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Day 157. Toscanini.

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

I think I am finally going to have to accept the fact that daily blog posts are a thing of the past for me. On one hand, work is keeping me so busy (and often into the night). On another, I have gotten little of my own composing done over the past few weeks. Part of me is bummed about this, but there is another aspect at play as well. As more and more of the CDs disappear from the front layer of shelves, more and more from the back are being pulled down for ripping. The quality of the discs here is still better then average for the most part, but there are lots of discs back here that, while I have listened and enjoyed them, they don’t necessarily bring up strong memories or personal history. I glanced over the blog as a whole a bit this past week and I have come across some strong memories that seem to be with me almost every day, and I also noticed that I have ‘found’ memories that I thought were lost (and now returned because of this project). I’m sure those aren’t done, but I am also sure at this point that they will be occurring with less frequency.

For me, starting this project almost a year ago was a needed distraction for what was a difficult time for Tamiko and me. Not between us, but due to situations in our lives that were, at the time, beyond our control in many ways. The blog provided some welcome distraction, and the enormity of the project itself gave me a positive outlet for some not always so positive energy. It also gave me focus on my life, family and one of the things that make me happiest in the world (music) at a time when lots of negative energy was flowing our way. I think this outlet for me helped me protect my girls from some of the negative that was hitting us and affecting me greatly at times.

Plus, there is just more music in the house now. Not that there wasn’t before, but the variety has grown considerably. Tamiko and I now have something different on every night as we wind down like we did when we first moved in together, Mira is discovering new ‘pretty music’ all the time and Celia and I start our evening reading with a new composer or musician just about every night. It’s pretty amazing how I have found something so great as a result of such a difficult situation (but, that is just how it goes sometimes).

Anyways, on to some music, and tonight I have been working on a stack of 11 2-Disc sets… the Toscanini / NBC Symphony Orchestra remastered and cleaned up sets the RCA put out in the late 90s. 6 discs of Beethoven, the pairs of discs covering quite a bit of the symphonic repertoire. All in mono. And while these are old recordings, it is remarkable how dynamic they are. I love watching videos of Toscanini conducting, and an image of him ‘shhhshing’ his orchestra almost always comes to mind (my friend Colin was able to do a wonderful imitation of this). It strikes me that Toscanini new that there was really a maximum of loud that you could get out of an orchestra, but with enough coaxing you could always get people to play a little quieter. This makes the louder parts seem more so by contrast, and this led to a large number of very dynamic recordings at a time when the technology in use was still quite limited.

Toscanini’s interpretations are seen by many people, especially today, as a bit off. I tend to find them a bit operatic, and sometimes overly dramatic. I don’t really have a problem with this, and like Glenn Gould I think that what you are getting is Toscanini performing a piece rather then just the piece itself. I wouldn’t suggest any of his recordings as the way to get to know a work (same with Gould – do NOT listen to the Gould ‘Goldberg Variations’ as the first version you listen to). Both are performers that you should go to once you know a piece pretty well. THEN – they are excellent examples of what great musicians can do with the art of interpretation. As I listen right now to Beethoven’s Seventh, I feel like I have a good idea about what is Toscanini and what is Beethoven. And the two are having a great conversation. It is my like I am having a seance as I listen to the ghosts of these two musicians play with each other… truly a treat.

Tags: Beethoven, Toscanini, Wagner
Posted in Celia, Classical, DAC Project, Mira, Tamiko | No Comments »

Day 153. Some folk / blues collections and some Mozart.

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

Tonight was some folk / blues and Mozart. Mostly a few collections (including some old Tower Records samplers and the ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ soundtrack) and the Muddy Waters Chess compilation, and the Mozart discs were made up of the Piano Quartets and his six quartets for Haydn. The folk and blues compilation ripping though was inspired by an assembly held for the student’s at Celia’s school. Every month, a few students from each K-2 grade classes are chosen to be honored students. All the other students in the class get to put together a list of why the honored students are people they like, the teacher adds something, and then the principal of the school gives each kid a little certificate with the list. During the assembly, the list is read, and parents are invited to attend. It is really very sweet, and Celia was in the first group of honored students for this school year. Tamiko and I made it to the assembly and were just so impressed with how this school teaches kids about what recognition is and how this sort of thing really makes them feel welcome in these first few years of school. And there was lots of positive reenforcement for good behavior with the kids (which is pretty impressive considering that there were 150 or so kids under the age of 8 in one room… they were all great, and they were told so).

