Night After Night

Goings On About Town, July 2, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the July 2 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates June 27 through July 3.

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Playlist (Crickets and Cicadas Sing).

A weekly tally of memorable things Steve Smith has stuck in his ears.

Gavin Bryars - The Fifth Century; Two Love Songs - The Crossing/Donald Nally, Prism Quartet (ECM; 2017)

Biliana Voutchkova/Michael Thieke - Blurred Music (elsewhere; due July 5, 2018)

Melaine Dalibert - Musique pour le lever du jour (elsewhere; due July 5, 2018)

Dead and Company – Citi Field, Flushing Meadows, NY, June 15, 2018 (Nugs.net; 2018)

Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force - Yermande (Ndagga; 2016)

Norbert Rodenkirchen/Robbie Lee/James Ilgenfritz - Opalescence (Telegraph Harp; 2018)

Dennis González New Dallas Quartet - Stefan (Silkheart; 1987)

Pascal Battus/Anne-F Jacques/Tim Olive - Trois Conseillers (Caduc.; 2018)

Coppice - Green Flame (Caduc.; 2018)

Aaron Martin - Touch Dissolves (IIKKI; due July 12, 2018)

PJS - Sweet La Vie (Leaving Records; 2018)

John Luther Adams - Canticles of the Sky - Olvier Coates (RVNG Intl.; 2018)

John Adams - Light Over Water (New Albion; 1987)

King Crimson - Earthbound (from Sailors Tales) (DGM; 1972/2017. More information here.)

Forma - Semblance (Kranky; due July 20, 2018)

Michael Leonhart Orchestra - The Painted Lady Suite (Sunnyside; 2018)

Jeremiah Cymerman - Decay of the Angel (5049 Records; due Aug. 17, 2018. More information here.)

King Crimson - Unidentified Show #2 (from Sailors Tales) (DGM; 2017. More information here.)

Pantera - Cowboys from Hell (Atco; 1990)

Kuzu - Hiljaisuus (Astral Spirits; due Sept. 2018. More information here.)

King Crimson - 2018 European Tour "Hot Tickles" (DGMLive; 2018. More information here.)

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Manze (Onyx; 2018)

Playlist (Lost in My Circle).

A weekly tally of memorable things Steve Smith has stuck in his ears.

AMM - The Crypt - 12th June 1968 (Matchless; 2008; digital via Otoroku)

AMM - An Unintended Legacy (Matchless; 2018)

Robert Rich - Sleep Concert at Gray Area, 24 Feb 2018 (self-released; 2018)

Kevin Drumm - Blocking (self-released; 2018)

Fórn - Rites of Despair (preview tracks) (Gilead Media; due Sept. 21, 2018)

Dead and Company - MCU Center, Worcester, MA, Nov. 10, 2015 (audience recording/Archive.org; 2015)

Carl Stone - Electronic Music from the Eighties and Nineties (Unseen Worlds; due June 22, 2018)

David Bowie - Who Can I Be Now? [1974-1976] (Parlophone; 2016)

Dead and Company - Citi Field, Flushing Meadows, NY, June 15, 2018 (Nugs.net; 2018)

Philip Glass (arr. Michael Riesman) - Dracula - Michael Riesman (Orange Mountain Music; 2002)

Sunn O))) - Downtown LA Rehearsal​/​Rifftape March 1998 (self-released; 2018)

YOB - Our Raw Heart (Relapse; 2018)

Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper (Profound Lore; 2017)

Let's Eat Grandma - I, Gemini (Transgressive; 2016)

Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (Domino; 2018)

Bath Time Lessoning: Let's Eat Grandma.

The Girl's continuing journey through music, with The Dad taking notes.

Let’s Eat Grandma
I, Gemini
(Transgressive; 2016)

[before I’ve said a word]

“I really like this part of the music, Daddy. I really like the voices. What is this called?”

[“You aren’t going to believe it, but this is a group of two young women who are called Let’s Eat Grandma.”]

“Let’s Eat Grandma?! That’s crazy.”

[“What do you like about it?”]

“I like the little voices at the beginning of it. How old are they?”

[“They met when they were just four years old, like you. They started their band when they were 13, and they made this album when they were only 17.”]

“Well, they sure do have a lot of instruments. What language are they singing?”

[“It’s in English.”]

“Oh, I couldn’t tell, because they said ‘syntha,’ and I couldn’t tell it was English.”

[Note: They do not say “syntha,” though they do say “shiitake” and “syncopated.” And they do have a lot of vintage keyboards, drum machines, bells, and other gadgets and doodads. It’s daffy and charming and rather a lot of fun.]

Transcribed June 18, 2018.

Goings On About Town, June 25, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the June 25 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates June 20 through 26. Click on the image to go to the related page on the New Yorker website.

