Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Ick...Tomorrow is it

Gotta play Pozzi Escot's Clarinet Concerto tomorrow. These notes haven't gotten any less high. Hm...Was hoping that the composer gremlins would come in while I was sleeping and transpose them down an octave. Nope...Guess that I'll just have to play them as written then.

Gonna warm up by teaching a lesson and having a 2 hour rehearsal. Even when we have a big concert, we still gotta make a living, right?

Short post tonight...I just figured that I hadn't written in a while. Tomorrow night's concert is why. One of these days I'll get around to detailing next fall's new chamber series. We'll do lunch...

Monday, January 23, 2006

When a Tree Falls on a Putz

What happens when you bail on a gig? Does the gig happen anyway? If a tree falls in the forrest and a flutist isn't there to hear it, does it make a sound? Absolutely. What happens to the ears that had agreed to listen to the tree fall? Nothing...Exactly that...Nothing. Next time you need someone to trek out to the forrest, you certainly don't give that person another call. They sit at home, not knowing that they've been passed over. Wash, rinse, repeat. This happens until they find a way to make up for being a putz.

Can you tell I'm cranky?

We've got a bit of snow (enough that I had to cancel driving and hour and a half each way to teach) and I spent my entire morning on the phone dealing with just about everything other than playing the clarinet. I spent about 6 hours practicing the horn today, which was a welcome workout.

A hint of later this season:

Perhaps the Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux from Elliot Carter
Perhaps Isang Yun's Piri

These are possible additions to my steady schedule.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Mining the Composer's Brains--Mmm...Brains

Played the Escot Concerto for the composer yesterday morning...8 am. I started at 8am and left the area for home at about midnight. Of course, I wasn't just playing for the composer. Genius that I am, I managed to schedule my few things of the day spread out through the day as far as possible. Well, since I got some practicing done, it wasn't a totally questionable use of time.

So: playing for the composer. This always makes me nervous. Sometimes you play for a composer and they aren't very talkative about what you're doing and what they'd like you to do. Is this because I'm playing it exactly as they'd wished? (Doubt it.) Is this because they're used to performers bitching and moaning about "impossibilities" or just making a bit of a scene?

In fact, the composer told me that it was odd for her to get to listen to performers and make comments while still in the preparation phase. I was aghast (Perhaps not quite aghast, but I like the word.). The score can only give us so much. When we're playing Beethoven, we have so much room within the notation to breathe that we can frequently wish for a wayback machine to ask a few questions. Instead, we try it one way, see how it sounds, rinse, lather, and repeat. Or we rely on the traditional way of playing it. ("Last bad performance" anyone?)

When I'm playing a piece where the composer is still wandering around somewhere, I can't wait to get the composer's input. If my job is to make aural what the composer first reduced to 2 dimensions on paper, why not crack open the brain where the other dimensions are located.

In this case, Ms. Escot was -very- helpful. I actually managed to play better than I had hoped. I remembered to have a mouse to squeeze for the high notes.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Feb. 4 Boston-area Concert

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Chamber Music to Warm a Winter Evening

Saturday, February 4, 2006

8:00 PM in the sanctuary of the
Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church
1859 Centre Street, West Roxbury, MA

Yukiko Takagi and friends will present an eclectic program of chamber worksby Debussy, Shostakovich and others in the beautiful sanctuary of theTheodore Parker Church. Ms. Takagi is the church's gifted pianist and amember (as are the other musicians) of the Callithumpian Consort, one ofBoston's most innovative ensembles.

On the program:

Three pieces from "Chu-i" for flute and piano by Kazuo Fukushima
"Premiere Rhapsodie" for clarinet and piano by Claude Debussy
"Drei kleine Stucke," op.11 for 'cello and piano by Anton Webern
"Sweet Air" for flute, clarinet, violin, 'cello and piano by David Lang
"Trio," op.67 for violin, 'cello and piano by Dmitri Shostakovich

In addition to Ms. Takagi, the performers are: Gabriela Diaz, violin;Benjamin Schwartz, violincello; Jessi Rosinski, flute; and Chris Bush,clarinet.

Tickets are $15 (2 for $25); $10 for students and seniors. A pre-concertreception at 6:00 PM hosted by Pam Haran and David Godkin is $30 (2 for $50)including a ticket. Those who can contribute $100 or more will be listed as sponsors. Please call 617-325-4439 for reservations. Tickets are also available at the door. All proceeds benefit the church.

