Non-Christmas Christmas music

Eric Wolfgang Korngold: Symphony in F-Sharp, Op. 40, "Much Ado About Nothing" Incidental Music; London Symphony Orchestra; Sir Andre Previn, conducting

I don’t know when I made the decision to see the movie, but I do know that Emma Thompson was my motivation to see “Much Ado About Nothing”. Her then husband Kenneth Branagh stood at the helm of nearly all aspects of this film: director, producer, actor, husband of beautiful actress, and script collaborator (with Mr. Shakespeare). It took me a while to figure out that it would be difficult to see this wonderful play by the bard on the big screen. Then it dawned on me: cruise ship. Oh, what a snag! I tried to console my frustration at not seeing Emma Thompson by reminding myself that New Zealand stood at our starboard bow. It helped a little.

Then, as we navigated the waters of Australia, the good news came. The movie theatre aboard the Royal Odyssey had scheduled a viewing of “Much Ado About Nothing” on the next cruise! Yes! Now I needed to get a copy of the play because I had never read it. I learned from Mrs. A in high school that a good book should ruin a bad movie and not the other way around. So when we docked by the city of Brisbane, I hustled to a bookstore to nab a cheap copy of the play. Book of William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”: two pounds. Can of coke on the table while reading on the back deck: one dollar. Drinking in the view of the northwest coast of Australia to the port side and admiring the Great Barrier Reef on the starboard side on a beautiful sunny day while consuming a masterpiece by one of the greatest writers who ever grasped a pen: thousands and thousands of dollars. Money which I never paid, so, yeah … priceless.

I finished reading the play while sitting in the theatre waiting for the movie to begin. And I thoroughly enjoyed both the book and Emma Thompson … I, I mean the movie. I never would have expected to see Ms. Thompson, Mr. Branagh, Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves on the same screen. But, whatever. It knocked me out.

My friend Eve has revealed to me on more than one occasion that she hears all classical music as Christmas music. If I recall correctly, it has something to do with her memory of how frequently her parents took out the classical LPs, which was as often as they took out the Christmas LPs. I would imagine that when one is younger it’s difficult to decipher the difference.

A similar phenomenon happened to me when I purchased the CD of this symphony by Eric Wolfgang Korngold. By the way, when you bear the name of Wolfgang, you have to decide whether to make your career as a chef or a composer. I bought the CD for the symphony. But I stayed for the selections from “Much Ado About Nothing”. I find it fascinating that of the five pieces in the set, in this recording, they left off the overture, which, after looking at the timings, definitely would have put the recording over the seventy-five minute limitation. You don’t see the producers of classical albums cut up a composition like that very often.

But, why Christmas? The music comes across as very light-hearted and bears the hallmarks of all the secrets, conniving, whisperings, plottings, hustle, shuffle and bustle of a gift-filled Christmas morning. Also, the melody of the Intermezzo, the fourth section (or in this recording, the third section), bears just a fleeting resemblance to “Oh, Holy Night”. It doesn’t sound very Shakespearean to me.

Credits: To the cast of Kenneth Branagh’s “Much Ado About Nothing”, for bringing romance, comedy, drama and suspense ala bard to the silver screen in a thoughtful, artful way. Hang in there, Keanu. Another “Bill and Ted” has to happen soon. Thank you, Emma. Big fan.

Truly old music

Ancient Noels; Maggie Sansone and Ensemble Galilei

In the early morning of Christmas Eve in 1984, what the media called a “killer blizzard” descended on the upper Midwest, canceling worship services and impounding people in their homes. The wind had gusted up to fifty miles per hour, the temperatures remained around thirty degrees below zero and, by the time the storm had blown itself out, we had two feet of snow to walk on.

A little drama unfolded on Christmas Eve morning involving three poorly dressed friends from my high school (I had graduated the previous spring.) and a borrowed truck that got stuck in a drift in the middle of the night about a quarter of a mile west of our farm. When the parents and the owner of the truck found the kids, our nice warm house emerged as the logical place to feed them, get them warm, and to wait until a vehicle could plow through the fast accumulating snow to take them home.

My Uncle M. and Aunt I. had invited us up to their house for Christmas Eve, but we called it off as the storm got progressively worse over the course of the afternoon. In our efforts to provide quality sustenance for our weary sojourners, we didn’t have an awful lot of festive food left for a cozy family gathering, but somehow Mom raided the freezer and threw together an excellent yuletide feast. And to pass the time, we relied on the TV station that gave us the best reception: Channel 8, PBS.

I haven’t watched Christmas Eve programming on PBS for a number of years, but at that time you could count on a musically lavish lineup. And on this evening they didn’t disappoint. We saw a special with Peter, Paul and Mary, Pavarotti at the cathedral in Montreal, a New England Christmas, and one other program that my sisters and I have talked about for years. We don’t recall the name of the program, but we definitely, positively, absolutely remember that it featured Sigismund the donkey. He, Mr. Sigismund, helped write a special Christmas carol, but the name of the carol escaped us. This special Christmas mystery has elicited discussion around the Christmas table for twenty-five years.

When I saw “The Donkey’s Carol” included on this excellent CD put out by Maryland musician Maggie Sansone, I was hoping that our donkey carol conundrum would receive its answer. Alas. Sigh.

Christmas often serves as a conduit of time, a lens through which we experience nostalgia. How often each Christmas do we recall memorable times with or about people who mean so much to us? We have special recipes handed down by our grandmothers, decorations that have adorned Christmas trees for generations, honored traditions that bring esteem to the memories of those we long to remember.

