This last month has seen a lot of tumult in this column. Hopefully, this week will restore some order to the situation. Just to be on the safe side, I've signed a contract with the Free Press in case the Record gig doesn't work out - that column would have a rather different bent, focusing on what music readers should not listen to.

In any event, I'm here for now, and I've decided to go back to reviewing CDs. This week's selection is a rather intriguing one, coming straight from my hometown of New York City. It's a group called Bang on a Can, and they actually follow the model of pop groups and name their album - it's called Industry (CD B196 4). Bang on a Can is an offbeat group of composers who are unashamedly influenced by pop music but are also well-versed in classical music history. The resulting sound world is very influenced by minimalism, a term you may remember from the column featuring Philip Glass. Minimalism generally refers to slowly-developing patterns, often using familiar harmonies, which evolve throughout a high number of repetitions. The selections on this disc are all what one might call "post-minimalist," if one were pretentious, which I am.

Calling myself pretentious was actually a nice segue into my next point. You see, Industry includes some of the most irritating program notes I've ever read. In their "mission statement," the members of Bang on a Can say that, when forming the group, they "didn't want to be restricted by boundaries, and we didn't want the listener to be restricted either." Sounds nice, but they later go on to discuss composer Louis Andriessen, who was a major source of inspiration to the group. Describing his musical philosophy, they say, "There is something about his personality that is like a call to battle. Are you for him or against him? Do you want to join the defenders of true originality and art? Or go to the other side where everyone is entrenched in old, superstitious ideas? He makes people feel part of a movement. An entire generation of young composers has been drawn to Louis Andriessen's rigorous radicalism. Refining rebellion with discipline is an important idea for our time. It's the kind of idea we like at Bang on a Can."

Now that, my friends, is pretension and hypocrisy. Bang on a Can was formed to avoid the "uptown crowd," which was too academic, and the "downtown crowd," which was too artsy-intellectual and pretentious. But it seems to me that they have simply created a new crowd to avoid - the "midtown crowd," or whatever name you want to give them (the "Banging crowd" sounds too dirty). I suppose my music is influenced by pop music and minimalism to some extent, but what if it isn't? Or what if they can't hear the influence? Does that mean that I'm against "the defenders of true originality and art"? I like the idea of not being restricted by boundaries, but it seems that they are just creating new boundaries.

After all of this bashing, I have to say that the music itself is quite good. Represented here are the three composers of Bang on a Can, namely Julia Wolfe, David Lang and Michael Gordon, as well as Louis Andriessen. The best piece on here is Gordon's title track, "Industry," which is written for cello with some strange distortion. It starts off softly and innocently with a simple chord progression that changes slowly, with glissandos (slides) and heavier distortion effects added on bit by bit as the cello gets louder. It sounds amazingly like an electric guitar, in fact. Eventually, the intensity becomes overwhelming as a lower cello sound is somehow introduced simultaneously with the upper string wailing. The rhythm becomes much more intense and fast, and the piece marches to its conclusion like a gigantic machine.

I had the opportunity to sit in on a class with David Lang, one of the members of Bang on a Can, and he was very enthusiastic, engaging and made some good points. He played for us the piece of his which is represented on this album, "The Anvil Chorus." The piece consists of a lot of banging on metal, chosen by the performer, and evoking the idea that in the Middle Ages, the loudest sound on Earth was that of blacksmiths pounding away. They would develop rhythms to keep themselves from striking the metal at the same time, and so here is the sound of many "anvils" being hit at various points in time. Lang uses foot pedals and such to create a larger sound world than one might imagine is possible from just one percussionist, and the resulting piece, while not overwhelmingly great, is nevertheless quite effective. The rhythms seem to fall in line with one another over time, and by the end it, too, feels like a giant machine, though more primitive and driven by men.

Julia Wolfe, the third member of Bang on a Can, gets the honor of opening up the CD with her energetic work "Lick." This piece has very clear roots in pop music, but is very complicated and well thought out. I described a CD by the composer Todd Levin as an awful mix of techno and classical music. Well, Wolfe's piece is a very funky, exciting mix of written form and pop feel. It's very punchy, with "hits" of sound and an insistent beat that you can really move to. And "Lick" takes you somewhere, something that most pop music fails to do as the songs revel in their stasis.

Wolfe calls her piece "over the top," but I would instead apply that term to a different piece on the album, Louis Andriessen's "Hoketus." These are four pieces played by two identical groups of instruments, consisting of short fragments alternating between the two groups in slightly changed fashion. My suitemates closed my door on two separate playings of these pieces - the songs are really irritating on a certain level. I find it difficult to write with this work playing in the background right now, so disorienting is the stop-and-go action of these insistent motives. But there is also something strangely satisfying about the work as a whole; have a listen and see what you think.

