Category: Music

Two notes on last night’s performance of Mahler’s Second (“Resurrection”) Symphony at Tanglewood with Seiji Ozawa at the helm.

First, I should know better than to try to make a critical analysis of any work before I actually sing it. A tenor near me was lamenting his difficulty in hitting the high notes at the end of the last movement, and I responded, “There are, I think, some works that are so transcendent that they even transcend the ability of the performer to finish them.” Of course, in the actual performance, it was my voice that cracked on the first fortissimo B-flat on the penultimate page of the choral score. As Monty Python would say, so much for pathos.

Second: I entered the weekend with some uncertainty about Maestro Ozawa’s conducting approach, having gotten accustomed to Maestro Levine’s undemonstrative, understated style. I still have some reservations after the concert. Seiji’s approach to conducting is dynamic and evolving, and I thought at some points that he was placing too much emphasis on emotional content and not enough on precision. But there were decided benefits to his approach too. His dance (and that’s the only thing to call it) on the podium demonstrated to the audience how the music should be interpreted emotionally just as it gave guidance to the orchestra and chorus on how to interpret it musically.

And besides, it’s hardly fair to take points off for precision when he was conducting the entire massive symphony from memory. In fact, I am humbled and shamed about all the times I complained about singing from memory, as he was not only cuing every section perfectly but also mouthing the words to the chorus at the same time, all without opening his score.

So here I am, actually on vacation, no calls to take later for work, in Lenox, Massachusetts, between days of my residency at Tanglewood for the Mahler 2nd. “Oh that magic feeling…nowhere to go.” And of course it’s pouring. Er, has poured, is currently spitting, but looks like it might pour again any second.

What’s a depressive guy to do? Why, crank up the iPod, of course. Today’s random 10 is brought to you by the fine drip coffee (since the espresso machine is broken) and free wifiat the Lenox Cafe, an outpost of Barrington Coffee:

1. Sufjan Stevens, “Vito’s Ordination Song” (Greetings from Michigan)
2. Nada Surf, “Blankest Year” (The Weight is a Gift)
3. Shannon Worrell, “Shoot the Elephant” (The Moviegoer)
4. Soul Coughing, “Maybe I’ll Come Down” (El Oso)
5. R.E.M., “Lotus” (Up)
6. Neko Case, “That Teenage Feeling” (Fox Confessor Brings The Flood)
7. Tori Amos, “Toast” (The Beekeeper)
8. Lambchop, “Suzieju” (How I Quit Smoking)
9. Minus the Bear, “Drilling” (Menos El Oso)
10. Mission of Burma, “Nancy Reagan’s Head” (There’s a Time and Place to Punctuate)

I’m back at Tanglewood, for the last time this summer, to perfom Mahler’s Second (aka “Resurrection”) Symphony with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the BSO. This will be only the second time that I’ve performed the work, and the contrast is pretty significant.

This time, I can hit the high B that the tenors have in the last movement (the only movement in which the chorus sings). I feel as though I’m in command of the music. We’re singing mixed—two tenors next to two sopranos on one side, two altos on the other, and two basses in front of us—which was common under Seiji Ozawa but which we are doing for the first time since I joined the chorus last summer (not counting Pops performances). This means that each of us has to totally know the music—especially since we’re singing from memory.

Last time? Last time was over twelve years ago. The Virginia Glee Club had been invited to join several other Virginia choruses in a performance in Roanoke, which I remember (somewhat improbably) as taking place in a large basketball arena, and that the singers were in the upper bleachers. And I remember driving there with Don Webb and Eric Rothwell, in Webb’s Japanese import with the license plate VMHLB2, and listening to Prince as we talked about the music that we were singing that season. And improbably, on that two hour drive between Charlottesville and Roanoke, just as we were discussing the endless mass that we had been performing all year, which was written by Cristobal de Morales and based on a well known medieval “Ave Maria” chant, the Prince disk worked its way around to “Sexy MF.”

And somehow, someone was singing along to the Ave Maria chant at the same time someone else was singing along to the Prince tune, which yielded “Ave Ma-ri–a…” “shakin” that ass, shakin’ that ass!”

At which point I realized that we were all going to Hell. Forever.

For this reason, my memory of Mahler’s Second is a little dim. So I’m glad I have a chance to do it properly.

Or, more precisely, Power Back On. I’m in my office now, but was working from home this morning because of a power failure that took down our entire building. (Apparently an air conditioner overloaded.) But they fixed it and it’s back to business.