Seeing Celia get her certificate was great. She stood with her classmates, waved at friends and blew kisses. She waved at me, Tamiko and Mira, and didn’t hide her head when the principal read about her. It’s amazing to see my little girl adapting to this new environment so quickly and so well. There are, of course, tons of challenges ahead but so far, she seems to be enjoying herself and learning so much.

My next favorite part of all this though we the fact that the music teacher was an important part of the assembly. Once things officially started, all the students stood up, turned towards the parents and sang a song together. This wasn’t a concert, no one was dressed up or told what was going to be performed ahead of time. The principal mentioned a song, and the kids sang it. What made it so special for me was the sense that it wasn’t special – it was just part of their day.

Even more amazing to me though was what happened before anything officially began. The music teacher started to play a relaxed waltz, then suddenly half the kids began to sing ‘Goodnight Irene’. Some very sweet music (recorded by Alan Lomax in the 40s with Leadbelly singing) makes its way to into my kid’s assembly. There was no verbal announcement, but at the same time, the music teacher playing this waltz was recognized by most of the students and they just started to sing. It blew me away… what lucky kids to have this be such an important part of their school.

So – I had to find my Alan Lomax discs with Leadbelly which led to a few other discs and a couple blues discs. I get so caught up in the centuries of music history from western Europe that when I realize the rich musical heritage my own country has created I find myself surprised over and over again. Part of me is a little ashamed of this, that this music isn’t just more of a part of my life (especially since I enjoy it so much), but I am also realizing that is part of what having kids is about. Celia and Mira have reminded me so much already about things that I have forgotten about, and part the excitement for me of Celia heading off to school is that I get to learn so many things again. What surprised me the other day is that for some reason I didn’t think music was going to part of that reminding. I’m excited now that it is.

Tags: Alan Lomax, Leadbelly, Mozart
Posted in Celia, Classical, Folk / Blues / Country, Mira | No Comments »

Day 151. Wagner, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald.

Sunday, September 19th, 2010

Mira again spotted the box-set operas tonight, and then she noticed that four of the double discs sets were actually in a single box… excitedly, she jumped at the shelf yelling ‘Daddy!!! big one big one BIG ONE!!!!’. Little does she know that in that box is the music that she already will recognize as ‘Kiwl the Wabbit’. Of course, it is none other then Wagner’s Ring.

I have the Karl Böhm Bayreuth Festival recordings from 1967. Buying a complete Ring cycle is a special thing… costly on the one hand, and on the other there isn’t a perfect one you can find. Now, I would certainly look for it on DVD, but fifteen years ago a CD set was still the way to go. I researched for a good few months and asked numerous people what they thought, and eventually chose this set for two reasons… it was a live recording, shaped by a masterful conductor, and Birgit Nilsson’s ‘throat of steel’ was singing Brünnhilde. I’ve listened to this set twice, and the coughing and ambient audience noise really doesn’t bother me. The performance is great, and doesn’t feel as flat to me as the Solti studio recordings do (which seems to miss the overall arch at times… I believe these are more production errors then Solti’s, but the problem is still there).

While I am sure I will probably spend the next week going through these recordings again, I am also thinking it might be time to go through the process again and see what else I should listen to and to see what is available these days on DVD. I can’t imagine just playing these pieces straight through for the girls to hear for instance. More and more I regret spending so much money on opera CDs and wish that opera DVDs had been around in the mid-90s (or even DVDs really for that matter), but I think that is especially the case with The Ring. On top of that, though I don’t watch much TV I don’t think our little tube will cut it for watching The Ring. So I probably really just need to wait a little longer until we can afford something a little bigger and for BluRay to really take off. I just need patience… Wagner isn’t going anywhere.

