Monotonous Forest

Carter's new Clarinet Quintet

Completed in September of 2007, Elliott Carter's Clarinet Quintet is scarcely 15 minutes long, yet shows the 99-year-old composer to be still bubbling with invention.  And last night clarinetist Charles Neidich and the Juilliard String Quartet gave us a gift: a second reading of it at the end of the concert.

In three movements, the piece often pits the clarinet against the strings, almost as a saboteur, with the composer's typical mercurial mood shifts.  About midway, the strings hold stratospheric notes pianissimo, while the clarinet is at the other end of the spectrum, at the low end of its range.  And as the composer later explained, the intervals he chose for the clarinet differ from the ones he uses for the others, subtly increasing the divide between the two forces.

Perhaps my favorite part is the final movement, about which Neidich writes, "The clarinet plays what may be the longest sustained melody ever written for the instrument while the strings play ever more involved figurations as if trying to be willfully oblivious of what the clarinet is playing."  It reminded me of a sort of chamber music complement to the first movement of Nielsen's Fifth Symphony, in which a snare drum is given the task of trying to "halt the progress of the orchestra."

The superbly expressive Juilliard musicians filled out the evening with five of Carter's solo works: Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi (for violin, from 1984), Figment (cello, 1994), Gra (clarinet, 1993), Rhapsodic Musings (violin, 2001) and Figment IV (viola, 2007).  At intermission, Ara Guzelimian asked Carter right off the bat, "So what about this combination of instruments appealed to you?"  Without losing a beat, the composer replied, "I really don't know!"

Update: Steve Smith captures the mood in his write-up for The New York Times, and a big "yes" to that first sentence.

[Clarinet drawing from MadProf's Workshop]

JazzFest webcasts: cheaper than airfare

On May 3 and 4 starting at 2:00 p.m., you can dip into some of JazzFest thanks to free live webcasts, which will also feature taped highlights from last weekend's line-up.

[Photo: "Bourbon Street, New Orleans" via And all that Malarkey on Flickr]

Undesirable music

How on earth did I miss this?  In 1997, taking a cue from Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid's project to determine America's most and least wanted paintings, Dave Soldier and Nina Mankin surveyed 500 people to determine what musical elements they liked and disliked the most.  From the results came two works, "The Most Wanted Song," and "The Most Unwanted Song," now available for listening on the increasingly indispensible UbuWeb.  Both are interesting, but the latter is almost pricelessly funny, and yet to my ears, oddly compelling.

It was determined that the most unwanted ensemble was a large orchestra, with the most undesirable instruments being the accordion and bagpipes.  Cowboys and holidays are the most unwanted subjects for song lyrics.  "The Most Unwanted Song" is approximately 25 minutes, and if you can stand it, well worth hearing until the very end.  Make sure you are not in an environment where laughter is frowned upon.

[Thanks to a friend at Cambridge University, via Dial "M" for Musicology]

New Orleans Snapshot #3: Vipers and sunspots

On the last afternoon of the French Quarter Festival, I ambled over to hear the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, who set up shop right in the middle of Royal Street.  A septet with no percussion, the Vipers get their retro swing from fast-strumming double bass and guitar, while violin, clarinet, trumpet, alto and bass saxophones dart about like a flock of swallows.  Each member sings, each with a different character to match a particular song.  A guest vocalist, Miss Sophie Lee, was a perfect flashback to 1935 singing Hoagy Carmichael's "Bread and Gravy."

Their bubbling results pulled in a huge crowd, with about five or six couples pulling off some elaborate dance moves.  A young barbecue chef (he volunteered the information) standing next to me complained, "These guys need a much bigger stage."

After an afternoon nap, I returned to the Mississippi River stages, first to see Kermit Ruffins and his Barbecue Allstars.  At this point Ruffins is one of the city's unofficial ambassadors, whose optimism comes out in every bar of his swanky trumpet work.  But I'm just a sucker for zydeco, and on a nearby stage were Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots.  Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes (above, accordion, harmonica and vocals) and his expert musicians combine blues, African and Caribbean influences that had dozens of people in manic footwork on the grass around the stage.  Sunset doesn't get any happier.

I ended up at the bar at Deanie's Seafood, for a Manhattan and a bowl of crawfish etoufee, and conversation with more out-of-towners.  Sitting next to me were a woman from Yellowknife, a town in Canada's Northwest Territories, and a guy from Frankfurt, Germany who was on his way to Bogotá, Columbia the next morning.

Listening in Sanskrit

At last night's Satyagraha at the Met, I found myself unexpectedly entranced, as did my listening partner for the evening.  The production design, by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, is filled with haunting imagery that enhances the hypnotic effect of Philip Glass and Constance DeJong's homage to Gandhi.  In Act II, an ascent of scores of lanterns is breathtaking, and the final scene, which juxtaposes Gandhi with Martin Luther King, is both serene and powerful.  That said (and a longer review to come), I don't expect to be craving hearing the score again anytime soon.  But others clearly disagree: at the conclusion, thousands in the audience were standing and cheering, especially for Richard Croft in the taxing lead role.  My own reaction aside, I found the response absolutely heartening, and it bodes well for the Met taking even bigger risks down the road.

[Photos from Acts I and II by Ken Howard / Courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera]

Offbeat venue vs. Stravinsky

Musical values aside for a moment (and there were many), Saturday's all-Stravinsky concert at the Park Avenue Armory was an event for a number of reasons, including a drive-by from the weekend's most publicized out-of-towner.  (Thanks to Alex Ross for a glimpse.) 

