Two lovely women

Candle in the Wind; Bernie Taub, lyrics; Elton John, composer, piano and vocal

I have won a few piano competitions and a couple of talent contests in my time. But when it comes to submitting my name in a drawing, I have only won once. I went to a community Halloween party and came closest to guessing how many M & M’s they had put in a big jar. I was off by only two M & M’s. My prize was every ten-year-old boy’s dream: a ruby-red, fake cut-glass, two-piece candle holder. My friends went home with cap-guns, toy dump trucks, giant candy bars, walkie-talkies and stuffed Snoopy’s. I got a rock … I mean a candle holder. A candle holder. Who would bring a candle holder as a prize to a Halloween party? I think Mom has the candle holder, now. And I think about the whole incident approximately every thirty-four years.

I have nothing to add to the stories of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Dianna of Wales but to say that they were made to live lives of glitter and glamour. I would bet a king’s ransom that both of these profoundly beautiful women would argue that “that’s not living … that’s just posing.” How many of us would be able to withstand the enormous pressures and scrutiny imposed upon the beautiful and famous by an “adoring” public who not only expect, but demand, elegance, attraction and charm every minute of the day?

Lyricist Bernie Traub does magic with the metaphors of a candle as a life lived and the sputtering flame as the tortured soul inside. His sensitivity to the greatness beyond the beauty gives credence to the notion that both of these wonderful women had much more to share with the world than the single dimensional features of which nobody seemed to get enough.

I don’t have any Elton John albums. I’m sorry that I don’t because I really like his music and his piano playing. Maybe I’ll win one in a drawing. Yeah, right.

Credits: To Mars, Incorporated, for making M&M’s. Hey, why did you stop making the Crispy M&M’s? They were awesome!!!

I love it, I love it not, I love it .....

The Koln Concert; Keith Jarrett, piano

When I was with Sam Butera at the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland in 2003, I had the opportunity to hear just a sliver of a few other acts. I stood off in the wings while the Buena Vista Social Club became electric on the stage. And I melted into a sea of Finns to hear the hardest working man in show business, Mr. James Brown.

For the two hours before Mr. Brown took over the festival, the great jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter and his quartet, featuring bassist John Patitucci (Isn’t that a great name?), threw down a peaceful landscape in the meadows of my soul. Which is strange, because I never really cared for Wayne Shorter’s jazz artistry. For years, I tried to make myself like him. I know he’s good, for people say that he is. But the message he carried in his saxophone notes always bypassed my house.

Until that day in Finland, where I swear he could have walked off the stage and onto the water that surrounds the city of Pori. I thought, It worked! It worked! I like Wayne Shorter! Yayy! When I got back to the States, I borrowed a buddy’s best – best, I was assured – best Wayne Shorter album, prepared to receive all the musical goods I had been denied for so many years. Well, ~sigh~ I heard that there was a message, but the conveyor belt wasn’t working.

Who can make account for fleeting tastes? Are we like Ebeneezer Scrooge, in that our momentary claim on the greatness of something new comes as the result of “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato”? I suppose, more likely, it’s the superficial things, like our moods, or those transient, passing pitfalls and perils of life that throw up a “protective wall” around all that we hold dear and beautiful, that impose criteria for our personal aesthetics.

Keith Jarrett’s “The Koln Concert”, for me, personifies this unique paradigm in individualized taste. My friend, D.C., told me that, as a pianist and an improvisor, I should have this CD in my collection. So, I bought it a few days later. And when I listened to it, I thought, What kind of flotsam is this? And I put it away and didn’t listen to it for three or four months. The second time I listened to it, I thought, My God … I have never heard anything so beautiful in my life. Eight months later, I felt I deserved a treat so I reached for “Koln”, prepared to be taken to the valley of profundity and the peaks of insight. Nothing happened. The valley was empty and the peaks were enshrouded in fog.

Like it. Hate it. Like it. Hate it. I haven’t listened to the CD for years, scared that I might fall to the wrong side, the Hate side, of that razor’s edge that hovers above the sweeping perspective of great art. We all like to love. And we want to love everything. But that's not our nature.

Someday, I shall be brave and face the music of Keith Jarrett. In the meantime, I have his recording in port, ship-shape, ready to go, on my iPod.

Credits: To Charles Dickens, for being great and common - at the same time. “A Christmas Carol” may be overdone, but it packs a wallop every time. Bravo.

Children's Stories

"Kreutzer" and "Spring" Sonatas for Violin and Piano; Itzhak Perlman, violin; Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano

When I got back to the barracks after playing for the recipients of the Medal of Arts and Humanities Award on that snowy evening in late December, I quickly changed out of my “special full” Marine Band uniform and into some jeans, hiking boots, a turtle-neck and my black and red Snoopy hockey jersey to begin my traditional over-night cross-country drive to South Dakota for Christmas.

As I drove out of town, I called Mom to let her know that I was on the road and to tell her about all the excitement I saw at the White House. The next morning as I drove into Indiana, Mom called me and asked, “Did you see Ms. Driving Hawk?” Mom, I know all those words and that sentence makes no sense. “Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve (SNEE-vee) receives one of the Medal of Humanities Awards today. I just saw it in the newspaper. She would have been at the reception you played at last night. She’s from – and still lives in – South Dakota and is married to one of Dad’s high school class mates.”

Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve’s name reflects her Lakota Sioux heritage. Born and raised on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, Ms. Sneve attended South Dakota State University, receiving Bachelor of Science and Master of Education degrees. She has served as an educator in the public schools, an editor at a small publishing house and a member of the board of directors of several organizations that reveal her passion for those things that identify her, and us, as thinking, feeling and communicating human beings.

