Category Archives: Song

Margaret Bonds: pianist composer, and teacher

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Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) was a pianist, composer, and teacher of music. I probably first became aware of her as a teenager, through some of her arrangements of spirituals for "classical" voice, especially as sung by Leontyne Price (e.g. He's Got The Whole World In His Hand, which Price commissioned from Bonds in the early 1960s) but have only recently delved more deeply into her work, and realized that many of her compositions --- the classical songs and some piano pieces are what I've really gotten into so far--- should be considered classics of 20th century American music. I expect they will become---indeed, hopefully, many of them already are---a permanent part of the classical music repertoire.

Most recently, I was reminded of Bonds by an excellent essay by pianist and composer Ethan Iverson, whose blog Do the M@th is essential reading for those interested in jazz and/or classical music. "Black music teachers in the age of segregation" emphasizes their contribution to the musical development of jazz musicians, both by teaching European techniques and theory, and leading ensembles often covering a wide range of music styles, sometimes integrating African-derived and African-American-developed elements and procedures. Iverson doesn't mention Bonds in his essay, but she is yet another example of a black musician whose role as teacher was important in American music---although her compositions and (sadly, probably under-documented) live performances are equally important contributions.

Bonds as teacher, as well as performer and composer, figures prominently in the diaries and essays of Ned Rorem---she was one of his childhood piano teachers in Chicago, and helped him with his first forays into notated composition. Rorem's discussion of his time with her, as well as with other childhood teachers, in the essay "The Piano in My Life" from Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary is engrossing.

It was time for a real teacher... Margaret Bonds .... at twenty-two was a middle-western "personality", having played Carpenter's Concertino with the Chicago Symphony under the composer's direction, and being herself a composer of mainly spiritual arrangements and of original songs in collaboration with Langston Hughes. ... At our first lesson, she played me some ear-openers, The White Peacock by Griffes, and Carpenter's American Tango. Had I ever heard American music before? ...

Margaret Bonds played with the authority of a professional, an authority I'd never heard in a living room, an authority stemming from the fact that she herself was a composer and thus approached all music from the inside out, an authority that was contagious. [...]

The first piece I wrote down, "The Glass Cloud," was influenced by Margaret's other prize pupil, Gerald Cook. [...] In the years to come his identity with Margaret would shift from student to colleague as the two-piano team, Bonds and Cook, became a glamorous enterprise at Cerutti's in New York, and at Spivy's Roof. When Margaret went her separate way to marriage, motherhood, documentation of Negro song, opera writing, and death, Gerald turned into the greatest living accompanist of the Blues, working first with the lamented Libby Holman, then--and still--with Alberta Hunter.

Did I outgrow Margaret Bonds? Why were lessons discontinued? If there was an objection to a seeming glib jazziness chez elle, Margaret thought of herself as classical and deep. (Conversely, I feel as influenced by prewar jazz as by "serious" music. Not the tune itself but Billie Holiday's way with a tune taught me to knead a vocal phrase, just as Count Basie's piano playing still shapes my piano composing.) In any case Margaret and I lost track of each other until we had all moved East during the war. Then we remained close friends until she died.

The whole essay is a great read, simultaneously sketching with vivid strokes aspects of an era in American music and American life, and of Rorem's musical development.

There is much more about Bonds at the pages for the 2016-2017 exhibitions "Margaret Bonds: Composer and Activist" and "Margaret Bonds and Langston Hughes: A Musical Friendship" at the Georgetown University Library (where some of her papers are held) including music manuscripts, photographs, concert programs, and correspondence from, among others, Rorem, Hughes, and Andy Razaf (whose stationery sports a sidebar listing songs he composed and/or wrote the lyrics to). Directly relevant to the matter of Black teachers and the institutions they worked in as a crucial resource in the development of American music is this from the exhibition text:

Throughout the 1950s, Bonds continued her work as a composer, performer and teacher. In addition to private lessons, she joined the staff of East Side House Settlement, a non-profit social services organization committed to serving New York’s underprivileged youth. At East Side House she taught weekly music classes, hosted performances featuring African-American composers, and served as music director for the annual spring musical.

There may be a lot to rediscover about her influence, as a teacher, on jazz and classical musicians, especially African-American ones, during this period in New York. East Side House Settlement is still active.

As far as her work as composer is concerned, from what is available on disc or digital streaming I'm particularly partial to her pieces for solo piano, and her songs. What is available in these genres is extremely good, and should find a permanent place in the repertoire of pianists and singers. Although the list of works in her Wikipedia entry is not lengthy, there is much that looks promising that does not appear to available in recordings or online performances; one hopes that will change.

 The Bells, based on the spiritual Peter Go Ring Dem Bells, from her Spiritual Suite for Piano, beautifully melds influences from European and American classical music (especially Debussy, Ravel, and perhaps Americans like Charles Tomlinson Griffes (who crops up in the Rorem quote above)) with African-American spirituals and pianistic touches reminiscent of jazz or perhaps the popular music of the time. Here it is played by Thomas Otten as part of a 2013 symposium on Bonds' work:

The other two movements, Dry Bones and Troubled Water, are also on youtube played by Otten at this symposium; below, Troubled Water, based on the spiritual Wade in the Water, is played by Samantha Ege:

The Youtube listing for Ege's performance gives the date of Troubled Water as 1967, but Randye Jones' online biography (which also displays the abovementioned concert program) also lists it as part of the Spirituals Suite, which it dates to the 1940s or early 1950s.