Andriessen is also represented with a fast, energetic piece called "Hout,"" meaning "wood," in reference to the marimba and (unheard) woodblocks, according to the composer. The piece consists of a series of phrases played by all of the instruments successively, right behind one another, so that everything sounds echoed by everything else. It's a really cool effect, and the piece holds together nicely. There is constant motion throughout the entire piece except for a very few spots where the motion simply stops - those moments are striking because of the activity of the rest of the piece.

This disc is a really worthwhile collection of interesting pieces. I just wish that the composers weren't so pretentious and hypocritical - read David Lang's program notes for more of the same. Still, it's definitely worth listening to. Join the Banging crowd!

It's not at all surprising -- and wouldn't have surprised the Founders in the least -- that a radical and corrupt political faction (the Bush-led Right) has been able to take over parts of the Government and sought to consolidate political power. The expectation was that this would happen, and the solution was to devise a litany of checks -- the Congress, the media, opposition parties -- that would stand up to and vigorously oppose that faction and prevent it from running rampant.

It's primarily the failure of those institutions, rather than the emergence of a corrupt and lawless faction, that has made the Bush era so unique and distinctively destructive. Those institutions have failed because they have been, and continue to be, defined by the meek, amorphous, principle-free New Republic Syndrome, which thinks that its restrained tolerance and complicit embrace of patent Bush extremism is some sort of mark of political sophistication and Seriousness.

• The "mainstream" position that Obama is adopting is ridiculous. He has misrepresented the facts surrounding the bill, making absolutely false justifications for supporting it, justifications which are themselves grounded in an assumption of fear that is itself totally insane.
• We are continuing our creep towards a near-autocracy, with the two main beneficiaries of the bill being the Executive Branch and the military-industrial complex.The Executive Branch here wins the power to avoid FISA oversight by taking over the oversight duties, itself. As Greenwald notes, this is not oversight - that's what courts are for, first and foremost ("oversight" of the law and the Constitution), and it's also what Congress traditionally does vis-a-vis the Executive Branch. Meanwhile, the military-industrial complex is folding in our surveillance activities and the corporations that support them (see Digby on this, and much more). They broke the law, and now they're going to avoid any prosecution for it.
• The Democrats are being typically craven and short-sighted. This election is a moment to bring real Progressive values into the mainstream. The question isn't whether people want that - people don't "want" values to be imposed, they want to see positive results. They way you bring those values into the mainstream is by implementing policies that work, and which reflect those values. This bill is the opposite of that policy proposal, but it unfortunately is "clean", in that the effects aren't seen. They lie underneath our system, eating away at it from within. To the public, it's a way of "fitting in" with the norms of the day, as articulated by the mainstream media, but to use that as a policy impetus is the worst kind of cravenness.

I came across your website when browsing for composers on the internet. I am a professional violinist and also a sheet music typesetter, based out of India. Meaning I layout songs, tablature and their melody in Western music notation. If you have hand-written samples of your music of which you want to create a high quality digital PDF file, I can do it for you, at a reasonable rate.

A lot of people have Windows based commercial software like Finale/Sibelius to do this kind of work, but you can save a lot of time and effort if you were to give it to a professional typesetter like myself. All you need to do is to scan or photograph it and and send it to me by email. I can do some very complex samples, please take a look at my sample from my website at [gives website]. You will require Acrobat Reader software to view this. Please reply to me if you are interested.

"If you follow only one link from this blog in your life, let it be [this one]," wrote Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, pointing his readers toward this performance by pianist and composer Jennifer Lin. Lin, then 14, starts by playing Joseph Hoffman's "Kaleidoscope," then Robert Schumann's "Abegg Variations." She talks about the process of composition and discusses the state of flow, when she can improvise beautiful music instantly -- a state of mind that cannot be forced. Lin invites audience member Goldie Hawn to choose a random sequence of notes, from which she improvises a beautiful and surprisingly moving piece, known to draw tears even via podcast. She finishes with a lightning performance of Jack Fina's "Bumble Boogie."

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi's newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.

Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi's soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.

ROMNEY: And, by the way, I want to make sure these folks are kept at Guantanamo. I don't want the people that are carrying out attacks on this country to be brought into our jail system and be given legal representation in this country. I want to make sure that what happened...