Most of us, though, don’t have the ability, much less the inclination, to genuinely relate to a person much older than three or four generations back. That’s where this CD comes in. Through this music from centuries ago on instruments championed by the Psalms, we connect with ancestors some twenty generations behind us - to celebrate an event that occurred some twenty generations before them: the coming of the King. In the guise of Maggie Sansone and the Ensemble Galilei, our ancestors from so long ago exalt the birth of Jesus from a not-inappropriate down-to-earth perspective, preferring quiet dignity to a loud herald but not without a hint of wonder. The birth and the death of Christ isolate probably the two single instances of cultural and spiritual recognition that all of humankind from the first century AD to November, 2009, hold in common. A unique family reunion like this brings timelessness to my Christmas celebration.

Credits: To John Rutter, for the story of Brother Heinrich’s Christmas. If a donkey’s voice is good enough to sing outside in the middle of God’s creation, why not in a choir stall? Thank you.

Singin' Santa Claus

White Christmas; The Drifters

In 2002, a young Italian cartoon artist named Joshua Held animated a little four-minute long gem that featured Santa Claus and his reindeer singing “White Christmas”. At some point it became an internet sensation with web surfers all over the world sending it to their friends and loved ones as a holiday “card”. I downloaded it onto my computer and shared it with my own family, watching it several times and seeing something new with each repetition.

I have searched the world wide interweb many times in search of a biography of Mr. Held but have found nada each time. However, one such search did yield a very creative piece that he animated called Teletransport. I like the way he thinks.

But the big question: Who sang “White Christmas” on this animation? A substantial amount of hunting online supplied me with the answer: The Drifters. This African-American doo-wop/R & B group has a long history with many members coming and going with varying degrees of artistic and financial success along the way. The group include such titles as “Save The Last Dance For Me”, “On Broadway” and “Under The Boardwalk” among their most famous singles. And in 1954, they recorded “White Christmas”.

Bill Pinkney sang the bass part (or Santa Claus) in this version of the Christmas classic. Clyde McPhatter sang the tenor part (or the solo reindeer). Mr. McPhatter had a short career, passing away in 1972 at the age of 39. Mr. Pinkney stuck around until July 4, 2007, where he passed away just before a Drifters performance in Daytona Beach at an annual Independence Day celebration called Red White and Boom. He would have turned 82 in August. Bill Pinkney had a respectable career as a solo artist and would have seen himself inducted into the Rock and Rock, Rockabilly, Vocal Group and Grammy Halls of Fame. The US Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor in 1993. Mr. McPhatter received many of the same honors, sang for Presidents and accepted honors from both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

I find it fascinating to note that two of our most beloved Christmas songs, “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin and “A Christmas Song” by Mel Torme, come to us from composers of the Jewish faith. Neither song references the religious facet to the holiday, but they do put the word “Christmas” in their respective titles.

Mr. Berlin didn’t like his songs played in any different style than the way that he composed them. He preferred that musicians play his creations with the notes that he printed on the page. This accounts for the absence of his songs in your typical fake book. He didn’t think of his songs in terms of a melody with chord changes underneath them. So, he never granted permission for inclusion of his songs in any song books but his own. And under these circumstances, he wouldn’t have approved of The Drifter’s version of “White Christmas”. But I do.

Credits: To Irving Berlin and Mel Torme, for honoring a holiday and holiday season that falls outside of their faith, but finding values within the sentiments we celebrate that everybody, even they themselves, can claim, admire and share.

Canadian Road Trip

The National Park Series; The Sounds of The Canadian Rockies; Randy Petersen, composer

In the summer of 1988, I traveled to Calgary, AB, to help my friend Chad H. move back to South Dakota after graduating from college. In retrospect, I didn’t help him move so much as I provided company in the car while on the road.

I had been pianist that summer for the Prairie Repertory Theatre at SDSU. We had staged a production of the melodrama called “The Drunkard”. At that time, each production opened in Donor Auditorium on the campus of SDSU, then moved forty miles down the road to a theatre at Prairie Village near Madison, SD. After the last performance of the summer, my parents took me to Sioux Falls so that I could catch a flight the next day to Calgary.

Chad met me at the airport and took me to his father’s home where we spent his last few days before hitting the road. On one of those days, his father insisted that Chad take me up to Banff National Park. I hadn’t done my homework in researching what the locals boasted for attractions. So I didn’t know what to expect. I put forth a query to Chad, What kind of park will we see? He responded with a grin and said, “Bring your camera.”

At no time in the entire planning of this trip did anybody say the following two words: Canadian Rockies. I wish that I could tell you specifics of all of the things that we saw and did, but it all went by in a beautiful blur. But I can tell you that I saw Lake Louise and the Fairmont Chateau Hotel. And we drove for a while on the Icefields Parkway. Somehow I talked Chad into suspending his fear of heights for a trip on the Banff Gondola.

Calgary had hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics and Chad drove me around town to see the different venues. We then packed the cars and trailer that afternoon so that we could start the long path toward South Dakota early the next morning, driving through Alberta, Saskatchewan and North Dakota.

For years the memory of this trip remained static, frozen on a computer screen, encapsulated in recollection cement. When I told my mom how much I enjoyed that Sounds of Yellowstone CD, she noted where it came from and looked them up on line to see if they had made similar CD’s from other National Parks. And on the following Christmas morning, my stocking contained The Sounds Of The Canadian Rockies.

The premise of this album carbon copies that of the Yellowstone CD. More of the same but with different songs and different rain. Interestingly enough, though, just the notion that this music and these sounds were audio depictions of this very place I had visited ten years or so before allowed me to mentally and emotionally revisit this splendid scenery, the memories of which had for so long subsisted in stagnancy. My mental filmstrip finally had a soundtrack to make it come alive.

Credits: To Chad H., my traveling buddy, who has only one or two more states to go on his forty-eight state trek. Hurry up and get your card punched so that we can get you to Alaska and Hawaii.