Bonds' setting, published in 1959, of Three Dream Portraits by Langston Hughes is superbly done. The only version for low male voice with piano that I've found on Youtube in acceptable sound is an excellent one by baritone Thomas Hampson with Kuang-Hao Wang on piano:

(Dorian Hall deserves mention for a superb performance with Dr. Timothy Cheek on piano, but there is unfortunately a lot of distortion in the recording---this would appear to be a casually recorded, though musically top-notch, recital.) There are several female voice versions on Youtube in good sound, for example one sung by Bonnie Pomfret with Laura Gordy on piano; another by Icy Simpson with Artina McCain on piano and one by an unidentified singer and the Ritz Chamber Players. The live recital recording of no. 1 in the series, Minstrel Man, by Nicole Taylor with Joan Sasaki on piano, is also worth mentioning, though the recorded sound quality is not perfect. Yolanda Rhodes and Josefina Gandolfi also do an excellent job with this song.

The settings of Hughes' Songs of the Seasons are also excellent. Below, an excellent live performance (the vocalist is Louise Toppin) of Summer Storm from a valuable 2013 symposium on Bonds, available as a sequence of youtube videos, that includes lectures as well as performances of works by Bonds and by her teacher, Florence Price (e.g. Price's Night, beautifully sung by the extraordinary countertenor Darryl Taylor).

In this symposium Toppin also performs several excellent songs that are not listed in the Wikipedia entry on Bonds. Stopping by Woods and The Pasture, from 1958, are on texts by Robert Frost; Feast, on a text of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Winter Moon, another of the four Songs of the Seasons, is available in a studio recording by Toppin with John B. O'Brien on piano. Bonds' songs also work beautifully sung by baritone Malcolm Merriweather with Ashley Jackson on harp rather than piano: Winter Moon from Seasons, To A Brown Girl, Dead (1933) on a text by Countee Cullen, and the Three Dream Portraits appear on a CD along with Bonds' Christmas cantata, Ballad of the Brown King, to words of Langston Hughes. Little David is an example of Bonds' setting a traditional African-American spiritual melody and text:

Here, as in many of Bonds' arrangements of spirituals, the piano part doesn't provide a conventional chordal background, nor does it double the voice---it is new musical material that is entirely Bonds', and contrasts with the vocal line while being absolutely appropriate to it.

Last but not least, perhaps Bonds' best known song is her setting of Langston Hughes' The Negro Speaks of Rivers, composed around 1936 and first published in 1944. Bonds spoke of the great personal significance of this poem to her, in an interview with James Hatch quoted in Jones' online biography:

I was in this prejudiced university [Northwestern, where she matriculated in 1929 and where, according to Jones, "she was allowed to study but not to live or use their facilities"], this terribly prejudiced place–I was looking in the basement of the Evanston Public Library where they had the poetry. I came in contact with this wonderful poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” and I’m sure it helped my feelings of security. Because in that poem he [Langston Hughes] tells how great the black man is: And if I had any misgivings, which I would have to have–here you are in a setup where the restaurants won’t serve you and you’re going to college, you’re sacrificing, trying to get through school–and I know that poem helped save me.

A favorite performance of mine is Gerald Blanchard's, from his CD on Blue Griffin:

Thomas Hampson gives a mellower, less urgent reading, but beautifully phrased and recorded, and making the text exceptionally intelligible:

One can also find on youtube a mixed-chorus SATB arrangement of this setting---it is not clear to me whether the arrangement is by Bonds herself or not, though I suspect it is---which would be well worth tracking down by interested choirs.

There's much more to be said, and investigated, about Bonds and her work; some of the links above, especially the Kilgore dissertation and the brief online Randye Jones biography, are good starting points, as is the Song of America page on Bonds. I have a copy of Mildred Denby Green's Black Women Composers: A Genesis, which has more on Bonds, her teacher Florence Price and others, on the way, as well as an Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers, edited by Willis Patterson (published by Hal Leonard Corp.) that includes the score of Three Dream Portraits. I'm looking forward to seeing what I discover in this anthology, although I'll probably be studying the musical content of, rather than singing, the Dream Portraits, while searching for scores for the Songs of the Seasons and the Frost and Millay settings, which are not included in that anthology. But I'll stop here for now, and leave you to enjoy her music.

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The greatness of Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)

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Cecil Taylor, one of the most important musicians of our time, and one of the pioneers of what is roughly called "free" or avant-garde jazz, died on April 5, 2018, at 89 years old.  Ben Ratliff has written an obituary at the New York Times, and Ethan Iverson has written an appreciation at his blog Do The Math.

I'm not going to write extensively about his music or life here; I'm just going to give links to a few of my favorite Taylor works, mostly ones that I am intimately familiar with.  (Well, I ended up writing a fair bit about some of them.)  They're chosen primarily for their intrinsic greatness, but with the main purpose of getting people who may not be familiar with Taylor in touch with his music, so the choice may be biased a little bit towards more "accessible" pieces.  I've been toying with the idea of a post, perhaps titled "Canon and Playlist," which would include a personal canon of the music commonly referred to as "jazz".  One idea would be to include just "masterpieces of the highest order" --- you know, stuff on the level of the late Beethoven piano sonatas, Janacek's "On an Overgrown Path", etc.  (So in jazz, e.g. "Parker's Mood" (Charles Parker), the album "Saxophone Colossus" (Sonny Rollins), Lester Young's greatest performances with the Count Basie Orchestra and with smaller groups in the 1930s---that sort of thing.)  The first two or three pieces I'll link here were would be my top Cecil choices for such a list (where they definitely belong). Anyone seriously interested in music owes it to themselves to listen to these pieces, several times if you don't connect the first time. You will probably find yourself richly rewarded. "Straight masterpieces", as someone said in a different context. If it weren't for the fact that Taylor grew up in Queens and settled in Brooklyn, I'd be tempted to refer to it as real Uptown Funk as well.