(APPLAUSE)

...to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed happens to other people who are terrorists. He was captured. He was the so-called mastermind of the 9/11 tragedy. And he turned to his captors and he said, I'll see you in New York with my lawyers. I presume ACLU lawyers.

(LAUGHTER)

Well, that's not what happened. He went to Guantanamo and he met G.I.s and CIA interrogators. And that's just exactly how it ought to be.

critical way. See you when pigs fly.

Oh, and one more thing - some people like Romney because he's a businessman, and we assume that Northeast businessmen can be trusted to be, at least, rational beings. He is obviously, first and foremost, a politician, and there is no doubt in my mind that he will, if elected President, behave like a politician, ruthless in his pursuit of reelection from Day 1, and cozying up to the same demographics and interest groups that brought him there. Those now can clearly be seen to include "those who like torture" and "those who have no respect for justice", so please keep that in mind when deciding which Republican to support. Not that any of those folks are reading this page, but it had to be said.

12/01/07

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The State of Classical Criticism, Filtered Through Computer Preferences - 11/27/07


I wouldn't be surprised if this comment page were reprinted in some future chapter on "Classical Music Criticism in the Early 21st Century" or the like.

11/27/07

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At the End of a Really Great Day - 11/23/07


My friend Emily Driscoll was killed in a car accident last Friday. She wasn't a very close friend of mine, but she was one of those rare, obviously remarkable people, smart and confident and charismatic, a doer and a mover and a shaker, compassionate and on the side of justice. Emily was a fantastic artist, and, along with Walker Waugh, was the co-director of the WORK Gallery, a small but intrepid art space in Red Hook. I'd planned to do some collaborations with them; they both shared my sense of art as a moving, living thing, and were eager to reach out to the other disciplines. It looks like our first collaboration will be a memorial. It's really a tragedy, with no consolation, save for the global recognition - too early - of a life well lived, in the fullest possible sense of that phrase.

My friend Eve said that Emily died the way that we might all hope to - "at the end of a really great day". She meant, I think, both the day itself, full of action and accomplishment, and also the entirety of her life, the broader "day". The phrase seems perfectly right to me, and so I'm giving that name to the Seattle piece, and giving its dedication to the appropriate mix of joyous days and tragic ends that it will forever conjure in my mind.

My deepest condolences to the Driscoll family, and to Walker. The world has lost a good one - thank you, Emily.

11/23/07

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The Writers' Strike - 11/09/07


I have less than no time to write right now, but while I was eating lunch, I came across this thread.

I don't know much about the strike, even though it combines two of my big interests - organized labor and artistic creation. I've just been too busy recently to have my head very far out of the sand. But these comments, even those in support of the strike, seem to miss the point: this is really a labor issue, and the question of work quality is almost totally irrelevant. For those of you who support, say, auto workers or coal miners, do you think that a strike by the workers should be undermined because you don't support the products that the workers produce? Of course not, for most of you. The point is, we can separate the conditions of labor from the product of labor. And, usually, a stronger labor force will mean greater attention to social justice concerns - the typical efforts to drive a wedge between environmentalists and labor activists notwithstanding. In this case, the question isn't whether screenwriters are putting out good work. This is not a referendum on their quality, any more than a GM strike would be a referendum on the quality of Chevrolets. There's a lot more to say about this, especially in the current debates about teachers' unions, but I wish the terms of this strike weren't so caught up in peoples' disgust with the current state of mass entertainment.

11/09/07

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One Sufjan Review - 11/04/07


OK, this is actually a pretty reasonable evaluation of the Sufjan Stevens show at BAM. That said, I think it mostly misses the really positive elements of the show, from a people-who-write-for-orchestras-and-such perspective, which I intend to write about this week - hopefully on the new New Amsterdam site....

11/04/07

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The NOW CD is in the House - 11/03/07




The CD is here! Call me biased but, in my humble opinion, it looks and sounds amazing. Yes, that's the cover image, above. We'll be selling it on New Amsterdam Records shortly - more info to come. If you can't wait to get your hands on it (and I don't blame you), come to the NOW show on Wednesday at 7:00, at Ico Gallery.

