Monotonous Forest

Music for virtual and real partners

Electronic Duets That Dazzle and Brahms in His Autumnal Glory.  The Juilliard Journal, April 2008.

All music and no [insert subject here] makes Jack a dull boy

With the blogosphere expanding at a rate faster than the known universe, I thought I'd post a fraction of my favorite haunts which have nothing to do with music.

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.  Seven contributors find and interpret signs in which quotation marks are either superfluous or outright misleading, with dry commentary.  "Really."

Christian Montone.  This New Jersey artist (and public school teacher, which might qualify him for sainthood) posts photographs, often documenting the forlorn beauty of suburban relics.

Brilliant Detroit Reporting.  Poet and satirist Emily XYZ has found yet another niche with this commentary on what is, and isn't, important in news.  (Honest, I have nothing but love for Detroit.)

lifeiscarbon.  An assortment of contributors from around the world highlight examples of new Scandinavian design, furniture and architecture.  Check out this post, showing the Hotel Kirkenes (below) and ending with the Home-Box, perhaps too monastic for most of us, but for a small dwelling it shows enormous imagination.

[Photo: Hotel Kirkenes by Finnish architect Sami Rintala]

Blast from South Carolina

At last night's eclectic opening of Keys to the Future, one of several audience favorites was Variations (2003), by John Fitz Rogers, founder and Artistic Director of the Southern Exposure New Music Series at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches.  Pianist Marina Lomazov, who also teaches at USC, has the willowy demeanor of a Paul Gauguin model, but there was nothing shy or inhibited in her fiery, yet controlled reading of Rogers's virtuosic exercise combining ragtime and boogie. 

[Photo: "Storefront in Calhoun Falls, South Carolina" by grits 'n' collards, on Flickr]

Keys, keys and more keys

For admirers of contemporary piano repertoire, Keys to the Future (starting Tuesday) is usually three nights of heaven.  Festival organizer, pianist and composer Joseph Rubenstein has recruited a superb slate of musicians in eclectic works by Louis Andriessen, Poul Ruders, Elena Kats-Chernin, John Fitz Rodgers, Chester Biscardi, Chick Corea and Kevin Puts, among many others.  The capper is the salon-like atmosphere of the Greenwich House Renee Weiler Concert Hall, as intimate as your living room.

[Photo by Little Baby Zorak on Flickr]

Small helicopters

On Thursday, composer Virgil Moorefield will be making a rare appearance at The Stone, with six of New York's best musicians performing his recent disc, Things You Must Do to Get to Heaven.  But he's been a busy guy.  He also teaches at the University of Michigan, and recently directed the school's Digital Music Ensemble in Stockhausen's Helikopter-Streichquartett, adapted for four electric guitars--and toy helicopters.  Watch the divine results here.

Tristan crashes, literally

The current Met run of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde has been plagued by one problem after another, but at last night's performance some 3,500 of us witnessed one of the scariest events I've ever seen onstage.

At the beginning of Act III, Gary Lehman (as the title character) was far upstage on the set's sharply raked plank floor, lying on his back on a blanket with his arms outstretched crucifixion-style, head first.  As the gorgeous, winding English horn solo of Peter D. Díaz filled the house, the blanket with Lehman slowly slid downstage and stopped about ten feet from the prompter's box, here disguised as a black wooden triangle with a small fire pit on top. 

As Kurwenal (Eike Wilm Schulte) and the Shepherd (Mark Schowalter) entered, suddenly the blanket slid down again but very fast, and Lehman's head hit the box with a sickening thud.  The house grew very quiet as the two singers rushed to help, along with maybe six more people from the wings.  As the curtain closed, a Met spokesman came onstage with a mike, saying Lehman was fine and would return: "He just needs to rest a minute and have a glass of water."  After a break of ten minutes or so, the house lights dimmed again and the curtain opened with Lehman in the same pre-accident position.  After prolonged applause and cheering for the singer's pluck, Levine and the orchestra continued, wrapping up the evening at around 12:25 in the morning.

Recalling Minghella's Puccini

Not in a million years would I have thought that that Puccini's Madama Butterfly would move me, but when I saw it in 2006 at the Met, filmmaker Anthony Minghella had a radically different take.  By removing the typically quaint Japanese house and accompanying snow globe-style scenery, he reawakened the opera's emotional impact.  And his use of a life-sized puppet as Cho-Cho San's son still feels like a burst of genius, ironically adding even more humanity to the story.  His death, announced today, saddens me, particularly since just two weeks ago Peter Gelb announced that Minghella was writing the libretto for Daedalus, a new opera by Osvaldo Golijov.

[The opening scene of Anthony Minghella's 2006 production of Madama Butterfly, photographed by Ken Howard for The Metropolitan Opera.  More photos here.]

Another artifact surfaces

Tomorrow night, composer Anthony Coleman joins new music group counter)induction for a true rarity, Mauricio Kagel's Der Schall (The Sound) from 1968, for five players and 54 instruments.  In 1969 Deutsche Grammophon released a recording of the work by the Kölner Ensemble für neue Musik as part of its Avant Garde series (above), which was never released on CD. 

But perhaps astonishingly, thanks to UbuWeb, the complete recording can be heard here.  Tuesday's concert also includes a new work by Coleman, as well as pieces by Kurtág and counter)induction founder, Douglas Boyce.

...and "Grimes" onscreen

My sole criticism of the otherwise stunning broadcast of Peter Grimes yesterday was the murky lighting, which probably did little to dissuade those who despise the production.  (Not everyone agreed: a friend in Cleveland who called afterward, raving, said the darkness didn't bother him at all.)  Nevertheless, it was disappointing, since one of the most pleasurable aspects when I saw it live was watching designer Peter Mumford's moonbeams streaming down, falling across the surface of the huge front wall, highlighting the details.  Further, there were precious few long shots of the striking tableaux using the wall's windows and doors, but to be fair, this was offset by some remarkable close-ups of the cast.

Musically, it was one thrill after another, with Anthony Dean Griffey sounding better with every performance (if that's possible), Patricia Racette positively luminous, and the Met Chorus in staggeringly good form.  (At one of the intermissions, a twinkling Natalie Dessay asked Chorus Master Donald Palumbo, "Do you beat them?  Are you mean to them?")  And during the orchestral interludes, the camera swooped down into the pit, where Donald Runnicles and the Met musicians were working absolute magic.

[Above: Anthony Dean Griffey, photographed by Ken Howard for The Metropolitan Opera]

Tiny scratching sounds

Starting tonight, the new music group Either/Or presents a three-day festival devoted to Helmut Lachenmann (b. 1935) at the Goethe Institut.  Filmmaker Bettina Ehrhardt will be on hand tonight for a screening of …wo ich noch nie war (...where I've never been before) her 2006 documentary about the composer.

On Tuesday, Lachenmann himself will be present, speaking and answering questions about two works, Salut für Caudwell for two guitars (1977) and Grido (his third string quartet, from 2001), with performances of both by Either/Or to follow on Thursday.  Last spring I heard Salut für Caudwell played by Either/Or's founders, Richard Carrick and David Shively, and it was one of the most fascinating evenings I can recall.  A sort of "deconstruction" of Spanish guitar technique, it asks the two performers to stroke, tap and softly scrape the instruments.  (Jimi Hendrix it's not.)