So without further ado, this Random 10, in which the first two tunes are combined greater in length than the next 8:

1. Branford Marsalis Quartet, “Countronious Rex” (Contemporary Jazz)
2. Anthony Braxton, “Cherokee” (9 Standards: Quartet, 1993)
3. The Charlatans UK, “A Time for Living” (Help)
4. Bobby Bare, “Everybody’s Talkin’” (The Moon was Blue)
5. Vic Gammon, “He That Buys Land” (The Tale of Ale)
6. Sufjan Stevens, “Chicago” (Illinoise)
7. Beth Orton, “Conceived” (Comfort of Strangers)
8. Billy Joe Shaver, “Georgia on a Fast Train” (The Third Annual Oxford American Music Issue 1999)
9. Woody Allen, “Summing Up” (Standup Comic)
10. Funkadelic, “I Wanna Know If It’s Good to You (Alt. Version)” (Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow)

It’s not uncommon for a folksinger’s bio to mention the influence of James Taylor, Suzanne Vega, and Linda Ronstadt. It’s a lot rarer for the bio to go on to mention degrees in classical vocal performance and experience in the Jewish, Arabic, and gospel traditions. It’s almost unheard of for a musician to live up to that many promises. But Carrie Cheron is that rare new recording artist who sounds completely authentic and passionate and at the same time polished and poised. Her debut album, One More Autumn, is a relaxed collection of acoustic performances that shows off her songwriting chops and her burnished mezzo voice to beguiling effect.

Carrie Cheron has been gigging around Boston and New York for a few years, but has also had a series of side gigs, including church musician (through which I should mention that I became acquainted with her, in the interest of full disclosure), that have carried her into some different idioms and musical traditions. The variety of her experience stands her in good stead on Autumn, which has a wide emotional range and plays with some interesting contrasts. The mood of the songs ranges from relaxed and reflective in “Goodbye Amelia,” “Autumn,” and some of the other folksy numbers, to mischievously mellow in “Untitled Song About Drinking Alone” to somber and mournful in “Ghost Town.” To my ears the standout track is “Arms of Our Brothers,” which sounds by turns anthemic and balladic and would not be wholly out of place in a worship service. Carrie’s choice of cover material and texts (including a fine performance of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and an adaptation of Christina Rossetti’s “Echo” as “Julie’s Song”) is solid as well.

Gripes? A few minor ones. Carrie’s voice is sometimes a little too low in the mix, particularly on the first few tracks where the backing vocalist is a little too prominent. While I appreciate the choice of traditional instrumentation, I personally could have done without the mandolin on a few tracks, especially on “Time” where it distracts a bit from the performance. When Carrie’s vocals, melody, lyrics, and accompaniment gel perfectly, as they do on “Arms of Our Brothers” and “A Rainy Night,” they hit with an incisive clarity like sunlight through a high window. Carrie may be her own most sensitive accompanist, as both these numbers are primarily driven by her piano.

My take on the album: it’s a compelling voice heard across a crowded room. I look forward to the next one clearing away some of my production quibbles so we can hear the voice more clearly.

It occurs to me that I’ve posted a couple of lists of review links, but haven’t actually written about the experience of performing great choral masterworks at Tanglewood. First a few specific notes about the Mozart performances, then some general observations:

First, the amount of music that the chorus actually sings in Don Giovanni is quite small compared to the three-hour-plus performance length. To be specific, we had three numbers in which we performed: about sixteen or 24 measures each for the men and women in No. 5 (the wedding song), another entrance for the men toward the end of the first act that lasts about 24 or 32 bars, and then the final scene in act II, in which the men have about 16 bars of devilish chorus work. That’s all told less than two minutes of music. Was it worth it to sit on stage for three-plus hours to sing two minutes of music? Um, hell yes, particularly because we had the best seats in the house for the action of the opera. As I eventually agreed with John at MessagesAboutMusic, the key aspect of this opera was being able to watch it, and we had a clear view of all the comedic interactions between the cast. It was a lot of fun.

Second, the Requiem. I’ve sung this piece a few times before, most recently out in Seattle with the Cascadian Chorale on the first 9/11 anniversary, and each performance is different and unique. For one thing, I learned the piece in a non-Süssmayer edition almost 10 years ago with the Cathedral Choral Society, so the memorization part was interesting: I was quite confident with the piece through the first few choral movements but realized a few days before the concert that I was quite shaky on the Offertorium movements, primarily because they had been omitted the first few times I performed the work. But I eventually pulled it together.