For now, here's a track listing:

Folk Music by Judd Greenstein

Hypno-germ by Patrick Burke

Hanging There by Mark Dancigers

All Together Now by Patrick Burke

How About Now by Nico Muhly

Cloudbank by Mark Dancigers

Sing Along by Judd Greenstein

11/03/07

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Spooky Modern Music Thoughts - 10/31/07


Last night, I was brought to a really excellent event - an "Evening of Spooky Modern Music", with Alex Ross reading from his excellent new book, paired in historically relevant fashion with piano music played by Ethan Iverson. It was in this crazy social club, and there was lots of free vodka, so of course it was bound to be a good time (less good this morning), but the pairing of the readings and the performance really worked. It was amazing to see all these trendy-cool people (including folks like Lou Reed and Mark Morris) listening to such a quirky little recital. I e-mailed Alex to say that this had to be the most people in attendance for a performance of Milton Babbitt's Semi-Simple Variations in 30 or 40 years. That is kind of cool in itself.

Anyway - I realize that I'm being a bit of a hypocrite right now, because I'm excited about music and unexcited by music writing, having spend too much time reading the recent pieces - and the responses to them - by Sasha Frere-Jones and Richard Taruskin that have caused stirs among the literary/music crowd. Mostly, it's just kind of boring. In SFJ's case, it's also just kind of absurd, but I've basically decided to not really get into it. Maybe I'll change my mind, but I don't think people are really reading this space enough to air public views and spend the time it would take to manufacture them. Once the New Amsterdam blog is up and running, that will change. I say all this, though, because Alex's book is the exception to my disinterest in music writing - it was refreshing to hear his insightful telling of history, and to be reminded that not everyone writes about music in a hugely self-important manner (SFJ and Taruskin are both this, in different ways) that undermines whatever point they're trying to make.

Also good from last night was hearing Charles Ives's The Alcotts, which reminded me that I played that piece in high school. I'd forgotten about it, but now that I'm writing piano music, I realize what a huge influence that work had on me. Ives was a difficult man with strongly-held convictions, and he "took no jive" from anyone. His music is very much along the same lines - it can come off, if you think about it in a certain way, as the musical equivalent of a classic Brash American stereotype, the tourist who talks too loudly, whatever those Frogs may think. But, of course, it's much more brilliant than that makes it sound - I mean it in a good way. Everything is in there. What do you mean, the music seems to be asking, "you can't do that"? There's no such thing. It's over the top, which - as anyone who's followed my musical thinking for a while knows - I consider a near-cardinal virtue. I have to think that my own sensibilities are greatly informed by Ives's attitude, so evident in this piece. It's fun to hear where you come from!

10/31/07

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Apology to the Icelandic Community - 10/30/07


I need to apologize to the Icelandic community. While I tried to be culturally sensitive and include that quasi-d-thing in Valgeir's name, when I did so, it added a space between every coded character on this page which had the effect of turning the page into a big pile of hanzi:



And so Valgeir's name has the improper "d" where the unwritable other thing should be. Apologies to him and to any other Icelanders who are reading this, as well as to the Icelandic-friendly community.

10/30/07

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How About One Great Song? - 10/25/07


I've been thinking about albums that are great, but which additionally have one transcendent song that rises above the rest. I'm not talking about bad albums with one good track, I'm talking about amazing, classic albums that are brought to that level by one especially all-time-classic song. It's like a good baseball team that has one superstar player, and thereby becomes a great team.

Albums that come to mind:

Pastel Blues, by Nina Simone

It would be a classic album, merely on the strength of "Be My Husband" and "Strange Fruit", and the overall high quality, but then there's "Sinnerman". Game over.

Marquee Moon, by Television

One of the best-ever debut albums, a super-classic post-punk original. But the title track is one of the best songs ever recorded, and gets to places that the rest of the album only hints at.

Odessey and Oracle, by the Zombies

It's hard for me to include this, because it's such a great album, with so many good songs, but "Time of the Season" sticks out - in its near-perfection and in its tone - from the rest of the songs. That said, I recognize that it's probably not even most people's favorite song on the album. This may be one where, you know, it's my list, so there.

'93 'Til Infinity, by Souls of Mischief

Great album, a constant breath of fresh air, totally positive and fun, but the title track looms large above the rest as one of the great early-90s hip hop tracks.

Controversial pick #1 - Thriller, by Michael Jackson

The more I think about this album, as great as it is, "Billie Jean" is clearly the best song on it, by far. Let's be honest, Thriller is a hit-and-miss album. There are plenty of classic songs, but that's the only one that I would need to have on any favorite song list. Is that the measure, here? If that's controversial, then what about this:

Controversial pick #2 - Purple Rain, by Prince

Look, I know. The idea of suggesting that anything could be better than "When Doves Cry" or, worse, "I Would Die 4 U" - to say nothing of the many other classic tracks on this album - is beyond painful. We're talking degrees of perfection. And it may be, in the end, that this album shouldn't be placed on a list like this. But it may also be the case that "Purple Rain", the song, is simply the best pop song in history. If that's the case, then shouldn't any album it's on be a part of this list? I'm putting that case out there. Call me crazy, but I think I may be right.