Ms. Driving Hawk Sneve received her Medal of Humanities, however, for her commitment to a place of peace and understanding where cultures meet and mingle. Through the mediums of writing and storytelling, she has endeavored to preserve the stories of countless generations of Native Americans by bringing her tales to the eyes and ears of children in a bold effort to go beyond tolerance, where love, appreciation and celebration of ethnic, intellectual and artistic differences don’t divide, but bind. As he presented her with her Medal, President Clinton remarked that, “Her stories have helped us to better define the American experience, to understand the Native Americans who were here before us … We thank her for sharing her timeless wisdom.”

The State Dining Room was full of talent on that evening that I played for the Medalists. In addition to Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve and Quincy Jones, singer Eddy Arnold, poet and author Maya Angelou, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, author Toni Morrison, jazz saxophonist Benny Carter, theatre director Harold Prince, playwright Horton Foote, singer, actress and film director Barbra Streisand and several others strolled about the room.

The only one who didn’t stroll sat in his chair one foot behind and one foot to the right of my piano bench. After Quincy Jones tapped on the piano, I looked to my right and violinist Itzhak Perlman smiled.

Credits: To Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, for bringing the world to a “special place”. I’m sorry I didn’t know who you were that evening. That would have been one of those great South Dakota get-together experiences where complete strangers chance upon each other and talk about old times.

Hip, dude

L.A. Is My Lady; Quincy Jones and his orchestra; Frank Sinatra, vocals

The first time I heard Quincy Jones was when I stopped in to see Greg and Sam across the hallway in Brown Hall at SDSU. Sam: “Erik, you’ve got to hear this CD.” Greg: “We don’t think that you can find any dude hipper in this world to announce the ‘arrival' of a dude than this dude on a track called ‘The Dude’ on Quincy Jones’ album called … wait for it … ‘The Dude’.” They were right. We sat in their dorm room and tapped into a level of hipness and funk that our Midwestern bland, straight and narrowness could barely contain. You guys, I said, I don’t think I can ever be that cool. “We don’t think that we can either.”

The first time I saw Quincy Jones was in the State Dining Room at the White House in December of 2000. Mr. Jones, along with several other artists, would receive the National Medal of Arts the next day, but this evening, the President hosted a reception for the recipients. I had played the piano for a host of other guests who had come to enjoy the Christmas decorations in our nation’s “first house” and was told to remain for a little while longer. It turned out that they needed someone to entertain the Medal winners in the State Dining Room “holding room”. I tried not to be star-struck and to concentrate on what I was doing. But just as the guests left the room, Quincy Jones tapped on the piano and said, “Dude, that was cool.” Well, who am I to argue?

My first real exposure to Frank Sinatra was on one of his last albums called “L.A. Is My Lady”, produced by Quincy Jones and featuring an all-star band. On the closing verses of “Mack the Knife”, the Chairman of the Board sings:

Ah, old Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin

They did this song nice, and Lady Ella, too

They all sang it, sang it with such feeling

That Old Blue Eyes, he can't add nothing new

__________

But with Quincy’s big band, right behind me

Swinging hard, Jack, I know I can’t lose

When I tell you about Mack the knife, babe

It’s an offer you can never refuse

__________

We got George Benson, we got Newman and Foster,

We got the Brecker brothers, and Hampton bringing up the rear

All these bad cats, and more, are in this band now

They make the greatest sounds you ever gonna hear

This album has more sentimental value to me than musical. I really enjoyed it at the time that I initially heard it in my college days. But as I’ve gathered more of his albums over the years, I’ve found that his work on “L.A.” barely hangs onto that old refinery and polish that he had fostered over the course of forty or more years.

But, I groove on Quincy’s arrangements. They’re cool, dude.

Credits: To Kurt Weill, for “The Three Penny Opera”. I don’t know if you ever thought “Mackie Messer” would sound so cool, but it does, dude.

Brass against Brass against Brass

The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli; The Philadelphia Brass Ensemble; The Cleveland Brass Ensemble; The Chicago Brass Ensemble; E. Power Biggs, organ

In my third year of Symphonic Band at SDSU, Mr. McK. decided to open our winter concert with a piece called “Flight” by composer Claude T. Smith. Mr. Smith composed this march-like work for the United States Air Force Band, who premiered the composition on November 1, 1984, in the Milestones of Flight Gallery at the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. At the request of the director of the museum, Mr. Smith included snippets of the Pachelbel Canon in D Major as the Canon plays as background music at Air and Space. The composer also makes a passing glance at the opening measures of the Air Force Song.

In the middle of the piece, the score calls for antiphonal trumpets. Typically, antiphonal brass ensembles divide themselves into groups of two and place themselves at opposite sides of the room, one answering the other across the expanse. But in this case, the composer just wanted a set of three trumpets to sit separate from the band, and Mr. McK. put me in the antiphonal trumpet section. It’s the only antiphonal playing I’ve ever done.

They say that the “Big Five” American orchestras are the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Thankfully, musical ensembles don’t instigate the rivalry that sports franchises do. As a matter of fact it’s refreshing to see the brass ensembles of three major orchestras come together to create a magnum opus for the ages. The master musicians came together in 1959 and 1968 to record this fanfare-ish and often triumphant music.

Credits: To James Smithson, the original “funding father” of the Smithsonian Institute, granting the United States 104,960 gold sovereigns in order to create an “Establishment for the increase and diffusion of Knowledge among men”. Congratulations, Mr. Smithson. The United States Government did something right with your money.

Recipes

We Are In Love; Harry Connick, Jr.

I bought Betty Crocker’s Best of Baking shortly after arriving in Annapolis in 1999. I don’t remember the circumstances under which I bought it. But I zeroed in on two cookie recipes: Giant Toffee Cookies and Triple Chocolate Chunk Triple Dipped Chocolate Chip Cookies. I made a couple batches of each before going home for Christmas that year. They were a hit and they’ve been expected every Christmas since.