Celia finally got into the box set act tonight as well, and pointed to the Ella Fitzgerald / Duke Ellington ‘Côte d’Azur’ eight disc set. A wedding present from our friends Bryn and Colin, this CD out of all our discs may be the one I will miss the packaging of the most. There are 4 two disc sets in jewel cases with different bright colors, and imprinted on the clear cases and the CDs underneath are male and female figures that, when aligned, embrace each other. The box itself is slightly off-white and doesn’t let on to art underneath. And as beautiful as the packaging is, the music in the set is even more beautiful. I probably won’t get to rip it tonight (I am ALMOST done with ‘Götterdämmerung’) but I look forward to playing it over the next couple nights after we get home with the girls.

Tags: Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Richard Wagner
Posted in Celia, Classical, Jazz, Mira | No Comments »

Day 149. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Great Pianists!

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Mira pointed to a Glenn Miller collection, and Celia wanted more piano music for her room. I went ahead and grabbed a Benny Goodman disc as well, and for Celia grabbed my little selection of the Phillips ‘Great Pianists of the 20th Century’. Tonight, Celia went to sleep with Rosalyn Tureck playing Bach Partitas.

Big Band music has a special place in my heart… when high school marching band would finally slow down in Fall, concert and jazz band took on a focus. Midway through freshman year, I FINALLY got to switch to saxophone, and we got to play ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ (a la Benny Goodman rather then Louis Prima). After years of playing clarinet I was finally playing sax, and when I hear ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ I immediately go out and buy a Benny Goodman record and hear … his clarinet. And I suddenly realize how cool clarinet could have been. I sold the instrument short. I remember thinking ‘I should go back to it!’ but then I hear John Coltrane shortly afterwards and am hooked on sax. So while I stuck with the saxophone (and still get my alto out every now and then) it was that first year of jazz band that finally made me appreciate the clarinet, and it is still one of my favorite instruments. And it works so well in modern music as well… such an amazing range of timbre within single notes, and across the whole instrument.

All this of course reminds me when I first started learning how to play in instrument in 6th grade. I’d had a guitar for some time, but never learned how to play it really. And when there were music classes in 6th grade, I really wanted to play alto sax. I wanted to play ‘Tequila’ like the 6th graders the year before me did… but the school didn’t have any left. My parents took me to the local music store, and again, no alto saxes were left. ‘But we do have clarinets’ said the clerk at the store, an guy in his 60s or so. I came wanting an alto sax, and a guy in his 60s tells me all they have is clarinet… I go from thinking I can get a cool alto sax to a stodgy clarinet. Well, that was just how my 6th grade mind thought. Still, I learned how to read music and learned how to play well with others. By the next year in junior high I auditioned into the second best band in the school, and was set to be in the top band the next year when we moved. By that time, I had started to learn guitar as well and I was hooked. Not having a band at the K-8 school I moved into when I moved to Roseville didn’t stop me, and I kept practicing on my own because I really enjoyed it.

I am often asked by other music friends when we are going to start music lessons for Celia (or, a few times, I receive looks of shocked horror that Celia isn’t already in lessons). I don’t think it was my parents intentions to not force lessons on me so I would enjoy making music more, but that is how it worked out. In the over twenty years of playing music, I have always enjoyed it. I’m sure I could be a better musician in many ways (especially a better instrumentalist) but I don’t know what the price I would have had to pay is. What I do know is, right now, Celia is listening to a wonderful pianist play Bach in her room as she goes to sleep. She will probably listen to this CD for a number of weeks, or switch back to Beethoven or Miles Davis. During the day, her and Mira want music on so they can dance. They have instruments all around them. They play on toy pianos and real pianos. Celia has bowed my violin while I practice cello, and has sung along with her toy accordion. If she asks for lessons, we’ll find a way to get them for her. And if Celia or Mira DO play instruments later in life, I look forward to practicing scales with them, then playing duets or trios. But for now, no pressure. Just lots of good music playing in the house.

Posted in Celia, Classical, Jazz, Mira | No Comments »

Day 147. Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and a box with a picture of Dizzy Gillespie on the cover.