Wasn't that a fun game? I think I'll do this again sometime.

10/25/07

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Pitchfork Can Be Gross - 10/22/07


Pitchfork is great and all, but sometimes, when friends of mine are involved, I get to see just how gross and mypopic that whole scene can be. Actually, I got to see it before I read this little synopsis of Nico's excellent concert at the very fine Wordless Music series. Nico was joined for the evening by a number of heavy hitters, who are awesome and worthy of praise. But that doesn't make the following description in any way acceptable:

Despite sweltering conditions inside the Good-Shepherd Faith Church near the Lincoln Center, Toronto's Sandro Perri (aka Polmo Polpo), composer Nico Muhly, and Icelandic producer/artist Valgeir Sigurdsson played to the rapt attention of a standing-room only crowd. And it was worth the effort: the three artists were joined by special guests Sigur Rós, who played a short and intimate three-song acoustic set, and Will Oldham.

Is that why the show was worth the effort for everyone? Really? To be clear, here's what makes me angry. It's not that I am making the juvenile claim that everyone should love my kind of music as much as some other kind, or that "it's a shame that Nico and Valgeir aren't more famous" (though they are, um, doing just fine), or anything Big Like That. What gets me angry is that Pitchfork is only able to see that concert for the People Who They Know Are In Their Scene, and somehow miss the rest of the show. It's like that scene in the Dark Crystal where the elves (or whatever) are walking around with the big scary monsters, but the scary monsters have no brains, and haven't been instructed to get them, so they can walk freely by, because the scary things don't even see them. In other, less dorky words, "Nico's concert" becomes, instead, "a show where Sigur Rós and Will Oldham played". This is the kind of journalism that kills a scene, where the new becomes inadmissible and, in fact, invisible - as Nico and Valgeir seem to be, from Pitchfork's perspective - unless it is couched in the proper terms or packaged in the proper way. "Breaking News: Famous People Play" is not a productive way to review a music concert, when you are ostensibly a cutting edge music publication.

Big up, by the way, to the good folks in Sigur Rós, who obviously did not want to overshadow Nico and Valgeir, and played a tiny, intimate set (presumably, to support their friends), and also didn't come back for an encore despite the embarrassing behavior of the crowd, which kept clapping for them long after it could have been deemed appropriate. Oh, and big up to Will Oldham, who is very cool and, I'll add, seems like a really nice guy, from meeting him briefly.

10/22/07

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The N Word - 10/21/07




So it looks like Nas is going to call his next album Nigger, which means that I'm going to have to write that dirty word if I want to talk about it. I don't think that there's any question that it's the dirtiest word in our lexicon right now, one of the few things you can't say in public without people getting quiet or someone calling you out. The only thing that's close is "faggot" (and I got called a "faggot" on the street the other day, strangely), but I don't think the two are in the same league, because - at least in places like New York City - it's a lot more common for someone to be called F- than N-, and the consequences are a lot more minimal. Is that because the Black community has been more successful than the gay community at defining the parameters of acceptable behavior? I'm not sure. No one really uses Jewish epithets anymore, even anti-semites (they usually say "zionists"), but on the other side, we have a professional sports team called the Redskins.

Naming is incredibly powerful, and that makes me think that the controversy that this album is already causing is actually potentially important. How, I'm not sure, but read this interview with Nas and tell me you don't agree. It sounds like Nas is doing some powerful thinking and trying to use his fame and position to make a positive change, which earns him big respect in my book - respect he already had, of course, for dropping one of the all-time greatest albums in history. But this is respect of a different, fuller nature.

As for me, I've been wondering how I'm supposed to handle that big, nasty word. It's all well and good for people within the Black community to have debates and discussions about how certain language should be used - and there's no doubt that it's a question that's up to that community, and also up to individuals within that community to decide their own relationship with a piece of language that they rightly own. But what does someone who is studying and writing about hip hop do? I have no ownership over that word, obviously - or maybe not so obviously. I remember being disgusted by white boys who used to use the word in a playful manner; for a while in high school, when we were all running in interracial cliques, and the Black kids would drop the word in a way that included all of us, it seemed to me uncomfortable but ok. Then when the white kids used it, it was in a way where they were certainly "enacting the forbidden" - a term I like, these days - which can be powerful in a positive or negative way. Were they using it as a demeaning term, fulfilling their (even subconscious) racist fantasy? Or were they leaching negative power from it through its exposure to the light of day? I want to avoid the question because it's too loaded for me to use - except that I encounter it again and again when listening to hip hop. That goes without saying, of course, but what do I do when I'm citing a line in which the word is included? It never feels right. It's like I'm having a conversation with a naked person - there's a tacit understanding that we're not going to discuss their nakedness, the fact that things are on display. We're just going to walk right by the fact that I just said that word. Does that give it more power? Or is the ginger handling the right approach? I wish I had an answer that really felt satisfactory, but I don't. I'll probably write more about this as I get deeper into my dissertation.

