Night After Night

Who Is Florence Price?

Reading to and with The Girl at bedtime is a constant joy: a time for discovery and sharing and, increasingly, an opportunity to gauge how her ability to read on her own is growing by leaps and bounds. One thing we especially enjoy is books about real-life women who made a substantial impact in science or the arts. We've got both of the Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls volumes, naturally—and we're even friendly with one of the women profiled therein, a firefighter who lives in our building in Queens. We've got special favorite books about Eugenie Clark, a bold ichthyologist who dared to love sharks, and Joan Procter, a pioneering herpetologist who revolutionized how reptiles are housed in zoos. We've read engaging age-appropriate biographies of Helen Frankenthaler, and Zaha Hadid, and Yayoi Kusama, and more.

Tonight we added a new volume to our library, and it's got a very special twist: Unlike all the other books I just mentioned, Who Is Florence Price? was created for young people by young people. Newly published by the Kaufman Music Center, the slender paperback was written and illustrated by sixth, seventh, and eighth graders enrolled in the center's Special Music School, guided by teacher Shannon Potts.

Near as I can tell, Who Is Florence Price? is not available commercially—but, having read it this evening, I'll voice a sincere wish that everyone could get their hands on it. In lively and affirmative prose, the book recounts a succinct version of Price's life that hews to facts presented in widely read 2018 articles by Micaela Baranello in The New York Times (here) and Alex Ross in The New Yorker (here). Both of those articles relate a story about a trove of yellowing manuscripts found in a dilapidated house outside of Chicago in 2009, restoring to circulation works by Price believed long lost. (It bears mention that those two stories unwittingly played into a burst of "long-lost composer rediscovered" claims, which scholars like Kori Hill and Doug Shadle, among others, rebutted efficiently; unlike her manuscripts, Price herself never had gone wholly missing.)

The rediscovery of the manuscripts – a genuinely momentous event that absolutely did serve to catapult Price back into the public eye – both starts and finishes the story told by the Special Music School students. The prose is easygoing and stylish, telling a story of aspiration, determination, and substantial achievement. The authors deal with obstacles represented by Price's gender and ethnicity in plainspoken manner. And notably, while the instance of conductor Frederick Stock taking up Price's Symphony No. 1 is rightly treated as a life-changing event, a reader gets the sense that the milestone came as a result of Price's resolve to have her talent noticed and appreciated, rather than an anointment of worth from a white male elite.

As I indicated previously, in recent years I've read a lot of books aimed at relating sophisticated life stories for very young readers; it takes a deft balance of content and tone, and these young writers get the mix just so. The illustrations – an appealing mix of drawing, painting, and collage – are similarly sophisticated and often arresting, as you might have seen in a tweet by the composer Marcos Balter late last week.

Heartwarming moment of the year: Kate Sheeran gave me this beautiful book on Florence Price, written and illustrated by middle schoolers from the @KaufmanMusicNYC Special Music School, and I ugly cried all over it. If you have a kid, get a copy!!! pic.twitter.com/2JZDtTCFPb

— Marcos Balter (@MarcosBalter) February 28, 2020

You likely noticed in the photograph at the top of this post that my copy of Who Is Florence Price? arrived with a handwritten card from one of the authors. I hope he won't mind that I'm sharing his message with you:

Dear Mr. Smith,

In January we researched, wrote, and illustrated this book about Florence Price. This project taught me that even music back then, and even now had/have ways to put some people better than others. Just like how one conductor changed Florence's musical life, it only takes one important person to change someone's life. I hope you enjoy the book.

Sincerely,

Jonah 12

7th grader

Dear Jonah: Thank you! I did enjoy the book a great deal, and so did my six-year-old daughter, who immediately declared my copy of Who Is Florence Price? is now part of her personal library. I'm certain that we'll be reading it many, many more times now, and I hope that many, many more people will have an opportunity to do the same.

Sincerely,

Steve and The Girl

P.S. We'd like to extend our thanks to Kaufman Music Center executive director Kate Sheeran for sending the book and your note along, too.