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

I had some Charlie Christian and Benny Goodman on earlier tonight, and it had both Mira and Celia dancing in their seats during dinner. And hearing Charlie Christian made me want to hear some Django Reinhardt, so I went downstairs and grabbed two JSP boxes that were hiding in the back shelves.

JSP (and in some ways, Properbox as well) have taken advantage of recordings going out of copyright, or of licensing recordings as they get ready to go out of copyright, and what this has meant to those of us who like early jazz is usually some pretty cheap box sets of music where the recordings have been cleaned up a bit. The Django boxes are generally well done. No documentation really (basically an article and personnel listings when possible) but packed CDs of music. In the early ‘90s, I had bought a 10 CD Django Reinhardt box-set that was an import distributed by Cema Distribution… the box was great, and I sold it to a friend (for pretty cheap) when he was having a rough time. I figured it would turn up again and I could re-purchase it, but it never happened. The two JSP boxes clock in at 9 CDs, and while it isn’t everything that was on that import box-set, it’s pretty close… and I’m sure it was a third the original boxes price.

Properbox has done an interesting job as well putting together some nice collections for around $30. I have a 4 CD Charlie Parker set to rip tonight (if I get to it) as well as a set called ‘BeBop Spoken Here’. Another set I previously ripped was a Lester Young collection that I enjoy quite a bit. These are old mono recordings, often transferred from disc. They will never sound great, but the performances are well worth having, and it is nice to see the label going to a large volume of sales rather then gouging the rare performance collector that would probably plop down serious cash for some of these recordings. Both of these labels have appeared in the waning days of the record store (or more precisely, the waning days of the CD). I imagine the parties putting these together see this, at least in some way, as a labor of love. These recordings won’t survive well in the MP3 age (they are too noisy and will just sound worse)… but in 5-10 years, when lossless recordings finally kill lossy formats.

We’ll see if the girls groove as much tomorrow night… I imagine they will.

Tags: Charlie Parker, Django Reinhardt
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Day 143. Mussorgsky, The Coral and Van Morrison.

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Mira looked at the CD shelf. Mira’s main thing has always been box sets, and most of them have been picked. Then she looked up. Opera. ‘Want BIIIIG ones!’ so I lifted her up, and she grabbed a bright blue and red box… containing two versions of Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Boris Godounov’. Celia grabbed the first disc by ‘The Coral’, Van Morrison’s greatest hits and I had a few more Nono discs still to rip.

While I was working at Barnes and Noble here in Seattle, a co-worker (Mark) also worked as the main liaison for donor relations with the Seattle Opera. A few months after I got here, the director of Seattle Opera had to cancel one of his preview talks for ‘Lakme’ and I stepped in at the last minute to give an audience of about 50 a heads up about what the opera was about. It was quite fun, and after that Mark kept an eye out for donor tickets that weren’t being used (usually for the dress rehearsals). Tamiko and I saw a number of operas this way, and ‘Boris Godounov’ was one of them. The set was brilliant, filled with reds, golds and candles, and the performance was great. If you have talked to me about the arts in Seattle, you probably know that I hold the Seattle Opera in the highest regard. While they don’t program as much new music or commission works like I think a major arts powerhouse should, they make up for it by putting on productions that are top of the line, and the singers are world-class.

Since seeing so many operas, I have found myself listening to less and less. Italian ones are fun still, since they are, well, Italian opera and just great to listen to. But listening to ‘Boris Godounov’, especially after seeing it the way we did, really shows how much you miss by listening to opera. I wish I had gotten into opera about ten years after I did. If I had, I would probably have a large collection of opera DVDs rather then CDs, and while this still wouldn’t capture the enormity of seeing an opera live, it would do better then the CDs would.

And as I’ve said many times, this is just the problem with recorded music in general. There are, of course, exceptions. And the track ‘Dreaming of You’ on The Coral’s first album might be one of them. Great British Invasion style rock, and the 19 year old lead singer sounds like he has decades more behind the voice on that record. The singing on this track is up there with John’s on ‘Twist and Shout’. I’m glad it was caught on record, because there is a good chance performances like this can’t be repeated.

Tags: Mussorgsky, The Coral, Van Morrison
Posted in Celia, Classical, Mira, Rock / Pop | 2 Comments »

Day 127. Nunes, Messaien, Lutoslawski, Pérotin and Leonin.

