"Picture Michelangelo with a briefcase and a beeper" - Songwriting With Dan Bern in Anchorage

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We had to write and sing a one line song to introduce ourselves.

Then we had to write lyrics in a

2

2

2

7

8

8

8

8

pattern - haiku like, 2 syllables, 2 syllables, etc - about a moose encounter.

And then sing it to the group.

Regular readers know that I can listen to music, but making it?  That stopped when I hung up the oboe in high school.  My talents clearly lay elsewhere.  But Dan Bern is such an incredible songwriter/singer, that I signed up for this songwriting workshop with the expectation that I'd just get to know more about him and where all the songs come from.

He writes and sings in the troubadour style of Woody Gutherie and Bob Dylan.  Long song stories that take you to on  unexpected places where you meet a surprising cast of characters.  And when it's over, you often have to gulp as you realize what it was all about.  He even has a song about Guthrie handing the torch to Dylan from his deathbed and how he (Dan) climbed in to sing to Bruce Springstein on his deathbed.  Here are the lyrics and here's a short audio clip.  He's written about lots of celebrities including Charles Manson, Marilyn Monroe, Tiger Woods, Joe Van Gogh (Vincent's son),

He writes songs about important issues of the day - True Revolutionaries, Gambling in Sports (he's a big baseball fan), Alien Abduction,  AIDS,  or Dan's first ten days as  President. 

Check out any of those songs and you'll see his imagination is not ordinary, and he's got music in his genes.


And Dan was Dan last night and everything he did  - including the introductions - was part of learning songwriting.  So I had no choice but to sing my intro, and while it was more talking than singing at first, I began to realize during the class that I've just had this image of me as not a singer all these years.  And there's no reason why I shouldn't liberate my inner singer.  Songwriter at least.

He also answered questions - about where inspiration comes from, writing groups, - with advice that's good for any creative process, like writing a blog even.  Like, you could write three lines (or three days) and when you hit the fourth, you nail it.  And have to toss all that came before. 

I first heard Dan long, long ago.  I'm not even sure, except it was at Loussac library and it was probably 1997 (When Dan Bern  - the CD came out.)  My son had heard Dan open for Ani DiFranco in Anchorage and essentially told us we had no choice but to go hear Dan Bern who was coming back to Anchorage.

And he was right.  By the last song of the evening - Estelle - I was in the zone. Such a wild and crazy adventure lament. (The link goes to a YouTube of it.  Still one of my very favorites.)  We've gone to quite a few Dan Bern concerts since, including the great pair of shows at Cyrano's November 25 (Mike, there's no year listed on the tickets, just the date).  In the last few years I haven't kept up with Bern's music so I'm looking forward to the Saturday night concert at Out North.  (There are concerts Thursday and Friday night too.  Check at OutNorth 270 8099 X 203.)

But I'm rushing this post out, even though it reflects my being tired, because there are still a few spots in the song writing workshop Tuesday night and Wednesday night.  While people are going to all three, you can go to just one or two.  Call Out North at 279-8099 extension 203 to get your space.  This guy is the real deal. 

If you look carefully at the second picture, you'll see we all got fortune cookies.  Our homework is to take something from the fortune and make a short song - use the fortune itself, or just one word, or the thought. 

I've put a lot of links to song lyrics (many of which have a 30 second audio clip and Estelle to a video and a lot can be found on YouTube) but this one - Art on the Run - seemed appropriate for a blogger who is trying to get this up so people can see it while they can still act on it. 

Take the best idea you got sprouting from your brain like cauliflower
Stick it in the microwave leave it for a quarter of an hour
Write poems on the freeway, write screenplays in between submitting faxes
Draw pictures at the Wendy's drive through window, on your way to do your taxes

Because you're not a child you're not a child
Days flash by, like numbers on a TV dial
Forget that novel, man; could be haiku is more your style

Making art on the run, art on the run, art on the run
Art on the run, art on the run, art on the run
Chopin in his Chevrolet and digital machine
Singing melodies while pumping gasoline
Picture Michelangelo with a briefcase and a beeper
When's the last time that you had a really good night's
SLEEEEEEP?   (All of Art on the Run is here.)

For those of you outside of Anchorage, he'll be in Palmer on Sunday.  And if you're Outside (of Alaska), here's his tour schedule.

Barbara, he'll be in Toronto October 18. 

It's late.  I'm going to open my fortune cookie now.

Let's see, do I write about loyalty or should I do one on numbers?

The Man Who Changed How We Think About Music

John Cage's life spanned most of the 20th Century.  Born 100 years ago this year, he died in 1992.  [I get enough google searches for "If I were born in 1912 how old would I be?" to think about putting the birth date down, but I'll assume most of my readers can figure it out.]

Cage truly revolutionized how we think about music. Maybe not directly, since most people have never heard of him, but he did change how musicians think about and how they make the music we listen to.

He moved beyond the idea of human created melodies and musical structures and focused on the sounds that exist in our world - Manhattan traffic sounds was one example - that had no meaning beyond themselves.  And silence was part of the sound palette for Cage.  To the extent that one piece, 4:33, was written for a pianist who sits at the piano not playing the notes for four minutes and 33 seconds.

