I'm off to Paris to meet Lynne, check that her paintings match the city, and spread the ashes of our dear beloved friend Evelyn. A bit in the Seine, a bit at Les Deux Magots (sprinkled over the crème de menthe), a little buried outside her favorite pizza place, a little tucked in next to Napoleon in Les Invalides.
After that, heading to Amsterdam to catch up with Laura Bohn, who is performing in a Monteverdi / Hip-Hop mashup performance, then to Berlin to perform the Shitstorm of Asshattery letter with the lovely and talented Candy (which may not be her real name). The highlight will almost certainly be my tearful love song to Simon Stockhausen, longing for the tête-à-tête we will now never have, which goes something like:
Dear Simon
How it thrills me
When you sneer
Just a little
Compel me to do
What you want me to do
I want to be
A forward thinker
Like you
My Simon
My Simon
My Simon
So why I am traveling all the way to Berlin? I am making a big deal of a rejection, something we have to deal with daily, but, Oh what a rejection! A rejection of epic proportions!
On that topic, one of my peeviest peeves is as follows. One spends a lot of time working on a proposal asking some foundation for its cash, which, as far as I am concerned they owe you for chrissakes, or similarly on the preparations for a competition or reading, which again takes quite a bit of time and energy and a Benjamin or two for all the copying and postage and whatnot and then in the end, more often than not, you receive a form letter - well, just an email nowadays, akin to being dumped by SMS - which tells you very little, e.g.:
Dear Erling,
I am writing on behalf of Music Director Joana Carneiro to let you know that we have completed the selection for next year’s composers as part of Berkeley Symphony’s Under Construction new music reading series and, unfortunately, we are unable to offer you a position this year. We very much appreciate the strong quality of this year’s applicants and regret that there are but three positions available in the program. Thanks again for your interest in our program and we hope you’ll consider reapplying in a future season.
Yours sincerely,
--- so and so ---
Director of Operations
Berkeley Symphony
So should one really reapply? Or do they think your music sucks so bad that next time it will go into the shredder in its entirety once your return address's postal code is noticed? Would it be so hard to simply send you a transcript of their discussion so one knows something at least of whether it is worth your time? One applauds their love for all your fellow applicants and their work, at least their love for the average applicant's work, but it's unclear what they thought of one's own work, which one might think is the more important question at hand.
In a manner inimitable, Lynne has covered the visual aspects of our Bulgarian adventure recently completed, striking to its heart, flaying the bleached skin from the stern flesh beneath. It is left to me, shivering here, exposed, these many days later, to relate matters aural, those phantom vibrations, ephemeral, barely remembered, and those matters left unspoken.
After a moderately long flight, by way of the City of Light, we arrived at the Sofia Airport on Bulgaria Air, the National Carrier, and cabbed it to the Hotel Arte on Alexander Dondukov, our bags following behind by a few days. In the morning, we darted between the speeding cars, finding safety in numbers, to arrive at the nondescript entrance of the Zala Bulgaria, locked up tight, the only way in through the servants' entrance, aka the musicians' or possibly the smokers' entrance, and wandered into the Sanctuary of the Hall itself, nervous with excitement. The first rehearsal began in a shaky and workmanlike fashion. I found my nervousness turning to dread, but gods be praised, in the end, through the remonstrations of Alexei Kornienko and the skill of the First Rate Classical Musicians, the performance was lovely. And after the dress rehearsal, the very talented Elena Denisova, who had been watching from above, pronounced the piece perfect; diamond perfect; which thrilled me to my toes.
I'm sure I have mentioned before how gorgeous the Ives' 4th Sympony is, and it was, even wearing its Bulgarian accent, and my piece was performed between it and the Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (see poster above). "Sandwiched between two old dead white guys" says Jim Cave, with a twinkle in his eye.
The Bulgarian Radio was to have broadcast the concert, which fell through, but luckily I had secreted a few low-res recording devices (to wit, an iPad and an iPhone) about the place and was able to reconstruct with some fancy footwork a mix heard here.
The piece is scored for a large but not too large ensemble, heavy on the brass, heavy on the crescendi, and topped off with a pretty solo in the middle.
explaining a fine point to Alexei
I do have one regret from my time in Sofia: that I didn't visit the Union of Bulgarian Composers, lining up and elbowing up too many vodka shots. That dream of overdrinking would have to wait until the Austrian side trip, with my friend Gerhard Lehner who emailed me whilst we were traipsing about the Bulgarian countryside to say that the Daniil Kharms opera was finally on after 7 years of discussion, and could I please come talk about it. So yes, we hightailed it to land of the Lindwurm, where I met with the librettist Max Afchatz, Schauspieler und Regisseur, while drinking and drinking until the migraine set in and a day was lost at the door of death. We say we will do it, in Fall 2012, at the Klagenfurter Ensemble's new theater in the old Messe, a mix of Kharms' life and work, exact anything to be determined, but hopefully covering his starvation at the joined hand of the Soviets and Nazis together.