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

It has been a busy week, with the evenings filled with lots of odd and ends to take care of. Projects at work and some personal projects (including a website revamp and a piece I have ben trying to finish) have held my attention a bit in the evenings, and I will sometimes pop in a disc to rip, then forget about it.

One thing that is starting to slow the DAC project down is the old laptop that I am using to host and rip everything. It’s getting a little long in the tooth, and it is starting to show and it has had to work more this past year then it probably did over the three or four years before this one put together! It is an old PowerBook G4 (with the lid / monitor cracked off of it from a nasty fall at a cafe). It’s been a little 1 GHz work horse though… before the DAC project began, it served as a little web server for me and a few friends (which was fairly low traffic), so to suddenly be using its hard drive to rip CDs on a nightly basis (the original hard drive at that!) plus the CD drive has probably started to tax it some. Plus, it streams music to me quite a but now. There are over 1,000 CDs that the computer has ripped and now manages between iTunes here at home and Subsonic when I’m away. Over 300 GB of files are on the connected hard drive. In other words, for a machine that is 7 years old, it has done quite a bit since all this started in January. And the thing that is failing? I’m not positive, but I think something with the latest version of iTunes on it is weirding it out… I put CDs in, CDDB finds it, then iTunes kind of just drops it. I have to open Disc Utility to force an eject of the disc, then I pop it back in and it shows up just fine. This takes some time and attention where initially the ripping of CDs was rather mindless. The other thing that has slowed things down was the replacement of a 250 GB Firewire drive with a 1TB USB drive. The old computer only has USB 1, so things are just slower now.

Over the course of a few nights this week I finally finished up the Kronos Quartet box set, and also the last couple discs of the Dvorak symphonies set that Mira chose earlier in the week.

This afternoon Mira broke from her usual pattern and went for ‘pretty box!’ as she put it. She brought a CD of Emmanuel Nunes upstairs to me this afternoon and wanted to show me the ‘pretty box!’ and ‘hear pretty box music!’. After about two minutes of confusion, Celia finally turned to me and said ‘Daddy, this music is scary… do you LIKE this???’. The piece (‘Quodlibet’) for 6 percussionist, 28 instruments AND orchestra (weren’t the 28 instruments already an orchestra?) was a piece I looked at quite a bit while working on a doctoral exam topic on sound and space. Yes, I can see why to a five year old the music would seem scary, and it isn’t something I would normally put on for the girls. So I turned it off and and put on some Kylie Minogue (and there was much rejoicing).

After dinner, I went back downstairs with the girls to pick out more discs and Mira grabbed some Lutoslawski (which probably would have also bee scary) and Celia grabbed a stack of five innocent looking purple jewel cases that contained four discs of Messiaen’s organ music and a disc of music by Perotin and Leonin. Celia and I listened to the music from the early days of the Notre Dame Cathedral while reading about Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, and she loved it. I did too. I do find some enjoyment (and quite a bit of mental stimulation) from Nunes, Messiaen and Lutoslawski. And Lutoslawski and Messiaen have been highly influential in my work though… and I have lots more music from them to rip so I’ll have more opportunity to talk about both of them. But give me music from almost 1000 years ago, and my mind gets working on musical ideas for things that I am working on today, and I loved watching Celia relax into a book while listening to this music. It is nothing like what she encounters in her day to day life really, but it shows how something that has survived almost a millennium can still reach out to a five year old today.

Tags: Leonin, Lutoslawski, Messaien, Nunes, Pérotin
Posted in Celia, Classical, DAC Project, Mira | No Comments »

Day 126. Dvorak.