After we set the book aside for the night, we listened to a bit of the first movement from Price's Symphony No. 1, in the excellent Naxos recording by the Fort Smith Symphony conducted by John Jeter. The Girl was duly impressed, but the rousing strains weren't especially amenable to falling asleep, so we switched over to our traditional lullaby, Bach's "Goldberg" Variations. (No, that's not pompous; it's effective.) But had I thought of it, maybe I could have played the incredibly beautiful Andante Cantabile movement from Price's String Quartet in A minor. Listen for yourself, in this gorgeous recent performance presented by Castle of Our Skins at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Feeling the Love for "Phil the Hall."

One of the new initiatives the New York Philharmonic rolled out last season, to coincide with the arrival of music director Jaap van Zweden (and Deborah Borda, the institution's president, as well) was "Phil the Hall," an unambiguously populist gesture in which first responders, volunteers, and other public-service professionals were invited to come to Lincoln Center, hear some very good music played by the city's flagship ensemble, and feel welcomed and celebrated.

The program – hosted by Miss America, Nia Franklin, and conducted by Van Zweden – was presented four times, with tickets priced at $5. A video featuring highlights from last year's events is available on the Philharmonic website. Tony Tommasini's New York Times review conveys many details and impressions—including praise for two of the composers, both 11-year-old participants in the orchestra's Very Young Composers program.

This year, it appears that "Phil the Hall" is happening only once, on Friday, April 3, at 8pm. There's no specification about types of professionals being invited to participate on the page for the event on the Philharmonic website, which simply states that Van Zweden and the orchestra "welcome our fellow New Yorkers to this special concert, back by popular demand."

There are a few new wrinkles. Along with the program announced in advance, audience members are requested to cast votes (here) for additional works to be played: the overture to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro or Rossini's William Tell, a splashy brass passage from Also sprach Zarathustra or Pictures at an Exhibition, and so on. Also stipulated this year: audience response will determine which piece gets an encore performance right there, on the spot.

What impresses me most, though, is that along with the Bernstein-era canon fodder, from Copland, Shostakovich, and Bernstein himself, the Philharmonic will present two works of more recent vintage—and more recent significance, too. Tread softly, by Nina C. Young, was the first of the institution's Project 19 commissions to be performed: a sequence of impressions, ruminations, and ecstatic expressions that materialize in sequence, then get cut off all too abruptly.

Young's piece is vivid, resourceful, and unpredictable, and makes its point imaginatively and poetically. And it's wholly likely that Tread softly will sound even more impressive in this context than it did among the odd-bedfellow works by Haydn and Mozart that adjoined its premiere. (I wrote a bit more about Project 19 and Young last month, here.)

The other recent piece on the "Phil the Hall" bill is Sweating Bullets, by Paloma Alonso—who was 12 years old when her work had its world premiere on December 7, 2019, during a Young People's Concert conducted by Van Zweden (his first), alongside pieces by Beethoven, Steve Reich, and Reena Esmail.

Alonso's composition, a cinematic evocation of jangled nerves, was a hit—and a highlight of the first YPC event I got to attend with The Girl, who was wildly impressed that the relatively small person she saw onstage could marshal such big, big sounds.

My hat's off to whoever selected the Young and Alonso works for this event. Both are effective, exciting pieces—and both make strong statements about representation and ability, too.

 

Caught: Tiger Trio, Whitney Museum of American Art, Jan. 4, 2020.

Tiger Trio
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
January 4, 2020
General admission

Personnel:

Joëlle Léandre, bass, vocals
Myra Melford, piano
Nicole Mitchell, flute, alto flute, piccolo

Back in the heyday of live jazz on New York City's 52nd Street, from the end of Prohibition in 1933 until the early '50s, the Three Deuces occupied a prime spot on the south side of the street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Bebop's architects – Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Miles Davis, and the like – played the intimate room at 72 West 52nd St., where, freed from the demands of the dance floor, they innovated collaboratively, pushing each other to greater heights of virtuosity and bravado.

