Culture – The Big City

Fossil Aerosol Mining Project

Do you like scary stories? Well, you’re not prepared for the terrors of this one.

An emptied planet, Earth without human beings, has been on my mind for a while. If you ‘enjoyed’ the NY Mag article, and would like to think about the future in a parallel, and visceral way, I would like to point you to my [article at NewMusicBox](newmusicbox george grella) that thinks through the media we will leave behind and how other beings might find music within.

And while you’re reading that, use my Bandcamp survey of music that imagines an empty Earth as a soundtrack.

Best.

My America

The perpetually new-found land

Thread(ing) the Words, the World

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As a reader interested in the state of contemporary music, you’ve likely already seen that Henry Threadgill won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in music, specifically for his 2015 album on Pi, In For a Penny, In for a Pound.

Personally, I’m overjoyed. I’ve been following Threadgill since I first heard one of his records with his group Air, which was probably around 1980-81. He’s one of those musicians who’s work gives me immediate pleasure while at the same time I often can’t completely comprehend it, and so I follow with persistent fascination. There are many examples of his music that deserve this kind of recognition, and the award feels to me like an honor for his complete career. But the Pulitzer is interested in the idea of composition, and In for a Penny, In for a Pound is just that.

I interviewed Threadgill and Jason Moran, in the company of Raymond Foye, for the December 2014/January 2015 Rail (I have something of a history of writing about Thread for the Rail, and without his existence probably would not be editing the music section). We talked about the work, which was about to premiere at Roulette (UPDATED: Liberty Ellman has told me the recordings were made in the studio, the Roulette performances were recorded but not for release), and he described it as a concerto highlighting the members of his excellent band, Zooid. He plays, but he’s not featured—he’s the composer, which likely made it easy for the committee to see what this piece is.

Musically, it’s the culmination of a long, developing concept of organizing what is best described as contemporary chamber music along the historic principles of jazz. From Air, through the Sextett, and even the electric bands Very Very Circus and Make a Move, Threadgill has been looking for a new structural method on top of the foundation of African-American music: marches, rags, the blues. You can hear a march, whether up-tempo or a dirge, a rag, a blues, or all three, on every single record he’s produced.

What he’s been doing with Zooid, and encapsulates on In for a Penny, is combine those roots with a means to tightly organize harmony and modulation while also allowing for improvised solos and free group interplay and accompaniment in the manner of traditional jazz. (I discussed this with him a few years ago, and don’t want to try and get too deep into it in case I misremember, but Threadgill uses a central chord, then lists the allowable intervals from the notes in the chord, and the musicians are free to use those intervals to modulate, but they must remain within those limits.) With his trademark recursive themes and hip, funky pulse, you get music that has immediate physical impact, that is firmly tonal (though complex), and tremendously sophisticated. Great art, in other words.

(His newest release is also another composition, in an appreciably different style: Old Locks and Irregular Verbs. This is a very beautiful record, a tribute to his dear, departed, much-missed friend Butch Morris—the music carries a deep, elegiac quality underneath a compelling, almost diffident, surface.)

And great African-American art, I want to point out. Threadgill’s work is the fulfillment of the AACM motto, the one Joseph Jarman would announce at the end of every Art Ensemble of Chicago concert, “Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future!” As Henry said during our interview, “What a lot of people forget about is that historically black people in America are the latest things on the planet!” They are, and they have been giving us all sorts of the latest thinking in serious music for more than a century. Occasionally, people hear this.

For more Threadgill listening pleasure, here’s a recommended discography:

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Henry Threadgill: The Complete Remastered Recordings on Black Saint & Soul Note: a great bargain, and although not the most comprehensive collection, this is where you get Spirit of Nuff…Nuff, one of his most important records, the compositional ideas of Song Out of My Trees, and some decent (if not the best) Air, including a guest appearance from Cassandra Wilson.

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Novus & Columbia Recordings of Henry Threadgill & Air: expensive, but worth every penny and pound. This has some, altough not all, of the Air records, the absolutely essential run of Sextett albums (You Know the Number, Easily Slip Into Another World, Rag, Bush, and All), the early X-75 compositional experiment, two Very Very Circus recordings, and Where’s Your Cup with Make a Move. That last band lasted all of two records, and is something of a sidebar, but Where’s Your Cup kicks ass all up and down the sidewalk. Get this if you can at all afford it, and even if you can’t (limited edition of 5,000 total copies, marked as running low as of the beginning of September 2016).

Pi Recordings: Henry’s label for the 21st century, with seven releases so far and, if the whispers I’ve been hearing are true, something else to come this year that is supposed to be crushingly great. This is where the Zooid band has been thriving. If you don’t need EVERYTHING Henry has made (why not?), and taking into account that Zooid has gotten better at Henry’s concept through the years, the records to get here are This Brings Us To, Vol. 2 through Old Locks and Irregular Verbs.