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

Been a busy few days of summer projects (lots of painting!) while also working on some fun SuperCollider and iPad stuff. And some good running. I did continue working on the Kronos Quartet box set, but also brought Mira down for a pick the other night. ‘What should we take Mira?’… ‘A big one daddy!’ … well, there aren’t too many big ones left. Some Miles Davis, lots of opera (which escapes her view for some reason) and a couple other collections here and there, but she pointed at a box set of Dvorak symphonies conducted by Rafael Kubelik. Some great performances on those discs… Kubelik is one of my favorite. He seems to me to be often overlooked, as there were so many great conductors alive during his conducting years. I think his Dvorak recordings are probably one of the best. While I don’t find his Beethoven or Mozart that exciting, I think he really had a knack with late Romantic repertoire. His Mahler recordings are probably one of the best (though I was never able to find all of them on CD… I have them on LP, perhaps it is time to see if I can find them anywhere online… a box WAS released in 2000! … hmmm… maybe I better finish ripping the Mahler discs I DO have before I think about buying anything else).

Tags: Dvorak
Posted in Classical, Mira | No Comments »

Day 100. Kagel, Liszt and Aretha Franklin.

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

Today marks the 100th day (though not quite the 100th consecutive day) of working on DAC. Since nice round numbers tend to give us pause and time to reflect (10th anniversaries, the millennium, your car hitting 100k miles, etc.), I spent part of today thinking that I should rip something special today. What should be the 100th days music selections? Well – by the time Celia was getting ready for bed, I still hadn’t thought of anything in particular to grab, so we ran downstairs as usual. And now that I think about it, I’m glad that is how it worked out. One of my favorite parts of this whole project has been involving my girls with it, and seeing what they are drawn to. It keeps things unexpected for me as well.

Celia keeping with her visual magnetism to all things pink, went for the Kagel discs I have on Montaigne (nice, bright cardboard packaging) as well as a Rhino collection of Aretha Franklin (because she liked the picture of Aretha on the cover). And next to that was a Vox Box set of Liszt’s ‘Years of Pilgrimage’ with Jerome Rose, so I grabbed that too.

Over the past 100 days, I have pulled quite a few discs onto the drives downstairs, and while not every disc has found me with something to say, I knew the music on those discs pretty well. And so, with Celia grabbing the ‘Sankt-Bach-Passion’ by Kagel tonight, we do have a special first. I have never listened to this CD. I know the story behind the piece, and have been curious to hear it (curious enough to buy the disc!), but have never listened to it. So I thought – ‘well! I’ll listen to it after I throw it on!’ and I still might, but in the mean time I am streaming a Quicksliver Messenger Service disc from my friend Daniel. Daniel has access to my server of music, and thought it was so cool that tonight he set up a Subsonic server for his music, and while I was browsing around on his I saw Quicksilver (an old face from growing up… as I type, ‘Mona’ is chugging away over the speakers. Man – what a great song, and I would be really surprised if the Kagel could top it, so I’m not going to mess with it).

The Liszt though is another one of those discs that Tamiko and I used to play in her apartment in Berkeley. Haven’t listened to it in some time, but I’m looking forward to hearing it. The recording in particular is, well, pretty bad. VERY resonant and blurry. But it is an excellent example of liking the first version you hear of something. I have another excellent recording of these pieces (the Bolet recordings I believe) and they are crisp and clean, and very well played. The Jerome Rose recordings are played well also, though I think there is a lot of pedal, and a lot of reverb (probably from the space). Tamiko and I would put these discs on as background quite a bit, sometimes for when we were eating, and the sound quality of them was perfect. At times, the piano sounds almost bell-like, almost like you are hearing it from across the street. We were also able to hear the bells of the Campanile from where she lived in Berkeley, with a similar sound quality. So even though I have better recordings of these pieces now, this would still be the ones I would put on. And will put on… because the notes might be the same, but it is this music that I remember when I think about Tamiko and I cooking together in her apartment on Arch St.

This project, and this blog, was supposed to be part escapism for me. And it has served its purpose well. It was given me great distraction at times over these past few months when things have been less then great. It has also given me a new faith in nostalgia, and brought back many happy memories. What has surprised me a little is how intense some of those memories have been. The smell of the air from 20 years ago creeps into this musical moments sometimes. Goosebumps sometimes appear on my arms as I hear something the way I did the first time I heard it.