South side of W. 52nd Street in 1948, photographed by William P. Gottlieb

Swing Street, as it was known, started to fade in the late '40s, and the last 52nd Street club shuttered in 1968. But just recently, thanks to the enterprise of pianist, composer, bandleader, and visual artist Jason Moran, the Three Deuces has had a second life. STAGED: Three Deuces, a crafted facsimile of a portion of the club, has materialized now, Brigadoon-like, at the Venice Biennale in 2015… at Luhring Augustine's Bushwick gallery in 2016… at the Walker Art Center and the ICA Boston in 2018.

And, after a late summer appearance at the Wexner Center for the Arts last year, the Three Deuces finally came home to Manhattan late in 2019, sharing space with two other historical apparitions, the Savoy Ballroom and Slug's Saloon, in an eighth-floor gallery at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

STAGED: Three Deuces (2015). Photograph by Farzad Owrang,
courtesy of Jason Moran and Luhring Augustine

During most gallery hours, a digital grand piano in the Three Deuces set played back performances by Moran. But the exhibition also included an impressive live-performance series, comprising Friday night and Saturday afternoon engagements by artists and groups ranging from Archie Shepp and Joanne Brackeen to Fay Victor and Jamire Williams.

Early in the afternoon on January 4, I attended the last live event with my family: a beautifully brainy, brawny, and varied set by Tiger Trio, a collaborative venture featuring bassist Joëlle Léandre (who also vocalized playfully and robustly), pianist Myra Melford, and flutist Nicole Mitchell.

I won't pretend to pass off this essay as a review—not least because we arrived just as the folding chairs were running out, so I spent the first 30-40 minutes of the set standing in the back with The Girl on my shoulders. Suffice it to say that these musicians are among the most inventive thinkers, writers, and players now active, and their collaboration worked at an empathic level: something like Jimmy Giuffre's chamber trio with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow, actually. The trio has two records out on the French label Rogue Art, and deserves the widest possible attention.

I do have to relate one serious reservation about the presentation, though honestly I feel conflicted in raising the issue. The gallery that included Moran's three STAGED set pieces also featured three large video screens, on which a series of Moran's collaborations with other artists played in a ceaseless loop. As a general observation, I'd have found it much more agreeable if the Whitney had deactivated these screens for the duration of the live performances, as a show of respect to the musicians.

More specifically, a wall label clearly indicated that one work in the video sequence – National Archives Microfilm M999 Roll 34: Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands: Six Miles from Springfield on the Franklin Road, a terrifying 2009 film by Kara Walker, scored by Moran and his wife, singer/composer Alicia Hall Moran – included graphic scenes of racial and sexual violence. But in a gallery darkened for performance, the label and its warning were easy to miss. As well, ticket holders weren't forewarned that the video screenings would coincide with the concert.

Walker's art is undeniably powerful, illustrating uncomfortable truths with macabre charisma. But when I set out for this concert, I hadn't foreseen needing to prevent a not-quite six-year-old girl, drawn to a flickering screen like a moth to a light bulb, from glimpsing images she wasn't prepared to interpret or understand.

Next time, I suppose, I probably should think to ask.

I'd like to have spent more time investigating Moran's show at greater length, but circumstances prevented my doing so. If you're curious to know what critics outside of mainstream media outlets thought, you'll find an insightful appreciation by Martin Johnson here, and a considered critique by George Grella here.

Caught: Forest Speech, Museum of Modern Art, Nov. 17, 2019.

David Tudor: Forest Speech
Performed by Lea Bertucci, John Driscoll, Ed Potokar, Margaret Anne Schedel, and Philip White
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
November 17, 2019

Sunday afternoon, after my daughter attended a performance of David Tudor's Forest Speech at the Museum of Modern Art with her mother and me, I asked her what she'd thought. "It was amazing," she proclaimed. "It was my second-favorite concert, ever." Surprised and delighted, I had to know: what had been No. 1? The Girl thought hard, evincing some frustration. "You know what it was… I can't remember the name." Prompted for some kind of recognizable detail, she said, "The one with all the animals."

