Sequenza21

Hey, remember a couple of weeks ago when I asked if anyone knew a video blogger for a special project.  I found one and not only is she a terrific interviewer (not to mention cute as a button) but i hear she plays a pretty mean fiddle.  Here, Hilary interviews violinist and YouTube symphony member Ben Chan about his experience via video Skype.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZhqE0sVfV0&annotation_id=annotation_681278&feature=iv[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiazdmmZF_8[/youtube]

Though usually known by its French title, “Les Noces” (The Wedding), this piece is ‘wedded’ so strongly to Stravinsky’s native tongue that I prefer to think of it by its original Russian title.

Stravinsky’s apotheosis of his Russian-folk style gave birth to almost as many developments as the iconoclastic Rite of Spring. The Rite was an amazing achievement, coming only thirty years after Brahm’s second Piano Concerto; but the novel rhythms, form, harmonies were still mostly clothed in the symphonic and balletic traditions of that earlier time. Just a few years later in Svadebka (1923, though the piece was musically complete by 1917) even this was chucked: the all-percussion and piano ensemble, counterpointed with soloists and chorus sharing the pit with the instruments; the whole piece one non-stop, carefully-geared motor; the cut/paste/overlay/interlock of the musical structure; the intensly emotional singing and playing presented without the slightest trace of sentimentality; the folk idiom morphed into simply raw material for the highest abstraction… All these have been picked up and run with, from the piece’s premiere all the way to the “downtown” folk of our own generation.

This YouTube video shows a Royal Ballet production, that recreates the original 1923 Bronislava Nijinska choreography. It’s in three parts and rather than start at the beginning I’ll just plop you down in the middle of the piece, when things are really bubbling away (parts 1 and 3 are easily found on the right sidebar at the YouTube page).

Schuyler Chapin, the legendary former general manager of the Met, died yesterday at 86.  Composer Matthew Zachary Johnson, who served as Mr. Chapin’s secretary for the past four years, has a tribute here.

There are beings that are just too special for this world. They arrive, fully-formed, on the messy little stage of your life and immediately dazzle you with their stunning beauty and charisma and goodness. They capture your heart so completely that you are always a little fearful that something this perfect cannot last. Howard arrived in our household eight years ago, at a time when we were still mourning the loss of a previous companion. By the second day, previous cats were forgotten. He seemed to have two speeds—full and stop—careening around our apartment and crashing into furniture like a furry bowling ball. As an adult, he slowed down, but not much. “He’s never going to be an elder statesman,” my wife would often say and something inside me sank each time. He could have been a contender on the show cat circuit but he chose to be our best friend, a lovable maniac, a love sponge who could never have his ear rubbed quite enough and a complete nudge, which is Yiddish for charmingly demanding. He talked a lot; there were things he wanted to say. He was  a gentleman, incapable of getting angry or biting or scratching anything except his own furniture. In short, he was perfect.

On Tuesday morning, he came and sat with us on the floor in front of the TV as we read the morning papers and watched the news. As usual, he planted himself on my newspaper so my hands would be free to rub his ears. After awhile, he asked my wife to go ‘feed’ him which was a trick he taught us that required one of us to stand over and rub his head a few times before he would eat. As always, he drank some water and went to lie down for his morning nap. A couple of hours later, Suzanne went over to the table and reached down to pet him. And he was gone. We were never more than 10 feet away.

He was eight years old, which is pretty young for a cat, and never sick for a moment. There were no warning signs. A heart attack or an aneurysm, the vet said. He died instantly.

For those of us who lived in his enormous shadow, the loss is deep and painful. But, we are comforted by the knowledge that we were able to share our lives, albeit too briefly, with a true superstar. Like JFK and Marilyn and James Dean, and other special beings who left too soon, he will never age, or suffer, or get old. He will simply live on in our minds and hearts as the perfect friend and a reminder of the fragility and the awesome power of beauty, innocence and pure love.

The NEA has announced its plans for the funding it got in the stimulus bill, and the elligibility guidelines make a lot of sense.  Back in early February when the bill was going through congress I expressed concern about whether the NEA would use the funding in a deliberately stimulative way, and, as the Magic 8 Ball would say, “signs point to yes.”