But another aspect that was important to me with this project was listening again to music that had, for some time, just sat on a shelf. It has given me a chance to remember how much music is out there on the one hand, as well as how much I have to get to know again. And to share. Mira this morning asked to hear the ‘Bunny Music’ (the Barber of Seville overture), and tonight when Celia was getting ready for story time, she asked me to put on Bach (we listened to the lute suites). And in a couple minutes, I bet I can put on the Liszt that I am ripping right now, go sit next to Tamiko, and she will pause her typing for a minute, look at me, and smile. I’m so lucky to have all this in my life, and while I started to realize this early in this project, at 100 days, it is amazing that the coincidence of a number, and the events of the day, shows me how important it is for me to get all this music playing again in my house.

Tags: Aretha Franklin, Kagel, Liszt
Posted in Celia, Classical, Mira, Rock / Pop, Tamiko | 1 Comment »

Day 98. Rossini, Paganini.

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

How did you first hear opera? If you are like just about anyone in my generation that would actually admit to listening to opera, my guess is ‘What’s Opera Doc’ or ‘Rabbit of Seville’ is somewhere in your personal viewing history. And I would also assume this is the case for people in my parent’s generation as well. Here’s a test, throw on ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and see if ‘KILL THE WABBIT!’ gets stuck in your head.

And of course I am passing this fine introduction to opera on to my girls. Mira asks to ‘see bunny!’ and Celia has had a couple years now of occasional Bugs Bunny / Elmer Fudd opera viewings. So when I guided Mira’s box-set grabbing hands towards Rossini today, and she just HAPPENED to grab ‘Barber of Seville’, and then I just happened to put on the overture, I could tell both girls recognized it. They laughed and giggled. As well they should. Rossini is funny. And when Celia is sad at the end of ‘What’s Opera Doc?’, well, she should be, because Wagner’s ‘Ring’ is a tragedy.

Probably my favorite part of the old Looney Tunes and other cartoons that use just about any form of classical music (whether it is opera, or Liszt or Schroeder playing Beethoven) is that in those older cartoons, they are actually performances – recordings of real people playing the music, and often quite well. And, they find ways to make the music humorous (and if you can hear the humor, that also shows you know your music). Humor in music is hard, and the visual cues in Bugs Bunny certainly help, but these are cartoons that can be appreciated. They aren’t childish adult voices singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ is a half yelling annoying voice like so many kids toys today. They aren’t synthesized. They are arranged by real arrangers, played by real musicians, and the cartoons often focus on the music and the virtuosity it takes to perform some of it. Of course Bugs Bunny needs his ears to help out with playing Liszt – anyone who has actually tried to perform his works knows that a few extra appendages wouldn’t hurt. I have heard a couple people say that being introduced to classical music in cartoons is actually bad for kids – it makes them think that the visuals are necessary, or that it has to be funny. I don’t really buy that though.

First of all, music, as something that is performed, is VERY visual. Not enough musicians realize how important appearance and performance are, but when you ask most people what the hard part about a computer music concert is, it is the fact that ‘there is nothing to look at’. And as far as opera goes, while I do love listening to opera, it is as much a visual art as it is a dramatic and musical one. And there are a number of performers who take advantage of the visual element. Paganini used to up light his performances to make his appearance more ‘devil-ish’. Liszt faced the piano so the audience could see his fingers. The Who smashed their guitars. Music is meant to be performed and experienced, and I think way to many people think this ISN’T the case because we can buy it on sound only recordings or listen to it on the radio.

Which brings up the other part of tonight’s additions… a set of twelve, two movement pieces for guitar and violin by Paganini. These are wonderful little pieces… sweet, melodic with occasional moments of violin virtuosity thrown in.

Tags: Paganini, Rossini
Posted in Celia, Classical, Mira | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Mira’ Category

Day 157. Toscanini.

Day 153. Some folk / blues collections and some Mozart.

Day 151. Wagner, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald.

Day 149. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Great Pianists!

Day 147. Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and a box with a picture of Dizzy Gillespie on the cover.

Day 143. Mussorgsky, The Coral and Van Morrison.

Day 127. Nunes, Messaien, Lutoslawski, Pérotin and Leonin.

Day 126. Dvorak.

Day 100. Kagel, Liszt and Aretha Franklin.

Day 98. Rossini, Paganini.

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