Bar room pianist

Live At Maybeck Recital Hall, Volume Two; Dave McKenna, jazz pianist

When I worked on the Crown Odyssey in 1991, there was a solo pianist who worked in the lounge close to the casino where she alternated sets with a harpist. It made for a nice atmosphere. The pianist’s name was P. McKenna. Being American on a ship with Greek crew and with virtually no women her age on the staff (she was in her early 40’s), she would spend her spare time hanging out with members of the band. When I first met her, she made a quick casual reference to some mystery person named Dave McKenna and moved on to something else. Then a few weeks later she mentioned his name again, claiming that she met him one time in a bar where he was playing piano. In her story, she sauntered over to the piano and said that she was a pianist, too, that her name also was McKenna and that maybe they were related. She said that he looked up at her, smiled, winked and said, “Yeah. Cousins.” And kept right on playing. I smiled at her and asked her if that really happened. She said, “Yes.”

About a month later she mentioned his name again and I had to stop her and say - I’m sorry, but I don’t know who Dave McKenna is. She laughed at me and asked, “How can you claim to be any sort of jazz pianist and not have ever heard or heard of Dave McKenna?” Three days later, we were in – you guessed it – Nice, France, at my favorite CD haunt. If Dave McKenna was the uber-pianist she claimed him to be, well, then, he should be represented well in the jazz section. He was.

Live At Maybeck Recital Hall, Vol. 2, features Dave McKenna. This series of forty-two live recordings was taped in front of an audience at the Maybeck Studio for Performing Arts in Berkeley, CA, with each recital featuring a different jazz pianist. Volume ten has Marian McPartland manhandling – uh, - womanhandling the piano. The entire collection was recorded between 1989 and 1995. The Maybeck hall has been purchased since then, and though concerts continue to occur, they are now by invitation only.

Mr. McKenna, known all over the world, was mostly a fixture of the Northeast part of the US. He was born in Rhode Island and played mostly in hotel bars in the Greater Boston area, capping his career with a decade long run at the bar in the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. A loyal Boston Red Sox fan, it was common for him to wear an ear plug from a transistor radio while he performed so that he could listen to the games.

Dave McKenna probably served me more as an unwitting mentor than any other recording artist. My abilities and tastes at the piano come closest to matching his. And I won’t deny that certain musical tricks or traits of his piano persona have invaded my own style of playing. Mr. McKenna would usually choose to downplay his status as a jazz pianist, preferring, instead, the more down-to-earth designation of bar room pianist – or, more accurately, JUST a bar room pianist. Yet, he receives accolades from his jazz colleagues the world over for his contribution to the development of jazz piano as a solo artist. Art Tatum, arguably the greatest soloist in jazz piano history, praised Mr. McKenna as a complete musician.

Dave McKenna passed away last year on October 18 at the age of seventy-eight. On Thanksgiving Day, a few weeks later, after church, I was driving to my cousin’s home near Philadelphia for the holiday. I turned my Sirius XM radio station to NPR to find that Terry Gross from Fresh Air was dedicating her show on that day to the life of Dave McKenna. She interviewed his sister, played several tracks from his numerous CD’s, and inserted clips from a previous show where she had interviewed Mr. McKenna. The show helped me to imagine a real person and I was able to relate to him in a way other than through his music.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I’m thankful that God made us the expressive people that we are, that our joys and sorrows can be shared in ways that engender closer fellowship with each other, that our kinships and friendships are not based on any single dimension but on the myriad of bits and pieces of self that chronicle and detail the life of a Child of God. I am thankful for music. And I am thankful for you. Thank you for reading my blog.

Credits: To P McKenna and people like her, who introduce me to other people, artists, musicians who expressive themselves in unique ways, so that my biography might not become stale, but teem with the life that the Lord intended. Thank you.

Late night singer on my radio

Live in Chicago; Kurt Elling

Late one evening on my drive home from a White House job, I was listening to NPR’s Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland. I hope that, if you do not know about the show, you take the opportunity to explore it. Ms. McPartland has been on the air with this show for 30 years. And she herself turned 91 years of age this year. She is an excellent jazz pianist and a phenomenal interviewer. Her show is one hour long and features one artist, usually a pianist. And she has interviewed the greatest. She spends much of the hour having the guest perform. Even if the guest is a pianist, they typically perform together at some point.

On this evening I heard a young male vocal jazz artist; a rarity these days, for some reason. Right before the break she said his name. Kurt Elling lives in Chicago. Ms. McPartland also lives in Chicago so a pairing was inevitable. He and his band regularly play at the Green Mill in Chicago on Wednesday evenings when they are not on tour. The first comment I heard Ms. McPartland make about him concerned his proclivity for reciting poetry to open up sets at the Green Mill. For the rest of the ride home, I alternated between indulgence in the tasteful phrasing of this expressive maestro and panic that I wouldn’t remember his name when I got home.

Kurt Elling graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, and, interestingly enough, enrolled in The University of Chicago Divinity School, studying there for three years before leaving just one credit short of graduating. He has recorded nine albums and currently is Vice Chair of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the service organization that produces the annual Grammy Awards.

Live in Chicago exudes excitement. Live albums usually do. The youthfulness and freshness of his voice, though, almost make the hipness tangible. You can hear immediately that the audience is on his side, and by association, so am I. I want everything to go right for this guy. Before a note gets played, he says, “Okay, here we go, we’re gonna make a record.” And we’re off to the races with the drums clearing the brush. The second track is my favorite: “My Foolish Heart.” My first hearing of this tune came with the Tony Bennett/Bill Evans album referred to just a few days ago. Mr. Elling and his band dress it up, though, into a swingier, swankier groove, going down avenues that the composer never could have imagined. The audience sits spellbound, even captivated, while the ensemble detours onto a side road of carefully constructed ambiguity, leading the listeners through a foggy maze of long pedal tones from the bass and rhythmic piano hammer tappings onto a dampened string while a type of back story is spun by Mr. Elling, emerging on the other side of the mystical haze onto the main road to a roar of triumphant applause from a relieved audience.