A much-loved but hopelessly broken toy.

I believe that our culture (and by “our culture” I’m talking about North America, and perhaps also Europe, to some extent) has undergone a fundamental shift. Expertise is no longer much valued in the cultural sphere; rather, it seems that the currently prevailing belief is that any one person’s opinion is as good as any other’s. Furthermore, if critical judgements are acknowledged at all, they are the judgements of the masses, expressed in economic terms: what is best is what sells the most.…

As a profession, classical music criticism emerged in the early 19th century and remained an esteemed aspect of musical culture to the end of the 20th century. It had a good run. But to cling to the idea, in the year 2018, that music criticism remains somehow relevant, and to soldier on with it, is to behave like a child clinging to a much-loved but hopelessly broken toy who refuses to throw it away and get on with life.—Colin Eatock

From "It was fun while it lasted"
Eatock Daily, May 31, 2018

An Ojai postscript.

It was unexpected, and perfectly lovely, to see this note posted to Facebook by Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the brilliant and idiosyncratic violinist who served as music director of the 2018 Ojai Music Festival, on my return home from co-hosting the livestream for that event. The festival was chock full of remarkable things, nearly all of which you can stream on YouTube already – do not miss the superhuman achievement of Markus Hinterhäuser performing all six piano sonatas by Galina Ustvolskaya in unbroken sequence (here) – and it was a great pleasure to speak at length, on camera, with Kopatchinskaja, cellist Jay Campbell, keyboardist Anthony Romaniuk, and Ojai Festival artistic director Tom Morris.

(Click on the photo to see the video on Patricia's Facebook page, or go straight to YouTube, here.)

At one point on Sunday afternoon, I was told after the fact, I'd somehow unwittingly spent literally a full hour talking on camera: alone first, then in the interview with Anthony, and then in conversation with my capable and affable co-host, the pianist and composer Thomas Kotcheff. (I'm glad to know that it went well, and somewhat relieved that such an extended bout of gabbing is not posted on YouTube.) Already I'm looking forward to returning next year for a festival curated by the brilliant soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan – and, with luck and better planning on my part, to bring my family along, instead of arriving with as much homework as I brought this time around.

Among the festival's many fine offerings, a few moments remain indelibly etched on my inner eyelid. (These photos are mine, taken from the anchor desk behind the bowl, except as indicated.)

• A performance of "Horse Sings from Cloud," by Pauline Oliveros, played by Kopatchinskaja, the JACK Quartet, and members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra on smartphones and tablets while spread throughout Libbey Bowl, the illuminated gadgets and twinkling tones making it seem as if a constellation had descended to sing.

• Jay Campbell, playing in profile in an open alcove above the stage, while the three remaining members of the JACK Quartet bowed illuminated wine goblets upstage in the "God-Music" section of George Crumb's Black Angels, during "Dies Irae," the second of two staged concerts produced by Kopatchinskaja and director Maria Ursprung. (Photograph by Bonnie Wright.)

• The percussionist Fiona Digney hammering with somber vehemence on a black wooden box, carted to the stage by bassists as if they were pallbearers, in Ustvolskaya's singular composition Dies Irae, around which the concert of the same name was built.

• The final image in "Dies Irae" – the thematic concern of which was climate change and an increasingly imperiled planet. After the Ustvolskaya piece, the concert's entire complement spilled like a priestly procession into the aisles to surround the audience, each carrying a handheld light source and a ticking metronome for György Ligeti's Poème symphonique, while simultaneously a recording of the Dies Irae plainchant played on the P.A. (as seen in the photograph, above). One by one, the metronomes stopped and the tiny lights blinked out, until all that remained was Jay Campbell's solitary tick from the stage.

Then the stage lights came up, and Campbell was flanked on either side by children: a young girl, and a younger boy, holding leafy branches. Campbell stopped his metronome, handed it to the girl (photograph by David Bazemore); you caught a fleeting glimpse, and then all lights went down. The meaning could not have been more clear. I was choked up and damp-eyed speaking on camera about that moment immediately afterward—and later that evening as I related it to the host at my guest house, and again a few more times as I told the story repeatedly on Sunday. (And again, just now, as I typed this.) 

A reminder: footage from last year's festival – curated by Vijay Iyer, and including my dream-achieved joint interview with Roscoe Mitchell and the late Muhal Richard Abrams – is also available in perpetuity on YouTube… or, as Thomas and I were referring to it by Day 2 or 3, "Ye Olde YouTube."

Playlist (overbooked in Ojai).

A weekly tally of memorable things Steve Smith has stuck in his ears.

