music

I for one welcome my NPR overlords. I’ve held off commenting on NPR’s “Fifty Great Voices” series despite my obsession with the human voice because… well really because I didn’t care that much. I thought about saying something when someone objected that Iggy Pop was not, technically, a ‘great voice’ — never argue with a fool in public, etc. But this evening as my scarily erudite beloved scares up images of Moorish manuscripts I did want to second the Public Radio Overlords’ nomination of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

I will be honest with you: I do not know very much about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music. There is a good reason for this: about thirteen years ago (!) one of the guys I work with hooked me up with the album “The Last Prophet” from Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records label, and this is the only album I’ve ever really listened to by him. In fact, I have not yet gotten to the second track of the album. For the last thirteen years I have been listening to the same track of the same album, over and over, and I still feel that I have not reached the bottom of it.

It’s not counterpoint or a Bach fugue and it doesn’t feature a full orchestra so I suppose at some level the music is not all that ‘complex’, but the tracks is seventeen minutes long and, let’s face it, it combines the best parts of the late Coltrane with Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria, which is not something everyone can say. We get the theme immediately, and variations are pyrotechnic, they climax, and then the piece winds down. There is a lot to say about Khan’s incredible vocal technique — as there is about the guy in the ensemble with the slightly higher voice — but it’s the mixture of intelligence and ecstasy in equal intensity (something that rarely happens) that I find so amazing. And that is just the individual singers. The ensemble work is equally insanely powerful. It’s ecstasy without simplicity, complexity without intellectualism: a genuine, overwhelming craftsmanship of the soul.

Now, In opposition to the ubiquitous refrain today that people are ’spiritual but not religious’ I often insist that I am ‘religious but not spiritual’, and I firmly resist the idea that the Christian music I sing is acultural (if it was you wouldn’t have to be a liturgy junky to get it). Still, I have to admit that this music has a power to it that is undeniable. Is it the piety of the performers or something deeper? I’m not sure — like I said, the only thing I’ve heard is the first track — but there is no doubt in my mind that if these were ‘boy meet girl’ or ‘baby I want you’ lyrics the piece would never have the obvious power it has for both performers and listeners.

I’ve taken a quick look around — most online music stores will sell you the whole album for ten bucks but not the first track. If you have 10 bucks and 15 years of your life free, I’d really urge you to pick the album up. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

I think I like this idea mostly because the name is so rad, but TechCrunch blogged recently that the music industry has run the numbers and is tentatively planning the USD when they give up on keeping people from sharing music. Apparently “Ultimate Surrender Date is between 2011 and 2013″:http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/08/big-music-will-surrender-but-not-until-at-least-2011/.

I have been listening to this piece (and the string quartet from which it’s been extracted) for a month now. You should pay a buck and listen to it too if, and only if, you want to listen to really really ravishingly beautiful music: Musica Celestis for String Orchestra is available on “iTunes”:http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=135478800&id=135478574&s=143441 and “eMusic”:http://www.emusic.com/downloads/emp/song/10915884/14013152.emp?gb=lm.

The string quartet is on “this album”:http://www.emusic.com/album/Aaron-Jay-Kernis-Kernis-Symphony-In-Waves-MP3-Download/10953497.html.

Just put it on in the car or your office. You won’t be sorry.

This is me trying to post more often. Or maybe just having more free time to do so.

The SEB and I are on a spree of judeo-baroque listening recently, including Salomone Rossi, Fretwork, Quire of Voyces (look past the spelling to the singing), and Phillippe Jaroussky. This hereby replaces our earlier Ravel/Milhaud/Poulenc Chamber Music mix. I’ve also been revisiting Tsunami.

Jaroussky seems to have set his sites on Vivaldi as Scholl did on Handel.

Some relevant links:
“Ad Vitam Records”:http://www.advitam-records.com/gb/index.php – choral music to unite monotheists
“Brilliant Records”:http://music.brilliantclassics.com/ – like Naxos, but with more hardcore liner notes.
“Jaroussky in the obligatory Nisi Dominus showcase”:http://youtube.com/watch?v=VHJYNYi5N7o — check out how little he moves (physically) as he moves his voice through his crescendos. Damn.

There is now in existence an album of “Tom Waits covers by Scarlett Johansen”:http://www.imeem.com/scarlettjohansson.

I approached it with an open mind. Honestly.