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Now that's an evening of chamber music. Come one, come all...Get your butts to the Church. Heck, if they'll let me in the door, they'll let anyone in.

Impending Concerto

Alright, tonight I put down the instrument in a huff. I haven't done that in years. When nothing is going right, it's time to put it down and do something else. Perhaps blog? Watch a movie?

Pozzi Escot's Clarinet Concerto is what's confounding me. More importantly, the altissimo (very high) notes are giving me fits. You see, up that high, the merest twitch can cause a note to be off by an interval of a 4th or 5th. Up there we do the same highwire act that Horn players perform every day. Of course, we're not used to it. Mozart, Brahms, Scelsi, and even Lee Hyla don't tend to live up there where the air is rare. Picking out a specific pitch from a harmonic series based on a single fingering is really a pain in the ass. Of course, if the piece weren't fantastic, I would have scheduled a different piece in it's place long ago. I'm much more willing to slave (over a hot stove?) if the piece is so well constructed that the difficulties are necessary.

Of course, if Lee ever reads that last page, he'll add an altissimo solo part to Pre-Pulse Suspended just to spite me. Go ahead, Lee...Give it your best shot.

Here's the listing from the New England Conservatory website of my performance as a Guest Artist:

nec shivaree

Feb 1, 2006
8pm Free
Brown Hall

Stephen Drury leads performances by nec shivaree, the avant-garde student ensemble, of Michael Finnissy's The Greatest Hits of All Time with Michael Norsworthy '01 M.M., '03 G.D., clarinet; Morton Feldman's Trio for Flutes; Pozzi Escot's Concerto for Clarinet with Christopher Bush '01, '03 M.M., clarinet; and John Luther Adams's songbirdsongs.

This is some damned fine music, if I do say so myself.

Monday, January 16, 2006

easier said than done

For anyone who doesn't know this rule yet: Whenever an ensemble member says "We don't need much rehearsal time. This piece looks really easy to put together," run for your lives. In fact, run for your lives, your dogs' lives, and small rodents' lives. That's usually a sign that parts have simultaneous indivisible subdivisions, differing but simultaneous tempos, a ton of notes in your most difficult register, blisteringly fast tempos, or excruciatingly slow tempos. Frequently, these piece have more than one of these hitches to a smooth rehearsal.

So this David Lang guy is one of the Bang on a Can-ites. His piece "Sweet Air" looks pretty easy to put together.

This Debussy Rhapsodie is a piece that I haven't played for a few years. I remember when I first started to learn this piece. I remember being amazed at so many wonderful recordings of the piece. I ended up buying about half a dozen and listening to even more in some available listening libraries. I was astonished that these guys (and one gal) could make the clarinet do such things. When I got the invitation to play this piece on this go-around, I spent the first weeks just studying score and playing a few of the difficult licks very slowly. Two nights ago I finally got around to listening to some of the recordings at which I had previously been so amazed. Poor ensemble, poor attention to the score, intonation problems left and right. (FYI - The Gal's recording was just as amazing this time around...the only one.)

Have my standards gone Up? Have I become a nitpicker? Nah...I just think that some punk went through my collection and substituted 2nd rate recordings for the good ones I know I had. When I find the genius who devilishly pulled off this crime, I'll get you good. (shaking fist at the sky)

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Notional Geographic

It's amazing to me what a difference a change in geography can make on stage. Move one violinist from the 2nd seat up to the 1st seat in a quartet and the ensemble becomes a completely different animal. This evening I watched a 2nd violinist work admirably within the limits of dynamics and tone that her 1st gave her, even though I was sure that she was frustrated at having to it. On the second half of the concert she switched to the 1st position. The cellist and violist both found a bigger sound, perhaps as a result. The dynamics became just that, dynamic. As far as the string playing on this concert, even the intonation was better. We are all trained to listen down to the bass voice for pitch, but sometimes there are other factors at play.

This concerto doesn't seem to be getting easier. Thorny, but good. This is one of those pieces that I'm going to love rehearsing. There's nothing quite as satisfying as putting together the pieces to find a real gem. There's no "tradition" to get in the way of finding exactly what the piece is, so the act is discovery rather than janitorial. Of course, if I kack too many altissimo notes, we made need a janitor.