His music focuses on sounds, not organized into the patterns we normally think of as music, so many people do not know how to interpret what they hear.  But it set the foundations for much modern music, including electronic music.  

I was particularly struck, at UAA's bookstore faculty forum last Thursday (September 13),  by a video clip of Cage as the guest on the 1950's tv show "I've Got a Secret." (See the I've Got A Secret YouTube is below.)  The celebrity panel is supposed to guess what the guest's secret is.

Cage's secret was that he composed a piece for three radios, a bathtub, ice cubes, blender, water pitcher, goose call, bottle of wine, whistle, and a bunch more items.  And was going to play it for them.  Watching Cage run from item to item to create the sounds in sequence, I realized that seeing the music performed was far more accessible for an audience than simply listening to what, without the visuals, would be random sounds.





This realization was reinforced when faculty member Dr. Laura Koenig described watching a performance of ball bearings frozen in a block of ice that melted allowing the ball bearings to drop and make different sounds depending on where they landed followed by a violinist responding to the ball bearing sound.  Dr. Koenig describes it on the video excerpts  below from Thursday's forum.  There are also some excerpts of John Cage discussing his music in the video.




There were three music faculty - Chris Sweeney, Phil Munger, and Laura Koenig - and art professor Sean Licka.   The bookstore's Rachel Epstein, who works so hard to create these interesting panels, was hovering around making sure people were speaking into the microphone so it would be caught for the UAA podcast that is now up.

You can hear the podcast of the whole talk here.

This post is totally inadequate for the subject.  I feel I should be writing more.  This was a man, not wealthy, who had an obsession.  Who lived close to poverty for years to pursue that obsession.  People understood that he was talented, but his ideas seemed crazy to most.  (Listen to how Gary Moore talks about his secret in the video.)  Yet he persevered.

A couple of people mentioned that Cage wouldn't be in most people's top 10 American composers of the 20th Century, yet he probably had the most influence on music.  This speaks to the contributions that people, who we tend to think of as odd, can make if they are allowed to.  He heard a different beat and didn't let it go.  He's both an inspiration to me to pursue what I think is important, and a lesson to see through the masks of the people around me to find their inner humanity and worth. 

Zuill Bailey Plays His 300 Year Old Cello At APU

Friends invited us to last night's great Sitka Summer Music Festival* Anchorage Autumn concert and I want to alert folks there's another concert this afternoon and another next Friday.

I don't keep current with what's going on in music nationally that much, so I didn't really know the name Zuill Bailey before last night, but I do now.  In the picture below, he's in the upper left giving an introduction to the concert - and telling us we can use our cell phones at this concert, if the electricity goes out, to light the room.  He's also holding the cello in the upper right.  But you can see (and hear) him better in the NPR video below.  The YouTube intro points out that his cello is very special,

built by the renowned Venetian maker Matteo Goffriller in 1693. That means Johann Sebastian Bach was all of 8 years old when Goffriller slapped on the final layer of shellac. 

In the main part of this photo you can see violist Sandra Robbins (l-r), the pianist Eduard Zilberkant, the page turner, and the oboist Catherine Weinfield, before they played Charles Loeffler's Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola and Piano. (I can read the program.)   As a failed junior high school oboist, I could appreciate how she didn't break her reed just before this piece with many solos, and I noticed how many reeds she had in her case when she took it out.  I also appreciated how beautiful the oboe is when someone can really play it.

I'm afraid that violinist Elmar Oliveira is just a speck holding a violin in the upper right hand picture, but he and violist were wonderful in the opening piece, Handel's Passacaglia for Violin and Viola.

I don't have a lot to say. It was a wonderful trip to another reality for two hours.  It's great to hear world class musicians in the tiny Grant Hall at Alaska Pacific University with its great acoustics and where you can see the musicians as well as hear them from whatever seat you're in.

So if you can, go this afternoon at 4pm.  There should be a couple of tickets available and maybe the rain will mean more than a few people will be giving up their seats if you just show up.  The chance to see and hear Zuill Bailey in this space may not happen again soon.  (Or maybe it will since he's the Artistic Director of the Sitka Music Festival.) 

There's another concert Friday at the Discovery theater featuring pianist Piers Lane -

"No praise could be high enough for Piers Lane whose playing throughout is of a superb musical intelligence, sensitivity, and scintillating brilliance."  Bryce Morrison, Gramophone

- AND Zuill Bailey. It's still a small, but not quite as intimate a venue, and it should be incredible. 

Here's the NPR video with Zuill Bailey:




*The official name for this concert series is Alaska Airlines Autumn Classics, but I have this difficulty with commercializing everything. Yes, it's great that Alaska Airlines supports this festival, but they can do that because they often charge Alaskans more to fly to Seattle or rural Alaska than to LA or other locations. I'd even be ok if this were called the Sitka Autumn Classics, sponsored by Alaska Airlines. So, yes, thank you Alaska Airlines for making this possible, but please be a little more modest and respectful, since it's really all Alaskans who support this through your often exorbitant airfares. (I just looked up flying to Seattle next Saturday and the cheapest flight available is $471 one way!)

