Erik Apland's iPodobiography

Farewell!

2010-10-13T17:42:00.005-04:00

Nickel Creek; Nickel Creek

I am not finished. I am a “work in progress”. You may have a good idea of who I am … I may have a good idea of who I am … but the real Erik Apland isn’t finished until the last few moments before the Lord God hits the stop button on the holy egg timer and declares, “Time’s up! Now, let’s take a look at you.” In the mean time, I will spend the balance of my time on God’s green and blue Earth decorating my life experiences with the tchotchkes … (Thank you, Kate!) … tchotchkes of life.

Over the course of three seasons of “Star Trek” and seven seasons of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, the USS Enterprise and the USS Enterprise-D each withstood token damage. That is, until the movies. Then they blew them up. The original USS Enterprise survived the first two movies and then got detonated in “Star Trek III”. The USS Enterprise-D was totaled in the middle of its first feature film, “Star Trek Generations”.

While looking over the damage, at the end of the picture, Captain Picard and Commander Riker searched for the photo album that he had shared with Councelor Troi earlier in the film. Of all the personal effects that Captain Picard had brought with him, he regarded his photo album of the utmost important. How he didn’t have them stored on an Apple iPod escapes my grasp of comprehension. But, I suppose they didn’t have iPods in the future back in 1994.

Riker remarks that she, the Enterprise-D, “went before her time.” Captain Picard responds to his Number One with the remarks of an acquaintance of his who said that:

“Time is a predator that stalks us all our lives. But I believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey; reminds us to cherish every moment … because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we’ve lived. After all, Number One, we’re only mortal.”

I play music. It’s how I enter the world. Every note of music that I’ve inhaled since that evening forty-five years ago today has found a place to abide in my soul. I share, with anyone who has the patience to listen, the state, shape, order and fettle of my inner being: the sunshine, the rain, the warmth, the cold, the trees, the birds, the lake, the ocean, the wood, the neon, the up-close, the far-away, the tweed, the denim, the happiness, the depression, the fantasy, the real, the fleeting and the everlasting.

Almost ten years ago, I encountered the music of Nickel Creek on what was supposed to be a pass through the Country Music Television station to get to SpikeTV while channel surfing on a Sunday afternoon. But I got stuck – trapped – in a song. “The Lighthouse’s Tale”, a sad story – trapped in a major key – has a quiet, measured and timeless energy that matches the pace of life itself …

I am a lighthouse worn by the weather and the waves

I keep my lamp lit to warn the sailors on their way …

And the waves crashing around me

The sand slips out to the sea

And the winds that blow remind me

Of what has been and what can never be

Now who can forge poetry like that on the walls of their spirit and not find inspiration? I, long ago, supplanted the youth and vitality of this vibrant ensemble in my inner garden of ideas, notions, import, design and grit. And I find a place for the harvest in Brahms, Beethoven, James Brown, Glen Campbell, Enya, Oscar Peterson, Gordon Lightfoot, Edith Piaf, John Mayer, Andy Williams and the Beach Boys.

How do you enter the world, my friend? What theatrical stage to you take – what platform do you storm – what threshold do you cross to reverberate the life that sings, dances, paints, burns, pulses, do-se-dos and, otherwise, hoola-hoops inside your soul? Do you capture, and nurture within, the vast essences of humanity that touch you the most, make them a part of you and then feature them wholesale through your lens of heart and spirit?

We are expressive beings. The flair in our clothing, the way we decorate our homes, the neatness of our desks, the style and color of our cars, the pedigree of our pets, the preferred flavor of our Jell-O, even the gait of our walk all reveal even the slightest essence of the unique spirit inside our skin and bones.

It has been my pleasure to be with you, dear reader, for three-hundred and sixty-six days. You now know much about me that I never ever would have thought important enough to share. It’s the little things in life that add up, trounce and trump the big things. I will miss talking to you. Come around and see me some time. I’ll take you out for some soup. In the mean time… I think I’ll go dancing in the rain…

Credits: To Mom, D., K., three or four Uncle D.’s, Cousin W., … ah, heck, all of you. You all frost my calvinator. And to God. Soli Deo Gloria.

This is the forty-fifth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Televisions

2010-10-12T23:26:00.004-04:00

Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor; Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer; New York Philharmonic; Eugene Ormandy, conducting; Vladimir Horowitz, piano

My sisters and I were part of that last generation to grow up with a black and white television. For a while there, we went through a number of TV’s. When one would go up in smoke, D. and I would look at each other, cross our fingers and hope, and pray, that our next set would show us the world outside South Dakota in glorious color.