For now, though, we'll wait for Nas to drop his own thesis on all of us.

10/21/07

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This is a Fantastic Post - 10/13/07


As some of you know, I'm writing my dissertation on hip hop, and specifically, on MCs' flow. It's rare to find high-quality writing about the musical aspects of hip hop, but this is an awesome example. I'm going to be writing about hip hop a lot more on this site in the coming months - and may even make a real blog elsewhere devoted just to the topic - so I thought I'd kick off that trend by letting people read the kind of thing that I hope to be doing. Once you read the kick drum piece, check out the rest of the "Beat Dissections". The man (J. Ben Leonard) knows his music, is a concise and witty writer, and seems to almost exactly share my musical tastes. I never thought I'd read a review of Dare Iz a Darkside, let's put it that way.

10/13/07

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Some Thoughts About Amsterdam - 10/11/07




So I was kidding when I said I'd be live-blogging my trip to Amsterdam. But I did take down some observations, which are likely to be on the obvious side for most people who have been there, or who have been to Europe a lot, or who are constant travelers. With that caveat, then:

Some thoughts about Amsterdam:

1) It's really quiet

Thursday morning, I was walking around the heart of Amsterdam, or somewhere near the heart, since I was admittedly kind of lost. But it was clearly a touristy area, with lots of boutiquey shops and gorgeous architecture. I walked for a long while, and the noise level never raised above the middle-of-the-night New York volume, even in Brooklyn. I attribute this to a few factors: fewer cars; less construction (I saw some but didn't hear any jackhammers or anything like that); no beep-beep backup noise for trucks; the relatively quiet tones in which most Hollanders seem to speak. But even with all that, I was still really shocked by the quiet.

2) The Musiekgebouw is awesome

This wasn't really a surprise, since everyone said so, but man, what a great space for music. Two incredible halls, great public space, rooms for installations and smaller shows, offices, outdoor space. And, as Michael noted, what makes it particularly special and different from most spaces in New York (and, with few exceptions, elsewhere) is that it is used as a social hub, independent of music. There's a nice restaurant with a really cool bar outside the main hall, and then another nice bar just outside the Bimhuis (the smaller venue, upstairs), where you can get drinks and bring them into the hall. Or not, and that's the point. Plenty of people were coming just to hang out in the beautiful atmosphere of the restaurant and bar. Part of this is that Amsterdam seems to have a paucity of stylish, attractive nightlife options. Case in point: the 11th-floor restaurant at the Stedelijk, in the giant municipal building where the contemporary art museum is making its temporary home during renovations, seems to be a hugely popular destination, despite having a rec-room atmosphere (being a municipal space) and really tacky decorations. All the tables had "reserved" signs on them, and the bar was packed. Still, whatever the reason, it's amazing that the Musiekgebouw has become not just a music venue, but a social centerpiece for Amsterdamers.

2[a]) Social space is different over there

It seems to me that public space, in Amsterdam, is treated differently than public space in America. My sense is that we in the States do not feel the same sense of ownership over our institutions as do Europeans. Do New Yorkers feel like we "own" Lincoln Center? Or is it "owned" by the wealthy patrons who keep it maintained, and the impregnable institutions that run it? It's hard to describe the sense of freedom that was present in the Musiekgebouw this weekend, as the Output Festival - the weekend-long electric guitar festival at which my piece was played - took over the space. I couldn't imagine taking over, say, Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully in the same way, where we would bounce around between events, have a drink in between, lounge around in the Lincoln Center courtyard. Wiek (the co-director) added impromptu pieces and events to the schedule up until the last moment, and this is exactly how the space was intended to be used! Even the Bang on a Can Summer Institute felt more controlled than this, as it was a self-conscious "takeover" of an art space. As free as it was (and I'm not at all speaking against it, or Mass MoCA, or anything else), it still felt like we were being "allowed" to do this, and that we were being watched by someone above us. That feeling was not present this weekend.