1. "Bulbs" from "Into the Hot", one side of a 1962 LP issued under the name of Gil Evans, but with the "Into the Hot" side composed and performed by Taylor and his group (the other, much less consequential, side, "Out of the Cool", was by Johnny Carisi). Evans was a great arranger, known especially for his work with Miles Davis, but I think he's generally considered to have acted merely as producer for this session. By turns, and often simultaneously, funky, sardonic, spooky, transcendently beautiful. Make sure and listen all the way to the end...where some amazingly beautiful things happen involving lines made of hierarchies of ascending arpeggios, calling to or layered over each other, decelerating into some calm after the high-energy drive of the central portion of the piece, then crystallizing into a hard-to-describe, somewhat raunchy, sardonic, and joyously dancing bit of riffishness, expanding again into transcendence as the arpeggiated lines layer over the cyclic riffing, then come apart centrifugally into jagged notes and long tones relaxing toward silence as they ascend, fading, into the empyrean.  Or whatever. Just don't miss it.

Cecil Taylor, piano; Jimmy Lyons, alto sax; Archie Shepp, tenor sax; Henry Grimes, bass; Sunny Murray, drums.

Like many people, probably, I was turned on to "Bulbs" long ago by a piece collected in Amiri Baraka (then writing as Leroi Jones)'s book "Black Music" (at Barnes and Noble; at Amazon) which reviewed the whole Taylor side of "Into the Hot/Out of the Cool" and singled out "Bulbs" especially. I picked it up as a teenager as part of a three-LP Impulse sampler, "Energy Essentials", being sold as a cutout, which also featured things like a 10-15 minute sampler from the alternate take of Coltrane's "Ascension", and various pieces by Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, and such. I also highly recommend the other "Into the Hot" pieces. Some motives or melodic moves from "Bulbs" also appear in the other pieces. Because it is more of a contrast with "Bulbs", I recommend starting with "Mixed", where the embedded video below will take you on first click, and then replaying the video from the beginning if you want to hear "Pots" as well. "Mixed" adds Ted Curson on trumpet and Roswell Rudd on trombone, and starts in a low-key, slow, out-of-tempo vein, with muted trumpet as well as Rudd's tromobone in the mix, spacious textures and much attention to varieties of timbre, slightly reminiscent of certain veins of 20th century classical music, then morphs into a very pretty ballad episode (I hear a slight suggestion of "All the Things You Are" in places, but would be interested to know if there are any more clearly recognizable standards being alluded to here), then is taken over by a repeating, somewhat sardonic riff, which alternates with a three-note ascending chromatic line (this is one reference to the "Bulbs" material, where the line is one note longer, a chromatic 1-2-3-2), develops more complexity and segues into a superbly improvised piano-and sax duet. Great stuff from Archie Shepp on tenor. And on and on... I would class "Mixed" as a masterpiece also.

2. The second unmissable masterpiece (well, let's count "Mixed" and call it the third) I'm going to recommend is "Indent", a solo piano performance recorded in concert at Antioch College in Ohio in 1973. It starts out with incredibly funky pentatonic motives, layered, developed, combined with a more chordal "second theme" (perhaps, and with variants), and these and other materials that are introduced are built up into an increasingly complex structure which ends up spinning into intense and dissonant flurries of note-clusters. This kind of cycle is repeated a few times in the piece, with different thematic material, and also with recurrences of earlier material. A masterful composed-and-improvised sonata. If the dissonant flurries put you off at first (which won't necessarily be the case!), just hope that they will make more sense on repeated listenings, and know that there are calmer and more consonant passages, often of great harmonic and melodic beauty, on the way.

For more solo piano of this sort, Silent Tongues (Live at Montreux) was in heavy rotation (on the sorts of stations that played this stuff at all, i.e. WEMU (Eastern Michigan University) and WUOM (University of Michigan)) when I was first getting into Taylor's music.  I recommend repeated listening to one of his solo records until it is fully appreciated, though, rather than skipping around; Indent was the one that got me into it and is still my favorite.  Once you dig it, there are many more to explore...

Now, for further listening, I'll embed a few more things that I'm familiar with and love.

3. To represent early (i.e. late 1950s) Cecil, here's a 1959 take on Cole Porter's Love for Sale with Buell Neidlinger on bass and Denis Charles on drums. I wonder if anyone bought this for the hilarious (in context) noirsploitation cover expecting some smoky late-night make-out music to play when bringing a date back to their pad...I hope so. The introduction is remarkably prescient of the kind of playing Taylor was to do in later work such as Indent that makes no reference to standards, but the fusion of this with subtly-transformed but recognizable standards-and-bebop style and material is a beautiful thing. (It is further advanced in that direction than on some of his records from a few years earlier.)

4. In the abovementioned appreciation, Ethan Iverson is of course right to cite the 1960 This Nearly Was Mine, also with the Neidlinger/Charles rhythm team, as a supreme Cecil achievement in the realm of reimagined standards.  Definitely another unmissable masterpiece.  Mosaic Records reissued most of the Candid sessions with Neidlinger, Charles, and Taylor (and often Archie Shepp on tenor and Lyons on alto), including this performance, and this set is a highly recommended collection, once you have Into the Hot and Indent, for getting further into still relatively accessible Taylor.  Unfortunately, although I bought the CD version when it came out, it is now out of print and used copies seem to be very expensive, so getting the individual Candid albums seems to be the way to go now.  The World of Cecil Taylor, Air, Cell Walk For Celeste, Jumpin' Punkins, New York City R&B.  (There also appear to be some multi-album sets but I am afraid these might be fly-by-night European ripoff editions.)