My work at Christmas has become so sporadic in the past few years and I don’t know until a month or so before Christmas how much time I’ll have to be with my family for the holidays. So, I’ve taken to making Christmas cookies in August while I’m at my Mom’s place in South Dakota. It’s nice to have a little Christmas cheer during the dog days of summer.

In August of 2008, I drove all the way to South Dakota before I realized that I had left my Betty Crocker book back in Annapolis. What would you do? Here’s what we did: On the pretense of visiting Great Aunt Vi in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which we did and had a very nice visit, we stopped at the Barnes and Noble, found the Betty Crocker’s Best of Baking book, took pictures of the pages with the recipes and skedaddled.

My favorite song from Harry Connick, Jr.’s, 1990 “We Are In Love” CD is “Recipe For Love”. How’s this for cute?

A little bit of me and a whole lot of you

Add a dash of starlight and a dozen roses, too

Then let it rise for a hundred years or two

And that’s the recipe for making love

__________

It doesn’t need sugar ‘cause it’s already sweet

It doesn’t need an oven ‘cause it’s got a lot of heat

Just add a dash of kisses to make it all complete

And that’s the recipe for making love

__________

And if you’ve made it right you’ll know it

It’s not like anything you’ve made before

And if you’ve made it wrong you’ll know it

‘Cause it won’t keep you coming back for more

__________

I didn’t get it from my grandma’s book upon the shelf

I didn’t get it from a magical and culinary elf

No, a little birdie that you can’t make it by yourself

And that’s the recipe for making love

Over the past few days, Mom and I have been fabricating a Pho-ish low-carb chicken noodle soup, using brined chicken breasts, onion, ginger root, cloves, peppercorns, sage and other assorted “chemicals”. The freedom of cooking without a net is comparable to the liberation from printed music on the stand above the piano keyboard. Anyone who sets out to create a dish without a culinary blueprint is, effectively, a jazz musician at heart.

The first time that D. ate one of my Giant Toffee Cookies, she re-dubbed them Roast Beef Cookies, from the standpoint that they were so big that you felt like you consumed an entire roast beef dinner.

Credits: To Great Aunt Vi. Ninety-six years old and still makes minced meat pie. MMMMmmmmmmmmm. Minced meat pie……………

Christmas scenes

A Festival of Carols in Brass; Philadelphia Brass Ensemble

The first time I ever encountered the word “unique” was at the opening of the Brookings Mall some time in the mid-1970’s. The Cinema Unique offered another film option to what the State Theater and the College Theater had to offer downtown. I thought that you pronounced it “you-nee-cue”. I was roundly ridiculed by the family on that one and I NEVER pronounced it wrong again.

In addition to the Cinema Unique, the Brookings Mall offered White Mart, Cover to Cover, Shriver’s, The Optical Shop, Hy-Vee Food Store, Perkin’s, U.S. Army recruiters, U.S. Navy recruiters and a host of specialty shops. When the mall first opened, I looked forward to going inside to see all of these stores in one place. It was practical. We didn’t have to watch for traffic inside. And I liked running up the wheelchair ramps.

As Christmas approached, I couldn’t wait to see the decorations at the mall and to test drive the brand new Christmas shopping venue. The first time we went Christmas shopping that year, the plan was announced that we would go to the mall first (Yayyyyy!!) and finish up downtown (Okay, whatever). The decorations at the mall couldn’t have thrilled me more, and D. and I had fun racing around from store to store without having to go outside.

After the mall, Dad parked the car downtown and said, “Everybody check your watches and let’s meet back here in one hour. Then let’s go have a hamburger.” Well, I spent the first fifteen minutes grousing because we weren’t at the mall. But the more time I spent downtown, the more I liked it with the outdoor lights and decorations, the snowfall, better places to hide when you don’t want to be seen by a family member when you’re buying their gift … and a much more accurate winter, Christmas scene.

Christmas imagery is so powerful; those mental snapshots that portray the quintessential Yuletide setting: the tree with a thousand lights, the sled going a hundred miles down the hill, the holiday dinner table laden with cranberries, mashed potatoes, the Christmas goose and chestnut dressing, the outside of a church with its stained glass windows all aglow, a horse-drawn sleigh, a snowman with a red scarf, a toy train, a Raggedy-Ann doll, a wreath on the door, stockings on the fireplace mantel … and Christmas cookies, Christmas pies, Christmas cakes, eggnog, hot chocolate and candy canes …..

How about this one: a group of carolers in Dickensian English attire on the street corner – or the Salvation Army brass choir stationed outside the department store? Yeah, this is the one that revs my Christmas scene engine. No, I never saw them on Main Street in Brookings, South Dakota, on our Christmas shopping night so long ago. But I can put them there and it’s just as good.

Before there was a Canadian Brass and before Mannheim Steamroller broke all records with their Christmas albums, the hottest LP on the Christmas market came by way of the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble and its repertoire of twenty-five Christmas carols. Outselling virtually all of the regular orchestral recordings made by the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Eugene Ormandy in the 1960’s, the members of the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble invested their efforts, here, in an expert blend of sound and orchestration, rather than in laborious and superficial pageantry. When they play each carol, they seem to want you to sing along, playing one verse after another with no interlude in between, indicating the conclusion by slowing down at the end.

Just the way Christmas carols are supposed to be sung. How unique!

Credits: To Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives, for truly commanding winter-time and Christmas imagery.

Only five months before Christmas!