Crowded Bike Racks, More Downed Trees, and Flying Debris, Cason and Cage

Wasn't quite sure what to make of this sign.

 The bike rack in front of the UAA administration building was full, and even had a notice on where the nearest backup rack was.  Five years ago this never would have happened.

Drew Cason spoke tonight at the UAA bookstore on a project he did this semester - landscape value mapping in the University district.  Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) he mapped survey data to specific spots in the university area.  Cool project.


Tomorrow there will be a presentation in the same spot - upstairs in the campus bookstore, where they sell computer equipment - celebrating composer John Cage's 100th birthday.  Sean Licka from Art,  composer (and blogger) Phil Munger from Music, and Chris Sweeney, also Music, will be there to comment on Cage's music and life.

Cage is considered one of the great, if non-traditional, American musicians of the 20th Century.

3-5pm at the UAA bookstore - free admission and free parking

Thursday September 13, 2012

"I was disturbed both in my private life and in my public life as a composer. I could not accept the academic idea that the purpose of music was communication, because I noticed that when I conscientiously wrote something sad, people and critics were often apt to laugh. I determined to give up composition unless I could find a better reason for doing it than communication. I found this answer from Gira Sarabhai, an Indian singer and tabla player: The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences. I also found in the writings of Ananda K. Coomaraswammy that the responsibility of the artist is to imitate nature in her manner of operation. I became less disturbed and went back to work." John Cage

Evening walk to Goose Lake Tuesday night.

And more downed trees. 

This one even took out the bottom of the chain link fence when it toppled over pulling up its roots and a good chunk of earth.  Saw a number like this one - the earth pulled up, not the fence.

Hope Last Saturday Night

My book club met in Hope Saturday.  One of the members has a cabin there.  After the discussion (John McPhee's The Control of Nature) and dinner, we walked into downtown Hope.  Note, the 2010 Census says there are 192 residents.  Not sure if that counts the summer residents, and it certainly doesn't count the campers on the beach.

We walked down to the muddy banks of Resurrection Creek.  This is where it flows into Turnagain Arm.

The Super Saturated Sugar Strings was playing at the Seaview Bar.  I'd met some of the band at the Out North fundraiser earlier this year.

Drummers, Tai Chi, More At Japanese Summer Festival

It is summer.  It's light out.  The low 60˚F temperature and grey skies don't bother me, especially when I read about 100˚plus temperatures in the Lower 48.  I biked to Sand Lake Elementary yesterday.  The parking lot was jammed (but not the bike racks) at this event sponsored by the Consular Office of Japan, the Japanese Society of Alaska, Tomo No Kai, and the Japan Relief Fund of Alaska Foundation. 


Sand Lake is an appropriate spot because it's the elementary school with a Japanese language immersion program.

The Tai Chi demonstration was my reason for going.  My wife, who's been practicing tai chi for a long time now, invited me.  The discipline, art, I'm not sure the right descriptor of tai chi, fascinates me.  There is something so opposite to how we usually do things in the West.  There's an inward focus, a controlling of one's thoughts and breathing and movements that is both beautiful to watch and, I'm told, powerful for the person doing it. J has gotten very good at this and teaches a group at a local assisted living home.  I made a video of yesterday's performance. But it raised one of the conflicts I deal with on this blog and which I'll  post about in more detail in a future post.  Tai Chi should is reflective and I think of it being quiet.  I imagine the ideal tai chi in a natural setting with a flute or other gentle Chinese music in the background.  My video of yesterday reflects the brutal reality of tai chi in a noisy school gymnasium.  Should my videos and photos reflect reality or our stereotypes of reality?  So much of the world reflected to us over the media is edited to conform to our stereotypes, which merely reinforces those stereotypes.  In the discussion with Doug (see below) he mentioned that he uses photoshop to get rid of power lines from his scenic shots.   I even thought about deleting the crowd noise and replacing it with a flute.  But part of what I'm doing is documenting life today, and such modifications would merely play into people's stereotypes.  And imagine historians of the future pointing to pictures where the power lines have been edited out.   And there was no way I could disguise the gymnasium background.   Note:  I'm not opposed to playing with reality (just the idea of thinking about a video or photo as reality shows how 'created' our reality has become)  to find new meaning - as artists do.  Just when the purpose is to conform to people's stereotypes rather than challenge them.   For those who would like to see the slow-motion flow of the tai chi can see the short video here. 

J introduced me to Doug whose wife is also in the tai chi group and who posts a photo a day on flicker.  He has takes lots of pictures and just puts up one a day.  I looked.  Trust me.  He's got great shots. (Even if they don't have power lines. :) )  Yesterday he put one up of the drummers at the festival and other recent ones include a wolf and an angry goose.  I need to go out in the woods with this guy.  I also need a camera that has a good telephoto.