Three nights of recording at the Green Mill has produced a powerful album. All of the cast members on Kurt Elling’s stage are masters of their craft. But I find profound joy in the stylings of Mr. Elling’s pianist Laurence Hobgood. It sounds to me like Mr. Hobgood has invented chords that I would swear music theorists never knew existed. The textures of his accompaniments weave deeply into the musical embroidery of Mr. Elling's ensemble.

I heard Kurt Elling in 2002 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. It was about 6 months or so after September 11, 2001. He performed “Not While I’m Around”, a song from Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. His audience wrapped themselves up in the blanket of security laid before them:

Demons are prowling everywhere, nowadays, I’ll send them howling, I don’t care, I’ve got ways…

No one’s gonna hurt you, no one’s gonna dare, Others can desert you, not to worry, whistle, I’ll be there!

Although we knew the artist singing the words, we didn’t know from whence they came. But considering the close proximity of the damaged Pentagon, these were words we were only too happy to hear.

Credits: To Marian McPartland, for making her joy of music infectious, for bringing guests to a well-deserved audio spotlight, and for refusing to rest on hard earned laurels just because she’s 91. You are a beautiful lady. Thank you.

Music on a world tour

Joaquin Rodrigo; Concierto de Aranjuez; New York Philharmonic; Jose Serebrier, conducting; Sharon Isbin, guitarist

During my high school years, Mr. D, our band director, had our jazz band play a variety of styles. I remember playing classics like “In The Mood”, “Satin Doll”, “Little Brown Jug” and “Blues In Hoss Flat”. At the other end of the spectrum, he also had us play a jazz band version of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”. As I recall the arrangement was pretty good. And we also played a jazz band chart of Chick Corea’s “Spain”. I liked it a lot. Mostly, I think, because of the intro. It sounded exotic and I liked exotic.

The next time I heard “Spain” was on The Tonight Show some time in the 80’s. Maureen McGovern was singing as a guest with the Tonight Show band that evening. I had heard of Ms. McGovern before. She was the artist that recorded “Wherever Love Takes Me” from the British disaster film Gold, “The Morning After” from The Poseidon Adventure and “We May Never Love Like This Again” from The Towering Inferno. The media referred to her as “the Disaster Theme Queen”.

The chart that she and the band performed on The Tonight Show was awesome. It was on that performance that I learned of the vocal range of Ms. McGovern. It’s huge. And she mopped the stage with the song. Mr. Carson invited her over to the couch afterward where she revealed that the traditional intro to the song, the exotic one that I had heard in jazz band a few years earlier, comes from the middle movement of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra.

Concierto de Aranjuez was composed in 1939 and was inspired by the gardens at the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, a spring resort and residence of the King of Spain in the town of Aranjuez near Madrid. The gardens were built to relieve the royal residents from dust and drought using the waters of the adjacent Tagus and Jarama rivers. Mr. Rodrigo’s Concierto endeavors to take the listener through sounds of nature in and around the gardens during the period in which it was written, capturing the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds, and the gushing of fountains. The adagio, the aforementioned middle movement, is one of the most recognizable portions of music in the 20^th century classical repertoire. Mr. Rodrigo and his wife revealed late in life that the expression of sadness that permeates the movement was written as a response to the miscarriage of their first child.

Mr. Rodrigo’s guitar concerto is the composer’s most successful work. He contracted diphtheria at the age of three and almost completely lost his sight because of it. Subsequently, he wrote all of his compositions in Braille, which were later transcribed for publication. And though by virtue of the guitar concerto he elevated the Spanish guitar to international concert status, he never mastered the instrument himself, preferring to play the violin and the piano. Mr. Rodrigo died in 1999 at the age of ninety-seven.

It’s fun to think of music as a message in a bottle, or as a balloon with a note attached. “Write to this address and tell where you found me.” Just this morning, my friend Brent C. was telling of a group of street musicians that he heard playing in Salsburg, Austria, and then saw two years later on TV promoting their tour of the US. I heard Mr. Rodrigo’s Concierto in a band room more than forty years after it was written as the intro to a ferocious jazz tune. An artistic thought that escapes the borders of the mind and into the music atmosphere can belong to the ages. And there’s no knowing when or how it’s going to come back.

Credits: To Mr. D., for enduring all the hardships and frustrations of teaching music in the public school systems, yet reaching the learning masses by sharing his musical soul. Thank you.

At work at the White House

The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album

People who know me have learned to ask me about my Christmas travel plans. I usually plan something crazy. During my time in the US Marine Band, my standard departure for South Dakota from Washington, DC, came immediately after my last holiday job at the White House. The bus would leave from the White House to return to the Marine Barracks, I’d change out of my uniform and into my jeans, hiking boots and Snoopy hockey jersey, shift the Durango into gear and hit the road for the next eighteen hours to celebrate the arrival of Christ and Santa with my family.

Have you ever known someone who lights up the room as soon as they walk through the door? Someone whose towering presence refuses to be secluded within the confines of flesh and clothing? Someone who can stop the conversation in a crowded room simply by floating down the staircase and smiling? I’ve often wondered if God parcels out this talent, or if a person who desperately craves attention develops this skill.

On the evening of December 20, 2000, I played solo piano for a few hours in the beautifully decorated State Dining Room. After about a half hour of holiday music on the old upright Steinway on this snowy, festive evening, some twenty people had sauntered into the State Dining Room from the Red Room to linger around the immense gingerbread house that was featured at the center table … when into the subdued atmosphere stepped Chevy Chase. I can only compare the occurrence of this dazzling entrance to the flipping of a switch. I would swear that the room was dark just a second or so ago. At first, he talked to everybody at once, as if we had been invited to his dining room. Then he flashed an almost blinding smile and moved from group to group, eventually finding his way to the piano.