Sibling Rivalry (or lack thereof)

Sisters; Irving Berlin

Earlier this summer, I played a wedding reception where the bride had asked, a few weeks before, if she and her sister could sing a song together. Certainly. What song would you like to sing? “Sisters.” I don’t think I know that one. “You haven’t seen ‘White Christmas’ with Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney?” You know, I’m going to have to see this movie sooner or later. This is the second song that I’ve heard from this movie and didn’t know that it came from this movie.

Sisters, sisters

There were never such devoted sisters,

Never had to have a chaperone, no sir,

I’m there to keep my eye on her

Caring, sharing

Every little thing that we are wearing

When a certain gentleman arrived from Rome

She wore the dress, and I stayed home

All kinds of weather, we stick together

The same in the rain and sun

Two different faces, but in tight places

We think and we act as one

Those who’ve seen us

Know that not a thing could come between us

Many men have tried to split us up, but no one can

Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister

And Lord help the mister, who comes between me and my man

Here are what a few famous people have said about sisters:

If you don’t understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child. ~ Linda Sunshine

Sisters never quite forgive each other for what happened when they were five. ~ Pam Brown

A ministering angel shall my sister be. ~ William Shakespeare

A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double. ~ Toni Morrison

Big sisters are the crabgrass in the lawn of life. ~ Linus

I am a better man today for having both an older and a younger sister. ~ Erik Apland

Credits: To K. and D., for being excellent sisters. I love you both for who you are to me, and for who you are to each other. You’re awesome.

More tango

Tango: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack; Lalo Schifrin, composer

A friend of mine from my steamboatin’ days lives in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was the drummer in our Dixieland band. I drove to his home to visit him one day while I lived in San Antonio. After getting caught up and getting a little tour of his home, he wanted to share with me a recent DVD acquisition from Amazon.

“Tango”, a film by Spanish director Carlos Saura, tells the story of a theatre director in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who puts together a musical about the Tango. The movie received a nomination for the 1998 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The composer of the soundtrack is named Lalo Schifrin. He actually appears in the movie along with his performing musicians.

A Paris Conservatory-trained pianist, composer and conductor, Mr. Schifrin is mostly known for his television and movie scores. His most recognizable and enduring theme is the opening title to “Mission Impossible”. He also composed the music for “Mannix” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”. His film scores include “Cool Hand Luke”, “Dirty Harry”, “Enter the Dragon” and “Kelly’s Heroes”.

I had never had exposure to the Tango culture of Brazil and Argentina before visiting my friend. What I found in this movie was alluring and intoxicating; certainly the dancing, but the music, even more. It speaks of a different time, cultivation of life, definition of mores and a different perspective of love.

This is a favorite rest area on my iPod highway.

Credits: To Lalo Schifrin, for the theme to “Mission Impossible”, one of the greatest 5/4 songs ever. It’s right up there with “Take Five” and the second movement to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6.

La Fiesta Dixielanda!

Fiesta!; Dallas Wind Symphony; Howard Dunn, conducting

When the SDSU Symphonic Band took a tour to Mexico in 1985, we did so with the objective to play for the common folk, the everyday people on the street. Instead of playing in a great concert hall, we performed a Sunday noon outdoor concert in the band gazebo at Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park. When we arrived, the immediate vicinity surrounding our concert venue was already populated with hundreds of people, some anxious to hear a concert, others, perhaps, just curious to see what would happen.

Our first encounter with the Mexicans started off with a bit of a disconnect. Only a few of the band members knew the Spanish language. And even bigger than that was the cultural barrier. I won’t deny the existence of even a bit of a music barrier, although, we weren’t concerned with that one very much. I recall sensing that, during our few selections, they were sizing us up and we were looking for some common ground on which to meet.

“Olympic Fanfare and Theme” from the 1984 Olympic Games by John Williams opened our concert, an opportunity for us to offer the hand of international friendship. Then we played a few pieces that I’m sure the audience enjoyed from a standpoint of simply beautiful music.

The piece that caught us, and our audience, off guard was our “throw away” piece. The “Original Dixieland Concerto” was a medley of three or four American Dixieland tunes that featured a Dixieland quintet up in front of the band – clarinet, trumpet, tenor saxophone, trombone and tuba. The audience went nuts over this piece and it threw us for a loop. Why this piece over the others?

The best explanation came from our conductor, Dr. W. He guessed that the audience was better able to relate to a smaller ensemble, possibly subconsciously associating it with the general size of a Mariachi band. I like that explanation. I like that they could see our music through their’s; or that they could see their music through our’s.

Certainly, we thought to ourselves, they’re gonna go mental over our “La Fiesta Mexicana” piece. But, you know what? It didn’t happen. They liked it, for sure. The applause was plentiful and sincere. But the response didn’t compare to what we got from our Dixieland piece. I suppose that what we played was too much like them. Maybe we held up a musical mirror to them and they didn’t know how to respond to it. Or perhaps they didn’t recognize themselves in the music we played.

Or, it could be that it was just too hot.

Credits: To the 1985 SDSU Symphonic Band, for letting me go to Mexico with them. Cervezas, yard beers, stuffed armadillos and foam clucking chickens. What more do you need?

A great musical

The Original London Cast Recording of Les Miserables; Claude-Michel Schoenberg, composer

I had picked up and put down my copy of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” so many times, it broke. Instead of using a bookmark, I had continually lain the book down, like we all do, with the inside pages face down … on whatever surface was available. Eventually, the binding disintegrated, leaving me with two halves of a book. I finished reading the first half in the normal way one would read a book. But, with the second half, I had to rip the top page out of the broken binding, read the page, turn it over, read that page, then throw it into a garbage can.

I met a lot of people when I read the second half of “Les Miserables” during one of the cruises on the Golden Oddysey in 1990. Virtually nobody was shy in approaching me to tell me that they had “never seen anybody read a book that way.” The band, on that cruise, received an outstanding number of excellent comments on the comment cards because of “that nice piano player who was reading a book and throwing it away – one page at a time.”