Besides having a crazily multicultural name, “Tarik O’Regan”:http://www.tarikoregan.com/ is one of the best new composers I’ve listened to in a long time. And best of all he writes extensively for Choir and does rip mix burn thing with chant and early music. Highly recommended.

This sounds promising: gracenote is “revamping the way it handles classical music metadata”:http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/press/article.html/date=2007010802 — and it has the support of a lot of labels and musicians. If you listen to classical music digitally, you know what a relief this (hopefully) will be.

I’ve been listening recently to the “Ars Nova Singers”:http://www.arsnovasingers.org/ who are one of the few groups who exactly the music I like: Renaissance and 20-21st century. I seem to remember having sung with someone who had previously sung with them but I’m not sure now of his affiliation. At any rate their CDs are well-programmed and “All Sky: New American Choral Works”:http://www.arsnovasingers.org/nar-004.htm is particularly tasty. The other thing I like about them is that they’re currently planning a performance of Carmina Burana with “Colorado’s pre-eminent low-flying trapeze and aerial dance-theatre company”:http://www.frequentflyers.org/ (I wonder how much competition there is?). I have other recordings of the stuff on After Sky, some of which I prefer over the Ars Nova version. But there’s no taking away from the group’s performance, or how well the CDs flows as a single program of music. So check them out.

I subscribe to RSS feeds, email lists, websites and every other conceivable genre of information that can be shoveled through my eyes and into my brain by the intarweb. Yet without a doubt my optic nerves tingle with glee from the informal email list that has developed between me and my two good homies “J Niimi”:http://home.uchicago.edu/~jniimi/ (you must all buy his “excellent book”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0826416721/sr=8-2/qid=1144786501/ref=sr_1_2/002-3783494-2858434?%5Fencoding=UTF8) and “Seth Sanders”:http://www.arts.cornell.edu/nes/faculty/sanders.html. To honor our sacred and holy union of brotherhood I pass along this url from from master content filter Niimi:

IRAQI: IS THIS THE CLAP YOUR HANDS ALBUM
AMERICAN SOLDIER #2: “YES THEIR HARDWORKING DIY AESTHETIC WILL CRUMBLE YOUR SPIRIT”:http://riffmarket.blogspot.com/2006/04/camp-nama-not-riff-friendly.html

MySpace has been about music and bands for some time now, and there have always been some hip young classical musicians with a MySpace page. But this is out of control — Naxos (which formerly demonstrated its digerati chops by signing up with Emusic etc. etc.) now has a “MySpace page”:http://www.myspace.com/NaxosLabel. Crazy, daisy.

I don’t put too much store in these things, but it is worth pointing out that the “Grammy nominations for classical albums”:http://www.grammy.com/GRAMMY_Awards/Annual_Show/48_nominees.aspx#30 are up (but not easy to find) on the Grammy website. As a diagnostic of a very particular take on classical music it’s interesting enough. Naxos’s Penderecki and Bolcom albums get multiple mentions, which almost makes me rethink my opinion of Bolcom. Hyperion is doing another recording of Lauridsen’s _Lux Aeterna_ to compete with the one from the LA Master Choral (or whatever they’re called). While I have no doubt that anything that comes out on Hyperion will be superb, I do wonder whether we need more recordings of this piece — on the one hand, the original recording is superb (and itself a Grammy winner iirc) and on the other hand since all of Lauridsen’s pieces sound so much alike, they could have recorded new material and still have produced the same album. What else? A new recording of Britten’s _Death In Venice_ (with Michael Chance rather than James Bowman) which definitely is underrecorded. The album of Carlo Chavez’s chamber music gets multiple nods. Ho hum. My far and away favorite piece of classical music this year is without a doubt Toby Twining’s utterly superb “Chrysalid Requieum”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000067DOM/002-8806560-6968065?v=glance&n=5174.

D00d — Naxos has just licensed _it’s entire catalog to Emusic_. I signed up with Emusic back when it had a thriving social network attached to it and featured unlimited, DRM-free MP3 downloads for US$20 a month. Then they got bought out, wiped out all of the reviews and playlists we had written, and instituted a by-the-track fee for downloads. I stayed away for years, but finally rejoined when I moved to Hawaii and they expanded their catalog. It was a grudging return, but they did something I needed, and as a business were making better and better decisions about expanding there catalog. Now Naxos, one of my favorite music labels, is releasing all their stuff on Emusic as well. This is fantastic — Naxos not only has an incredibly deep bench of classical standards, they also provide great recordings of new and unusual classical music. And these are not just reference recordings — Naxos earns Grammys and Grammy nods every year for its fantastically engineered and performed albums from superb but lesser known artists. So whether you want a recording of Vaughan Williams’s House of Life song cycle, the complete Bach motets (indeed, my FAVORITE recording of the complete Bach motets), or a recording of the entire Slichot service “according to the Orthodox rite” they are now available, DRM free, in a way that supports classical music.

