about this NYC-based AIDS nonprofit they support, Classical Action, a Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids affiliate. Among other things, they run events where classical chamber music artists donate their time to perform in intimate, home settings. Tickets are over $200 but you get to hear an artist playing in a living room, and the money goes to “raise vitally needed funds for HIV/AIDS service, education, and prevention programs across the country.”

It’s a great idea and a great fundraising model – a high-priced ticket for an extraordinary experience.

Standard
books, music

the so-called normal case

The preservation of self: that could be the motto for all of Sacks’s writing on neurological disorders. The so-called normal case is highly contingent, he seems to be saying, depending on the physical integrity of the brain beneath, and in what we refer to as the abnormal case we are still dealing with a self in the fullest sense. There is always an “I” there, someone to whom things matter; so long as there is consciousness at all, there is a subject of that consciousness. Even if you can’t tell your wife from a hat, there is still a you that must deal with this disability. Ultimately, then, Sacks’s clinical case studies are exercises in love and respect.

From Colin McGinn’s NYRB piece on Oliver Sacks’s new book about music.

Off topic but on subject, I rented a guitar yesterday. I went in for a banjo but couldn’t bring myself to do it. The two I could afford weren’t any good. So, for a very small amount of money, I have an Ovation around the Portland apartment now.

Standard
music

“I pick the banjo electric”

I just had to point this out, since I used to play – and can still fake three and a half songs – a five-string electric Tranjocaster with 2 pickups. But no whammy bar. Darn. $1000.

Sexier: the Deering electric banjo with fake little I-wish-I-was-a-Gibson-SG horns. 3 grand-plus. But, so pretty, and “the Crossfire is the only banjo which is fully equipped to participate as an equal in all musical styles without the volume limitations.”

Standard
music

8 Quickies And 1 Fantasia – A Mellow/Weird Cast Holiday Mix

So, one night in my past I was driving around LA, sick of KROQ and Indie and even sick of NPR and I put on the classical station and heard this crazy piece of music, “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” and it was the most incredible thing I’d ever heard, and I went to Amoeba and bought it right then and there, even before going home, and I didn’t know exactly how to put it on a mix tape, but hopefully starting out with eight short songs is the way to do it.

So I sorted my playlist by length and picked short weird stuff that I thought would somehow prepare the way for the Greatest Fantasia Ever. This is far and away the most mellow mix I’ve ever made. The fantasia made me do it. Gave it to the departing cast for their plane journeys.

The whole thing runs only about half an hour.

1. don’t know what this is. Someone gave it to me. (1.31)
2. intro -manau (1.41)
3.de la mata (anon.) – terra nova consort (1.14)
4. entre o rio e a razao – mariza ( 1.58)
5. territory – amy raasch (1.23)
6. hold on – dashboard confessional (2.13)
7. tomorrow – sean lennon (2.05)
8. a widow’s toast – neko case (1.37)
9. fantasia on a theme by thomas tallis – neville marriner, academy of st-martin-in-the-fields.( 14.19)

Standard
music, theater

Things theater can learn from live music

1) Audience participation.
Last night at Atomix in San Antonio, watching Sari’s roommate Monica and her friend Chris King play live. Monica finished her spontaneous set with a cover of Amy Winehouse’s REHAB, and Chris and I clapped along to it. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, because I felt essential to the performance.
She started out by saying “I’m going to need you guys to clap like this -” and demonstrated the rhythm – and we started, and she helped, and only once our beat was established did she begin playing.
I’ve seen shows before where people were supposed to join in by clapping, but never one where there actually was no rhythm section – so that the musicians, or performers, were relying on the audience to be part of it. That was great. I’m going to have to steal it.

2) Bar participation.
After they both played, more of Monica’s friends showed up – Kelley and his girlfriend Alyssa – and they were talking about the dynamics of which bars wanted open mics on which nights, and how to plan the event, both in location and in timing in the week, so as to maximize the bar’s profits from the event. It was very eye-opening to me. The musicians play for free, but the bars get money from it – and the musicians get promotion and space.

When was the last time you heard of a theatrical event bringing money to a bar, instead of begging for donations from it? This is a financially vibrant interchange. I’ve thought before that any event that takes place at a bar is performatively successful.

I’ve also thought that I wanted to create an open mic night at a theater. When I saw the way Chris Covics at Unknown was having musical acts come into the space each night after the plays, to bring the theater money, that gave me ideas for one approach.

But the problem with that is the hassle of the liquor license. You get folks in the space, which is great, but a theatrical open mic at a bar would be even more dynamic. What I really want is a stage space with an integrated full bar. Which is what Atomix appeared to be. If I ever do start a company, it’ll be in a location like that, and we’ll only do shows that can be integrated with drinking.

And something we both need to work on:

3) Audience expectations.
Kelley told a story about an open mic he knew where the people running the show had alternated live artists with DJs. The problem was that the regulars in the bar started booing the live acts because they just wanted the DJ to play more dance music.