“Do you know the music of Bill Evans?” Well, I most certainly do, Mr. Chase. “He and I played together as kids.” Really? Wow! And do you play the piano, too? “My mother had a career as a concert pianist. I don’t play like she did, but I’ve got some game.” Would you like to play? “Well, perhaps just a little something. I don’t get to play very often.” He sat down and proceeded to play one of Bill Evans’ best known tunes called “Waltz For Debby”.

The Bill Evans trio, featuring Bill Evans on piano, Scott LaFaro on bass, and Paul Motian on drums, released an album entitled Waltz for Debby in 1961 and featured this beautiful song. The words and music paint a musical portrait of his niece. I first heard this little gem of a tune, however, when I purchased The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album, released in 1975.

I don’t think I have heard either of these legends sound better than when they collaborated on this project, except for maybe on their second album called Together Again from 1977. The best qualities of each of these masters rise to the top, mingle, and coalesce into a truly exclusive voice/instrument integration, a rare blend, so distinct as to isolate their art from all other pianist and singer pairings. Often, two musicians will meet each other on their respective plains and enjoy the view together, but Mr. Bennett and Mr. Evans climbed from their lofty mutual vantage point to parts unknown, to terra incognita, so as to glimpse wondrous vistas, panoramas of which only a precious few have ever glimpsed.

I’ve never heard of Bill Evans, I told Mr. McK. one day as we discussed jazz pianists in college. “Most musicians would brand Bill Evans as a pianist’s pianist," he replied, "like the chef who taught Julia Child and the conductor who mentored Leonard Bernstein.” Typically, and sadly, only jazz aficionados know about Bill Evans. Tony Bennett, naturally, reaches a more mainstream audience. But, what a match!

When Mr. Chase finished the song, he bounded off the bench, bowed to applause for just a second, then deflected attention away from himself by requesting “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. I played three or four choruses of the Christmas classic while he very graciously listened to the whole performance. “That was marvelous, Marine. Thank you for playing that for me.” You're quite welcome, sir. Thank you for listening. And Merry Christmas. "Merry Christmas to you as well." He directed his holiday well-wishing and his singular air of good cheer to a few other islands of guests. Then, after admiring the giant gingerbread house, he smiled once more at his newest fans and moved on to another room, dowsing the light as he left.

Credits: To Mr. Bill Evans, for hearing, developing and sharing a unique piano voice. Thank you. To Mr. Tony Bennett, for a lifetime of warmth and beauty in song. I found your heart, by the way. You left it in Stan Fran’s disco. Sorry.

Psalm 46

Speechless; Steven Curtis Chapman

A few days after September 11, 2001, the House of Representatives and the Senate convened in the Capitol Rotunda to hold a memorial service. One who was asked to speak was then Senate Chaplain Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie.

We all remember our own personal reactions to the events of that horrendous day and the days that followed. I recall that I lacked peace of mind and expected more apocalyptic incidences to invade the news. My optimism has always had arms long enough to reach and grab a hold of reality when necessary. But my optimism fell into a coma on that day and I couldn't get it to wake up .

The chaplain has a commanding voice. It at once convinces, assures, soothes, eases, heartens, revives and, believe it or not, even smiles. If God had held Dr. Ogilvie in reserve for one moment in all of history, this is where I would guess that he would have placed him: on television screens across a nation paralyzed with grief, armed with Psalm 46.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof…

He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.

Be still and know that I am God…

That’s when I woke up. To stillness. To peace of mind. To a realization that I had allowed doubt, trouble and mistrust to preside over my soul’s penchant for the Lord’s tranquility and serenity.

…I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Dr. Ogilvie left the speaking platform smiling but without comment, confident that the Psalmist required no assistance - short of a voice.

Steven Curtis Chapman recorded “Speechless” in 1999, two years before I needed it. I was glad I had it. The title song is number two in the lineup. And the album concludes with “Be Still And Know”. “With Hope” was written for a family who lost a child, and the song was later sung in honor of the victims of the Heath High School shooting on December 1, 1997. Heath High School is Mr. Chapman’s alma mater. Many consider this album Mr. Chapman’s greatest work and is recognized by many as one of the finest Christian albums of all time.

It almost seems that, with these songs, comfort was Mr. Chapman's overall intent here. And yet, there are lighter songs, too, like reminders that the morning of September 11, 2001, was beautiful with lots of sunshine. And that God didn't bring about the day so that monsters could wreak havoc with his children.

Sons and daughters were born on September 11, 2001. On a day where buildings turned to cinders and airplanes fell from the sky, the God who breathed all of creation into existence saw the normal, run-of-the-mill, miraculous advancing of his kingdom. For such a God, when He tells me to be still, I can be still.

Credits: To Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie, Peter Marshall and a full slate of House and Senate Chaplains, who tend to the overwhelming spiritual needs of Congressmen and Senators in a country that desperately resists, yet desperately needs, Christian spiritual help.

The Snoopy Dance

Vince Guaraldi Trio; Linus and Lucy

A few days after my high school graduation in 1984, my cousin W. married T. and they are two of my favorite people. W. had asked me to play at their wedding. So my sister D., Grandma E. and I got to drive to Minneapolis a few days before the festivities. What I remember most about their wedding is the rehearsal dinner. T. gave his mother a wrapped gift knowing that she would start to cry, because, apparently, that’s what she did whenever anybody gave her a gift. When she removed the wrapping, there was a box of Kleenex.