Deaths in Winter

Deaths come disproportionally in winter (in the northern hemisphere). There’s no sure explanation, but it seems to me the combination of cold and diminished sunlight direct the body towards a natural cessation of activity, and for one already approaching the end of life, it may be perhaps one subtle step to slip away.

Some important, irreplaceable musicians are now gone: Mark Murphy, Paul Bley, Pierre Boulez, and Elizabeth Swados. Read the obits if you want, they all give a good outline of each career, though I have some differing critical views on their individual importance. (UPDATE: Here is my own Boulez obit at the New York Classical Review.)

Mark Murphy

I miss Murphy particularly. The ultimate, true hipster, he gave up a promising career as a matinée idol singer to be a musical expression of the Beats, especially Kerouac. As careerism and consumerism has taken over the professional development of writers and musicians in America, the Beats have become easy to laugh at, in the sense that if one conforms to the crowd, numbers protect the ego with a sense of false courage. Murphy never let go of what is an essential American idea of individual freedom held within the values and morals of communitarianism:

His influence on the most artistically important contemporary singers was profound:

Paul Bley

Bley is a great loss too, although, unlike Murphy, his playing declined over the last decade or so, along with his health. You’ll find Bley’s records under jazz, and he was one of the greatest jazz pianists, but he was so much more—an exceptional improviser who could freely improvise coherent, linear structures, and was an exceptional listener. And he was an emotionally moving blues player. There’s substantial documentation to his career, on records and in books: I’m partial to this great solo CD, and this Black Saint/Soul Note box is the best single compilation (and if you can get one or more of the Life of a Trio CDs, you will have some of the finest small group improvisations ever recorded) . Bley’s own thoughts are important, and he had a capable amanuensis in Arrigo Cappelletti, but read Paul Bley: The Logic of Chance in the original Italian if you can, the translation is literal and un-idiomatic, a tiring read.

Elizabeth Swados

Swados may get lost in the shuffle. She had a tough end, but she left us with a lot of great music, and Runaways should remain a staple of high school and community productions as long as there are kids. Please don’t underestimate how important this is: the music we make and experience when young is the most important music in our lives, and Swados will be inside millions of people.

She also wrote books, including My Depression: A Picture Book, which is an important thing to read for those of us who find ourselves caught in the mental and emotional straight-jacket of self-loathing.

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Pierre Boulez

Certainly everyone will mention Boulez and Le Marteau sans Maître, and that is an important work, but in the negative sense. The piece marks the extremity of decadence of serial music. Schoenberg and his followers used the cool veneer of their music as pernicious, ideological propaganda, developing the idea that their method was objectively correct, the logical culmination of historical currents. Actual history, the accumulation of events, has shown serial music to be both an aberration—it’s heyday, though outsized, was short-lived—and the same as every other style, which first supersedes previous ideas, then grows increasingly solipsistic until it, in turn, is superseded by another. Le Marteau is about nothing more than a technique taken to the nth degree, past the point where it serves a coherent musical purpose.

Boulez was, in all, a notable composer, staking out a place in the continuum where he exerted beneficial intellectual influence and also created some fine pieces of music. Pli selon pli is one of my favorites, along with …explosante fixe… :

As a conductor, his recordings of Stravinsky, Bartók, Debussy, and Ravel should be in every classical music lover’s library (I think his Ravel is the finest on disc). His takes on romantic music are uneven, but at their best are refreshing and satisfying. The salient example is his Mahler: his readings of the Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies have brilliant moments but ultimately fall apart, while the vocal music comes of well, with a great pulse and understanding of Mahler’s continually forward development.

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Best Classical Recordings 2015

Another year in which classical music didn’t die, was not dying, was not suffering, etc, just like every other year. I attended easily over 100 classical music performances, spanning music from the Renaissance to something like last Thursday, and listened to over 200 recordings that were issued just this year—and one important caveat is that there is still about 48 hours of music I have not yet been able to get through. If you only read stories about economic issues in classical music (or jazz) you would only ever think that the music is vanishing. It is not so, never has been, will never be. Yes, it’s fucking impossible to make a living, much less a buck, but people are still doing it. Who are you going to believe, mainstream cultural writers/editors, or your lying ears?

The composition of these lists is something I still fiddle with, because of this historical tradition of classical music and the nature of recordings. This year, I have two main lists, Classical Recordings and New Music; the former is new recordings of previously recorded music, the latter is new recordings of music that is heard on record for the first time.