 


I was waiting for the drummers. (Don't tell my wife.)  I posted about this group last year on the  Fourth of July when they were at the Park Strip.  From the very first time I heard the Taiko drummers from Japan at West High maybe 25 years ago, I was hooked.  The energy and power of the drummers and precision of their playing, and, of course, the way the drum beats go through your body.  This is the complete opposite of the tai chi.  (Is it really?  I have to think about that.  On the most obvious level, yes, but maybe they have more in common than it appears at first glance.)  And the local Anchorage group Tomodachi Daiko gives lessons.  I'm tempted. 

Watch the video.  I've got part of two pieces.  The third one is complete. It starts at 50 seconds.  I find it totally riveting.  Though the video is a pale reflection of actually being there.  These are local Anchorage folks of all ages.  Mesmerizing. 

There were a lot of folks selling things including Bosco's with lots of manga.  I know one of the festival goals was to raise money to help people still recovering from the Tsunami in Japan.  I assume that part of the sales went for that cause.  But I'm not sure how it worked.  (My son spent a large part of his income at Bosco's when he was younger.)

What City Has More Than A Dozen Bagpipe Factories?

People are constantly saying they'd like to hear some positive news instead of the constant din of negative stories.  But it also seems most people really read the appalling and shocking stories more than the feel good stories.

Here's a bit of news that came via email from a friend.  It's a bit unexpected.  The city of Sialkot, Pakistan is one of the world's biggest exporters of bagpipes.  From CNN:

Sialkot is located in north-east Pakistan, some 125 kilometers from the capital Lahore. Legend has it that the city started making bagpipes during the British Raj, when a Scottish businessman came to town and set up a factory.
More than a century later Sialkot is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of bagpipes, with more than a dozen bagpipe factories, both big and small. 

The video shows a different side of Pakistan than we normally see.




It seems they also make vintage footballs and basketballs, new soccer balls, musical instruments, and  and even replica US Civil War uniforms. 

The Hot Club of Nunaka's Gypsy Jazz

The Hot Club of Nunaka played gypsy jazz Thursday night at Out North's Black Box Theater.   This is part of the Anchorage Music Co-op, one of the many arts groups incubating over at Out North.

Derek Christianson, Karl Pasch,             Eric Rogers,              Nathan Levine,   Carter Bancroft

We enjoyed chronological tour starting in the 1920's and I thought about how much of what happens in a community is invisible to the people just passing through the neighborhood. (Though a door was open a bit so maybe some of the music drifted out.)

I also thought about the Klez-X, the klezmer group we heard in San Francisco in January.  One can't help but hear the connection between the gypsy and klez music.  The key thing missing last night was the accordion.  And Klez-X were all incredible musicians.  The kind that make performing music look easy.  Nunaka reminded me how hard it really is.  Although they were really good nearly all the time, there were points where, to my untrained ear, it didn't quite make it.  This is just a local group that I assume plays after work.  But they are so good, I want them to have some impresario take them under his wings and polish them up the few places they need it.

It's much easier to give a sense of the night by just playing the music, than talking about it, so here's a brief video sampler from the concert. Because of where I was sitting, Carter Bancroft was cut off for most of the video.  But at the end the person blocking my view left and you can see him on the right in the last clip.  And think about this like listening to a concert over the phone.  The sound on my tiny Canon Powershot is pretty good, but it can't do justice to music.





You can hear more, better quality samples at Hot Club of Nunaka's website.

By the way, Nunaka Valley is an Anchorage neighborhood with, generally, moderately priced houses, and not a place one would associate with hot gypsy music.  A band joke, I would assume.

Spenard Jazz Fest - Poetry and Dance Night Thursday

Sitting in the Organic Oasis was like beiing into another world.  Musicians, poets, dancers, and their friends were gathered.  I would say the performances varied greatly in quality, but the vibe of the evening was comfy, warm,  and I was impressed with all the work people had done to put the evening together.  We saw some people we knew and made new friends as well. 

After the post on the lack of women's voices in the media the other day, I've been much more conscious of whether I've got the camera on men or women. I do have to say that sometimes leaving a picture or video clip out is a favor. But that's because I'm not doing a good enough job with the camera.

The video will give a pale sense of things.  It sounds much less on the video than it did in person.







The Spenard Jazz Fest continues Saturday.  From their website:

Sat June 09
Jazz at the Market | SPENARD FARMER’S MARKET  | 10 am – 2 pm
Free
Stop by the Festival booth for some live music, free refreshments and tons of cool SJF merchandise!
Plus other SJF surprises! You never know what could happen at the market or who you’ll discover.
.

“Altered Arts” Jazzy Mural Painting | BLAINE’S  |  10 am – 6 pm
Free
Time for the annual mural painting at Blaines.
SJF band stand to be filled with an array of local jazz heroes


Originals {Day 2} | ORGANIC OASIS | 4pm – Late
$15/$10 (student/senior/youth)  | Punch Card
Come out for the new music! Great artists, great food, great atmosphere.
4pm: Phil Beckett
5pm: Alex Cruver trio
6pm: Elite 9
7pm: Lee Pulliam
8pm: John Damberg
9pm: Tyler Desjarlais
10pm: Phil Knowlton
.