This concert was the first time with the TFC that I feel like I really understand why we sing music from memory. Memorizing for a guest conductor can be tricky, since frequently the conductor wants different interpretations of the music from that which was memorized, and there are only a few rehearsals (maybe as few as two) in which to re-learn the music. But singing with Maestro Levine is different.

I observed last year at Tanglewood that his conducting style is different than others with whom I’ve sung. He stopped a rehearsal of Mahler’s 8th and said to the first violin section, “Look at your scores for that passage. I think you’ll see that Mahler wanted something different than what you’re playing.” No histrionics, no micromanaging, just appealing to their native musicianship to bring out a coherent performance.

It appears that he takes a similar approach to working with choruses: if you provide him with a well thought through, passionate performance, he works in that context to provide feedback. But he never microconducts emotional context, dynamics, fugue entrances, etc. because he relies on you as the performer—yes, even the individual chorus member—to bring that to the performance. It’s daunting if you’re used to conductor-tyrants, but it’s liberating and exhilarating if you can own the music and invest your own energy in the performance.

I’ll be interested, after three concerts with Levine in a row, to see how things go with Seiji Ozawa in August. From what I understand it’s a night and day experience.

My first ever picture in the New York Times! (I’m the face circled in red.)

The New York Times review of the Requiem was the first to appear, late last night, followed by the Globe:

• New York Times: At Tanglewood, Scintillating Send-Offs for Don Giovanni and Mozart: “With the festival chorus, meticulously trained by John Oliver, weighing in at about 80 voices, Mr. Levine simply let it rip. The wall of sound at the start was stunning, and the performance remained compelling throughout, mostly for its power, but also at times for its subtlety.”
• Boston Globe: BSO celebrates Mozart’s 250th with style. “Sunday afternoon brought a solid and stirring performance of the Requiem, with some splendid singing from the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and a starry team of soloists…”
• The Phoenix: Mozart plus. “John Oliver’ Tanglewood Festival Chorus didn’t have as much to do as in its stunning work in the next day’s Mozart Requiem, but it was one more crucial cog in Don Giovanni’s miraculous success.” (OK, so the Phoenix really only reviewed Don G, but they still said we were stunning.)

Only one review so far for the weekend’s performances, but it’s a good one: Boston Globe, Levine leads triumphant Don Giovanni. I would agree with Dyer’s assessments of the soloists, particularly Matthew Polenzani, Soile Isokoski, Morris Robinson, and Luca Pisaroni. The cast had tremendous rapport and it was fun to watch from the best seats in the house, even if we only had a few minutes of song.

The bloggers generally agreed: Bravo, Alto Flute thought it was “very very very very VERY good” and said it gave him/her chills, even at the 3 hour plus running time. The writer at My Blog Is Laaaaaaaame says the singing was magnificent. Fanw, who was on stage with me, notes that the female contingent of the TFC was captivated by both Pisaroni and Mariusz for more than strictly musical reasons. Of course, one grumpy blogger at MessagesAboutMusic wrote that the singers sounded like a bunch of mediocrities to him. Wonder if he was listening to the same concert.

The concert week continues; I sing the chorus part in Don Giovanni in a few hours. The chorus part consisting of approximately 30 measures of music, this will be mostly an excuse for me to watch the action from up close. And the cast being amazing, the action should be excellent indeed.

I was actually reading this New Yorker article about the complete Mozart oeuvre during one of the long stretches between our entrances during one rehearsal this week, but had to stop—there was just too much to watch. For instance, the celebrated scene in which Leporello explains to the stunned Elvira that she is just one of his master’s conquests, then proceeds to read the list from a log that he has kept. In the first runthrough, Leporello used his own paperbound copy of the score as the “catalogue.” In the second, there was a burst of laughter and applause as at the requisite moment in the aria, Levine’s own hard-bound score appeared, passed to Leporello via one of the wind players. Leporello took the score, gaily referred to it during the aria, then passed it back, Levine conducting from memory all the while. The humor of using the score as the catalog, as Leporello’s record of Don Giovanni’s conquests, is delicious, and plays nicely on the metaphysical level.

Today’s Random 10 is brought to you by the letters C and B, where C stands for Carver Middle School and B stands for bus. Carver was the middle school next to ours—immediately adjacent, oddly enough—where a lot of the kids from my neighborhood went, some of the nice ones and some of the troublemakers. I rode the bus with them through three-quarters of the town and a 30 minute morning commute to attend the next door middle school, which had a gifted program. Watching them go their way as I turned and trudged mine probably goes a long way toward explaining my reluctance to accept the privileges in my life at face value, as I know how close the alternatives are.