5. For more great ensemble Taylor, still relatively accessible, I recommend as the next step after Into the Hot, the 1966 Blue Note album Conquistador, specifically the title piece. A long form, well-structured and full of variety, with lots of beautiful episodes and material, and great improvisation. Early in the piece there is one of my favorite Jimmy Lyons alto solos. Lyons often brings beboppish lines into Cecil's free framework, often to great effect, but sometimes (not in anything I've linked above, I think!) I can find them a bit repetitive or unimaginative (as standard bebop lines can also become on occasion). I love the transition from an episode of long, pretty trumpet (or is it fluegelhorn?) lines by Bill Dixon (at 5'37 he seems to begin to quote Miles Davis on the Davis/Gil Evans Sketches of Spain, but takes the line elsewhere!), to funky vamps beginning at 7'20 or so, behind an appealing rising melody, aimed at gradually bringing the energy back up, and ultimately taking it into a top-notch Taylor solo. This solo is pretty intense, with a lot of the lines that sound like flurries of note-clusters, but interspersed on fairly short time-scales with short bits of other material...and the control and variety of structure in the intense fast lines is great. The beautiful rising melody-over-vamp recurs momentarily to mark the end of this solo, and things go on from there.

The other long track, With(Exit) is also superb. I have had this on LP, again since teenage years, but this remastered version sounds pretty great even on Youtube... I may have to buy the CD.

The other ensemble Blue Note recording of the era, Unit Structures, is also excellent.  It seems to have gotten more attention for a while.  For instance, Martin Williams included Enter Evening (Soft Line Structure) to represent Taylor in the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz that he edited, a sort of gesture toward establishing a jazz canon, back in 1973.  That piece (the second track on Unit Structures) is mostly slow-paced and out of strict tempo, mellower and more reminiscent of European-rooted avant-garde classical music and atonality, than much of what Taylor was doing at the time (though I don't mean to suggest that avant-garde "classical" music was its primary inspiration or that that whiff of it is very strong, or that it is strictly atonal).  The first piece, "Steps", on the other hand, gets into an intense alto improvisation (I am not sure at the moment whether it is Lyons or Ken McIntyre) that might remind one at places of Albert Ayler, and reminds me of Joseph Jarman's intense sax work on the Art Ensemble of Chicago's masterpiece Fanfare for the Warriors (also the name of the album, which as a whole is also a masterpiece).  The solo on "Steps" is somewhat in the "screaming" vein of free jazz...not really something I would recommend as accessible to someone new to Taylor and avant-garde jazz although you never know.  (Ditto for the sax work on Fanfare.)  I am enjoying Unit Structures a lot and will put it into heavier listening rotation if I find time to.  (As I write this, around the 30 minute mark of the whole-LP Youtube video of Unit Strucures, Jimmy Lyons is combining is free boppish lines with more avant-garde stuff in a great, melodically inventive vein.)  But for those new to Taylor I recommend sticking to Conquistador at first.

6.  Finally, if you really want to sample a full-bore, hour-long exorcism and communal communion with the spirit world, Streams and Chorus of Seed, the only track on the live album Dark To Themselves (recorded at the Ljublana Jazz Festival on June 18, 1976) is your ticket. If you are just trying to learn to dig Taylor for the first time, you might want to skip this, but not to go here or somewhere similar is not to give a full picture of Taylor. Besides Taylor on piano it features most prominently the tenor sax of David S. Ware, as well as Jimmy Lyons on alto, Raphe Malik on trumpet, and Marc Edwards on drums. You will probably want headphones for this one---use good ones, as I doubt cheap earbuds will be up to reproducing these sounds accurately enough. Watch the volume, though. The screaming sax of David Ware, especially, on this can be a bit hard to take particularly since it goes on for a long time---but it is a powerful statement (or at any rate, powerful--I am not sure "statement" is the right word) and there is simultaneously often a lot of interest going on in Cecil's piano to focus on. The LP that was the initially-issued version was a heavily cut version of this---the whole thing could have been issued on a two-LP set but perhaps it was thought it would be too much for people. Indeed I am having to take a break from this at the 37 minute mark or so. The CD edition I'm linking to the Youtube upload of includes, I think, the whole performance and has much better sound than the LP. I am still not quite sure what to make of this performance overall, but it has much to offer and is definitely pure, uncompromising Taylor. But I'm sure what to make of Taylor overall: a first-rank master whose creations will be with us, I hope, for as long as humans exist and love music.

De Guise-Langlois & Morgenstern Trio in Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, and Dover String Quartet in Mendelssohn Op. 80, at the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival

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On Wednesday, March 7, 2018, at the Leo Rich theater in the Tucson Convention Center, I heard two of the best chamber music performances I've ever heard.  As part of the 25th Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois and the Morgenstern Trio performed Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the end of time), for a standard piano trio (piano, violin, cello) plus clarinet, and the Dover Quartet performed Mendelssohn's String Quartet in F minor, Opus 80.  You may find in my reviews that I tend to emphasize the positive, and not belabor it when a performance could have been better, instead concentrating on how much I have gotten out of the performance that was actually given.  So let me emphasize that that is not the case here: one could imagine performing these works a little differently, perhaps, but not better than was done here.  This was an extraordinary, unforgettable evening of music.

Program for the first performance of Quatuor Pour la Fin du Temps

The Messiaen is a piece I have valued for decades; I know it to the point of recognizing many of the themes when played in concert, but (unlike some other works) I have not internalized it to the extent of being able to replay significant parts of it in my head.  I have long considered it one of the most significant pieces of twentieth century chamber music; the performance by de Guise-Langlois and the Morgenstern made it clear that it is one of the pinnacles of music of any time or place.  It is inspired by the biblical book of Revelations, and deeply informed, as was all of Messiaen's music, by the composer's intense and very personal form of Catholic faith, and while it should be experienced in this light, with the aid of Messiaen's own program notes (and the obvious signposts provided by the movement titles), it is of universal value and appeal regardless of the auditor's faith or lack of faith.    A translation of Messiaen's notes is included in the Wikipedia article on the piece.  (References like "blue and orange chords" evince Messiaen's synaesthesia, in which harmonies evoked experiences of color.)  I won't try much to describe the significance of the music or the experience of listening to it, since Messiaen's notes give a pretty good idea of what's in store.  In this regard I'll just say that he is strikingly successful at achieving---roughly speaking, as the color experiences will not be available to most of us and the specific religious references are more inspiration or metaphor than something reproducible or verifiable---what he describes in the notes:  the music is powerful, beautiful, glorious.