Alas, glorious color didn’t arrive in our house until Grandma A. passed away in 1986. We think that Grandma got the very first color TV in the county. We also think that Grandma got the heaviest TV in the county. It was absolutely huge and maintained its heroic physique by ingesting heavily from the feast provided by the electrical current suffused into her house.

I don’t know if Grandma planned this or not, but the family visited a lot more after she got the TV. We came over to watch the Superbowl, we came over to watch movies, we came over to watch Charlie Brown. D. and I even went over one time to play with the color knobs so that we could watch the Beaver eat green peanut butter.

When we cleaned out Grandma’s house after the funeral, Dad arranged it so that we could inherit the color TV. We put it into the southwest corner of the living room. I think that our house settled a little to the southwest after we brought in the TV.

The little black and white TV that our “new” color television replaced ended up in my bedroom – much to the chagrin of my sisters, I suppose. The configuration of our house, along with the aerial position in the attic, the temperature of the water in the cistern, Mercury’s relative position to Venus, the Dow and the location of the squirrel in the tree in the front yard all contributed to an ideal location of the … now, spare … TV on my dresser.

In the late summer of 1982, I was flipping through channels after a day out in the hay field with Dad and I came across the broadcast of the finals of the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah. I had never heard of this competition. But it appeared intriguing. So, I went downstairs, fixed myself a brown peanut butter sandwich – how lame – and went back to my room to watch the big contest.

The first contestant played Peter Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor. Oh, man, I thought. This guy’s gonna win! Then the second contestant played the Sergei Prokofieff Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major. Oh, man, I thought. She’s even better than that other guy. She’s gonna win! Then the third contestant approached the piano; this skinny, compact, wet-behind-the-ears, eighteen-year-old piece of fuzz, and he played a piece I had never heard before: Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor.

Have you ever taken a bite of something, and then forgot to swallow? A lump of food that stays lodged between your tongue and the roof of your mouth because you can’t believe what you are seeing or hearing? One of the bites of my PB sandwich became uber-gloop in my mouth for several minutes as I sat riveted by the most breathtaking display of musical and technical fireworks, pianistic wizardry and pageantry I had ever seen … and heard. I knew, in the moments following this forty-five minute spectacular, while I sat applauding and weeping in my room, for both Mr. Rachmaninoff and this little urchin in a tux at the piano, that my life would never be the same. I had heard the finest piece ever written.

Sergei Rachmaninoff completed this most difficult of all of his piano and orchestra works in September of 1909 at his country estate, called Ivanovka, in Russia. He often said that he “wrote it for elephants”; hint: he wrote it for pianists with elephantine technique. The work has been known to instill fear into many pianists, including the dedicatee, Josef Hofmann. Pianist Gary Graffman has been heard to lament his not having learned it when he was younger, when he was “still too young to know fear.”

As God is my witness, I yelled after making sure that only God was hearing me, I WILL learn this piano concerto. The next day, I went to the Brookings Public Library to see if they had a recording of this behemoth. Pianist Andre Watts had recorded this musical reincarnation of Goliath with the New York Philharmonic and I about wore out the LP from the number of times I played it before having to take it back. After letting the masterwork fester in my ears for a few years, I summoned the courage – stupidity? – to order the sheet music. During the summer of 1985, I learned it. It took me four months to learn it, memorize it and play it.

I don’t think I endeavored to learn this piece from the standpoint of a challenge … or to show off. It certainly was a challenge … but, believe it or not, … I don’t consider difficulty when choosing or dismissing a piece to tackle. I listen to the whole piece in order to evaluate its musical merits and its potential match to my musical personality; and to see if I like it.

I have performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 two times, but neither time with an orchestra. I had a brave second pianist sitting at a second piano representing two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, double basses, cellos, violas and violins. It was a thrilling experience each time.

Why did I learn it? I liked it. And it was an accomplishment. It hangs on my figurative wall of achievement – along with my performance of the Prokofieff Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major – and the day Dad and I stacked thirteen wagonloads of hay bales – and my well-earned B in high school biology – and the day that my Brookings High School freshman and sophomore boys vocal ensemble earned a superior plus at solo and ensemble contest – and the day we saved a batch of kittens from certain death after their mother had died – and the year I ran the Marine Corps Marathon – and the year that I wrote a blog …

Credits: To Vladimir Horowitz, the last of the romantic pianists. Thank you for your pianism, your excellence and your music.

This is the forty-fourth of my final forty-five CD’s.

