A year or so ago I decided to start studying orchestration in order to continue composing, even if no longer able to perform on piano. I had acquired a used copy of Walter Piston’s Orchestration book somewhere. It’s bound with an imprint of Allerton High School–England–on the cover. A note pasted on the first page: Frank Snape Music Prize, Marilyn Smith,1960-16, J. J. Morton (?) Head Mistress.
Anyway, cut to a month ago when one of the classical stations I listen to on the way to work was playing a Haydn symphony. Thinking of the 100-plus that he had written, I decided to try to write a piece for orchestra every month this year. Learn by doing, etc. Although I will commit the offense of not fully allowing the pieces to develop their themes and structures, I will benefit from frequent fresh starts, and will be able to grow out of the previous works’ mistakes. I had this idea on January 15th so I’m on target for 30-day composing sessions, but behind for the year. It’s a soft target.
I started unsure what my orchestral style would be. Rock musicians turned orchestral generally produce tonal works similar to their songs but without any of the edge that electric guitar, studio processing, etc. adds to the music. I didn’t want to fall into that. Inspirations are the Russians: Shostakovich and Prokofiev, the sonorists: Schnittke and Penderecki (5th Symphony), and works like Sibelius’s 5th Symphony (for its discursive fluidity) or Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony.
In this first study, I started with the general intent of opening with a section of chattery, fluid strings, then leading to a more homophonic section dominated by brass, and developing off of those. The result is 5 sections and a coda, generally:
Polyphonic theme A for string
Homophonic hymn-like theme B for brass
Theme C derived from the texture of theme A, progressing with more dissonant brass
Theme B in the string section while the brass references theme C
Theme A and C interwoven, closing with coda referencing the simplified texture of theme B for brass and strings
At 3:12, it does feel a bit rushed as if it’s 30 minutes in a 3 minute span, but I feel like it did achieve what I set out to express. (Musescore used for scoring and PDF/MP3 output.)
I like to write notes here, for my own reminiscence, about interesting concerts I have been to. However comma some concerts pre-date this web site and I think of them often and so want to let them be counted. Most of the dates I list are from memory and what I can find on the web, so some may be a different venue, and a different year, and wildly inaccurate, but still my experience of the concert is there. Their documentation is only as poor as my memory. [ed. I made a partial reference to some of these in 2009 and 2016].
Elvis Costello at the Fox Theater in Atlanta in 1989. This was his King of America tour and the first concert I ever went to. I know. KoA was mostly country–his foray into the Nashville song-writing scene–and not my favorite, but a great opportunity to go with my brother and his then-girlfriend who was, unfortunately all I remember, a very likeable goofy blond pot smoker. We were in the upper balcony?
21 Aug 2009 – Elvis Costello to Release Live Shows on CD (Steve Hoffman Music Forums) – The chat board post references a show in 1989 that they went to, probably the one I went to also.
Some punk bands at 688 Club. It closed in 1986, so it must have been my first or second year in college. I remember being freaked out having never been to any place like that. Things have changed. That locale recurs as concert-related because it’s an urgent care location and I had to go for a freaky looking spider bite I got at one of the Piedmont Park Music Midtown festivals.
GWAR at Masquerade in Atlanta. First mosh pit and hanging out with metal heads from college and some weird drugs and yeah. GWAR spit “blood” and threw “maggots” (dye and rice) on the crowd so clothes were trashed by the end of the concert. And the pope raping scene was… something else. This is where I fell in love with the group dynamics and camaraderie of the mosh pit. I miss that and know I cannot again be a part of it at concerts as an older (?) person. Recommended, though.
Music Midtown several years when it started in 1996. It was at where the Federal Reserve building is now (just up the street from where we live now), then where the Georgia Aquarium is now, then off Piedmont and Pine (near Central Park where Shaky Knees is now).
Philip Glass solo piano at Emory’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts in 2000. This was when I worked at a company in the king (or queen?) building and we went with another couple from work. They sat in the front row of a very intimate setting and left in the middle of the performance. I hate that that’s my prominent memory.
Robert McDuffie performing Philip Glass’s 2nd Violin Concerto at Spivey Hall at Clayton State in Morrow, GA. This I can’t find anything about but I know I was there. Reduction for violin and piano. The joy of the composition was matched by his enthusiasm and passion for the work.
McCoy Tyner at the Variety Playhouse in 2010. I remember his performance being a mix of blocky, forceful and dissonant jazz with the multi-voiced, polyrhythmic complexity of Prokofiev. It was eye-opening.