Alex Ross' 2004 New Yorker article (reviewing a book on the piece by Rebecca Rischin, and a performance by the Met Chamber ensemble) provides further valuable background and reaction to the piece, which he calls "the most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century".  It was composed primarily in 1940-41 while Messiaen was imprisoned in the German prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII, and first performed there in 1941.  Parts of it were apparently begun earlier (notably the third movement, Abîme des Oiseaux (Abyss of the Birds, for solo clarinet).  I am not sure how deeply the music was influenced by the conditions under which it was composed, since in style, content, and intensity it does not seem to me radically different from his work before and after the war.  It's possible that the composition of the work for a medium-size chamber group may be one of the most important effects of the quartet's origin in a POW camp---it may be my own ignorance, but most of the other great works I am aware of by Messiaen are either for piano (or piano and voice), or large groups like orchestra or orchestra with chorus.

Ross differs from Messiaen in how he describes the "Seven Trumpets" movement, writing:  "the gentlest apocalypse imaginable. The “seven trumpets” and other signs of doom aren’t roaring sound-masses...".  Whereas for Messiaen it is "Music of stone, formidable granite sound; irresistible movement of steel, huge blocks of purple rage, icy drunkenness. [...]terrible fortissimo[...]".  How one experiences it may depend on the performance, I guess, as well as the auditor.  Ross calls the "Trumpets" section "Second Coming jam sessions", and in connection with the piece overall (not necessarily this movement), my wife also mentioned a kinship with jazz.  This should be understood in light of the rather wide range of jazz my wife and I listen to --- not just bebop and swing masters like Bob Rockwell and colleagues, but avant-garde artists like Charles Gayle and Peter Broetzmann, and modern if not quite avant-garde groups like Kenny Werner's quartet, Charles Lloyd with Bill Frisell, and the Billy Hart Quartet, just to mention a few groups we have recently heard live.  Indeed, the Lloyd/Frisell combo and the Hart quartet (with Ethan Iverson on piano, Mark Turner on sax, and Ben Street on bass) are especially prone to episodes of Messiaenic intensity: continually evolving ecstatic/reflective grooves, carefully crafted harmonic coloration, dancing rhythmic complexities, calm serenities bringing to mind Baudelairean realms where "tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté, / Luxe, calme et volupté".

As I said above, the performance by de Guise-Langlois and the Morgenstern was one of the best things I've ever heard.  Clichés like "riveting", "stunning", etc...apply without reservation and quite literally:  my attention did not wander for a moment during the long performance, and the audience sat in the proverbial stunned silence for ten or twenty seconds after the musicians lowered their bows and instruments, before breaking into a standing ovation.  Of course, S.O.'s have become disconcertingly common these days (it especially annoys me when people stand and clap as a prelude to an early run for the exits), but this one was fully deserved. Ross' generally positive review of the performance he attended remarks that it "lacked the total unanimity that makes a great performance of the Quartet seem like a mind-reading séance".  This performance had no such lack, although our close vantage point in this relatively small auditorium disclosed that the mind-reading was taking place in the usual way, through ears and eyes, as they very actively looked at each other, nodded for cues, sometimes swaying to the music.  It was indeed a kind of séance.  De Guise-Langlois' clarinet playing is remarkable in its dynamic and expressive range and sensitivity to the other musicians; I got the impression (perhaps misguided) that her attention to the other musicians may have been the crucial ingredient binding them into a unit capable of such a sublime achievement.  She has a wide range of expressive timbre at her command, but overall I would say skewed toward clarity and purity of tone.  Catherine Klipfel's tone, on a Steinway D, was great for this piece, bell-like with just enough of a touch of hollowness and edge to add complexity and not to be icily pure.  Everyone played superbly and I will be on the lookout for the Morgenstern and de Guise-Langlois in other repertoire.  De Guise-Langlois seems to me clearly a rising superstar of the classical clarinet.  I didn't find any single link at Youtube that I felt gives an adequate idea of the full range of what she can do, in a sympathetic medium-size chamber context.  I did very much like a contemporary (though relatively conservative stylistically) duet with piano, composed by Kevin Puts.

The space above the stage in the Leo Rich auditorium was larded with microphones for this performance, and highlights of Tucson Chamber Music Festival are eventually broadcast on Classical KUAT-FM, 90.5/89.7 FM, so I recommend trying to find out when this will happen and streaming the broadcast over the web.  (It may be a long time from now, though.)  I would be thrilled if it eventuated in a full-fidelity digital recording---the Arizona Chamber Music Association does sell CDs of past festival highlights, so we can hope this performance will appear on such a disc in the future.

Ross recommends the 1975 recording by Tashi as "still unsurpassed" (at least in 2004).  I have long had this on LP, but have done most of my listening to this Deutsche Grammophon CD featuring Daniel Barenboim on piano (Youtube link here).  I also recall getting a lot out of an excellent performance at the Santa Fe Chamber Music festival in the 1990s, and a really wonderful performance of the solo clarinet movement at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's concert series a few years back.  I think it was part of a concert by the ensemble Eighth Blackbird.  I haven't revisited the recordings I own since the Tucson concert, because I don't want anything to displace it in my memory, although I think it is now time to start listening, as this is a piece of music I want to "git in my soul," as Charles Mingus might say.