Now at some level, _all_ Reggae is Jewish. But as the “Bookninja”:http://bookninja.blogspot.com/ points out, “some are more Jewish than others”:http://www.hasidicreggae.com/files/2005/02/07/22/11/33/kimmel_on_stage_2.jpg. But unlike some other novelty bands, “Matisyahu”:http://hasidicreggae.com/, So Called, and the other artists on “Jdubrecords”:http://jdubrecords.org/ are actually pretty quality.

Similarly bending across genres is “Alarm Will Sound”:http://www.alarmwillsound.com/AWS-Home.html , whose latest album features “orchestral arrangements of Aphex Twins tracks”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0009XT8KQ/ref=wl_it_dp/002-1728795-4172847?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=I363QKRWD46T0S&v=glance&colid=NK3EH604LU8H. The danger here is of alienating both classical and electronica fans, but apparently the CD — which includes arrangements by “Steven Bryant”:http://www.stevenbryant.com/bio.php — manages to be satisfying to both groups.

Satisfying crossover might be harder to achieve for the “Ahn Trio”:http://www.ahntrio.com/, whose belly-baring marketing is designed to turn off snobby classical music fans like me. But in fact if you look at the contents of their “last”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006JSCQ/ref=ase_ahntrio/002-1728795-4172847?v=glance&s=music “couple”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00004TR18/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2_cp/002-1728795-4172847?v=glance&s=music of albums, they are one of the few groups out there I can think of doing 20th century music for a classical trio — and one of the very few who have actually commisioned new pieces. I personally think the ’string quartet performs Jimi Hendrix/The Doors/Authentic World Music’ thing is _so_ overdone, but I would still be interested to hear some of their stuff.

Currently I’m enjoying Toby Twining’s remarkable “Chrysalid Requiem”:http://www.tobytwiningmusic.com/projects.html, which I highly reccomend to just who can take an earful of challenging (but not off-putting) 20th century music. It’s best described as a cross of the Poulenc mass with some “overtone singing”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throat_singing and “Allen Shearer”:http://class.csueastbay.edu/music/Allen_Shearer.php thrown in.

Update: the Twining requiem is *unbelievably* awesome. Check out the “sample tracks”:http://www.bangonacan.org/store/item.html?sku=CA21007 here).

In a strange and yet typical twist of internetdom, an “ancient post of mine”:http://alex.golub.name/log/?p=50 has become the home of a small but growing community of people desperately seeking the lyrics of Vivaldi’s lovely motet “Nulla in munda pax sincera” (known to most people as the theme song from the movie ‘Shine’). I often wonder what Vivaldi would think if he knew that today his piece evokes in the minds of most listeners the image of a middle-aged Australian man bouncing up and down on a trampoline wearing nothing but a raincoat. At any rate to make the world a better place here they are:

Aria:
Nulla in mundo pax sincera
Sine felle; pura et vera
Dulce Jesu, soia spe

Inter poenas et tormenta
Vivit anima contenta
Cast amoris, soia spe

Recit:
Blando coloere oculos mundus decipit
et occulto vulnere corda conficit.
Fugiamus ridentem
vitemus sequentem
has delicias ostentando;
arta secura vellet ludendo superare.

Aria:
Spirat anguis inter flores
Et colores explicando tegit fei.
Spirat anuis, sed tegit fei.
Sed occulto factus ore
Homo demens in amore
Saepe lambit quasi mei.

Alleluia.

Which means:

There is no true peace in the world without bitterness; in you, sweet Jesus, it is pure and rightful.

Amongst teh anguish and torment lives the contented soul, is only hope, chaste love.

The world beguiles our eyes with alluring colors and consumes our hearts with hidden wounds. When it laughs, let us flee from it; when it pursues us, flanting its delights, let us shun it; for by carefree conduct and amusements, it would over come us.

The serpent slithers through flowers, and whilst it shows the beauty of it colors it conceals its venom. The serpent slithers, but it concelas its venom. But he who is dumbstruck and insance with love, will often lick it as if it were honey.

Alleluia.