An entire day to practice tomorrow! Almost...Actually, I have to run and pick up a piece for a Feb. 4 concert. It's by David Lang, a person I know not at all. I haven't even Googled him yet. Talk about an act of discovery. Ah, on the same concert, I'll be doing the Debussy 1er Rhapsodie. I'll post the details sooner or later.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

A Post-Chris-tmas Wishlist

Again, blogging from a train. This time, I'm doubling back on my tracks: DC to Boston.

As a young(ish) musician, I'm impatient. I want a steady paycheck, which may never happen, but I want to work on my own projects as well. Old chamber music, new chamber music, orchestra work, even the occasional solo gig. Variety is the spice of life, or dukkbokki. Or is that gochujang? I even want to teach. I want students, advanced or not, who can regularly keep me thinking about the basics of playing the clarinet and music in general. I want all of this now. For some reason, all of these areas of a compleat (...can you tell I've been reading Gunther Schuller?) musician don't seem to always pay so well.

So far this season, I've been booked to play bass clarinet in the show Kismit, clarinet in an excruciatingly soft Tufts new music concert, bass again in a band concert, a few cycles with the orchestra of standard orchestra literature, some light swing music with a pianist, some solo Bill Smith pieces, Pozzi Escot's upcoming concert as a guest soloist with NEC's avant garde attack wing "Shivaree", a number of Callithumpian Consort shindigs, and what looks like it could be a satisfying performance of the Debussy 1er Rhapsodie. (There were a few others thrown in there, but my brain can't keep track of them all.) At first glance, that looks to be a fairly satisfying if busy schedule. Of course, Then we throw in the teaching: regularly scheduled lessons, rescheduled lessons, trial lessons, coachings...At least once a week I try to carve out a handful of hours to sleep. Of course, that doesn't count anything past the 4th of Feb. After that, it looks life might get a little bit busy.

What I want is this: a job paying quite a bit of money, hours flexible, job duties non-existant (not minimal...nonexistant), location flexible, with several tax-free stipends. That last stipulation is only available for certain specialized positions, but they tend to require actual work. I'll consider any position with 4 out of 5 of these preferences.

Or I'd like a pony.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

An Independent Hell

This evening I'm blogging from a train. Amtrak to Washinton, D.c. Ah, the glories of modern transportation. At each stop, I do a sweep of the wifi connections from the train. If this gets posted during the evening, I've been succesful finding a hotspot. Otherwise, I've uploaded from somewhere in DC. Why train? Because the bastards at Independence Air let me buy a ticket last Friday, only to announce that they are going under on Monday. Somewhere there's a room in hell waiting for these people: the soundtrack-Hummell Bassoon Concerto; interior design-Tammy Faye Baker; company-Bill O'Reilly; room service-Amtrak "Cafe" car. Oh, you'll suffer...even your stomach lining will suffer.

On the train I've been watching on my laptop a Korean movie, "Introducing My Girlfriend/Windstruck." It's a bit of a modern fairytale with love, love lost, and love regained (but with a not-dead love this time...). Strangely enough, the soundtrack seems to be all classic American tunes. In fact, much of it seems to be drawn from the same soundtrack as "Dirty Dancing." What does it say about the saturation of American media/music that our classic pop is used in a Korean movie to invoke nostalgia? (I know for a fact that Korea had a pretty popular pop scene back in the day. I've heard the tunes at noraebang.) Of course, sap that I am, I got all verklempt exactly when the movie makers intended. I wonder if Koreans have the same reaction?

Been reading Renee Fleming's "The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer" for the past few days. Of course, the book has the occasional story of life on the road to keep the average reader interested. The meat and potatoes of the book seems for me to be a frank discussion of the trials and tribulations of staying viable as an artist. Fleming so far seems to attribute her constant growth to trying to be a good student. Occasionally I see slight hints of Diva, but that's to be expected from someone in her position. What lightens my mood and gives me some hope for singers and opera stars in particular is a constant drive to do better. By better, I don't mean the next high-falootin' gig, whether it be The Met or in front of a recital audience. Instead, she's looking for her own artistic evolution.