Their children, K. and M., are also two of my favorite people. When I saw M. a few months after she was born, she would open her mouth so wide whenever she would yawn. She looked like an opera singer. So we dubbed her Bella Prima Donna of the Metropolitan Opera. The singing part never took. But she’s a pretty good saxophone player. I remember her practicing her part for Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride”. She had the only part in “Sleigh Ride” that didn’t sound anything like “Sleigh Ride”.

I remember when she was three or four years old. My sister K. and I took the kids to the park. When we got back she went running up to my dad, who was napping, and she loudly declared, “We went to da powk!” Dad, struggling to recall where he was, shifted into automatic parent pilot and reflexively repeated what he heard, “You went to da powk?” And M., indignant, vexed and piqued beyond a level that any respectable three or four year old could be expected to bear, gave Dad “the look” and articulated, “No, not to da powk. I said, ‘We went to da POWK!’”

K. is my comrade in everything that is “The Simpsons”. As much as I love that animated program, I will concede that K. has probably gone one inch further over the edge than I have with an ability to recite long passages of comedic Simpsons gold. He and I can and have entertained ourselves for hours recalling hilarious moments from our favorite show.

Whenever I sat at the piano in their house, K. was right there paying very close attention. Through the years, he has become a talented piano player and an excellent guitar player. Currently he is a trumpet student at the University of Minnesota School of Music enjoying studies in both jazz and classical music. M. attends Luther College in Decorah, IA. These two kids are near and dear to my heart and I am very proud of both of them.

I don’t know when there has been more joy in the house than when K. and M., when they were kids, would do the “Snoopy” dance if they could get me to play “Linus and Lucy”. And it was routine for that to happen several times over the course of a visit.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was first aired in 1965, the year that I was born. Charles Schulz’s Peanuts and the music of Vince Guaraldi have played major roles along the way. In 2001, a United States Marine Band combo was sent over to the Capitol to play for a ceremony. Congress was bestowing the Congressional Gold Medal, posthumously, to Charles Schulz. I wasn’t initially asked to play with this combo. But something came up for the original pianist, so I was put on the job.

We played Vince Guaraldi’s music from all of the Peanuts specials all afternoon for a packed Capitol Rotunda, ending our set with “Christmas Time Is Here” and “Linus and Lucy” before they began the ceremony. The proceedings were taped and a few seconds of the ceremony and our music was included in a tribute to Charles Schulz when ABC aired “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that December. The Internet Movie Database has included me on their website because my fellow combo players and I were mentioned in the credits. In typical Charlie Brown fashion, my name is misspelled.

I didn’t tell anybody about it being on TV because I didn’t think we would be featured enough to warrant a fuss. But there we were. Can you believe that K. and M. were watching the show? They saw me right away. And immediately started doing the “Snoopy” dance.

Credits: To Leroy Anderson, for often putting more charm and creative thought into three or four minute musical gems than some composers put into major symphonies. Thank you for "Sleigh Ride" and "Belle Of The Ball". I'm a sucker for a catchy tune.

Rural Art

The World So Wide; Dawn Upshaw, soprano

One of the biggest fans of CBS Sunday Morning lives in a little town in SD. My mother has taped the show for years because it airs during church. After Mom walks across the street to her home following the worship service, she prepares her lunch and sits down to watch the program. If I had the time to tape and watch TV programs, then I, too, would champion the show like she does. When I visit home, I generally do watch some of the CBS tapes that occupy a little stash in her entertainment center.

In 1993, CBS Sunday Morning came to Southwestern Minnesota to tape a segment of their program. They had heard about a University of Minnesota School of Music production of “The Tender Land”, an opera by Aaron Copland. The story takes place on a Midwest farm owned by Grandpa Moss in the 1930’s and centers around Laurie who graduates from high school soon. Copland wrote “The Tender Land” between 1952 and 1954 with the idea that NBC would broadcast a staging of this now rarely performed work. NBC didn’t air one and Copland wrote it off as a flop.

CBS Sunday Morning caught wind of this presentation, not because of its occasional stagings, but because the University of Minnesota had scheduled performances of this opera in seven rural Minnesota communities – on seven farms. On seven fully functioning farms, each of which held a farmhouse with a prominent front porch from which the cast could present the story. They asked that each community provide a chorus, a junior high age girl to fill the role of Beth, Laurie’s sister, and accommodations for twenty-eight people (opera singers, orchestra musicians, techs, directors,etc.). The flyers for the show instructed the audience to bring chairs or blankets to sit on and a picnic if they so choose.

The CBS segment aired many months afterward. Mom saved this one for me, knowing that I would thoroughly enjoy this story. And it HAS stuck with me for many years.

The score contains an aria sung by Laurie called – what else? – “Laurie’s Song”. I have heard it on recitals over the years and I have kept an eye out for a recording of it where I wouldn't have to purchase the whole opera.

Dawn Upshaw, in 1998, released an album of American operatic arias. It includes “Willow” from The Ballad of Baby Doe by Douglas Moore, “What A Movie” from Trouble In Tahiti by L. Bernstein, and “Ain’t It A Pretty Night” from Susannah by Carlisle Floyd along with “Laurie’s Song” from The Tender Land. Ms. Upshaw sings on the world’s finest stages and several of her CD’s have found a home on my iPod. She battled breast cancer in 2006, but since then she has received an excellent prognosis and has returned to performing.

I have tried over the years to ascertain which facet of these Tender Land farm performances intrigues me most. Although the Midwest farm slant makes it a little more personal, I think I like that a type of art and artistry is brought to a place where one wouldn’t expect to find it – and that it feels like it belongs there.

Credits: To CBS Sunday Morning, for not only providing a smart, cultural, weekly offering of the news and the arts and the way that they influence each other, but also for providing us with sometimes simple, sometimes spectacular moments of nature at the end of the broadcast, as if to say: You may think that we’ve focused for almost ninety minutes on important, deep-seated issues – but hold on, ‘cause you haven’t seen nothin’ yet.