I'm not sure if I'd heard of the Dover quartet before this performance of the Mendelssohn.   I quickly decided that the Dover is one of my favorite string quartets ever.  String quartets can sometimes sound strident---an effect that may depend partly on the type of strings they are using.  The Dover was anything but, with a warm, even at times mellow timbre that nevertheless had plenty of texture and was compatible with great intensity and drive where needed.    The F minor quartet, Opus 80, was composed in the shadow of the death of Mendelssohn's beloved sister Fanny; within a few months of its composition, Mendelssohn too was dead.  It is a masterpiece, and the Dover did it full justice.  The outer movements had plenty of intensity.  The slow movement had a bit more autumnal, meditative, mellow pastoral feel --- I had a sense that this movement, too, could have been given more intensity and a different, more anguished, emotional tone in places, but not the sense that such an interpretation would have been preferable, particularly in light of the Sturm und Drang that was often in evidence in the outer movements.  An outstanding performance, also fully deserving of the standing ovation that ensued.

Ensembl Mitdvest: Muczynski, Bach, Birtwistle, and Dvorak at Kastelskirken, Copenhagen

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At Kastelskirken in the Kastellet fort in Copenhagen today (19.11.2017) a wind quintet drawn from the Danish Ensembl MidtVest played Robert Muczynski's woodwind quintet, opus 45; J. S. Bach's Partita in A minor for solo flute and basso continuo (bass clarinet); Harrison Birtwistle's Five Distances for Woodwind Quintet, and an arrangement by David Jolley of Antonin Dvorak's String Quartet # 10 in E minor, opus 51. With its white rectangular interior and tall mullioned windows with clear panes affording views of the 17th century buildings, with their steep tiled roofs, around the spacious raked-gravel courtyard inside the fort, and the Danish state flag with swallowtail streaming in the wind, as well as strollers and the occasional patrolling pair of soldiers on the grassy outer rampart, Kastelskirken was an atmospheric location for a concert on a blustery late-fall afternoon. The quintet is Charlotte Norholt, flute; Blanca Gleisner, oboe; Tommaso Longquich, clarinet; Niel Page, horn, and Yavor Petkov, bassoon.

I did not previously know American composer Robert Muczynski (1929-2010), and am delighted to have been introduced to him. The wind quintet is a super piece, in a melodic, more or less tonal style, with plenty of brio and humor at times, especially in the opening Allegro risoluto, but also beauty and seriousness, especially in the second movement (Andante). His style is personal rather than derivative, but to give a rough idea what to expect, one might cite some commonalities with impressionism, flecked with a little bluesiness in places (to my ear); Poulenc and other composers of that era; Rorem, William Schuman, and others of that ilk, even while I had a clear sense that he was aware of post-tonal developments and able to incorporate aspects of them where it made musical sense. A great pleasure to hear and I will seek out a recording and other chances to hear it again. An interview with Muczynski by classical DJ Bruce McDuffie is very much worth reading.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Bach also. Flutist Norholt used quite a bit more rubato than I'm used to in Bach, especially in the very familiar first movement of this piece, but it was not an impediment to enjoyment.

It's always good to finish off the first part of a program with a substantial, crowd-pleasing potboiler to send folks into intermission with, and the MidtVest did just that with Harrison Birtwistle's Five Distances. The English composer, born in 1934, is generally considered a pretty austere, uncompromising atonal composer, and this was no largo sweetota, but the piece has structure, recognizable recurring elements, variety and beauty. The MidtVests' performance seemed perhaps more expressive and intense, than the Boulez/Ensemble Intercontemporain performance I linked above, though it's hard to compare a live performance to a recording. The audience (which I estimate numbered around 70-90) seemed to have no trouble connecting with it, and it received a rousing round of applause.

After the break, an excellent performance of a familiar and well-loved Dvorak string quartet, arranged for wind quintet. At first I though it was missing something in the phrasing that could perhaps only be provided by the original strings, but fairly quickly settled in to enjoying a committed and successful performance.

An excellent concert all round, with the superb, and to me, unfamiliar, Muczynksi and Birtwistle pieces real standouts. Kudos to the MidtVest for top-notch playing and for succeeding with an adventurous program.

Harmaleighs at Fuller Lodge, Pretty Picture, Dirty Brush

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Great concert by indie folk/pop duo The Harmaleighs (Haley Grant, guitar & vocals; Kaylee Jasperson, bass & vocals) Halast night (Feb. 19) at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos, accompanied by Mike (?) Baker on guitar and supporting vocals.   I bought their excellent album Pretty Picture, Dirty Brush at the show; it's also on Spotify and at itunes.  A new album will be out May 5th. Here's a live acoustic duo version of the first song, "Hesitate", on Pretty Picture:

I guess "Diamond Ring" might appear on the upcoming album. Here it is live with the addition of Baker:

A group of three girls from Los Alamos High, the Hopeless Distractions, did an excellent warm up set of three or four songs, covers although they told me they are working on a few things. They are in the same vein---indie/country/folk/pop, sweet and somewhat ethereal vocal harmonies.

Huge thanks to Los Alamos High history teacher John Lathrop for organizing the concert, and the Harmaleighs for playing this little burg! I'll update this post with a few photos soon...

Schumann: Papillons, Blumenstück, Novellette; Novaes, Arrau, Sokolov

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Since my last post involved some Schumann piano pieces, I thought I should link to some performances of them:

Papillons, Op. 2, Guiomar Novaes, piano:

Blumenstück, Opus 19 in Db major, Claudio Arrau, piano:

Novellette, Op. 18 No. 8 in F# minor.  Grigory Sokolov, piano:

Orion Weiss with the Salzburg Marionettes: Schumann, Debussy

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Not sure why this has been sitting around as a draft, but I'm belatedly posting it now; good music is always relevant:

Really glad I finally decided to go see and hear the Salzburg Marionette Theatre with pianist Orion Weiss play Los Alamos on Nov. 1 (2014), because Weiss' Schumann was a revelation, and his Debussy superb as well.  With relatively spare sets and costuming, the Marionettes accompanied Weiss in Schumann's Papillons, Opus 2, a succession of short dance movements bookended  by an introduction and finale.  The Marionettes' storyline seemed to involve a love, or at least flirtation, triangle.  Relatively lighthearted, as was the music (at least for Schumann).  The music was my main focus and it held my attention.  Superb music, superbly played.  Perhaps even better were the two longer pieces, played without Marionette action, the Blumenstück in Db, Op. 19, and the Novelette no. 8 in F# minor.  I'm no expert on Schumann's piano music, but I have the impression that many of Schumann's longer works in general can be difficult to interpret effectively---it is easy for them to appear unstructured, longwinded, and/or even a bit repetitive.  No such problem here.  Long developmental passages had a definite trajectory, and both on the level of phrases and the overall structure, Weiss penetrated to the musical meaning of the piece instead of just letting the notes unspool.   When I spoke with Orion after the concert he mentioned that it can be challenging to make the main theme in these pieces still meaningful, and bring something new to it, each time it recurs; he definitely succeeded.  I've sometimes felt like the Los Alamos Concert Association's Steinway D can sound not quite brilliant enough, and perhaps like the action is a bit heavy, slowing things down a bit.  Not so much recently, though.  I enjoy hearing how different that piano can sound each time a different artist plays it, and Weiss got a great tone out of it, balanced between brilliance and purity and warmth and complexity, and played with great facility though not in a technically showy manner.  (I suspect that just to sound at ease in these pieces is quite a technical challenge!).

Unfortunately although Weiss has quite a few CDs out, for example Scarlatti sonatas, and Rhapsody in Blue (on different CDs!) on Naxos, his Schumann is not available on disc.  If he ever puts out a disc of Schumann, I'll snap it up; in the meanwhile I'm going to investigate the piano music in more depth.

After intermission, we were treated to Debussy's relatively rarely performed La Boîte a Joujoux (The Toy Box).  This was explicitly composed as music for a marionette ballet, and the sets were much more elaborate and beautifully done, the music and action perfectly integrated.  The music, appropriately, is a tad less adventurous than the great piano-only works like the Preludes, with perhaps more standard sounding pentatonic and whole tone material, and a bit less complex and coloristic harmony, a bit more emphatic and regular rhythm at times (and explicit punctuation of the action), but still, very rewarding, and perfectly played.  Atogether a wonderful, transporting evening of music and stagecraft.

Addendum:  I found this Nov. 2 post by the piano technician for LACA--- if it refers to the previous night's concert, as the photo of the artist also suggests, then I join Orion in thanking him for a great job getting the piano ready.

Local Scene: Leaves and Trees, Hannover

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Great to be somewhere that has a local music scene.  Hannover indie-folk band Leaves and Trees released their first EP on April 23rd.  The release show/party at LUX was full by the time we arrived (from a concert of Max Reger's choral music at the Marktkirche by way of  the Pfannekuchen Haus) so we hung around sheltering from the wind in front of a locked door facing the Schwarzer Bär tram stop, that appeared to be next to the stage as it transmitted the sound quite well.  Only a couple of beers from a nearby kiosk would have been necessary to complete the Just Kids Too Young to Get Inside picture, but we didn't bother... good sounds coming through the door, though.  Nice arrangements, with good use of cello.  I'll buy the EP at Bandcamp  (where it can also be streamed).

The signature tune is Who Is That Man, for which a very well done video that tells a story that goes beyond the lyrics, is available on YouTube (you'll get an accurate impression of the local woodlands from watching it):

There's also a nice video of lead singer Fabian Baumert singing another song from the EP at a singer-songwriter slam at local club Kulturpalast Linden:

I don't think every post about a band's new EP needs to be a "review", comparing it to the writer's favorite bands and the world's top artists, etc... and opining about a band's chance of "making it" instead of just enjoying their music. Nevertheless, since this EP and the Who Is That Man? video evince very high production values that might suggest eventual goals wider than just local or regional success, a few comments along those lines. I think that's not an implausible possibility. I don't really know what the indie-folk scene or possibilities are these days---but a little investigation suggests there are some pretty nice festivals and things around Europe with bands I enjoyed checking out on the web. (The opening band for L&T's LUX show was one.) Maybe there was a moment a few years back, when with Mumford and Sons and Bon Iver and such, indie-folkish singer-songwriter music was going mainstream, and maybe that moment is over, making some modest success for this type of band, that sort that can lead to an extended career for a band making a living from music, tougher. I like all the songs on the EP, like the overall band sound, and like Fabian Baumert's singing. A little bit of gentle, almost Nordic North-German melancholy in the mix is very nice. Uncomplicated, but not completely predictable, song and chord structure, beautifully arranged. Relaxed tempos and feel in general. The sound on the EP seems very good, possibly a little crunchy in the treble but I have only streamed it yet; the FLAC and CD may fix that. I'm reluctant to say such a thing, but I do think that to have a broader---say, international---appeal, it would be good if Mr. Baumert's accent when singing in English, which is generally quite good, were even more natural. Some of the lyrics are hard to understand, and in this kind of music that can be crucial. On a light note, it is risky to include "Whoa", let alone "Whoa-oah-oh", in lyrics, especially when you're playing acoustic guitar. It works out fine here.

If you have a local band of this quality, go to their shows, buy their music, and support them. Here's hoping Leaves and Trees get the opportunity to write and play much more and continue to grow.