Terry Riley improvising on the Tennessee Theater’s Wurlitzer organ at the second year of the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, 2010. His performance was hypnotic. Solo on a theater organ performing phased, minimalist feats of brilliance. One of a kind. Lisa’s mom, Mickey, owned that city’s events and so got us free tickets to everything. I was the only one that could go. I missed the first year, with Michael Gira and Philip Glass. It was/is(?) an amazing rock/experimental festival, more so being in Knoxville. Weird, huh?
So in college I met some great guys (where?) that were in a band called Afterlife. I wasn’t a real performer but would have liked to have played with them, and so I eventually hung with a different group of friends and more loosely disciplined musicians and they fit my casual undiscipline and let’s face it skillessness at the time. Still…
(The bassist from Afterlife, Jonathan, and I hung as pals and got into girlfriend shenanigans and partied and watched our first John Waters film together, perplexed and laughing, and generally slacked, and dated roommates to greater and lesser results but had an experience all the same. Some good times; some weird.)
Afterlife has been releasing in the last five years or so new albums. Again: discipline pays off. Full discography is:
THE FROZEN SUN (1988)
THE AWAKENING (1990)
CURTAIN CALL (1991)
COMPASS ROSE (2013
BRAVE NEW WORLD (2016)
In our era of purging, I found two cassettes of their first two releases. “The Frozen Sun” and “The Awakening”. I don’t remember purchasing them, but I think the sticker for “The Awakening” says $5.00!
Do not be alarmed by the rectangular shape, these are cassettes!
Afterlife album reviews of their first four albums (search includes one non-Afterlife album) via Nostalgia Is Evil – Music Reviews The Official Blog of Patrick Aei, some guy whose mother went to West Georgia with the rest of us (who?)
I need to decide what to do with those classic, self-produced cassettes.
(Odd note: back in 2004 I had posted a random reference to one of the members. Completely unrelated subject though.)
While practicing piano recently I had a particularly frustrating session working on the Bach fugue I picked up a month or so ago. For a normal practice session I play slowly through the whole piece, or what I have in my hands at that point, noting any trouble spots, and then work on logical sections from start to finish or sometimes the reverse. Sections may be a few measures or more likely eight or 16 or what feels independent. I learned the approach of working from the end backwards from my piano teacher. It helps with memorization and makes it easier to start playing at any point in the score from memory.
During the frustrating practice session I would work through maybe eight measures and by the end my mind would completely wander and lose the notes. Go very slowly, get it right several times, try a slightly faster tempo, and yet fail near the eight measure point. I had some to drink the night before, and considered that as cause, but I also worried that the event last year may be affecting me. Or maybe age? I probably had bad practices years ago and just never had an excuse to go all hypochondriac over it. There have been many sessions since that Bad One, both good and less good.
While commuting I have been listening to Locatelli’s Art of the Violin (see the L’art del Violino scores at IMSLP). I have a relatively inexpensive 4 CD recording with Susanne Lautenbacher that was burned to MP3 and uploaded to Google, so have been getting familiar with the work instead of looking at it on the shelf. Recommended performance. Anyway, I’ll often keep focused on the melody and structure for several minutes, but then wander and start thinking about work or life or whatever. But then maybe I’m just focusing on traffic, which is good. Still, the diminution of attention span is frustrating. I’ve also been listening to and following the score of Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata (jazzy harmonies with Carter’s complex rhythms and part writing). Dedicated listening is key.
Because of the lack of sustained focus, frequent or just sporadic, I’ve been thinking about meditation, whatever that may be. I guess I’m just trying to sit and think of nothing which is the opposite of focusing on something but it feels like an attempt at controlling my thoughts and so controlling my thoughtfulness. We shall see.
My first visit to Vancouver and Canada proper from Fri 28 Sep to Mon 1 Oct for music shenanigans that changed before departure and became much weirder once the night of the concert arrived but could still be categorized as Shenanigans proper.
The trip was initiated on impulse when we saw that Childish Gambino was closing his last tour there qua Gambino. Tickets purchased, other tickets purchased, and hotel etc. However comma the week before our weekend there CG broke his foot during a performance and so cut the performance short and cut the Vancouver performance much, much shorter as in “canceled”. Make-up concert is the beginning of December IIRC, so we’ll probably be visiting again. Beautiful, fun city so no regrets.
Fri 28 Sep 2018
Drinks and snack at Cat Cora’s before departure, a tradition since some previous trip I don’t remember when, but do remember that said name sounded made up, and so was as good a choice as any for departure. Wine, cocktail, hummus, and chat with a 76-year-old who was visiting family and needed to get back home for work. Travelers are the best.