The First Lady of Song

Gold; Ella Fitzgerald

I have put this day off for far too long. Miss Ella Fitzgerald’s face has been staring at me for weeks from the view screen of my iPod.

I am not qualified to talk about Ella Fitzgerald. On the greatest day I wouldn’t have the strength. Today I find it hard to even try.

This paragraph right here represents my third attempt to graciously, intelligently and perspicaciously exalt her place in all of music without sounding dopey and dull-witted. I’ve failed yet again.

In 1994, one of the musicians in the band that I led on the Star Odyssey bought a box of old video tapes for a dollar at a pawn shop while we were in Vancouver, BC. There were some great movies in the box that brought hours of entertainment. But the reason he bought the box was a VHS tape called “Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music III” that featured Mr. Sinatra, of course, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Ella Fitzgerald.

You don’t see Mr. Sinatra stand aside very often. That goes against his persona. But he voluntarily does so on this video. Twice; once to listen to her scat on “Stompin’ At The Savoy”, and once to “eavesdrop” as she renders “Don’t Be That Way”. Remarkable, considering that the production has Sinatra’s name splashed across the title. I like to think that he reveled in this opportunity to back out of the spotlight, as if to say, “Yes, I can carry my own with my particular way to turn a phrase. But this woman – this lady of song – my friend Ella Fitzgerald is the real thing. Please don’t talk. Let’s listen.”

I think that I can count on three hands the number of times where true energy has penetrated the camera lens and fallen out of my TV or computer screen. When I heard Mr. Sinatra and Ms. Fitzgerald sing “The Lady Is A Tramp”, I was lifted as high out of my chair today when I found the performance on YouTube as I was in front of the TV in my stateroom aboard the Star Odyssey fifteen years ago. And they recorded twenty-seven years before that. I’ve been jazzed all afternoon after listening to it once. Precious few musical moments are truly timeless. This is certainly one for the ages.

Gold, with its forty tracks, represents and embodies a great American life. I wish that I could honor her by acquiring the entire discography of her career, that I could track the making of an authentic musical icon, song by song, gem by gem, that maybe, just maybe, I could pinpoint that precise place where effort disappeared, to leave only pure music, pure energy, pure Gold. This compilation along with a few other albums will suffice in the mean time.

God gives us many reasons to live on this earth. Oreo cookies, the Grand Canyon and Ella Fitzgerald are three of the best.

Credits: To Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, for writing the excellent “The Lady Is A Tramp”, and for envisioning that a song can rise out of its place in a musical, to stand on its own, and to twinkle in the reflection of another artist.

Monsieurs Debussy and Ravel

Ravel - Debussy String Quartets; Quatuor Ysaye

I can’t remember when I first heard Terry Gross from NPR’s Fresh Air. But I do remember “boycotting” the show by keeping it off of my car speakers. I had heard a couple of interviews that I enjoyed. But the third interview that I listened to her conduct was with Monica Lewinsky. I didn’t like the questions, I didn’t like the answers, I didn’t like Ms. Lewinsky or Ms. Gross. All I picked up was a bad vibe.

Politics don’t flash brightly on my conversation topic radar. However, allow me to say that, though I lean strongly to the conservative side, I celebrate with all of my fellow United States citizens the freedom to be as different from one another as we like. And just as I appreciate their attempts to decipher and respect why I cling tightly to my Christian worldview, then so must I venture boldly and frequently into camps where the global climate has a warmer or colder temperature than I like in order to extend the warmest handshake and decrypt those matters that determine the path of those that accommodate a broader spectrum of lifeways. At least, that’s what I should do.

NPR tends to lean a little left of center. And so does Fresh Air. But NPR's love of the arts brings me to their front step frequently. The specifics of that particular Fresh Air interview never stuck with me. Apparently I was put out sufficiently that I decided that I didn’t need to hear this kind of interview anymore.

About two years later, my friends G. and D. were discussing a recent interview on Fresh Air and I proceeded to spout off about my last visit to her time slot on NPR. G. briefed me on an article that she had read about Terry Gross where a question had been posed to her about her worst interview. Are you surprised to hear that it was with Ms. Lewinsky? Me neither. I had failed to grant Ms. Gross the benefit of the doubt and to afford her not so much a second chance, but another chance. After hearing this new information, and learning a little lesson, I can gladly report to you that Fresh Air now visits my Trailblazer Bose speakers with much more frequency.

It’s a phenomenon in the world of art that those attributes that graciously accord sustainability to the music of any one composer confound the experts. They encounter an inexact science. We listen to the music of J.S. Bach three centuries after he scored it. And yet, while he lived, his colleagues considered him old fashioned. His music sat mostly idle until Felix Mendelssohn repremiered (can you repremiere something?) the St. Matthew Passion nearly one hundred years after Mr. Bach revised it. The world probably won’t know the true greatness of today’s composers, or lack thereof, for decades.

With so many aspects of music in common anyway, the circumstances of the premiers of both Claude Debussy’s and Maurice Ravel’s string quartets attract fascination. Contemporaries and critics alike panned both these chamber works. Mr. Debussy’s audience didn’t like his String Quartet in G Minor because it didn’t sound German. Mr. Ravel’s own composition teacher, Gabriel Faure, found fault with the last movement of his String Quartet in F. No one should wonder, then, that Mr. Debussy cabled Mr. Ravel this message: “In the name of the Gods of music and in my own, do not touch a single note you have written in your Quartet.”

Both giants only wrote one string quartet. Who can blame them? And yet both composers and string quartets have emerged above those who criticized. A more open-minded musical public, who could sequester the jury for a little while longer so that the evidence of musical genius could accept closer scrutiny, eventually embraced and championed what appears to be, so far, the world’s finest Impressionistic composers.