And that bus goes a long way toward explaining my bizarre memory for 80s pop and hip-hop. The alpha kids at the back of the bus always had a radio, a boom box really, which the driver tolerated since it kept them from beating up the other kids (usually). And that radio would always be tuned to some reasonably urban station or other, which (in the days before really rigid formats) could also be counted on to drop some choice dance tracks alongside the hip hop. I first heard Doug E. Fresh do “The Show” on that bus, and “Roxanne Roxanne” … and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Which explains its presence with the former two songs on my first brace of 80s compilations.

And the rest of today’s list? To me today, the other nine songs look like the fruit of my long running attempts to run away from the music on that bus and find something different. It was a quest led me down a lot of blind alleys as well as to a lot of new and interesting places. But it never succeeded in excising those other songs, which tormented me for years—the knowledge that the troublemakers may have gotten the worse school, but they still had my attention because I couldn’t get their music out of my head.

1. David Byrne, “Good and Evil” (Rei Momo)
2. Frankie Goes to Hollywood, “Relax”
3. James Brown, “Bewildered” (Star Time)
4. Richard Buckner, “Faithful Shooter” (Since)
5. Miles Davis, “Assassinat (take 2)/Julien Dans l’Ascenseur” (Ascenseur Pour L’échauffaud)
6. Mogwai, “Friend of the Night” (Mr. Beast)
7. Funkadelic, “Funky Dollar Bill” (Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow)
8. The Wedding Present, “Shatner” (George Best Plus)
9. Mogwai, “Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist” (Come On Die Young)
10. Camera Obscura, “Dory Previn” (Let’s Get Out of This Country)

I came from an intoxicating rehearsal of the Mozart Requiem this morning (if you’ve ever sung the “Rex tremendae” with a huge, well-tuned chorus after listening to four nearly perfect soloists hit the “Tuba mirum” out of the park, you know what I mean). This afternoon I was startled to come across a suggestion that the piece is not just intoxicating but subversive. A reviewer on Amazon writes that the piece incorporates “Freemason music” (look for the review called “The All Time Best Mozart Requiem”). In a word, huh?

Turns out it’s not that far fetched. Mozart was a Freemason, a member of the lodge “Zur Wohltätigkeit” (Benefaction) and a Master Mason for the last six years of his life, and many of his works contain what some have described as overt Masonic symbolism, such as the three chords in the opening of the Magic Flute. But the only case I can see for giving credence to the Masonic symbolism suggestion for the Requiem is its echoes of the orchestration of the Magic Flute. Not much to hang a conspiracy theory on.

But I was amused to learn of one non-Masonic connection in Mozart’s work: the scatological, as evidenced by his six (or three) part canon, “Leck mich im Arsch” (K. 231 or 233, also known as the “Kiss My Ass” canon). You won’t hear that on WCRB…

As I was looking through the Feedster and Technorati listings for reviews of the Gurrelieder concert, I was pleased to run across a couple of other people who have been blogging about (and from!) the TFC:

• Rishi, who performed in February’s and July’s Gurrelieder
• Carol Minor at Minor Music, who attended the performance last weekend and with her keen eye noted some details of Levine’s conducting
• Five O’Clock Shadow, who attended the February performance and appears to be a Boston student
• Maury D’Annato of My Favorite Intermissions, who joins the chorus of bloggers and reviewers griping about balance problems with the soloists
• Kelly Corcoran of, um, her MySpace, who sang with us in July (and whom I didn’t realize was a conductor)
• fanw, who writes intelligently about the trade-offs involved in singing in a major work like the Gurrelieder as an amateur chorister
• Andrea, who sang in the February Gurrelieder and wrote about some of the logistical challenges of singing the last five minutes of a 130-minute-long work
• Marie, whose dad is in the TFC and who wishes she could sing like Karita Mattila (don’t we all?)
• Willowfinn, who had an impromptu Gurrelieder dance party with his/her friends in the back row at Symphony Hall back in February, and who also points out the real reason for the piece’s magnificence: “Schoenberg + zombies + a dude named Waldemar + a veritable forest of violins = WIN!”

I don’t always go back and gather links to the reviews of concerts that I’m in, but it’s a habit that I’m trying to get into. Not because I’m egocentric (though as e.e.cummings once wrote, I have yet to run into a peripherally situated ego), but because for years I sang in groups that didn’t get reviewed and I’m trying to make up for lost time.