(Mid-flight, I glance at the video screen of one of the people in the seats in front of me, voyeurism we’re all guilty of, and see that Sen. Flake has made some ruckus in the senate Judiciary hearing. Everything since has gone to shit, but watching that 12th hour pause in the apocalypse was exuberant. (I’m sorry to even remember it now.).)
Stopover at SeaTac and more snacks at the Dungeoness Seafood House. The general environment has changed from South East to become Pacific Rim/Northwest. (Last Seattle trip was for the Peter Gabriel/Sting concert.) West coast, man. Current pulp sci-fi novel was left on the plane as we arrived in Vancouver and Lyfted it over to the Marriott Pinnacle.
The most holy of crabs, met the next day. He followed Lisa all the way from Louisiana.
Pause at the hotel bar for drinks before going out (over the weekend we had a stopover three times at that bar and the drinks were bad each time, ugh, if the hotel bar is not good I question the hotel). Still, we had a nice confirmation of dinner choices when the bartender recommended the restaurant we had already planned to go to: The Flying Pig in an area called Gastown (how Mad Max!). At Das Fliegende Schwein, waiting for our table, the hostess sent us across the street to the bar at The Lamplighter Public House. There, we chatted with a barfly incredulous at our Presidential Idiot. You and me buddy. Light dinner of shared squid and caprese was perfect.
Sat 29 Sep 2018
Day 2! Cold, light rain, and generally what you expect in the northwest. Sun would be good, but this weather fit the locale nicely.
Brutalist salmon hatchery seen in our park while walkin’
Locally-sourced late-breakfast/early-brunch at Forage–double fried pork sandwich, bison hash, scones for the next morning–to prepare us for our foraging in the wonderfully betreed Stanley Park. As we entered the park we saw one of many groups of people in various rope-based tree climbing competitions. We were promised coyotes and beavers (apparently nocturnally sleeping in their muddy pile of a beaver dam) but ultimately only saw ducks and squirrels and many dog-walkers. I had not dressed for the day, so in the gift shop planted in the middle of the park I picked up a woolen red plaid jacket with elbow patches (Professor Lumberjack!). Near the shop was a display of 8-or-so totem poles carved in the past decade by local artists, each telling the stories of various origins: the art of canoe-making given to local tribes by a water spirit (IIRC?), wolf god be-knighting a family, etc.
Land, sea, and sky
After an hour or so of wanderings around the many isolated park trails, we exited at the water to circle back to civilization and relax at the Cactus Club Cafe. Hot waitresses and a crazy chalkboard filled with inscrutable writings and drawings (ed. Lisa has a pic of the blackboard, need to get it to relive the mania). We continued our day of walking with a walk back through the city and its little neighborhoods: a distinctly asian area with shops and markets, quaint houses, and a Louisiana restaurant called The Holy Crab (see above) that had a crab with a halo as its logo. Eschewing po’ boys and jambalaya, we continued back to the waterfront for local beers and margarita pizza at the TAPshack. Late afternoon, the walk and the time change finally hit us, we had a power nap back at our room at the Pinnacle.
Snafu! from the TAPshack. What does it mean?!?
The evening’s major plans were a swanky dinner at the 11th best restaurant in all of Canada: Hawksworth. It’s also on West Georgia Street, so that’s nice. First stop on the way was the bar at the Fairmont hotel. It had great atmosphere and an excellent Manhattan and, even better, a female pianist who during her set did a loose cover of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”. On to some of Canada’s 11th best food! I had fretted over not having a nice-yet-casual sport jacket to wear but, though very nice inside, there was a healthy mix of styles from somewhat casual to some very trashy club dresses to proper swanky. Dinner was on fleek. We shared appetizer squid (again) in peanut sauce then a sliced ribeye, haricot vert, carrots, cauliflower gratin. Any steak I have in the future should be ashamed of itself because I think I blacked out from deliciousness.
Back to the hotel and an early end at around 11:30 because we are old.
Sun 30 Sep 2018
Rain rain rain.