Standard
music, travel

Guitar straps with “Howdy” buttons, and other Texanica

Last night we went to the Limelight, a San Antonio bar and space for live music with a Sunday night open mic. Sari’s roommate Monica played, along with a bunch of other singer/songwriters. The standard guitars were acoustic, and the singers, even the boys who looked like indie rockers, had a really earnest tone of voice that touched on country even if it didn’t stay there. And you can buy three gin-and-tonics, one amaretto sour, and a can of beer for $14.

Maybe it was because we were with Monica, but all the artists who played were so much friendlier than anyone I would have met in LA. They played their sets, came and sat at our table, said hello at the bar. And they all knew each other, too – “I liked your new song,” and so forth. It’s a great environment. I think the Austin/Nashville scene spills over into all the smaller cities. If I were a singer/songwriter starting out, I wouldn’t go to LA or New York – I’d go somewhere more supportive first. Like this.

It’s basically the same lesson I’ve been learning about theater, that being the smallest fish in the biggest pond first isn’t always the wisest step – that you can get more experience more quickly in the regional scene.

Standard
L'Internet, music

SchumannIsTheMusiciansDaveEggers.com

At the Rose and Crown in Shallow Alto last night with Cliff and Heather. We consumed Chimay, which Heather referred to as “the champagne of beers,” and got into a heated discussion – or, rather, they did – about Beethoven, Bach, and Schumann. Apparently Schumann was sort of like the Dave Eggers of his time? He started a musical journal and was very involved in the criticism scene, but from the perspective of a working artist.

I was texting Zack the entire time with bad domain name names, removed from our conversation.
dreamballet.com
inverseretrograde.com

We are frustrated at not being able to take either transient.com or umbrage.com.

Standard
a propos of nothing, music

And it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life

This is my “Sad Songs Are Nature’s Onions” mix. I owe many of these to other people, mostly because sadness is better when shared.

It’s a sad day for sad songs.

Try A Little Longer For Your Friends – Mokie (Fraggle Rock)
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right – Bob Dylan
Eleanor Rigby – Beatles
The Hard Way – Mary Chapin Carpenter
Father Lucifer – Tori Amos
I Hid My Love – Audra McDonald recording
I Was Hoping – Liz Phair
Jane Says – Jane’s Addiction
Under the Bridge – RHCP
Let’s Say Goodbye – Richie Kotzen (or, Don’t Wanna Lie, but that’s too on point)
At The Edge Of A Continent – Amy Raasch
Bittersweet Symphony – The Verve
Tomorrow – Sean Lennon
Let It Die – Feist
Dig – Incubus
The Room – Suzanne Vega
Misty – (Travis Miner on piano)
Graceland – Paul Simon

I think I deserve a lot of credit for not including anything from Les Miz in this mix.

Standard
a propos of nothing, music

You Can’t Leave The Piano!

Just spent an hour banging on Shiyan’s piano. It’s lovely. I realized that one of the reasons I like the instrument so much is that my singing voice seems to get weaker as I get older – I can barely hear myself now – but playing the piano lets me pretend to be a singer, with the harmony in the left hand and the melody, sometimes even the chorus, in the right. Everything I make up happens in the realm of imaginary musicals.

When I got into orchestra in eighth grade I was made quickly aware that every other instrument on the planet is easier to sightread. Violinists? Clarinetists? Generally reading ONE note at a time instead of, oh, I don’t know, six. It was part of me getting lazy and dropping it.

I also was going through a very Tori/Alanis phase of banging loudly on the keys and giving my father a headache. Haven’t been consistent since.

I don’t play very much these days but every time I do I am reminded of my intense attachment to the piano as an instrument. It’s such a cumbersome attachment to have as someone who wants to be nomadic – really, it’s a long-distance relationship, and you never know when you’re going to see him again – but at the same time, it lets you be pleasantly suprised every time I walk into a living room and see one. Like meeting a new actor, or a new friend. Hi, piano. Just wait till I get you alone.

Playing the piano is like directing a play, too – you feel like all the different keys need to keep going at once, but when you’re in harmony with it, they happen naturally. It’s one of the few things I can do that makes my brain and body feel completely engaged. I have so much energy in my hands – perhaps from two years of typing dictated emails at Ludicrous Speed – and it takes a lot to make me stop moving around erratically. The other one is directing. The other other one is unprintable.

No more cumbersome than being attached to theater, which is also, let’s face it, another long-distance relationship. Michael Rohd is about to start regularly commuting between Chicago and Portland, which is not the most absurd theater commute I’ve heard of. If anyone can do it, he can, but still!

I have loved you, Thespis, across seven continents…

I do wish I could convince myself to fall for another instrument. Something more portable. But it never feels right. I love the faceoff, sitting down with that big hunk of wood (good heavens) and knowing only one of you is going to stand up from the duel.

So I have melodies floating around in my mind. I like to play loud and fast. And I can’t execute anything with the grace with which I hear it, so I screw up all the time. But I do love trying.

Standard