Noah Creshevsky - The Tape Music of Noah Creshevsky 1971-92 (EM Records; 2004)

Noah Creshevsky - Hyperrealist Music 2011-2015 (EM Records; 2015)

Noah Creshevsky - Reanimator (Orange Milk; 2018)

Robert Rich – Premonitions (Vinyl on Demand/self-released; 1980-85/2014)

AMM - AMMMusic (Elektra/ReR Megacorp; 1967/1993; digital via Otoroku)

AMM - The Inexhaustible Document (Matchless; 1987)

AMM - The Nameless Uncarved Block (Matchless; 1991)

AMM - Newfoundland (Matchless; 1993)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Death and the Maiden - St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (Alpha Classics; 2016)
> Franz Schubert - String Quartet in D minor (D. 810, "Death and the Maiden"); Augustus Hörmiger - Toden Tanz; Anonymous (arr. Kopatchinskaja) - Byzantine Chant on Psalm 140; John Dowland - Pavan (from Seven Teares); Carlo Gesualdo - "Moro, lasso, al mio duolo"; György Kurtág - Ligatura-Message to Frances-Maria (The Answered Unanswered Question); 'Ruhelos' (from Kafka Fragments)

Kayla Cashetta - Toys I (excerpt) (SoundCloud; 2018)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Take Two - Jorge Sanchez-Chiong, Reto Bieri, Matthias Würsch, Anthony Romaniuk, Laurence Dreyfus, Pablo Márquez, Ernesto Estrella, (Alpha Classics; 2005)

Steve Roach - The Delicate Forever (Timeroom; 2018)

Angélica Negrón - Bubblegum Grass Peppermint Field - performers from Bang on a Can Summer Institute 2011 (SoundCloud; 2011)

Emma O'Halloran - Dying Is a Wild Night - Argus Quartet (SoundCloud; 2017)

Robert Rich - Sleep Concert at Gray Area, 24 Feb 2018 (self-released; 2018)

X. Lee - SPEC.: Voice, Cello, & Live Electronics (SoundCloud; 2017)

 

Goings On About Town, June 18, 2018.

Why am I sharing screenshots of concert listings from The New Yorker? Because they are mine. I wrote them. And now, I can say so, because as of the June 18 issue, The New Yorker is publishing bylines with its listings in the Goings On About Town section – to which I have been an anonymous contributor for more than a year now.

But while bylines did in fact appear in the print edition of the magazine, they haven't been implemented online just yet. That, then, is why I've saved and shared these screenshots.

I'm extremely proud to be a contributor to this august publication – and I'm grateful that it provides me with a well respected, well circulated platform from which to advocate for artists like Amirtha (and Lea), James, Marti, and Teodora. (To address the obvious question: no, I do not cover my primary employer.)

[ADDENDUM, June 17: Bylines were added to these items just a few days after I posted this, as was the "(+)" missing in the Spectrum listing. Click on the images above to view the related page on the New Yorker website.]

From the long stretch in which I didn't talk about this part of my working life, here's one I'm especially proud to have gotten into the magazine:

(Oh, and by the way… flamboyant most definitely was not a dogwhistle.)

Playlist (D'un soir triste).

A weekly tally of memorable things Steve Smith has stuck in his ears.

William Schuman - Symphony No. 9 ("The Ardeatine Caves") - Philadelphia Orchestra/Eugene Ormandy (RCA Red Seal; 1971)

Lili Boulanger - D'un soir triste - BBC Philharmonic/Yan Pascal Tortelier (Chandos; 1999)

Vanessa Rossetto - erased de kooning (self-released; 2015)

Long Distance Poison - Knock Magh (Hausu Mountain; 2018)

Charles Wuorinen - Piano Concerto No. 3 - Garrick Ohlsson, San Francisco Symphony/Herbert Blomstedt (Elektra Nonesuch; 1988)

Celer - I, Anatomy (Alternate Version) (self-released Bandcamp subscriber exclusive; 2015)

Pauline Anna Strom - Trans-Millenia Music (RVNG Intl.; 1982-88/2017)

Taylor Brook - virtutes Occultae (self-released; 2017)

Tuluum Shimmering - The One That Touched the Sky (self-released; 2018)

Cecil Taylor & Sunny Murray - Corona (FMPArchive; 1996/2018)

Robert Rich - Premonitions (Vinyl on Demand/self-released; 1980-85/2014)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto in D - Patricia Kopatchinskaja, MusicAeterna/Teodor Currentzis (Sony Classical; 2016)

James Ilgenfritz - Origami Cosmos (Infrequent Seams; 2017)
> Annie Gosfield - Rolling Sevens and Dreaming Elevens; Miya Masaoka - Four Moons of Pluto; Jim Thirlwell - Xigliox; Elliott Sharp - Aletheia