There. Never say I never gave you anything.

Once again, it turns out that “Nike is trying to take punk rock away from the kids”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/nikes_major_lift.php. Ian Mackay has been active in copyright reform stuff over the years — in fact I bet a lot of people who are interested in copyright reform have an elective affinity for it based on their previous experience with indie rock, the DIY ethos, etc. etc. I know I do. At the same time he’s always been very concerned that the people who buy stuff from Dischord do right by Dischord, since it works so hard to do right by them — Dischord doesn’t give their recordings away for free or use CC licensing. They appreciate the importance of reform in the music industry, but still rely on their ‘brand’.

Frankly even though Nike apologized, I still think Mackay should give them their seven dollars back and tell them to get out of the club.

“George”:http://allaboutgeorge.typepad.com/ points to “this British color story”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1658941,00.html, wherein Oboe d’amour is _not_ a reference to an instrument used in early music. It’s a little gratuitous, but not as untrue as you might think.

It does raise the question, though, why we don’t seem to mind the idea of romantic hookups shaping the course of rock and roll bands’ careers but we consider the casting couch in classical music to somehow be more morally problematical. Also, it makes my life as a chorister seem unbelievably dull.

“Joel”:http://searchforlove.blogspot.com/2003_04_01_searchforlove_archive.html#200168801 writes:

Today I spent seven hours in church. Tomorrow I will spend five hours in church. Sunday I will spend another seven hours in church. This week (Holy Week) is the only time during the year that I feel uncomfortable, as a Jew, singing in a church choir. When the congregation pretends to be the Jews and sings “Crucify him!” en masse it’s hard not to feel a little, well, on edge.

And everybody gets so upset when I stand up in the middle of the service and shriek, “Your god is a lie!”

I mean, I’m just saying.

/me raises fist in show of solidarity

I recently made a mix for a friend of mine based around settings of e.e. cummings poems. Here’s the play list with links to the individual artists.

*Three Poems by e.e. cummings*
i thank you god for most this amazing day | hope, faith, life, love | i will wade out
By Eric Whitacre, performed by the Brigham Young University Singers
“Eric Whitacre: The Complete A Capella Works 1991-2000″:http://www.arsisaudio.com/cd147.html

*i will wade out* (sun in my mouth)
By Bjork
“Vespertine”:http://unit.bjork.com/specials/albums/vespertine/

*Even*
By Jake Heggie, performed by Sylvia McNair
“The Faces of Love”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000K2EN/qid%3D967954025/sr%3D1-/104-0552802-2479935

*Ave Maria*
By Josquin de Prez, performed by Voices of Ascension
“Beyond Chant: Mysteries of the Renaissance”:http://www.delosmus.com/item/de31/de3165.html

*Abraham and Isaac* The second of the five canticles
By Benjamin Britten, performed by Ian Bostridge and David Daniels
“Britten: The Canticles”:http://www.virginclassics.com/vclass-cgi-bin/rh_cat_mid_rh.cgi?key=676

*Ave Verum Corpus*
By Imant Raminsh, performed by the Vancouver Chamber Choir
“Songs of the Lights: Choral Music of Imant Raminsh”:http://www.vancouverchamberchoir.com/vcc/index.cfm?method=cd.getCD&trackID=15

*Missa Brevis in C Minor*
kyrie | gloria | santus/benedictus | agnus dei
By Imant Raminsh, performed by the Vancouver Chamber Choir
“Earth Chants: The Choral Music of Imant Raminsh”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006FIA1/qid=1111047151/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/104-0552802-2479935?v=glance&s=classical

*in time of*
By Steven Sametz, performed by Chanticleer
“Colors of Love”:http://www.chanticleer.org/contemporaryclassical.htm#colors

Nerd Rap for the Nintendo Generation.

Actually it’s been around for a while, but there is a new CD out from BCM international — a group of composers who are sort of a post-punk version of Les Six. I’ve not heard this CD but the last one was fun and is now available for download (check out “Uncle Sid” and “Godzilla Eats Las Vegas”. Seriously). I still think that out of all of the things I’ve ever written my interview with them is one of the best things I’ve ever done. My choir is currently rehearsing Eric’s setting of e.e. cummings’s “i thank you god” and it is really a mind-expanding piece. In fact, I reccomend his Complete Choral Works CD to anyone and everyone who is the least bit interested in choral or 20th century music — it is just that unbelievably good.