Bach, Johannes-Passion, Bachchor und Orchester Hannover, Marktkirche

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I attended a performance of J.S. Bach's Passion according to St. John (Johannespassion) by the  Hannover Bach Choir and Orchestra last night at the Marktkirche in the central market square of Hannover's old town. I may or may not have listened my way through this work on LP as a youngster, and probably did overhear it on the stereo growing up, but this is probably my first careful listen to the whole piece. (About two hours, no intermission though a brief episode of tuning between the two sections.)  A very rewarding if, obviously, fairly solemn two hours.  Really superb choral singing with the different vocal parts sufficiently distinct and the words very clear (well, especially with the aid of a program given my limited German) but the choir unified.  Remarkably dramatic effect when the choir portrays the crowds present at the high priest's and Pilate's interrogations of Jesus, contrasting with the choir's other main role as expressing Christian sentiments from a point of view that is not necessarily within the narrative aspect of the piece (but might also be taken so, as expressing another aspect of experience of some in the crowd).  The latter is usually in hymn-like chorales, but also often (as in the opening "Herr, unser Herrscher dessen Ruhm") in more complex and extended episodes with more involvement of the orchestra.  The visible wind instruments were baroque in appearance, there was a large lute, and I suspect the string section and most or all of the rest of the orchestra was original style instruments as well.  Tempos were relatively fast, and the resulting sound was excellent, though for some reason the orchestra came across with less clarity than the singers---the relatively reverberant acoustic of the tall, relatively open North German gothic brick hall church maybe having something to do with that. On balance I think the original instruments and the chosen tempos gave a somewhat rough, unprettified, but still accurate and well-played, effect that worked extremely well in the piece, accentuating its seriousness.  Some passages, in which the choir and orchestra engaged in extended contrapuntal reflection upon a dramatic development, or expression of the crowd's intention or reaction, with voices and instruments becoming a swirl of fast-moving harmonies and passing tones, attained an eerie and dramatic effect that reminded me of some twentieth century postserialism, maybe Ligeti or Penderecki.   The soloists were really excellent and did everything well.  Such a performance is definitely not about attention-getting individual vocals but all the soloists did have, in performances that were consistent throughout, some songs that really stood out in expressing key moments in the drama.   Alto Christian Rohrbach has a beautiful clear voice and delivered "Es ist vollbracht!" perfectly; the soprano soloist (either Miriam Meyer or Nadine Dilger; two sopranos are listed in the program) was especially affecting (though never overdoing it) with "Zerfließe, mein Herze" ("Dein Jesus ist tot!"); bass Albrecht Pohl did a great job of handling a variety of vocal tasks in combining the role of Pilate with many additional bass arias.  Johannes Strauß was especially outstanding as the Evangelist---he has an amazingly clear and beautiful tenor voice, deployed with perfect control.

Of course an extended piece like this with religious and dramatic aspects is an occasion for plenty of reflection on musical aspects of the piece but also on these in relation to the human condition.  One of the more interesting aspects of this piece for me was the amount of attention given to the political and social aspect of the story: the interaction with Pilate (I don't fully understand what's going on here yet), the issue about Jesus being called "King of the Jews" but asserting "My kingdom is not of this world", the high priest and the servant, and later the crowd after the exchange with Pilate "Shall I crucify your king?" "We have no King but the Emperor", calling for Jesus' crucifixion.  (There seems to be an emphasis on "the Jews" delivering Jesus to Pilate and calling for his crucifixion in this text.)

A superb, clear, controlled and well-thought-out performance and a perfect way to get better acquainted with this serious, reflective, many-faceted masterwork of Bach's.

Duke Ellington Sacred Concerts---Oxford University Jazz Orchestra and Schola Cantorum Oxford

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Just came from an extraordinary concert at the Sheldonian Theatre in which the Oxford University Jazz Orchestra and the Schola Cantorum of Oxford performed a version of Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts, with two pieces from composer and baritone Roderick Williams' Oxford Blues Service inserted in the Sacred Concert running order.  This constituted the second half of the program; I'll perhaps write in another post about the first half, which featured many good things but a sound balance that was slightly problematic at times, with the band occasionally drowning out the excellent guest soloist, alto saxophonist Nigel Hitchcock.  (I can't allude to the first half, though, without mentioning the really superb singing of first-year Olivia Williams in "Lookin' Back" and "Feelin' Good".)  In the second half, the balance was suddenly almost perfect, the bass acoustic throughout, the swing consistent and unforced, and immediately with the meditative baritone saxophone solo, originally performed by Harry Carney, that introduces "In the Beginning God" we were immersed in Duke Ellington's world of sound and his personal take on religion and spirituality.  Besides the excellence of the band, choir, and soloists, the conducting and preparation of the musicians by Schola conductor James Burton was clearly crucial to the success of this performance.  Nigel Hitchcock's beautiful alto playing was another crucial ingredient, but the regular band members who played key solos, like the baritone sax in "In the Beginning", the clarinet in "Freedom", the plunger-muted trumpet in "The Shepherd" did themselves and the Duke proud as well.  The Roderick Williams pieces "Gray Skies Passing Over" and "The Lord's Prayer"  fit in perfectly, being in a somewhat harmonically lush jazz-to-mid-twentieth-century pop vocal style very similar to parts of the Ellington vocal score, but more contrapuntal, with, I think, an echo of English, and even perhaps Renaissance, church music.

Besides getting real swing from the ensemble, Burton kept things relaxed but accurate, with a real dynamic range, the band in balance with the soloists (Ellington's writing presumably helps here too), expressive phrasing and control over the pace and development of each piece.  "Freedom" was another standout, done with intense feeling and great energy, drawing roars of approval from the audience.  But all the movements were executed superbly, and there were many such moments.  The tap-dancing of Annette Walker, in "David Danced Before The Lord" was another highlight.

This was an utterly professional-sounding performance that felt infused with the passion of people who are together reaching a level they may or may not have reached before, in the zone, giving the audience a musical experience not to be forgotten.  The Sacred Concerts may be a work best experienced live---it was certainly immensely effective, enjoyable, powerful, and moving in this performance.  Bass player and alto Lila Chrisp who is in both groups apparently had the idea that they should join forces in this piece.  I'm very grateful to everyone involved for making this happen and really filling the Sheldonian with the spirit---especially the spirit of Duke Ellington and his band.