Tenor John Nuzzo And Anchorage Children's Choir

I've learned that hearing opera singers in small venues is amazing, so Sunday we went to UAA's stunning little recital hall  - Michael Hood, wherever you are, thanks! - to hear John Ken Nuzzo sing a collection of songs in Italian and Japanese. (According to Wikipedia, Nuzzo's father is Italian-American and his mother is Japanese.)  After the first pause he came back without his bow tie and the audience loosened up a bit as well.

After Nuzzo's performance there was a brief break and the Anchorage Children's Choir came onstage.  He's been working with them this week and he and they seemed to be having a great time together.  Here's a brief excerpt of them singing Finiculi Finicula.  

 

 He's been spending a lot of time recently doing concerts in Japan and work related to Tsunami relief. 

Ex-CIA Man Cooks For Out North Fundraiser

Out North is a tiny (seats about 90) theater in Anchorage that has regularly brought often edgy, sometimes beautiful performances that usually challenge my stereotypes, assumptions, and even my world view.

It’s what art is supposed to be - blasts of blasphemy piercing through the facades society  constantly creates to hide the uncomfortable by-products of how we live. Not every event is great, but if you aren’t making mistakes now and then, you aren’t pushing the limits.


So, when we were invited to a fundraising dinner for Out North, we said yes. 
It was a little pricy, but the tickets at Out North are usually much less than the more proper venues and we’ve gotten far more stimulation than we’ve paid for.  And we want to make sure that Out North is here a long time.  It’s one of the parts of Anchorage that sustains my brain and soul. 

Entering the Green Connection from a decidedly ungreen early May Anchorage was already a treat.  We were treated like VIP’s - creative name tags, a glass of bubbly, and hors d'oeuvres tucked away amongst the greenery. 

And there was music.  I’m pretty sure they were part of the group Super Sweet Sugar Strings. 





And then we were called to take our seats for a gourmet dinner.  Yeah, I can hear you saying, “What do you know about gourmet food?”  And you’re right.  As a mostly vegetarian who also east fish, but rarely meat, I do now and then stray from my normal diet.  But if I’m going to eat meat, it better be really, really good.  (It was.)

Our dinner was a lot of very fresh local and wild treats, combined in unexpected ways, cooked by chef Carlyle Watt, a graduate of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America), Napa Valley branch.  Some people we already knew.  Others we know now.  

OK, I thought I better check the criteria for gourmet food.  From Ask.com:

"Gourmet food is of the highest quality and flavor, prepared well and presented in an artful manner."

I forgot the artful manner part, but you can judge for yourselves.  Click the pictures to enlarge if the text is too small.

Since it was a fundraiser, there were some auction items between courses.  We ended up with two punch cards to the Spenard Jazz Festival. 

Someone else bought this Out North poster with Out North founders Jay Brouse [Brause] and Gene Dugan demonstrating their willingness to provoke some folks in the community for the sake of not self-censoring their work.  It made their lives and Out North's existence more difficult, but it also made it more real.  And they attracted true artists up here. [I know that some people will look at the poster and wonder what I'm talking about.  But remember, just last month 58% of the voters turned down an amendment to the local non-discrimination ordinance to add LGBT folks to the list.  This wasn't about marriage, it was just equal rights to not be turned down for a job or an apartment or loan because they're gay.]

Check out their website.  Sign up for their email alerts.  If you don’t want to become mentally and spiritually lazy, monthly visits to Out North are highly recommended. 

Spring Showing and a Bit of Nutcracker Keep Me From Reading

I've got 100 pages targeted for each of the next three days to get this book finished by Monday night's book club.  So I'm going to minimize my time here.  You can see by the bookmark, I'm only halfway through.  It's great reading.  I just have to keep away from this computer.

Meanwhile the birch buds are showing.





And the daffodils are coming up.

I'm not sure what this is.  Something new I got last year.  But it shows you the struggle I'm having with my camera's automatic focus.  Usually I can figure a way to trick it into getting what I want sharp, but it sure liked the background leaves better than the bud, and no matter what I did, it wouldn't yield.









And finally a little music from Yeonhee Freeman's music students who put on a recital today.  What a delightful interlude.  This is one of our honorary nieces in the red dress.

Music Licensing Fees Keep Wrecking Crew From Commercial Release

I was recently thinking about doing some posts on the fate of the best movies that have been at the Anchorage International Film Festival.  Whatever happened to them?  Did they fade away?  Did they get audiences?

Today I saw this New York Times article about The Wrecking Crew.

The Wrecking Crew wowed the people who saw it at the Anchorage International Film Festival - in the museum theater - and it won an Audience Award for Best Documentary.

On December 12, 2008, I wrote:

Then we saw one of my favorite films of the week - The Wrecking Crew. When I first saw it in the schedule I figured it had to be good if just for the music. The Wrecking Crew was the backup band for most of the big hits in the late 60s pop music in California. It turned out to be an interesting movie that filled in a lot of gaps - these guys and one woman - played in literally every big hit. It was sort of like a public television fundraiser oldies show, but much, much better.