You're goddamned right. I'd like to throw this book as violently as possible at every public school music teacher in the land. Are you stagnating as you are honored with the responsibility of teaching the unsullied minds under your care? When was the last time you went to a concert? Last time you brought a musician into your school? Not just classical musicians: What about a Korean Komungo player? That shit would blow someone's mind definitely. Where's the money, you ask? There's plenty out there...Ask your local supermarket or bank what their educational grants are all about. It's a tax writeoff and advertising for them...

My shameful admission for the day: After a while of it sitting in my mental inbox, I'm finally making my way through Green Day's "American Idiot" this evening. This is a wonderful album, not the least for the title track. Try "Homecoming". These guys have certainly heard The Who and culled what they can use. These are just two tracks out of more than a handful of winners. These guys are obviously fans of 50's rock...Caught a hint of "Leader of the Pack" in "Jesus of Suburbia." See folks, there's good music coming from those cranked amplifiers...occasionally...

Alright...sleep beckons...Or perhaps another movie...or the Double-Chocolate muffin hidden away in a bag somewhere.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

What a Beautiful Suture

Today, while inhaling a cider at the local coffee establishment, I was unable to get my laptop to log on to their wifi. As a result, I was drawn into an argument/conversation between the several servers behind the counter. One of them was a jazz sax player and made this statement: "It takes more work and study to become a steadily gigging musician than it does to become a doctor." Uh oh...I hope not.

From what I understand, Stanley Drucker was appointed to the clarinet section of the New York Philharmonic when he was 19. (He celebrated his 50th season in 1997. You do the math.) Although I feel that Drucker is and has been one of the pillars of American clarinet playing, I hope that my doctor has more than a high school education before I turn my head and cough.

I don't want to discount the hours of practice and the early start many musicians get on their careers, but I'm afraid that this sax player had a bit of a problem with his statement. Every time a steadily gigging musician with an early start on their career (Mozart, Midori, Charlotte Church, etc.) was mentioned, they became "the exception." Was he looking for an average amount of practice/study time amongst all musicians? He's trying to quantify that which can't be quantified. What's his definition of a musician that's steadily gigging? Would it be a certain number of gigs per week? (Oops...There go some of our soloists. They suddenly don't count unless they're playing 4 gigs a week.) How about only classical musicians? (Oops...What about YoYo's Silk Road Project? How do you pigeonhole John Zorn?) His basic premise was flawed.

This pontificate in charge of caffeine had a statement that couldn't be proved wrong. We all learned in Jr. High School study of the Scientific Method that Theories that can't be proved wrong are fatally flawed.

This gentleman was, I believe, still a student over at the New England Conservatory and still trying to justify what we do as labor. As an alumnus of the same school, I'll be give him the benefit of the doubt and take it easy with my response:

Embrace the fact that you're taking part in an art (Yes...Even Jazz is an art.). Yes, we toil many hours a day until we get it right. Of course, we're the only ones able to quantify our success. Of course, as soon as we achieve success in our own minds, we jack the requirements higher. Our jobs are more about achieving evolution than achieving factory quotas. The number of hours spent in your practice room don't matter, the ability to set demanding goals and achieve them do. It's an ART. Stop trying to quantify the damned thing.

You're never going to be able to talk statistics about an artist's education (academic or otherwise) because you're going have an impossible time controlling variables. Every person is an exception.

Now, if you think that being a doctor can't be artistic and passionate, just wait until an unimaginative, uncaring dentist starts cleaning your teeth.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

The Dogs are Another Year Older

As 2006 is now an hour old, I feel perfectly justified in saying I'm pleased that 2005 is over. I mean, come on...Is it really necessary to have these things last for 365 days? We get the point after 200 usually, 250 certainly. This is why I prefer Webern to those 4 LP Stockhausen marathons. Perhaps MTV (when it meant Music TV) trained me in my early years to accept 3 1/2 minute soundbytes more easily than 4 hours.

Pozzi Escot's Concerto is staring at me from my stand. I'm fairly sure that I angered the two dogs of the house by practicing it yesterday. I've been trying alternate fingerings for some extremely high notes as I would prefer them to come out every time I wish. As it is now, I can either work on those sections of the piece and face two irritable schnauzers, or hold off until I fly back to Boston on Monday. I think the skin around my ankles would prefer I wait until Monday.

Here are some questions: How are we using the net as "classical" musicians to help our cause? Are new music groups using the freeflow of information differently than old music groups?