There's much to like about the system of private philanthropy that we've come to accept as the way things are done in America, and as European countries roll back (or threaten to roll back) their public funding for the arts, the system we have in place may come to seem more and more vital. But is it possible that deemphasizing the public funding of public art spaces may make the public feel less ownership over those spaces? If so, then we're losing a lot. We wind up reaffirming the caste system, where elites may choose to behave magnanimously, while the public cedes its right to claim ownership over its spaces, and thereby sidesteps the possibility of using them for provocative purposes that truly engage the body politic. If the mayor has to give permission for rallies and parades, and a wealthy oligarchy molds art institutions to serve their own needs, what is left? Where can we find the "street"?

One of the friends I made in Holland was a woman named Aziza, who is an artist and graphic designer, and the girlfriend of Mark Haanstra, the bass player from the Catch Quartet. She asked me, at about 4 in the morning, whether Americans had lost hope. I said that I didn't know how most Americans felt, but that we were taught not to hope, or to care. The media often takes the blame for this, as well it should, but the lack of truly functional public space is an enormous problem that is highly underrated in the litany of American social erosion. Union Square and Strawberry Fields need to be reclaimed, as do Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Holland helped me see just how important that is.

I'll add more observations over time but I wanted to actually publish some of these thoughts before I forget them.

Oh, but actually, I need to add: 3) Vermeer's The Little Street is one of my favorite paintings - this painting jumped out in person when I saw it at the Rijksmuseum, in a way that few others ever have in my life. It's such an unassuming work, but cripplingly beautiful because of its details: the brick, the street, the contrasts between colors and the play of light. I'm not enough of an art critic to say why it is so exceptional, but I feel that it is beautiful in a way that may transcend description. It's a bit like the A Major Prelude of Chopin, the 7th in his Op. 28 set, a work that I chose to analyze as part of my doctoral oral examinations at Princeton. I found some structural secrets buried within it, but they never seemed to come close to the heart of the matter - they were descriptive but only suggested unattainable layers that lay beneath. I don't think that even Chopin, or Vermeer, could identify the ineffable quality that elevated their best work to another level. The Little Street and the Chopin Prelude are useful examples because they highlight the potential of simple works to reach that level. In the end, finding that ineffable place has a lot to do with skill but nothing to do with perceivable difficulty. A few simple chords, or a humble street, can provide the best reflection of our highest human ideals. That, to me, is always worth remembering.

10/11/07

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Going to the Game - 10/08/07




I know I'm long overdue on my Old Amsterdam report, plus I have a bunch of things to say regarding a number of other issues.....but tonight, I am going to the game, thanks to my friend Ben. I woke up this morning, wondering if there was any way I could scam my way there, and it somehow happened, scam-free.

I told Ben, when he sent me an e-mail asking if I could by any chance join him for the game, that I felt like the astronauts in this commercial - which, by the way, is an ad that's stuck in my memory, and constantly comes up as a reference that no one gets. Thanks to YouTube, perhaps I can start saying "we can live with that" and actually have my friends understand what I mean.

More soon!

10/08/07

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PETA and the Wolf - 9/18/07


I've written before about how solidarity movements (and here I'm thinking of those few of which I've been a part, or closely observed) can have a directly counter-productive tendency to blind participants to the common causes that the subgroups share. My sense is that the source of this tension lies in the dependence on binary thinking in the movements' overarching strategy - "us vs. them" is the usual means of uniting a disparate "us" into a coherent force of opposition. Once you've made that kind of thinking the norm, it's nearly impossible to stop it from pervading your internal discussions and influencing the ways in which subgroups in the movement view one another.

There's a debate going on at Grist, the fantastic environmentalist website, about the place of vegetarianism in the environmental movement. The debate started with a PETA campaign that, in their usual, unsubtle style, attacked meat-eating environmentalists. What's astonishing about this debate, and most others like it on the internet (whatever the controversial topic), is that nearly every single person who posts agrees on the most important points that have been raised. The argument lies in the details, and in the method of packaging the relevant information to a hostile public.

It's probably worth having these kinds of arguments, but only if there's a recognition of the common causes that tie the participants together. In the absence of such a recognition, nothing is gained, except perhaps the occasional reader who refines his or her perspective or the tools with which he or she may engage in subsequent discussions. It all seems less efficient, however, than figuring out the big points on which everyone can agree - the horrible effects of large-scale animal harvesting - and then working towards a unified campaign that brings as many voices to the table as possible, in support of that position.