That was typed in quickly and without enough reflection time at the Bear Tooth just before a final movie for the day.  As the days went by, the power of the The Wrecking Crew story, highlighting the musicians who backed up so many of the great songs of the 60s, sank in.

And all that great music is the problem.  They are still struggling to pay the royalty fees for 132 music cues.

In the 1960s many of the hits coming out of Los Angeles under the names of
the Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher, the Mamas and the Papas, the Monkees and other top pop acts were actually recorded by an elite but largely anonymous corps of studio musicians nicknamed the Wrecking Crew. To gain them some belated public recognition Denny Tedesco, a son of one of the most prolific of those session players, spent more than 15 years making a documentary about the ensemble.

But there’s just one problem, and it has held up commercial release of “The Wrecking Crew” since 2008, when the documentary made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival. The film includes dozens of snippets from songs the Wrecking Crew played on, but the record companies that own the recordings want so much money from Mr. Tedesco, whose total budget was less than $1 million, that he has turned to a fund-raising campaign, including an event scheduled for New York in mid-June, to meet their demands. [Read the rest here.]

And go to the Wrecking Crew website just to hear the music.  

And it's coming soon to

• Annenberg Center for Performing Arts - Philadelphia, April 28-29
• Woodlake Elementary School in Woodland Hills, California, May4
• The Cutting Room in NYC on June 13.

Check here for details and other upcoming showings or if you want to put one on.

I Get A Taste of the Alaska Folk Festival

Wednesday evening I got to slip into Centennial Hall to catch a bit of the Alaska Folk Festival in downtown Juneau. 

The Empty Oil Barrel Band played and sang politically themed satires.

The festival program remembers Buddy Tabor and Barbara Kalen.

From Tom Begich's blog  we get a more personal reflection on Tabor.  Here's a short excerpt.

February 6, 2012 - Last night, perhaps around 8 PM, Buddy Tabor quietly passed away. A singer/songwriter with a direct link to the soul.  Alternately irreverent and loving, apolitical and revolutionary, album after album cut through to your heart and your head in simple tones and a gravel voice. Weary without giving in, spiritual without putting it on. Aware. Conscious. The words of a poet, the soul of a dreamer, the hands of a housepainter. Buddy Tabor was complex in his thoughts, simple in how he executed them. His body of work pearls worth holding and remembering, just as he is.

 This festival has a lot the feel of the Anchorage Folk Festival and the man sitting in the aisle seat of my row on the flight home today had played at the festival. 

Klez-X (cellent)

Saturday night we went to see Klez-X at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.  This group is special.  Each person on stage surprised me when it was their turn to step out and show what they could do.

In the first piece, the thought flashed through my mind - the opening of Rhapsody in Blue is klezmer music.  How could I have not figured that out before?  Or am I imagining this? So now I've been able to google this and I'm not the first to think this.  From Music Stack:

Many klezmer musicians, or Klezmorim, eventually immigrated to the United States, widening klezmer music's appeal in the early part of the 20th century. Early examples of klezmer musicians in the United States include David Tarras, Naftule Brandwein and Mickey Katz. These Jewish American immigrants proved immensely influential in the development of jazz music, even inspiring the introduction to George Gershwin's famous "Rhapsody in Blue." The rock era left klezmer largely forgotten. But the 1970s and onward welcomed a bit of a revival for klezmer and Jewish music. Groups like The Klezmatics, The Klezmorim and The Klezmer Conservatory Band branched out and incorporated other music styles such as cajun, jazz and even ska into traditional klezmer music.

And in The Book of Klezmer: The History, the Music, the Folklore Yale Strom quotes Mickey Katz:

Before I even played a note on the clarinet I used to go to the Yiddish theatre with my parents, which later influenced my playing and perception of what Jewish music was and what the audience wanted to hear.  I began playing the clarinet when I was eleven in grade school on an old beat-up instrument that was used during World War I.  In order to have lessons I went to an uncle’s tailor shop on Saturday afternoons and played for all his customers and earned $1.50.  I was aware of Yiddish songs as a youngster because my sister sang professionally at lodges and other Jewish organizations.  And klezmer music I knew because I played it at weddings and other Jewish events. Then in high school I formed a band and that’s when I began my legitimate career as a musician.  I was playing clarinet and sax - a lot of jazz and concert music.  In fact I was the second clarinet player in the world to play Rhapsody in Blue.

. . . I was hired because I was the only guy who could play it with all the shmears and glissandos and everything. [emphasis added]

I just have to mention all the people because they were so good.  Danny Hoffman was the violinist and composer of many of the songs played.  He currently lives in Israel and this was the first time in a while the group has played.  Danny made the violin sing.

Then we got to know Jeanette Lewicki who played accordion and sang.  She'd go through an English translation of the song before singing it and then, wow, her voice and her heart brought the Yiddish back to life.