According to the NEA website:

Projects are limited to:

• Salary support, full or partial, for one or more positions that are critical to an organization’s artistic mission and that are in jeopardy or have been eliminated as a result of the current economic climate.

And/or

• Fees for previously engaged artists and/or contractual personnel to maintain or expand the period during which such persons would be engaged.

All applicants must have received NEA support in the past four years, and according to the FAQ that limitation is aimed at reducing the difficulty of administering the grants–previous recipients have already been vetted and have demonstrated both artistic merit and the ability to follow the rules,  and already represent a broad range of arts, sizes, and locations.  Plus, to be effective the funding needs to be disbursed quickly, and working from a preexisting pool of applicants will expedite the process.

This strategy makes a lot of sense.  Focusing on existing jobs that are in danger ensures that the money will be genuinely stimulative, and job preservation turns out to be more valuable than job creation.  Here’s Ezra Klein on the subject:

On this, the economic literature is clear: A terminated worker’s next job generally offers lower pay, lower benefit levels, and lower status. He’s also less productive for the company: He doesn’t always know the sector as well and there’s a learning curve at any new place of employment. Meanwhile, keeping a company solvent through a hard few years is rather less expensive than inducing enough demand to create a whole new set of companies.

Many non-profit arts organizations have already been hit hard by the economic meltdown.  The Detroit Institute of Arts, for instance, is laying off 20% of its staff.  The Miami City Ballet has cut 15% of its dancers.  The Los Angeles Opera has laid off 17% of its staff.  Each of those articles lists more cuts to other organizations as well, and that was just a sampling of what I found in about five minutes of searching.  Here’s hoping the NEA stimulus can help mitigate the disaster.

The application deadline is 11:59 p.m., Eastern Time, on April 2, 2009.

The festivities continue at the newly reopened Alice Tully Hall tonight, with a concert they’re calling “New York, New Music, New Hall.” The evening gets underway with a preshow at 5:30 in the outer lobby where ETHEL will play a piece called Space by Phil Kline.  The sold-out main event starts at 7:00 and features a smorgasbord of performances by Alarm Will Sound, the Bang On A Can All-Stars (with special guest Glenn Kotche of Wilco), and Steve Reich and Musicians with Synergy Vocals.  AWS is playing music by Derek Bermel, Oscar Bianchi, and Caleb Burhans.  The All-Stars are playing music by Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Glenn Kotche.  Steve Reich and his posse are doing Music for 18 Musicians.

I asked a couple of the composers to tell me something interesting about their new pieces.

David Lang says:

My piece tonight – SUNRAY – came out of a giant case of writers block. Every summer, Bang on a Can runs a music institute at Mass MoCA in the Berkshires, and we teach there and hang out and write music and work with students from around the globe.  I was supposed to make a new piece for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and I didn’t know what to write, and there was a rush on – it was supposed to be a surprise present for my dad on his 80th birthday, so I had to be on time and do a good job. The pressure was on.  Everyday, I would just stare out of my apartment window, trying to think of something worthy to do but nothing seemed to work. The apartment was next to a dry cleaners – the store was called SUN CLEANERS and their sign had these stark, intertwined rays of the sun shooting out, in bright red and yellow, and I would just stare endlessly at it, trying to think about music. Feeling ever more miserable with my deadline fast approaching I just looked up and thought – write what you know.  And so I did.

David is a modest guy and a great composer, and I have to admire his willingness to admit, on the record, to the banality of the compositional process.  I haven’t heard the piece, but past experience tells me to expect good things.

Caleb Burhans says:

Let’s see. I was commissioned by Lincoln center to write this this past summer for aws. I finished “oh ye of little faith… (do you know where your children are?)” at the end of august. I had the advantage of knowing what else would be on our program so i composed the piece trying to show off the groups strenghths which were not featured in the other works. The title is a reflection on having sung too many weelkes and morely madrigals (more or less) and the subtitle comes from “it’s 10pm…” and also the idea of “children” of god. The piece is for a pretty standard chamber orchestra with the exception of flugelhorn in place of trumpet and the addition of e. guitar & e. bass.

Caleb is playing guitar.  The piece is being premiered tonight, but I was lucky enough to hear a preview (special thanks to the Nabi Gallery, which made it possible) and I can tell you that it is breathtakingly beautiful.