This time the first review I saw was Sunday’s Albany Times-Union story, which was Page 1. The New York Times and Boston Globe reviews followed yesterday. Mercifully, all three avoided the temptation to use the common review of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, “as usual, the chorus sang superbly and from memory.”

• Albany Times-Union: Cantata by BSO, singers classy: “The huge male chorus (and the women when called upon) sang superbly, especially in the “Wild Hunt” section. By the time, the final chorus to the sun rang out, the music of “Gurrelieder” was anything but ugly or boring.”
• New York Times: At Tanglewood, James Levine Transforms Students Into Pros (about both the Gurrelieder and the following night’s Strauss Elektra performance): “Even in the orchestral prelude, which evokes the natural world with plangent harmonies, glowing strings and twittering woodwinds, Mr. Levine paid heed to the harmonically restless bass lines, glints of dissonance and ominous stirrings amid the musical bliss. The orchestral and choral textures are often daringly thick in this music. Schoenberg had to manufacture special manuscript paper with 48 staffs to notate the work. (That oversize manuscript is on display this summer at the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan.) Yet though the textures are dense, they are never gloppy. In a good performance all the inner voices and details should come through, and this performance was superb. The Boston Symphony continues to sound like one of the glorious ensembles of the world under Mr. Levine. He was joined by the impressive Tanglewood Festival Chorus and some noted vocal colleagues from the opera world.”
• Boston Globe: BSO’s ‘Gurrelieder’ is luminous, heartfelt: “The men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus really pumped out the sound in their demanding music. The work is a favorite of Levine’s; he knows how it works and how to make it work. The orchestra responded to the conductor and to the challenges of the music with playing that told the story and bathed it in an ardent glow.”
• The Patriot Ledger: CONCERT REVIEW: Levine carries off grueling task with a flourish: James Levine is definitely back. Just a week after his return to the podium after months-long recovery from a fall and rotator cuff surgery, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s music director led thrilling back-to-back performances of two blockbuster scores during the weekend at Tanglewood, a daunting feat for any conductor… orchestra and chorus sounded glorious in this opulently orchestrated score richly depicting nature and a vast range of human emotions. The love theme bloomed with memorable depth and sheen, while the Wild Hunt with the ricocheting men’s chorus sounded frighteningly unleashed. The mixed chorus made the concluding sunrise a stunning soundburst.
• Berkshire Eagle: Unforgettable Schoenberg: “John Oliver’s festival chorus — and especially the men, who sang in three antiphonal groups and carried most of the choral burden — wakened heaven and earth with its outcries and murmurs. But perhaps the real star of the performance was the BSO, which, under Levine’s knowing ministrations, took a narrator’s role of its own and delivered it in sonic splendor. The delicate opening invocation to nature, the shouts of passion, the eerie rumblings and seethings: All told a tale of undying love.”

I knew that my residency in the Berkshires was no vacation, but between rehearsals, calls for work, the concert tonight, and driving home afterwards (ETA: 1:30 am), I’m gonna be dead tired. So here’s to the Friday Random 10, which is hopefully going to do its job and take my mind off the next twelve hours:

1. Smashing Pumpkins, “Stumbleine” (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness)
2. Nada Surf, “Concrete Bed” (The Weight is a Gift)
3. Dead Can Dance, “Song of the Nile” (Spirit Chaser)
4. Hank Williams, Sr., “Hey, Good Looking’”
5. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, “Leap Frog (alt tk)” (Bird and Diz)
6. Wynton Marsalis Septet, “Marthaniel” (Citi Movement)
7. Wynton Marsalis Septet, “Spring Yaound&eacute” (Citi Movement)
8. Elvis Costello and the Attractions, “13 Steps Lead Down” (Brutal Youth)
9. London Chamber Orchestra (James MacMillan, composer), “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” (MacMillan: Seven Last Words)
10. Radiohead, “Faithless the Wonder Boy” (Anyone Can Play Guitar [single])

Just posted a new set of photos from the Tanglewood grounds from the last few days of rehearsal for Gurrelieder. Hopefully it will stop raining soon and tomorrow’s will be a bit brighter.

Many of these photos were taken in the formal gardens on the Tanglewood grounds, which are well hidden near the theatre building and seem a bit forgotten (though the hedges are cleanly clipped, they’ve grown to the point of beginning to obscure some pathways).

Incidentally, the photo to the right may help provide some context for why Maestro Levine had difficulty being heard over the rain. Imagine him sitting just inside the building near the open side, with a 120-voice men’s chorus facing him; then imagine a torrential downpour on the outside.