I guess I skipped Sheldon Brown - clarinet and sax - because he's the guy who gave me the Rhapsody in Blue connection when he played.  And he also made the links to jazz obvious too.

Then, probably the biggest surprise, was when the trumpet player put down his instrument and came up to the mike.  Stephen Saxon began very casually to make a few vocal sounds.  And before I knew what was happening, his 'sounds' became an amazing scat piece that would have made Ella jealous as he scampered over the notes from low to way up high all sounding perfect to my lazy ears.  He'd take a note and slide it slightly up and down and around teasing it and the audience.  And later he performed magic on some traditional prayer music. 

The drummer, the base, and the trombonist were all fantastic.  They're all listed on the website. And all of them seemed to be so comfortable working as a group.  A wonderful concert.

Note:  the photos above were all taken after the concert - Saxon was still on stage putting things away, and the others were setting up for dancing in the lobby area after the concert. 

Go hear some samples on their website.   They're all great. 

Flocking Bohemian Waxwings, Signs of Moose

I went out yet one more day to shovel snow off the driveway.  It feels like I'm doing this every day.  The sun was nice and the air so crisp and clean.

Here's a spot in the snow in front where a moose must have crashed for a while.  The footprints are all around the mountain ash tree.  (Where the Bohemian Waxwings end up on the video.)




And while I was clearing snow, a flock of Bohemian Waxwings flew in.  I love to watch how they swarm.  If you make the video full screen and watch closely, you can see them most of the way from the beginning in the lower right then as they fly out around the tree and then back on the left to roost in the tree.  It was so quiet that I figured I needed some music, so I borrowed some from Waldemaar "The Bohemian" Music Video.  His has much different and much better video, unless, of course, you're a bird freak.  I hope he doesn't mind my borrowing.

First Play, Then Eat - The Vegetable Orchestra

Watch them make and the play their instruments.  They don't show them later eating them unfortunately.  Local foods people - certainly a vegie orchestra should perform at your farmers' markets! A more recent video shows them recording their album - Onionoise.

And on the vegetable orchestra website I found that eating is, indeed, part of the concert experience:

A concert of the Vegetable Orchestra appeals to all the senses. As an encore at the end of the concert and the video performance, the audience is offered fresh vegetable soup.

But I have to mention that hundreds of millions of people (actually more than three times the population of the USA)  around the world are going to bed hungry, even starving. Such orchestras can only exist where there is plenty of food.

Anchorage Sunny Sunday - Moose, Writers, Beach, Trombone, and the Moon

It's Alaska Book Week and some writers were gathering at Out North.  What do writers do when they gather?  I thought I'd take advantage of the beautiful fall day and ride over to find out before heading to a trombone concert at UAA.

On the way, a not too unusual Anchorage event,  I waited a bit for the moose to get out of the road.

Then on through the neighborhoods, a short stint on the bike trail to Out North.


It was quiet, there were writers working in the gallery.  I didn't want to disturb them and I hadn't brought a computer to join them, so looked at the fabric exhibit with the incredible lace I posted about earlier.


  How many 'women's' activities have been delegated to 'craft' while the men made 'art'?   There was a huge coffee table book on lace.  I wonder what all I might find out reading it?  Did women make lots of money making lace for the wealthy?  Why am I skeptical?  But I really don't know.  [Well, of course I had to see what I could find out:  footguards.tribpod.com gives a long list of 18th Century prices in England:

"13s 10d
A yard of Mechlin lace.

16s
A pair of men's lace ruffles."

That would be a similar kind of lace, I think.  The site gives lots of other items to compare prices with.  A bottle of champagne at Vauxhall was 8s (shillings) and the weekly wage of an unskilled laborer was 9s.  A half a loaf of bread was 1/2d (half a penny - 12 pence made a shilling) and you could get 'enough gin to get drunk on' or a 'day's allotment of coal' for 1d.

But the lace artist in Anchorage said one of the pieces - less than a foot square - took three years to make.  So I'm guessing it took more than a week to make a yard of lace, thus these women would have earned less than an unskilled laborer, probably significantly less.]

Sorry for the diversion.   I hadn't known how much time I would spend at Out North and it turned out to be not much.  But the sun was warm and Goose Lake was on the bike trail route to the UAA Theater and Art Building.  So I sat on the beach and enjoyed the fall sunshine.

Yes, the aesthetics of our public works people is pretty low.  This beautiful lake with a great vistas of the mountains has power lines punctuating the view.  Bothers me every time.  I guess I'm supposed to be inspired by man's ability to exploit nature.

At least Alaska doesn't allow billboards on any of the highways.  That's a big plus.  We aren't all without appreciation of Alaska's natural splendors.

Then to UAA for the trombone concert.  Anyone ever been to a concert that focused on the trombone as the main instrument for all the pieces?  My quick count says there were 100 - 125 people there on a sunny Sunday afternoon - temps still in the 50's at a time when people know the next weekend could have snow.  Based on my NYE (New York Equivalency) there'd have to be 3,100 New Yorkers to have the same proportion of the population attend such a concert. 

Christopher Sweeney played five pieces.