Credits: To NPR, for bringing the performing arts to anyone with a radio.

The Disney year

Dotsero; Jubilee

After spending nearly a year and a half on cruise ships, I spent 1992 in Orlando, FL, trying to get established on land as a free-lance artist. I also auditioned for the music “powers what be” at Walt Disney World and got hired as a musician with “casual” status. That means that they felt that I was capable of playing the theme park shows whenever one of their keyboard players was sick or went on vacation. As far as I was concerned, the best part of the deal was my WDW ID card that got me into the theme parks whenever I wanted. Second best, though, was getting away from the ships for a while.

Let me tell you about two interesting aspects of cruise ship life. My formative years in the Midwest galvanized me into a direction-oriented person. I can typically tell you which direction is which in half of a second thanks to a grid like road system that lattices the middle of the country from western Ohio to eastern Colorado. When I boarded each cruise ship for the first time, it was with the concept that I was entering a building, noting the direction that the ship was pointed, orienting myself inside and out from that perspective. Subsequently, when disembarking in virtually every port, I was thoroughly directionally adrift.

Second, cruise ship life doesn’t operate on a calendar; from a practical standpoint, time is governed in the large scale by the itinerary of the ship. As land-locked people, we live our weeks in such a way that we don’t need to look at a calendar to know which day of the week we’re in. We use our calendars to tell us what activities and events we have planned for any given day. But when someone works on a cruise ship that has twelve to fifteen day itineraries, the only feature that honestly distinguishes one day from any other is the port that is visited. The days of the week have no meaning.

My friend Stephen K. once identified for me the slippery slope from the “no calendar” state of affairs to the “realization” of the meaningless of time to the delusion that one is living each and every day without responsibility in some sort of paradise. A person who exchanges reality for an exotic, counterfeit pretense of Shangri-La quite often will have a difficult time returning to Kansas.

When I arrived in Orlando, I immediately joined a church if for no other reason (although there were lots of reasons) than to distinguish at least one day of the week from the others. I made many friends at St. John Lutheran Church. I joined both the early and late service choirs because of the amazing people in each one.

October of that year, however, brought the realization that WDW was mostly about keyboards and not pianos. I decided to load up my stuff, point the Buick toward South Dakota and return to the callous glam of the cruise ships.

But not before having one last day at WDW. My friend Jill N. had a friend who played in a band that was appearing at a bar at Pleasure Island during the first week of December. So we made a day out of it, hitting all of my favorite attractions at all of the parks, grabbing some pizza at a very hip pub and catching the last two sets of Dotsero.

Dotsero is a real band of brothers. David and Stephen Watts (bass guitar and saxophone, respectively) have led a contemporary smooth jazz combo for eighteen years. They take their name from a small mountain town in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Their songs are original, but their sound bears a resemblance to the Rippingtons and Spyro Gyra with maybe a nod toward Solar Wind. I certainly enjoyed their show. David came over and spent his break visiting with Jill and me. I bought one of their CDs and asked them to sign it.

I worked for another two and a half years on cruise ships starting in January 2, 1993. But my time in Orlando grounded me for a while. With the exception of making marvelous new friends, this was the most valuable thing I acquired in 1992.

Credits: To the choirs of St. John Lutheran Church in Orlando, FL, for their commitments to musical excellence in worship. And for your invaluable friendship. Thank you.

Lots of pianos

Mozart Concertos K.242, K. 365 and K.466; Andreas Schiff, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Georg Solti, pianists; The English Chamber Orchestra; Sir Georg Solti, conducting

In the autumns of 1980 and 1981, the Brookings chapter of the National Guild of Piano Teachers held a multiple piano concert. They rented the Peterson Recital Hall at SDSU and rented five pianos to share the stage with the resident Mason and Hamlin concert grand. Nearly one hundred piano students participated, at one point having thirty fingers gunning for action at each piano. They would start with the students who had been studying piano for only a few years and work their way up to the more advanced students.

I remember being included on a piece that had one person at each piano. And then another piece had four pianists at two pianos, but since we had six pianos, we had three pianists playing each part. Since there were only two young – men? – can I say men? – we were only 15 and 16 years old – okay, I’m going to say young men, my friend Del L. and I were always put at the same piano. As the grand finale at each concert, the teachers gathered at the pianos. One of those years they played the “Jamaican Rhumba” by Arthur Benjamin.

Much has been made recently of the 5 Browns. I think that the hype is well-deserved. They are two brothers and three sisters who all come from the same family in Utah and who all studied simultaneously with Yoheved Kaplinsky at the Juilliard School. They range in age from twenty-three to thirty. When seeing each one of them at their own grand piano, building a unique, tightly tethered sense of unity from a lifetime of natural sibling interrelation, one can only wonder how the group comes to musical cohesion considering that each must have their own valid conviction on musical tenets. These same matters come to bear on the performances featured on today’s CD.

Pianists rarely have the opportunity to play together. I remember that, when I first heard the term “piano quintet”, I just assumed that there would be five pianos. Sorry, classical music public, that’s not how it works. A piano trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet or nonet is virtually always with only one piano.

We should all thank the God in heaven for the sense of fun that took up residence in the amusement park of music that is the brain of Mr. Mozart. It’s a relief that at least one composer finds the temperament of your average classical pianist to be sufficiently down-to-earth so as to share a concert stage with, not only one other, but two other pianists. As with anything penned by Mr. Mozart, the writing and phrasing on these concertos is at once brilliant and graceful. Mr. Schiff, Mr. Barenboim and Mr. Solti are most assuredly having a marvelous time thrashing about in a sea of clever, artful and, yes, even athletic Mozartian pianism.

Credits: To beginning piano teachers the world over, for their dedication to the joy of music in the hands of a youngster. Thank you.