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Classical Recordings

An interesting year to say the least, a big year for Schumann (primarily thanks to Harmonia Mundi, with Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov), and also for Morton Feldman and Fred Rzewski: two new recordings for each of Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello and The People United Will Never be Defeated! respectively. I’m not alone as a contemporary composer and critic who can never get enough of new music on recordings and concert programs, but as we get further into the 21st century, the actual evidence of performances and recordings tells me that new and contemporary is active and pervasive. It’s all one stream of time, and arrow pointing into the future, the vanguard supported by the centuries that came before. I like to spread things around, so it’s an indication of how fine the albums are that I put both new recordings of The People United on this list. Both Levit and Oppens are tremendous in this music, but Levit’s album is a better one because it also has the Golbberg and Diabelli Variations.

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Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov, Brahms, Schumann & Dietrich: Violin Sonatas
Igor Levit, Bach, Beethoven, Rzewski
Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre, Coeur, Airs de cour Français de le fin du XVI siécle
Ursula Oppens & Jerome Lowenthal, The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Aleck Karis, Curtis Macomber, Danielle Farina, Christopher Finckel, Feldman: Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello
Dmitri Ensemble and Graham Ross, Shostakovich-Barshai: Chamber Symphonies
Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Gil Rose, Lukas Foss: Complete Symphonies
Orli Shaham, Brahms Inspired (Opus 117/118/119)
New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, Carl Nielsen: The Symphonies and Concertos
Chi-Chen Wu, Nicholas DiEugenio, Robert Schumann: Complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano

Opera

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RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, René Jacobs, Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Boston Baroque, Martin Pearlman, Monteverdi: Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
Musica Aeterna, Teodor Currentzis, Mozart: Cosi fan Tutte
Ensemble Pygmalion and Raphaël Pichon, Rameau: Castor et Pollux
American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, Hindemith: The Long Christmas Dinner

Honorable Mention:

Momenta Quartet, Similar Motion
Jennifer Koh, Bach & Beyond, Part 2
Frederic Chiu, Distant Voices: Piano Music by Claude Debussy and Gao Ping
Alexander Melnikov, Isabelle Faust, et al, Hindemith: Sonatas for …
Jennie Oh Brown, Looking Back: Flute Music of Joseph Schwantner
Diego Ares, Soler” Sol de mi fortuna, Sonatas form the Morgan Library
Kim Kashkashian, Sarah Rotheberg, Steven Schick, Houston Chamber Choir, Robert Simpson, Morton Feldman/Erik Satie/John Cage
Sophie Karthäuser, Ensemble Correspondences and Sébastien Daucé, Lalande: Leçons de Ténèbres
Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman, Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
Jean Rondeau, Bach: Imagine
Movses Pogossian, Varty Manouelian, Susan Grace, Stefan Wolpe: Music for Violin and Piano (1924–1966)
Mark Kroll, Marina Minkin, Vitttorio Rieti: Music for Harpsichord and Instruments
New Budapest Orpheum Society, As Dreams Fall Apart: The Golden Age of Jewish Stage and Film Music 1925–1955
Jerusalem Quartet, Beethoven: String Quartets Op. 18
Karen Gottlieb, Music for Harp
Trio Settecento, Veracini: Complete Sonate Academiche
Melia Watras, ispirare
Matt Haimovitz, Bach: The Cello Suites

New Music

An extraordinarily difficult category to rank this year. Michael Pisaro’s release had the most acute effect on me as a listener, so I’ll put that at the top, but everything else was strong, involving, and fascinating in one way or another, together they made 2015 a notable year for new music.

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Michael Pisaro, a mist is a collection of points
Tristan Perich, Compositions 1–4
ICE, Anna Thorvaldsdottir: In the Light of Air
Konus Quartett & Mondrian Ensemble: Jürg: Chamber Music
Yarn/Wire: Yarn/Wire/Currents Vols 1–3
Boston Modern Orchestra Project: Andrew Norman: Play
Conspirare and Craig Hella Johson, Joby Talbot: Path of Miracles
Christian Wolff, Christian Wolff: Incidental Music and Keyboard Miscellany
Parker Quartet, Jeremy Gill: Capriccio
Joe Phillips, Changing Same

Honorable Mention:

Zooid, Henry Threadgill: In for a Penny, In for a Pound
The Sebastians, Night Scenes from the Ospedale
Steve Lambert, Zahskl’s Jukebox
Eric Nathan: Multitude Solitude
Mihailo Trandafilovski: Five
Lewis Nielsen: Axis
Nordic Affect, Clockworking
Richard Carrick: Cycles of Evolution
Dan Trueman, Adam Sliwinski, Nostalgic Synchronic: Etudes for Prepared Digital Piano
Elliott Sharp, The Boreal
loadbang, lungpowered
R. Andrew Lee, as if to each other…
Reiko Füting, names, erased
Trio Nexus, Alvin Lucier: Broken Line
Michael Vincent Waller, The South Shore
Noah Creshevsky, Hyperrealist Music, 2011-2015
James Moore and Andie Spring, Gertrudes

Reissues

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