• Dances of Greeting (1995) by Norman Bolter - accompanied by Brady Byers on the snare drum and Eric Bleicher on the finger cymbals.  (Actually there was only one.)
  
• Sonata for Trombone and Piano (1993) by Eric Ewazen - accompanied by Dean Epperson on the piano.
  
• Extase for Trombone by Emmett Yoshioka
  
• Aleutian Sketches (2011) by Philip Munger (who was there) accompanied by Linn Weeda, trumpet, Cheryl Pierce, horn, and Dean Epperson again on the piano
  
• Sonata for Trombone and Piano (1967) by Donald White, accompanied by Dean Epperson

My knowledge of music theory is pretty close to zero.  I can just tell you if I like something or not.  That was brought home when I asked Phil about the limits of composing for the trombone compared, say, to the violin or the trumpet.  He said something about the trombone being first to be able to do something with the slide, but then the others improved on that.  If you see this Phil, maybe you can explain it in the comments.

Trombones have such rich sounds that it was a pleasure to listen.  It made me think of yesterday's post where I quoted Charles Wohlforth about how one thinks differently in the wild.  One also thinks differently in a musical performance. One focuses on the sounds in a way one doesn't normally in life,  and time too, as in the wild, is different.

Composer Phil Munger after the concert

The Aleutian Sketches debuted in Unalaska on May 13 this year.  Today, composer Phil Munger heard it live for the first time Sunday and seemed satisfied.  The audience was clearly satisfied.  (Disclosure: Munger is also a blogger who I've come to know through blogging.)

It was a delightful concert and J and I and a friend then met up at the Thai Kitchen for dinner.  And then I watched the almost full moon come up from behind the sun pinked Chugach as I biked home.

 

 

I took some video. Here's the end of part IV of Aleutian Sketches, called Volcano Woman II. There's some extra meaning in this piece for me. It was inspired by John Hoover's sculpture, Volcano Woman, which is in the Egan Center lobby on 5th Avenue in downtown Anchorage. That has always been a favorite of mine. And to top it off my friend Joe Senungetuk married Martha Hoover one of John Hoover's daughter's last summer and we attended the wedding in Cordova. Unfortunately, I never met John Hoover who passed away this summer in his 90s.

I apologize, as always, for the sound quality on my tiny Canon Powershot, but you get a sense of the music.

Father Oleksa on Culture and Bagpiper Plays Alaska Flag Song

Talking about cross-cultural communication problems isn't easy.  No one does it more effectively than Alaska's Father Michael Oleksa.  With lots of stories about his own German-Russian background and his wife's Yupik background and his many stories of teaching around Alaksa, he uses humor and a lot of thoughtful insight to get audiences to see how embedded our own cultures are in our brains and that there are reasonable alternatives to what we've grown up believing was 'the correct way' in any number of situations.

[UPDATE 9pm - Whoops.  I forgot the photo of Father Oleksa.  Here it is.]

He spoke today at the Alaska Federal Executive Association's Civil Rights Committee had its Multi-Cultural celebration Wednesday at Loussac Library. 

There's no way I can convey all he said, but I can give his overview of culture.  If it makes sense - you should try to find an opportunity to hear him spell it all out.  If it doesn't make sense - you should try to find an opportunity to hear him spell it all out.

Basically, he offered three definitions of culture:

1. Your view of the world - your culture's stories about how the world works
2. Your 'ballgame' of life - every culture has rules about how to play the game of life.  He discussed the conflict between his mother's German and father's Russian sense of time.  One was strictly tied to the clock, the other was more flexibly related to the natural flow of things.
3. The story into which you were born - these are the family stories you grew up with, which slowly get added to over your life, not necessarily in any chronological order, and not necessarily told the same way by everyone.

He pointed out that most people aren't really aware of the first two.  We tend to know these things subconsciously.  Only the third one is something that people can articulate.  For that reason, he suggested that people from different cultures ask each other about their grandparents' stories as a way of starting to understand each other.

Father Oleksa's website lists his videos and writings and audio, but isn't clear about how to get hold of them.  Communicating across cultures [videorecording] / is available at Loussac Library.  I promise you the videos will be wonderful to play for your family. They are NOT dry and boring. You'll smile and you'll gain insight.

After Father Oleksa spoke, we heard an example of cross-cultural fusion - Dan Henderson of the Alaska Celtic Center played the Alaska Flag Song on his bagpipe.



I learned that bagpipes were brought to the British Isles by the Romans and were banned for 75 years after they were declared a weapon of war by the British.

Seldovians - You Get Jason Farnham Next

The Seldovia Arts Council arranged for a pianist Jason  Farnham to give a concert in Seldovia Saturday night, and we got a sneak preview at Out North in Anchorage last night.








He's a very good pianist, but he's also an entertainer.  This is good piano playing, but definitely not high-brow. 

The Seldovia Gazette gives the specifics:

Saturday, August 20th, 7:30pm at the 

Sea Otter Community Center! 








Yes, if I had shut my eyes and just listened,  I wouldn't have known he was lying down on the job.