O. M. G. — So I was recently checking out Stephen Paulus’s newly redesigned website and noticed that they sung his Pilgrim’s Hymn at the Reagen funeral! On second thought, maybe I remember hearing this on the radio and smirking? I can’t be sure. As someone who grew up in Reagen’s America I agree with my friend who opined that the funeral ought to have included a section where they ran a stake through the coffin ‘just to make sure’. Just watching Angels In America (which you should all, all watch. Especially you, Tinka.) is enough to send me to that dark dark time when the only positive side effect of Reagen’s Moral Hygeine was a backlash that involved a lot of good punk rock.

Paulus is one of these composers whose works I begrudgingly admire and enjoy singing despite myself. I don’t know why I don’t like him more. There are moments of the True Amazing Sublime in much of it, but somehow… I don’t know… it just never seems to add up. Pligrim’s Hymn is one of these. I sung it in Chicago and could never quite make up my mind about it. When I first sight-read it I thought it was awesome. Then as we rehearsed it I considered it simplistic and uninspired, but with a few killer chord changes. Then as we added dynamics I realized it was like cornbread — not so good by itself, but designed to soak up butter. Then after we added all the schmaltz we could I just really liked it but didn’t think it was pure genius.

On the whole, though, it is a beautiful, simple piece with beautiful, heartfelt lyrics. Perfect for cracker-ass traditional Midwestern choirs like the Dale Warland Singers who perform this free and legal MP3 of Pilgrim’s Hymn you should all listen to. I think in general everyone will like this piece a little, regardless of what sort of music they listen to.

There are things I feared about moving to Hawai’i. Living in a place where white people were a minority and race relations were an issue? I was fine with that. Dealing with the politics of indigenous landownership and Hawai’ian sovreignty? Hello: this is my dissertation. Eating with chopsticks constantly? Please.

No. One of my biggest worries was Hawai’ian music. I feared the ukelele. Even ‘Pacific Urban Music’ — as some have described the blending of island culture and hip hop — worried me. I’m down with hip hop, but never really got into reggae, and reggae is super popular in the Pacific. Don’t know why. I like two-tone ska. I like Operation Ivy. There are some exceptions. For instance, fellow PNG dimdim O-shen (I’m a sucker for his tune Meri Lewa (quicktime audio)). Anyone with whiteboy dreds who raps in Tok Pisin is OK by me.

So I was super-gratified to encounter Keali’i Reichel, who is sort of a musician/curator/cultural heritage activist. I think this line from his biography says it all:

He has opened concerts for Bonnie Raitt, LeAnn Rimes, Celine Dion, and Sting; he has played such diverse venues as Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and the sportswear department at the Mililani WalMart.

In particular, his album Kawaipunehele contains what is without a doubt the most awesome cover of Styx’s timeless anthem Come Sail Away (realaudio stream). Listen to it. NOW. Although it had never occurred to me before I heard it, this song is so meant for Hawai’ian sovreignty polics and Hawai’ian culture that I don’t even know where to begin. Nautical imagery, of course, is familiar. Nostalgia for a happy childhood in which friends and family figure prominently. Stength to overcoming adversity and fortitude to reach a final goal in a world of disillusionment and disenfranchisement. A final utopian goal which takes the form of a heaven which is, despite ambivalence about the colonial influence of missionaries and the destruction of indigenous spirituality, Christian-inflected.

Next up: Hawai’ian falsetto singing. Like countertenors, but without Purcell.

p.s. special bonus link:Shelties in Hawai’i. Strange. But cute. Possibly the only Hawai’ian language website about shelites on the internet.

Here are the names of future bands I would like to be in, taken from that moment of inspiration in everyday life when you think to yourself ‘hey, that would be a cool band name’:

1. Boroko Food World
2. Snell of the Crushed Skull
3. Silverstein’s Dreams of Brie
4. Kneel Before Zod

I’m very excited to report that I’ll have the opportunity to interview Eric Whitacre and the other members of BCM International this week as part of a feature I’ll be writing for Gapers’ Block. The RMC homies and I just performed Lux Aurumque for our recent Advent Vespers and I must say it’s a remarkable piece. Simple yet beautiful, it really lets a group’s ensemble work show off. At one point I was the only first tenor that showed up for rehearsal so I got to hold an E against a D. I found it frightening, and yet also strangely exciting. Seconds are one thing, but moving between pianissimo and piano while you’re doing it is something else again. Also, starting tommorow the radio show is in full effect. 88.5 fm 1:30-3.