This was the day of the Childish Gambino that was not to be but it was still filled with hi-jinx. First was a long walk to breakfast at Cacao 70 Eatery where, sadly, it wasn’t that good. You get a delicious little fruit and chocolate appetizer, and the waitress was soooo nice, but what followed the appetizer and the soooo nice waitress was just meh. Next, the dotted line of walking to the Contemporary Art Gallery took us by The Moose Garage which was a must stop dive bar situation. Very Vortex-like so we were right at home. A wall of old blown-out stereo speakers, be-stickered walls, and music from Donnie Darko (along with, oddly, some 80s hair metal). Coincidentally, the bartender grew up in Adalaide (though he says he would never go back) and we chatted about our recent trip to Sydney and Lisa’s frequent Australia work comings and goings.
Dove Allouche’s works: Petrographie RSM 5 and Surplomb 7, 8, and 9
The Contemporary Art Gallery was much smaller than expected, only two large rooms reminiscent of the The Contemporary Austin, but the featured artist, Dove Allouche, had some stunning pieces that, so complex in their preparation, process, and ultimate expression, I can hardly describe. My best attempt: he sometimes works with old, pre-1900s photographic techniques and, with them, photographs and post-processes molds that grow on paintings, cross-sections of millenia-old stalactites, pearls, and the Paris sewers, using crystals as lenses, crown glass (that I think he created?) as part of the frame, and added hand-drawn tones. The processes’ results were almost overfull with content. The other artist, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, was a tonic to Allouche’s density. She works with short, alliterative phrases that kindof break the words contained. Think Jenny Holzer or Barbara Kruger who, weirdly, I just saw referenced in BoJack Horseman season 2 episode 4.
Other, enumerated wanderings before the plan B concert (and that concert was… oh, jeez, I can’t even…):
Uva Wine and Cocktail Bar around the corner from the gallery. Our first quality wines of the trip, many local, paired with groovy French pop music. A nice British Columbia pinot noir.
Beat Street Records. We had a choice of I think a dozen record stores in the city, most near Gastown which seemed to be hipsville. The only near-purchase I had, I had unfortunately forgotten the name of the album and realized later that it was one of those that I looked at: Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s All Souled Out. Dammit. However, it is a pain flying back with vinyl so, hooray… question mark?
Stop off at the hotel bar across the street from our hotel, because we thought it looked cool but ultimately wasn’t, for some bad wine but delicious house made chips.
Dinner at Taishoken Ramen. Great choice! And five minutes after we sat down as one of maybe three other patrons, it completely filled up and people started lining up out the door. We’re trend-setters. Neat.
One thing Lisa spotted when researching where to go before before our plan B concert (again, oh jeez…) was the Vancouver International Film Festival. Dozens and dozens of films to choose from, I don’t know how we picked what we picked but it was amazing: a Singapore film by the Singaporean director Siew Hua Yeo called A Land Imagined. Generally it was about Chinese guest/slave laborers that come to Singapore to work construction and disappear under suspicious circumstances. A sleep-deprived detective follows the immigrant underground in an attempt to solve the cases. The unifying theme, in a somewhat magic-realist story, was The Ephemeral. Workers without a home and without respect as human beings, land being created that seems to exist outside of any country, sleeplessness, homelessness, lack of self. 5/5. And as if echoing the film, we saw it in a multistoried mall that, like most malls you can think of, was at its end of days.
We chose DPR Live based on the fact alone that he’s a Korean rapper. Could be weird; could be fun. I expected maybe a club scene letting the beat drop and having a unique DJ behind him with maybe some odd, Southeast Asian sampling. Instead with DPR (which stands for I am not kidding you: Dream Perfect Regime) we got a teenybopper, ahem, chigga. Think of him as a Korean Justin Bieber (who’s a Canadian. huh). Thinking that he was going to start fashionably late and that the opener would run late, and not that the audience would be 14- and 15-year olds out on a school nite, we arrived to see only the last three songs. Mercifully. The look on the bartender’s face when we arrived and grabbed beers was classic. A worse night he could not have had.
Still, interesting is interesting and we definitely got interesting.
Post “concert” was across the street at the Cinema Public House which, it was assured, there would be no DPRats. Cool scene, man. A very bar bar with cute waitresses that hung with the best snark I could muster and the soundtrack was old school hip hop that was cool but made me more angry at my missed opportunity with the Pete Rock and the CL Smooth and the fact that they were All Souled Out. Still, good bar, yo. Post hip hop was DJ High Toones with some good cuts. And throughout were Temples of Dooms on like seven or eight TVs. Consistency is a virtue.
The end.
Mon 1 Oct 2018
But not.
Flight home but not too early and the reverse layover at SeaTac landed us in The Africa Lounge for drinks and snacks and talks with bar neighbors I don’t specifically remember. The vacation end was not all depressing like most vacation ends are and I credit Canada.