Ah: Aesop's Fables, performed by Isango Ensemble at the New Victory Theater earlier this month. That made sense: a vivid show, still fresh in her memory. Still, thinking back on her strong response to a concert she'd seen in March, I had to ask: "But what about Kiss?!" The Girl thought for a moment, grinned, and held up three fingers.

How perfectly remarkable to think that a piece Tudor completed in 1979 – meant to reshape the avian chirps, simian hoots, and leonine roars of the Rainforest menagerie, which he'd cultivated with his fellow explorers in Composers Inside Electronics, into something more closely resembling speech – might thoroughly captivate a not-quite six-year-old listener in 2019.

Then again, what's the surprise? As I mentioned in a previous post, Rainforest V (variation 1) remains as beguiling and enchanting as ever: an uncanny arboreal soundscape, fashioned with Seussian assemblages of junk, electricity, and ingenuity. "Collectively they become a kind of urban jungle, suspended like Calder mobiles with the anti-utilitarian aesthetic of Duchamp readymades," Alastair Macauley wrote in an elegant, perceptive review for The New York Times, which also includes an account of a previous Forest Speech performance.

The present installation is the latest development in a long historical process, boiled down concisely on the MoMA website (where you also can download a longer essay in PDF format):

Tudor’s first Rainforest, from 1968, served as the musical score for choreographer Merce Cunningham’s dance of the same name. In 1973, working together with a group of young artists and musicians, Tudor expanded the work from a musical composition to a performance installation titled Rainforest IV. Composer Gordon Mumma described their collective artistic process as “a garden of shared ideas with minimal fences.” The group would later be named Composers Inside Electronics (CIE) (active 1973–present), and to this day includes John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein, among others. Tudor continued to work with CIE on multiple iterations of Rainforest over the next several decades. This last evolution of the work, Rainforest V (variation 1), transforms an installation once activated by performers into a rich visual environment animated by a computer program.

Rainforest V (variation 1), now part of the permanent MoMA collection, has been chirping, hooting, and howling autonomously since the museum reopened in October, its sounds perceptible not only in its assigned alcove, but also throughout a fair portion of the closest neighboring fourth-floor galleries. But Forest Speech transforms the installation back into something activated by performers—here, John Driscoll of Composers Inside Electronics, along with fellow composers, improvisers, and inventors Lea Bertucci, Ed Potokar, Margaret Anne Schedel, and Philip White.

Sliding wall panels, which I'd not noticed on my previous visit, closed off the Kravis Studio space from the adjoining gallery. The floor-to-ceiling window that dominates one side of the space was covered, creating a no-frills performance chamber. Audience members sat on benches surrounding the installation, or grabbed pillows on the floor underneath it.

The music sounded good in the space: clear and well defined, loud at times but never too loud. Familiar Rainforest sounds mingled with new voices (almost literally, at times) as the five musicians shaped a not-quite hour-long performance using laptops, weight- and touch-sensitive pads, controllers covered with ranks of identical buttons, and other gadgets not so easily recognized—I'm thinking now of the foil-wrapped whirligig on Driscoll's desk. You heard murmurs, snatches of conversation, bursts of laughter. At one point everyone converged into a zone of steady rhythm patterns—incongruous, maybe, but no less appealing for it.

Rainforest V (variation 1) remains on exhibit through January 5, 2020; it's open to all visitors at no additional charge, and makes for a charming encounter for visitors of all ages. One last round of Forest Voices performances is coming up in December, featuring Ginny Benson, Cecilia Lopez, Daniel Neumann, Sergei Tcherepnin, and C. Spencer Yeh. Tickets for the evening events on December 12 and 14 are sold out already, so remaining availability is limited to two daytime performances on December 15, at noon and 3pm. Those events are free with museum admission but require a separate ticket, available at the fourth-floor information desk. (Be forewarned: studio capacity is extremely limited, so you can count on tickets going quickly.)