With the help of strong playing and singing from the Gotham City Orchestra and the Vox Vocal Ensemble, conductor George Steel can only be enthusiastically commended for programming some rarely heard works, including the short Variations (Aldous Huxley in memoriam) (1963-64) which was done twice.  And although the Symphony of Psalms (1930) appears fairly often, I don't recall ever hearing either the Mass (1944-48) or Requiem Canticles (1965-66) in live performance.  In the Armory's enormous, vaulted Drill Hall, the orchestra's brass sounded especially imposing, and many chords followed by silence had a haunting resonance.  (The room has a decay of almost six seconds.)

Steel should also be thanked for testing out the space, an entirely worthy experiment.  But I'm not totally convinced that the hall is ideal for many types of music, fascinating as the entire evening was.  Completed in 1879, it has an 80-foot ceiling, and is 200 feet wide, 300 feet long, so the stage and seating were placed at one end: visually it was like being adjacent to a basketball arena.  The sound often seemed to be dispersing itself all over the place.  (I did try sitting closer to the center of the stage, with some improvement.)  Voices were audible but sometimes had a metallic overtone.  Balances were dicey.  And the faster sections, such as the final movement of the Psalms, were a blur.

Perhaps Bruckner motets would fare better, or other slow-moving music less dependent on sudden rhythmic changes.  Recently a group tested the space with the first movement of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, which unfortunately I couldn't attend, but I wonder how that fared.  In any case, this sold-out evening offered unusually well-chosen music, and much food for thought.

[Photo: 7th Regiment Armory Drill Hall by Jack E. Boucher, 1984]

Donizetti break

After seeing the final dress rehearsal for the Met's La Fille du Régiment, there is no way this is going to be anything other than a huge smash.  Yes, the biggest draws are probably Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez, who not only sing beautifully but command the stage with expert comic timing.  But some other cast members only increase the delight.  Felicity Palmer, in a 180-degree turn from playing nosy Mrs. Sedley in Peter Grimes, is uproarious as the haughty Marquise of Berkenfield.  And in a crucial non-singing role, Broadway veteran Marian Seldes tramps around as the Duchess of Krakenthorp using a voice that makes her character's surname sound positively onomatopoeic. 

Laurent Pelly's imaginative production, with with designer Chantal Thomas using folded maps to create mountains and valleys, is delicious and only increases opportunities for humor, but the biggest success here is the precision stage direction.  Dessay's early scene with an ironing board is a great example, but there is much more everywhere else.  I'm not sure whether to credit Pelly, choreographer Laura Scozzi or Associate Director Agathe Mélinande or all three, but I can't recall ever seeing something at the Met so consistently funny.  The icing on the cake: conductor Marco Armiliato and the orchestra, who deftly give the score the lightness and giddy sheen it needs.

[Photo from the Preservation Department, University of Buffalo Libraries]

New Orleans Snapshot #2: Morning inspiration, and the burning orange

At 11:00 last Saturday morning, an ensemble from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz kicked off the day with a loving set on one of the riverfront stages, with boats of all types drifting by in the background.  Terence Blanchard is the artistic advisor of the Institute, now housed at Loyola University, and the almost-two-hour set by these talented students couldn't have been more uplifting.  Later that afternoon, my friends and I strolled over to the Old U.S. Mint, one of Louisiana's State Museums, hosting a blowout foursome: the Jimmy Thibodeaux Band, Jeremy & The Zydeco Hot Boyz, Terry & The Zydeco Bad Boys, and Dwayne Dopsie & The Zydeco Hellraisers.

But a dining experience won the prize that day (since a Toledo, Ohio friend reminded me that I hadn't mentioned a cocktail here in quite awhile).  At Arnaud's restaurant, one of their signature desserts is Café Brûlot, an intoxicating mix of coffee, Curaçao, brandy, orange and lemon rinds, cloves and cinnamon. The menu gives you no hint of the show that is to come. A waiter wheels a cart over to the table, then begins meticulously peeling an orange in a continuous, unbroken spiral, while separately heating the brandy and liqueur.  When all is ready, he ignites them, then raises the orange high (the center segments dangling from the peel) and slowly pours the mixture so it runs down the fruit, creating a dramatic flaming corkscrew hovering in the air, and eventually ending up in two glasses. 

[Photo: neon motorcycle spark plug wires by Boogey, from MAC Performance]

Blackbirds storm Manhattan

Tomorrow night I'll be at eighth blackbird's concert at Zankel Hall, with New York premieres of Double Sextet by Steve Reich, and singing in the dead of night, by David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe.  For a preview, read Paul Bodine's write-up of the same program on Tuesday at the Samueli Theater in Costa Mesa.  (Thank you, Tim Mangan.)

New Orleans Snapshot #1: Bones

For those who crave trombones, the septet Bonerama has four of them, and their almost two-hour set at the end of the first day of the French Quarter Festival was riveting.  Sousaphonist Matt Perrine led his driving, infectious "Bayou Betty," from their latest CD Bringing It Home, taped live at Tipitina's, and just as danceable was "Cabbage Alley," a thumping anthem by The Meters.  And even Beethoven even made it to the party, with Steve Suter's "Equale," ingeniously morphed from Three Equali (for four trombones, of course). 

But the high point was a restless, inspired arrangement of Jimi Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic."  Leader Mark Mullins has called Hendrix "one of his favorite trombonists," and the piece makes an effortless transition into brass territory.  Watching the group at sunset, with their celestial braying against the backdrop of the Mississippi River, we all agreed that this was pretty much jazz heaven.

[Photo: Bonerama in 2007 at the Maple Leaf, New Orleans]