The young girl who played the part of Cosette in the original Broadway cast of “Les Miserables” sang “Castle on a Cloud” on The Tonight Show in 1988 and I was entranced; both by the young girl and the song. I went to the Brookings Public Library the next day to borrow the cast recording. After making a tape of the album, I proceeded to destroy the tape by listening to it over and over and over, again and again and again and again. I LOVED this music.

And I love this story. A character who can rise to live a life of honor, integrity and all that is good amidst a base of wretchedness, angst, strife and despair brings hope beyond measure. Of course, there are numerous characters and instances that lend moralistic fiber to the tale, but I stand in awe of the virtuous Jean Valjean, one of the greatest heroes in all of literature.

I have seen this show three times and performed it as an orchestra member five times. I can’t get enough of it.

Credits: To Victor Hugo, for “Les Miserables” and “Notre Dame de Paris”, two giant books. I have never been so sad to finish books as when I finished these. It was like saying "Good-Bye" to a good friend.

Terminology

From Fresh Water; Stan Rogers

I started work on the Delta Queen in January of 1997. Quarters were a little cramped compared to my cruise ship lodgings. But I had my own room with a bed, a shelf and a sink. I lived, literally, thirty seconds away from my post at the piano; out the door, up the stairs, through the pantry, into the dining room and onto the piano bench.

During my precious time off, you could usually find me in one of three places: my room with my ghetto blaster, CD’s and a book, on the bow, or pointy end, of the boat with my discman, CD’s and a book, or at the stern, or blunt end, of the boat with my discman, CD’s and a book. While hanging out where the deck crew, first mate and second mate congregate, I got to know some of the procedures and terminology used over the course of everyday paddleboat navigation.

Sometimes the captain didn’t want the boat to come into town until a specific time. If he projected an ETA that was too early, he would pull over to the side of the river, the shore, as it were, and tie up to a tree for a few hours. They call that maneuver “chokin’ a stump”.

In the spring, when the river is typically swollen, it may surprise you to know that the river flows faster in the middle than it does near the shore. A river vessel going upstream can make better time navigating the shallower waters. The shores of the southern portions of the Mississippi River are cloaked with willow trees, who like to measure the depths of the water highway with their stringy limbs. Subsequently, when the boats hug the shore closer than usual, they call that maneuver “running the willies”.

On his CD “From Fresh Water”, Stan Rogers sings a tune that references a phenomenon called a “white squall”, a sudden and violent windstorm event that has received the blame for numerous deaths and capsizings in the history of seamanship. They are rare at sea, but common on the Great Lakes. In Rogers’ song of the same name, the ship loses a young member of the crew to a white squall. During the chorus, the narrator sings:

But I told that kid a hundred times, “Don’t take the Lakes for granted.

They go from calm to a hundred knots so fast they seem enchanted.”

But tonight some red-eyed Wharton girl lies staring at the wall,

And her lover’s gone into a white squall.

Folk song singer Stan Rogers had intentions to record one album with songs about the Atlantic Ocean, one album with songs about fresh water lakes and one album with songs about the Pacific Ocean. Of course, this is the second album. Certain aspects of the production of this album date it. There are times when the music played on this album personifies the production values of the early 1980’s. But I enjoy this CD for the craftsmanship of the music, words and sentiments.

Today, I drove over the Illinois River south of Peoria, Illinois, and over the Mississippi River straddling the Quad Cities of Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline, Illinois. Yesterday I crossed the Ohio River at Wheeling, West Virginia. I played the calliope on the Delta Queen in all of these places. Those were great days.

Credits: To the deck crew of the Delta Queen, who kept me in the know of how to handle a paddlewheeler. Thanks for the lessons.

Laws and proverbs

Hammersmith / Moorside Suite/ Suite No. 1 in E-Flat / Suite No. 2 in F; Gustav Holst, composer; Dallas Wind Symphony; Howard Dunn, conducting

Profundity runs rampant on the ol’ prai-RIE. Never squat with your spurs on. Always drink up-stream from the herd. Never slap the face of a man who chews tobacco. Always speak your mind, but make sure you have a fast horse. Never thrust your sickle in another man’s cornfield.

Preferring the legal podium to the proverb pulpit, Dad chose to render his wisdom in the form of law.

Apland’s Law #1: Whatever is legal isn’t necessarily right, and whatever is right isn’t necessarily legal.

I know. It’s not profound. But it was to him when he thought of it. Which leads us to…

Apland’s Law #2: Everything is profound to everybody … once.

I made my contribution to the Apland book of law with …

Apland’s Law #3: Before you complain about gravel in your coffee, make sure that you have gravel in your coffee.

Dad had other, far-less earth-shattering observations than these that have, nonetheless, stayed, as it were, up in my head. Such as, “Even if we don’t get very much rain in June, things stay pretty green out in the field – up until about the fourth of July. Then things get brown. Fast.”

This comes to mind as I drive across Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Whoever is in charge of rain-dancing must have cut the rug and tripped the light fantastic. On this third week of July, the crops have yet to change their summer color scheme. The small grain, by now, has typically soaked in enough dry heat to tan their slender stalk and make it tilt to the side with a healthy head of grain. But, the fields are green.

So green, in fact, that it makes me think of the meadows, forests and fields that I saw while riding the train in England and Scotland. The comparison, however, stops at the color. You look at the organized, bread-basket-of-the-nation efficiency in the center of our country and you can’t help but think how we’ve only been farming most of this land for roughly one hundred and fifty years.

The rural areas of Great Britain have yielded sufficient produce to sustain its population for way more than a thousand years. Field and pasture borders today were probably set one hundred or more generations ago and field configurations have stayed true to the contours of their environs. It’s not difficult, even today, to envision a simple, rustic, Old Country scene.