Rainforest V (variation 1), photographed on Oct. 19, 2019

L-R Margaret Anne Schedel, John Driscoll, Philip White, Lea Bertucci

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.

Bath Time Lessoning: Stevie Wonder.

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

Stevie Wonder
Songs in the Key of Life
(Motown; 1976)

[“Tonight I’m playing you one of mama’s very favorite albums, and it’s one of mine, too.”]

“Who is it?”

[“This is Stevie Wonder, and he’s one of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time.”]

“Well, I would say that he’s an awesome singer.”

[“Something that’s very special about Stevie Wonder is that for almost all of his life he has been blind, which means that he can’t see anything at all, and yet he taught himself to do all of these things and make all this great music.”]

“You mean he was born blind?”

[“Pretty much. So when anyone tells you that you can’t do something, you think about all the great things that Stevie Wonder has done and what he was up against, and then you’ll know that you can do absolutely anything you want to. You might not remember this, but when you were just nine months old, you and me and mama all went to a big concert in Boston and we listened to Stevie Wonder play all of this music right there in person.”]

“Well, I do remember.”

[“You do?”]

“Yeah, I remember all the music I heard in mama’s belly. I was rocking out onstage in there.”

[“………well, that would explain a lot.”]

Transcribed Dec. 16, 2017.

The Girl and The Mom, ready to see Stevie Wonder at TD Garden in Boston, Nov. 11, 2014

 

Bath Time Lessoning: Some Feedback.

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

“You always pick the best music for bath time, Dad.”

 

[“Well, that’s very nice of you to say. I try hard to pick things that you’ll find interesting. But if I played something that you didn’t like, it would be okay for you to say so. Not everybody likes every kind of music.”]

 

“Well, I sure do like your music you pick. Actually, I’m rather quite impressed with your music, sometimes.”

 

Transcribed Dec. 8, 2017.

Bath Time Lessoning: Paul Simon.

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

Photograph: Peggy Harper

 

Paul Simon
Over the Bridge of Time: A Paul Simon Retrospective (1961-2011)
(Sony Legacy; 2013)

 

["So, what kind of music do you feel like hearing tonight?"]

 

"Well, Paul Simon," The Girl says.

 

["OK, whatever you say." "The Sound of Silence" begins.]

 

"Hey!" The Girl exclaims. "This is the Trolls song."

 

["That's true, but it was Paul Simon's song first. He wrote it. Did you know that?"]

 

"Well, yes. Mama told me."

 

[Little subsequent commentary, though reckless dancing ensues during "Cecilia." Then, in a quiet moment during "Bridge Over Troubled Water"]

 

"That's a good song, Papa. Can we watch it again?"

 

[She listens to it again. After the second time, "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" follows.]

 

"Hey!" The Girl exclaims once more. "THIS is the song I wanted."

 

Transcribed August 24, 2017

Bath Time Lessoning: King Crimson.

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

Photograph: Tony Levin

 

King Crimson
Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind
(DGM, 2016)

[during percussion-only intro to "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part 1"]

"This is cool music, Papa!"

[during choppy guitar transition]

"I really like the music, Papa! I like the way the guitars sound."

And with the arrival of the song's ponderous, crushing main riff, The Girl – who is listening for the first time ever to her papa's foremost musical obsession – leaps up from the suds, puts on her metalhead grimace, and bangs her head.

That's my Girl, all right.

Bath Time Lessoning: Hans Abrahamsen.

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

Barbara Hannigan singing with the Berlin Philharmonic (Photograph: YouTube)

Hans Abrahamsen
let me tell you
Barbara Hannigan, Boston Symphony Orchestra/Andris Nelsons
(WCRB broadcast; 2016)

"Pretty," says The Girl, who is far more intent on jumping, splashing, and soaking papa.

Transcribed Feb. 6, 2016.