Waiting overnight for our plane in a quick revisit to Sofia we had dinner with Dimitar Moskovsky, the bass clarinetist for the orchestra, serenaded by the fast 2+2+3 rhythms of the restaurant band where, as Dimitar pointed out, the threes and the twos don't quite share a common denominator. This feel is explained some here, and is referred to as a metric time bend in the wikipedia article:
For example, the Bulgarian tune Eleno Mome is written as 7=2+2+1+2, 13=4+4+2+3, 12=3+4+2+3, but an actual performance (e.g., Smithsonian Eleno Mome) may be closer to 4+4+2+3.5.
The feel of Western Art Music is measured and gridded, formed of a steel that is difficult to bend, the swings of jazz and the quintuplet-y versions of the double-dotted funk of the 70s untaught in the conservatory.
But, before, inside the very small fourteenth century chapel dedicated to St Petka of the Saddlers, we were killing time, exuding a musical vibration that led us to a fellow tourist, the young American organist Michelle Horsley studying in Frieburg, fresh from performing John Cage, and with her came a sense of home, of the aspects of American that I love, there, in that faraway place.
But, before that, there was the visit to the Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak, notable for the beauty of the tomb itself, and notable for the three-way party that stumbled out of the broom closet when we rang the front doorbell, the middle-aged gothic transwoman unlocking the door as she fixed herself, while the other two giggled. I wanted so much to find the words required to ask exactly what had been going on in that closet, but the moment passed, and the ticket taker took her seat while the other two walked off arm in arm.
Lynne and I are off to Bulgaria to see the premiere of Certitude and Joy and to place wreathes of remembrance on the tombs of the Thracian kings and to investigate the painting techniques of their National Awakening. Queer is just about wrapped up, adjudicated most positively by the expectantly swollen audiences of the last weekend. It was lovely as always to see old friends come out, and lovely to make some new connections as well.
All the performers and crew were fantastic, Joe Wicht lighting up the stage even more brightly this time than last, the person on whose shoulders the piece rests, whose jersey number should be retired along with the show. Ken Berry flew in from Australia to reprise his roles, even more endearing and funny this time than last. And those who were new to cast – James Graham and the regally named pair of Diana Consuelo Hopping Rais and Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos Jr. – were riveting to watch as they threaded their way through the landscape. It was great to work with Bryan Nies from the Oakland East-Bay Symphony and all the other musicians – Jab and Marja Mutru and Michele Walther and David Sullivan – all the musicians yours truly, who seemed to think that he could play the guitar again after a 10 year hiatus, even though he used the same guitar and strings, lovingly preserved by Thom Blum in a special place, under glass in the crypt below the laundry room leading out to Franklin Street. And who can forget Jim Cave, my main man, who has helped make all of the operas he has touched into something real, making them into the thing that I remember them to be after the greasepaint has dried and the last playbill is swept up? Clyde Sheets once again has made some art, as he has done so often, and Laura Hazlett arrived at a costume design that I myself wish I could be transported into, flicking the ash from my Gitanes to the dusty street. Cid Pearlman, who fixed so many small motions, focusing in, adding beauty. I am the producer of this work, and not just the composer, the one who picks up the music stands and rolls the piano out of the way each night, and, as such, I can't tell you how important it is to have a crew on whom to rely: Catherine Reser the stage manager and gun handler, who, after a misfire one night, took it upon herself to check the load of each blank, to inspect the crimping, to check the smell of the black powder for its correct bouquet, and Will McCandless and Dylan McMillen. And thanks to Greg Kuhn, who didn't sleep for weeks before, during and after.
The work is OK. I've decided this now after seeing and hearing and playing it again. I originally thought that it was a quick bit of flummery knocked off while waiting for the funding to come through for Sub Pontio Pilato, but in playing it again, I hear things I didn't hear before, and once again I am shown that the quickly-written piece allows the channeling of the music-god-all-one-faith-spirit to guide one's hand, while the labored work suffers from too much from mere human frailties.