Anyway, I listened to the Suites of Gustav Holst today as I made my way toward South Dakota. The Sioux Valley High School band performed Holst’s “Second Suite in F Major” when she played flute in the band. Mr. Holst managed to squeeze seven English folks songs into four relatively short movements in this composition for military band. It’s all good, but that last movement, when our British composer masterfully superimposes the great and wondrous “Greensleeves” over what must be the merriest Irish jig ever, I am altogether swept off my feet. Or out of my seat. Whichever one is appropriate.

Let me say that the English can write a folk song. And the Americans can write a cowboy proverb.

Shirts that cost more than a week’s worth of groceries are like horseshoes that cost more than a horse.

Credits: To Waddie Mitchell, one of the great cowboy poets. I like your take on reincarnation.

Road Trip!

Music for Two; Bela Fleck, banjo; Edgar Meyer, double bass

I’m on the move!!! There’s only enough time to tell you that I’ve got great road trip music piping through my Bose speakers, my own personal internal GPS has fired the atlas and I have the AC set to “ear muffs”.

Just glance at that album cover to the right. Who can look at that scene and not feel that jerk of wanderlust? That hankering for something irregular to ordinariness? That craving for anything extraordinary to regularness?

C’mon! Let’s go! “Where?” To find a cactus. Or an igloo. Or a windmill. Or a giant wagon. Or an underground lake. Or a tulip festival. Or a lodge of beavers.

I’m on the move!!!

Credits: To Orange City, Iowa, home of the Tulip Festival. Does your high school marching band still wear wooden shoes when they march through the parade?

Favorite art song

Beau Soir; Claude Debussy, composer

I played for a number of vocal recitals during my time at South Dakota State University. I liked vocal recitals. After spending hours in practice rooms with instrumentalists on works that had the potential to tax the concentration level of even the most devout classical music fan, I found it refreshing to focus on a series of four- to five-minute art songs, recitatives and arias.

Vocal teacher Kristi V. liked Claude Debussy’s “Beau Soir” and had most of her students learn it. And I’m glad, because now I like that song, too. Paul Bourget wrote the original French poem. In English …

When the rivulets are rosy in the setting sun,

And a mild tremor runs over the wheat fields,

An exhortation to be happy seems to emanate from things

And rises towards the troubled heart.

A yearning to enjoy the charm of being alive

While one is young and the evening is beautiful,

For we are going on, as this stream goes on:

The stream to the sea, we to the grave.

M. Debussy was only twenty years old when he wrote the beautiful music that compliments this romantic poem.

I downloaded it so that I could share it with my first cousin-once-removed K.

Credits: To Kristi V., for bringing opera to upper Midwestern bunch. They didn’t know that they needed it until they heard it.

Foreign languages

Chant II; The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos

Throughout my CD-listening career, I have been able to clamber over the “foreign language” barrier. I can listen to a German song by Mahler, an Italian aria by Puccini or a French song by Debussy and thoroughly enjoy the music without needing to decipher, word for word, the meaning of the text in order to attain “optimal” understanding of the work at hand. I don’t fault audience members, however, for wanting a translation. It’s natural to not want to be left out. If the singer or chorus knows what they are singing, it’s just good manners to apprise the listeners of the subject encased within the music.

At times, though, the Devil in me wants to deprive the listening public of the translation of a foreign text. Because I sometimes see a printed translation as a crutch. While glorious music surrounds them, the occasional audience member unintentionally blocks out the music in order to read the words; in which case the words become the music to that listener. They missed the point. The composer’s endeavor was to lift the text to heightened awareness by virtue of the music. Perhaps even to replace the text itself, so that the music is the personification of the sentiment expressed. In which case, the audience member only need know “sad”, or “despair”, or “justice”, or “death”, or “hot”, or “hungry”, or “I have a knife”, or “Who is that charming woman?” or “I like watermelon.”

I will now descend from my soapbox and tell you that when it comes to Gregorian chant, you might as well look at a translation. The ancient composers of these religious snippets of liturgy and scripture, near as I can tell, had little intention of expressing explicit mawkish aspects of text on the wide sleeves of Benedictine brothers. As far as I’m concerned, the music and texts are interchangeable.

I don’t know why I bought this CD, other than to have a “set”. The music is beautiful. Just as beautiful as the first one, as a matter of fact. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t tell this one from the other one. In fact, let’s be completely candid. If you played the first one and told me that I was listening to the second one, I would have no reason to doubt you. In the immortal words of Bill Murray, when he takes up the Gregorian chant, minus the music, in the movie Meatballs, “It just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER!!! … “

Credits: To Bill Murray, for comedy at its best. Mr. Murray, I liked “Groundhog Day”, mostly for the references to Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody On A Theme By Paganini”. But I loved it when you said, “Ned, I would love to stand here and talk to you, but I’m not going to.”

An enigmatic folk song

The National Park Series; The Sounds of Shenandoah; Randy Petersen, composer

Dr. Eph Ely conducted the South Dakota Honors Choir in July of 1982. He compiled an outstanding program for our end-of-the-week concert. To this day, some of my favorite choral anthems come from the repertoire that Dr. Ely chose for our ensemble. “Oh, Shenandoah”, an American folk song arranged by James Erb, played romance with each of us in the choir with its quiet unison lines, transitioning to deep, rich chords that underpin the magnificent, yet lonely, melody and inevitably bringing the outside to the inside with an enterprising section where the first sopranos, second sopranos and altos create an echo effect with the melody. It was one of the greatest four minutes of my life.