In this case, it seems to me that the main source of division is PETA's stupid tactic of attacking meat-eating environmentalists, instead of bringing those people into the fold in an assault on factory farming. But that's just one argument among many represented on the site. The problem, then, is that my middle-road position winds up becoming just another binary - you are either for a middle-road solution, or against it, and then those of us in the middle don't want to hear about it. Mounting a political campaign is akin to making pizza dough - whatever problem you solve creates a new problem somewhere else in the dough. I know that some people have solved that one, though, so I'm confident that the rest of us can find solutions on the other side of the metaphorical divide.

I would like to write more about vegetarianism and this particular argument, but that will have to wait (as usual).

9/18/07

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Everybody's Doing It - 9/13/07


A running joke in the musical community of which I am a part is the ubiquity of FirstNameLastName.com websites. Everybody has one, it seems. Most are of the normal variety, with just the two names, but some people have middle names or initials or other words attached and some are not coms but nets and orgs (and therefore tax-deductible?). Still, go to my links page ("how") and you'll find a big list of the standard variety. Like my own.

With all that in mind, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the newest inductee into that pantheon: my cousin. I guess this means he's going to be a composer!

Congratulations to Bari and Eric on having this big, beautiful baby!

I should also congratulate my cousins on the other side of the family, who have a slightly older and also adorable little girl. I haven't met her yet, but she is apparently as smiley and happy as they come. I can't wait to get out to Detroit to meet her soon. Here's a pic:



Anyway, I'm off to Vermont tomorrow for, among other things, the World's Fair, though this time without Nico, Dan, and Liz. Oh, well. Next week, the madness continues - until then, l' shanah tovah to the People of the Book out there, and happy almost-Fall to everyone else.

9/13/07

p.s. On a musical note, I have to mention that Yigdal has been running non-stop through my head since I heard it on Erev Rosh Hashanah. It's such an amazing tune - probably my favorite from the Hebrew liturgical tradition. Expect to see threads of it, and other Semitic tunes, running through the music I write this Fall.

p.p.s. I totally forgot to include the all-important initial-initial-lastname!

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Support NOW Ensemble! - 9/05/07

NOW Ensemble is trying to raise the absurd but necessary sum of $20,000 in order to meet our expenses for the coming year. If this sounds like a lot to you, consider that even if we took that money and simply divided it up among only the performing members of the ensemble, that would give each of them $4000, hardly a reasonable sum for the amount of work they put in. Now keep dividing up the pie - imagine if you wanted to give all the composers who wrote for us a small commission, well under market value. We'll probably have about 6-10 new works this year, so that's $6000 at least, conservatively. And where will the money come from to promote the CD, to have a tour, to promote and publicize the group and its events, to make sure that players don't have to turn down NOW Ensemble gigs in order to take better-paying (or simply paying) gigs, instead? The answer is that it will come from you - I hope! Please consider giving even a small donation to NOW Ensemble today. Many small donations lead to a big difference!

9/05/07

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Ugly Architecture - 9/04/07


Nico rightly calls attention to a preposterous NY Times review of the new Tschumi building in downtown Manhattan. I encourage people to read his critique, and also my follow-up comment. Any architects that are reading are also encouraged to herald us into a new age of creative spirit, preferably one with less ugly buildings.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of being 1-2 years behind on all things musical, I would like to recommend Matthew Welch's album, Dream Tigers. It's a beautiful series of pieces, all quite different, but sharing certain priorities, it seems to me on a first listen. It's very good stuff.

9/04/07

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Come Dance on Friday - 9/03/07



When does the new year begin? When I say "year" I of course mean the academic year, or the concert year, or (I suppose) the Jewish year, which begins around the 14th of September this year. My musical year kicks off on Friday, with a big show at the CSV Center in the Lower East Side. This show is going to be ridiculously fun, with Mohair Timewarp (Bill Brittelle) and One-Bit Music (Tristan Perich) joining Dancigers (Mark and me) in an event that's kind of a party, kind of a show, kind of a concert, with some art thrown in for good measure. Mark and I have seriously ramped up our act, so I will have to stay sober the whole night, in order to be able to perform the challenging music we've written for ourselves. It's challenging for us, but hopefully fun and, I don't know, "enriching" for everyone else. And now we get into the murky world of terminology, which quickly stands in for purpose and meaning in music. Is this music able to enter into a dialogue with the rest of what I'm doing? That's an open and interesting question. For now, I'm happy to be making music that moves me, in the sense of getting me to nod my head and want to dance. I hope that everyone who comes on Friday winds up feeling the same way.

Oh, if nothing else, you'll get to meet the new machine.

9/03/07

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