Just back from Boston, where I started work on a project with Elizebeth Randall, a dance on love and loneliness, a scrap of music started while the snow drifted from the trees outside my nephew Ben's apartment in Somerville. It's a treat to work with someone who is such a talented dancer, open to everything, who perceives the beauty in a shadow, a change of the light.
We're keeping a blog of our work plus bits and pieces as they develop.
After four years hanging over my head, the Mass finally premiered last night, and hanging over my head was the above: St Gallus in the company of the bear with whom he traded sandwiches for firewood, and, to continue this trope past the point of enjoyment, I woke up hung over after the free-flowing alcohol-laced VIP reception, where, just like Scrappy and his friend, we decided in our stupor to ring the doorbells and wake up the bishop but succeeded in waking only his sister as he was out "on assignment." Thank God for Europe where they still seem to sell out houses - and a mighty big House o' God in this case - for brand spanking new music and where they seem to applaud and applaud and applaud to the point of embarrassment (although this discomfort is one with which my vanitas can well live). Kim Brockman was the soloist and stole the show with her effortless navigation of the 23rd Psalm which, I have to say, is really just more or less in a simple 3/4, but the accompaniment tends to confuse.
Speaking of confusion, even though over in Kyle Gann's heaven of stratospheric beauty, present concerns are partial tuplets and non-power-of-two-denominator time signatures, down here wallowing in the mud of the temporal world, I would be just a little bit happier in my insignificant existence if I could be assured of accurate non-partial tuplets and power-of-two-denominator time signatures and reliable groupings of 8ths and 16ths at moderate tempi that don't quite hit the downbeats. But the performance was lovely, and the circle of communication from composer to performer to audience and back again was closed very nicely, and I was overjoyed just to experience it all in such an over-the-top goopy-rococo environment.
The performance was in the choir - which you can see here - using one of the two mechanically connected baroque organs. The stiff action necessitated a simplification of the faster parts of the Credo. I wrote a quick Postlude as a bit of espresso or maybe dolce to wake up the audience after a long period of contemplation of our insignificance and the certain oncoming freight train of death, etc, but it turned out that even my delightful insouciance was a bit beyond the very limited rehearsal time for Willibald, so we had to cut the (as I call it) Terry Riley section, that with one meter for each limb (although really two are in the right hand and one is split between the feet), but as to the remainder, as Duncan put it, Willibald hit it.
The best part of performing in the Dom Kathedral is that, every fifteen minutes, there is a small but very clear bell part added to the piece, almost always in just the perfect place, so much better than the added ambulance sirens of my mostly urban performances, and in fact I herewith formally add the instruction to the score: play a clock chime or two or maybe even a few more every fifteen minutes starting at a random time offset (well, actually at five minutes before the quarter hour marks as we need to give the brothers time to dust off the knees of their robes and get themselves to tend the radish garden or whatever) and please don't be stopped by the fact that the soprano is just now putting herself in the proper mood for her emotive solo or the fact that the music is really really really quiet, OK?
Looking over Lake Como from our room at the Bellavista in Valmedrera at the town of Lecco in the distance, where my filmmaker friend Ilaria lives. Lynne says the bell tower is typical Lombardy. Bellagio, the real one, is just north of here, famous in my circles for the Rockefeller study center. Ron Kuivila told us that his residency there consisted of one unbroken cocktail hour. The hoteliers speak Western Lombard, not sure which dialect.
Tomorrow we take the trip over the alps in the opposite direction of Hannibal, sans war elephants, but with pillaging, conquest and victory on my mind at least, into the land of Schweizerdeutsch.
We had several great meals in Florence. First was a traditional Bistecca alla Fiorentina and the second was just around the corner from the synagogue (above) at Ruth's Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant. The former because of the enormity both in mass and taste and the second because the owner regaled us with stories of his days in Prague in the bad old days of the Soviet repression: how he hung out with Vaclav Havel (he had a book of photos of the two of them and various other hippie types), about the Plastic People of the Universe (including where they all are now), about the Velvet Underground (and how the Velvet Revolution was named after them), about the importance of Frank Zappa to their culture, about how they carried copies of the White Album with a label peeled off a Smetana LP, and how the best Milos Forman film is Taking Off.
I'm off to Paris to meet Lynne, check that her paintings match the city, and spread the ashes of our dear beloved friend Evelyn. A bit in the Seine, a bit at Les Deux Magots (sprinkled over the crème de menthe), a little buried outside her favorite pizza place, a little tucked in next to Napoleon in Les Invalides. 
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