Nobody really knows where the folk song originated. Nor does anyone know the exact point of view of the rover-lover who originally sang the song. Is it a man or a woman? Is the object of affection a man or a woman? Or does he or she miss the Shenandoah River? Maybe he or she misses living in Shenandoah, Iowa. The words don’t provide enough information. But, know this: Someone misses someone, or something, passionately:

Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you,

And hear your rolling river,

Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you,

Away, we’re bound away

Across the wide Missouri

__________

I long to see your smiling valley

And Hear your rolling river,

I long to see your smiling valley

Away, we’re bound away

Across the wide Missouri

__________

‘Tis seven long years since last I’ve seen you

And hear your rolling river

‘Tis seven long years since last I’ve seen you

Away, we’re bound away

Across the wide Missouri

I suppose that the lack of details lends an element of charm and tender sentiment to our lovestruck roamer’s pinings. It reminds me of the telephone shtick of Bob Newhart where he plays the world’s first solo “straight man” in which the audience only hears one side of a telephone conversation. It seems to me, here, that we don’t get to hear the answer to a splendidly written love letter.

Mom, Uncle D. and Aunt J. came to visit me in Annapolis, Maryland, in September of 1999. I was preparing to fry some homemade chicken flautas in my wok when Mom called me from the parking lot right outside my apartment to announce their arrival. Forgetting to turn down the fire under my vegetable oil-laden wok, I ran outside to receive my guests. Forty-five seconds later, I returned to my kitchen to find, as you can imagine, the doorway to hell emanating from the bottom of my wok, welcoming my visitors with pitchforks of blaze and the pungent redolence of Hades. Don’t worry. We put out the fire. Nobody got hurt. My wok was scorched, as was my pride. But the flautas were delicious.

During their visit, we took a sojourn on Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park in western Virginia. We found a spot from which we could watch the sunset and drink in the peace and stillness of Shenandoah Valley’s tranquility. Recalling the song, I thought to myself, Yeah, if I came from here, I would miss this – probably enough to write a song.

Credits: To the people who make impassioned pleas on behalf of our National Parks to the U.S. Congress. Your work is so important. Thank you.

More Beethoven!

The Complete Sonatas for Piano and Cello; Ludwig van Beethoven, composer; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Emanuel Ax, piano

I don’t have a story today. But I love Beethoven’s Sonatas for Piano and Cello. They rock my world.

Credits: To you, again, dear reader. I can’t believe you’ve held on for as long as you have. I’m thankful that you have. And I’m thankful that you do.

A White House dance

The Best of the Song Books; Ella Fitzgerald

A funny story: On July 7, 1976, the White House held a State Dinner for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness Prince Philip as part of the bicentennial celebration of the American Revolution. As always, “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band assumed their place to provide musical support for the very elgant affair.

In all of the shuffle, the White House powers what be didn’t make arrangements for any special song, or even any special time, for the special dance of the President and Queen Elizabeth. More than likely, the conductor of the Marine dance orchestra assumed that he would receive a heads up when the President prepared to dance with Her Majesty. Nope. No heads up.

Right in the middle of a tune, with no warning, the President led Queen Elizabeth out onto the dance floor and proceeded to dance. And to the conductor’s, and everyone else’s, horror, he realized the predicament that he and his fellow Marines were in: They were playing Cole Porter’s “The Lady Is A Tramp”.

It might have been that nobody even noticed the faux pas, except that one of the newspapers included it in their headlines the next morning. The director of the Marine Band received a stern phone call from the White House that day: The song “The Lady Is A Tramp” is hereby banned from performance at the White House. Period. Amen. As you were.

In December of 1990, at my first audition with “The President’s Own”, they handed me a list of songs. “Pick a song from the list and play it in a cocktail piano style.” I looked at the list, saw “The Lady Is A Tramp” as a choice and started playing it. One of the Marines on the audition committee walked out from behind the screen, approached the piano, stopped me and said, “Let me see that list.” After a quick perusal, he called out, “Yeah, it’s on here”. I’m sorry, did I do something wrong? “Not here, but if you would have been at the White House, they would have sent you home.”

Nobody … I say, nobody … sends home Miss Fitzgerald when she sings “The Lady Is A Tramp”.

Credits: To Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II, for nearly sixty years as the British Monarch. Your majesty, you exude class and reign with sophistication and grace. God Save The Queen.

I am three-quarters of the way through!

Rock This Town

The Dirty Boogie; The Brian Setzer Orchestra; Brian Setzer, guitar and vocals

I remember hearing “Rock This Town” by the Stray Cats during my high school years. They played it a lot in the gym during noon. I didn’t think much of the song then; not my style. But I’ve warmed to it over the years. There’s a lot of excitement there.

But that ain’t nothin’ compared to the hip and crazy meter reading you get from the version that Brian Setzer and his orchestra put out on "The Dirty Boogie". If the Stray Cats were in third gear with this song in the 80’s, Setzer has revved it up to sixth gear for this recording and then kicks it into overdrive before they call it a party at the end.

I really dig the retro aspect. “This Old House” reminds me of Rosemary Clooney. Santo and Johnny’s “Sleep Walk”, a steel-guitar instrumental from 1959, certainly influenced an inspired performance on this CD. Mr. Setzer received a Grammy Award in 1998 for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for it.

Brian Setzer’s take on “Jump, Jive ‘n Wail” gets its cue from the chart by Louis Prima, Keely Smith and Sam Butera. Of course, Sam Butera played this song many times during my tenure with his band. Setzer plays it practically note for note from Louis and Sam's version.

Sometimes, Sam’s regular trumpet player, F., couldn’t make it to one of our jobs. So, the trumpet player who had the job before F., K., filled in. Interestingly enough, K. plays trumpet with Brian Setzer’s band.

In season five of “The Nanny”, Brian Setzer and his orchestra make an appearance on episode three called “The Bobbie Flekman Story”. K. gets a speaking part. You can see him checking out the food here.

Credits: To Brian Setzer, for making music BIG.

Liturgy or no liturgy?

Credo; Sergei Rachmaninoff, Krzysztof Penderecki, Igor Stravinsky, Sir Andrzej Panufnik, composers; Choir of King's College, Cambridge; Stephen Cleobury

When I took up with Presbyterians in 2004, I did so with a leap of faith. I had seldom worshipped the living God without the security of a liturgy. For almost forty years, I walked the weekly Lutheran garden path of careful praise, sensible adoration and abstemious reverence, imparting the all too familiar nod to the Kyrie, Sanctus and Gradual stones that lined the trail.

Although, I must confess that, during the last few months leading up to my new commission at Wallace Presbyterian Church, my mind wandered easily as I sang the same music, muttered the routine prayer response – even concentrated on concentrating during the Lord’s Prayer so that I could mean what I was saying … praying. It got to the point where I frequently thought to myself, Does church need to be this difficult? Is it this exhausting for everybody else? Are the believers that surround me truly honoring God the way that they think they are, or are they merely taking another rough and tumble through the habitual Sunday morning routine that follows toast and juice?

At the bottom of my leap of faith was a refreshing pool of candor in worship and revitalization of my exercise in praise and devotion to God. Last week, we called for worship with a Psalm and confessed our sins corporately. This week, Isaiah gave us reason to convene and we disclosed our transgressions in silence. What will happen next week? I don’t know. But I haven’t catnapped in a liturgy-induced Christian coma for quite a while.

King’s College Choir in Cambridge, England, in their CD titled “Credo”, presents a power-house eclectic Eastern European “Dream Team” liturgy experience. Bookending the virtual church worship ceremony with selections from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers” and the “Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom”, director Stephen Cleobury chose plainchant to separate Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Cherubic Hymn” and “Agnus Dei”, Igor Stravinsky’s “Ave Marie” and “Credo” and Sir Andrzej Panufnik’s “Song to the Virgin Mary”. I can hear, in these pieces, the reverence that each of these composers hold for their God. But the music isn’t always for everyone. Sometimes one man’s praise is another man’s misery.

I know better than to completely buck the Lutheran liturgy. Although there is only one true God, there are various ways to praise Him. C.S. Lewis wrote in favor of a liturgy-laced service, claiming that worshippers

go to use the service, or if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these thing best – if you like, it “works” best – when, through familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

After an absence of six years from regular Lutheran Sunday morning services, I find that I can, indeed, concentrate better during the occasional visit to a Lutheran church. The hum-drumness has evaporated and certain words and phrases, that formerly slid out of the corners of my mouth without meaning, are sharp, two-edged sword words that now find clarity outside my refreshing pool of candor and revitalization.

Credits: To Clive Staples Lewis, for writing a treatise for the ages on the concept of Christianity and calling it “Mere”. Thank you for “Narnia”. What a magical place!

A favorite band piece

Rocky Point Holiday; Ron Nelson, composer

On our first Symphonic Band concert during my freshman year at South Dakota State University, we played some outstanding literature: H. Owen Reed’s “La Fiesta Mexicana”, John Williams’ “Olympic Fanfare” and Antonin Dvoark’s “Slavonic Dances, just to name a few. But, my favorite piece on the program was written by Ron Nelson. He called it “Rocky Point Holiday”.

He composed it while on vacation on Rocky Point, Rhode Island, and was his first major work. The University of Minnesota band had commissioned him to write a piece for their tour of the Soviet Union, and he served them this scrumptious entree.

Why do I like it? I’ve thought about that question for years. I think that I like the contrasts in the rhythms. It seems like there are always at least two rhythmic ideas happening at the same time; one fast, and the other not so fast. I suppose one could consider it an exercise in relativism. You don’t know how slow one part is until you play it in conjunction with its counterpart.

I had hoped that I would hear the Marine Band play this piece during my time with them. Alas, it wasn’t to be. But, thank heaven for the World Wide Interweb and it’s iTunes. This is a favorite track.

Credits: To H. Owen Reed, Mr. One Hundred Years Old. Thank you for your service to music education. And thank you for “La Fiesta Mexicana”. Awesome, haunting piece.

Tough Piano Parts

Russian Cello Sonatas; Sergei Rachmaninoff, Nicolai Miaskovsky, Dimitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, composers; Truls Mork, cello; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano; Lars Vogt, piano

Over the years, I have taken on the piano part of any number of Paul Hindemith’s sonatas for wind or string instruments. Mr. Hindemith, over the course of his career, wrote at least one sonata for most of the orchestral instruments. The common feature of distinction with these 20^th century works is that the piano part often has ten times the difficulty of the other part. Subsequently, I have redubbed the titles of Mr. Hindemith’s sonatas. His Trombone Sonata (1941), for example, has now been given the designation Really Hard Piano Part Sonata With Light, Fair, Candy Cane Trombone Obligato (1941) (title edit, 2010, E.A.).

The same could be said of Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 19. The exception here, though, is that Mr. Rachmaninoff included the word “piano” in the title of the piece. That, right there, gives the pianist an equal voice to the cellist concerning the interpretation of the work. And, well, it should be so. The piano part is

HUGE!

And with no intention to undermine the difficulty of the cello part, I have redubbed the title: Piano Concerto Sonata for Piano and No Orchestra But With Guest Appearances by a Cello, Op. 19 (title edit, 2010, E.A.).

I haven’t learned this piano part yet, but it is on my piano part bucket list.

Credits: To Ms. Elizabeth Pridonoff, who played the piano part of Mr. Rachmaninoff’s Op. 19 at a faculty recital at CCM in 1989. I will never forget it. It was awesome. Bravo.