The Pride of the Dakotas

2010-10-11T23:52:00.002-04:00

Light Out of Darkness (a tribute to Ray Charles); Shirley Horn, piano and vocal

I cherish the memories I have of my days in the SDSU “Pride of the Dakotas” Marching Band. As I’ve said before, as a pianist, I’m the one that moves the show when I make an appearance by myself. It’s typically a one-man show. I’ve decided what to play, how to play it, when to play it, where to play it and what to wear while I play it. My successes and failures are my own.

In the marching band – I found an opportunity to hide amongst the numbers. No matter what I did individually, it was done as a member of the ensemble. I was one of one-hundred seventy-five members. I was one one-hundred and seventy-fifth of a marching band.

We played some pretty decent music. But it wasn’t about the music. Music schmusic. We were part of something bigger than any of us could ever be on our own. And we put on a fantastic show five to six times per season.

We only took one big trip during my four years in the “Pride”. In the autumn of 1987, my senior year, we went to Greeley, Colorado, where the SDSU Jackrabbits played the University of Northern Colorado Bears.

Here’s what happened: they seated us in the stands on the other side of the field from the main part of the stadium. Then, during the half-time show, we took the field and played the show for the main part of the stadium.

Our marching band director, Mr. McK., had missed a whole week of rehearsals two weeks prior to our trip. It came to our attention that his fortieth birthday would happen during our time in Greeley. So, while he was gone, we rehearsed a little routine that we nonchalantly inserted into our half-time show. At a specific part of the show, - “We interrupt this half-time show performance to wish our illustrious director Jim McK. a happy fortieth birthday!” - we broke ranks and spelled out “Jim’s 40” on the field and played “Happy Birthday” – “This has been a special announcement. We return you now to your regularly scheduled half-time show!”

We all had lots of fun, Mr. McK. thought it was a riot and we all had cake before sitting down for the second half of the game. I asked one of the spectators seated next to us how the show looked. “Great. You guys have a fantastic band.” Did our little scheme come across on this side of the field? “Well, I don’t know. Was it your intention to spell out ‘Oh sh~t’ on the field while you played “Happy Birthday”?

Since my time in the “Pride of the Dakotas”, the band has grown considerably – almost four hundred playing members! – and taken much more impressive trips. They have traveled twice to the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California. They have also traveled twice to Washington, D.C.

Their first trip to our nation’s capital took place on the occasion of President Clinton’s second inauguration in 1997. The band took a second trip to Washington, D.C. for the Independence Day Parade in 2000. Upon their arrival into town, they had a picnic in a park and they asked me to put together a jazz trio to play music while they chowed down on some barbeque.

An interesting thing happened during their preparations for this trip. They received a call from someone associated with the “Capitol Fourth” concert that PBS broadcast on Independence Day evening. It seems that actor and singer Barry Bostwick, host of the concert, wanted to sing Meredith Wilson’s “Seventy-Six Trombones” from “The Music Man” for a show opener. Since the setting of the song concerned a marching band, it had been suggested that they choose one of the bands from the Independence Day Parade lineup to accompany him on the song. They went with the “Pride of the Dakotas” because it was the biggest.

I saw the “Pride” march in the parade but I couldn’t go watch the concert. The broadcast of the “Capitol Fourth” happened while I was with the Marine Band on the south portico of the White House. But I had set up the VCR to tape the extravaganza and when I got home from the White House, I relived my “Pride” days vicariously through the spectacle played before me on the TV.

On the day before, the band rehearsed with Barry Bostwick, the National Symphony “Pops” Orchestra, conductor Erich Kunzel and the PBS live broadcast crew. It had been a hot day – over one hundred degrees – and the band had been out in the sun for quite some time. All of a sudden, a rainstorm whipped up. No lightning, no thunder … just rain … lots of it … and it stayed for about twenty-five minutes

As college kids are wont to do, all four hundred members of SDSU’s “Pride of the Dakotas” Marching Band cheered, whooped, clamored, hollered, shouted and erupted in general celebration and revelry. The drumline went into their twenty-minute routine, the other members of the band rocked the joint with singing and choreography while the symphony, crew and other performing artists watched on in amazement.

When the rain had passed on and the crew could uncover all of the electronic equipment, the rehearsal went on as planned.

Several months later, Mr. McK. received a letter, recounting all of the excitement that had happened on that day in July the previous summer, “when the heavens opened up and poured” and “your band exploded. I will remember that moment for a long, long time. Signed, Ray Charles.”

I don’t have any Ray Charles albums. I need to get some. But his spirit lives on through this tribute album by Shirley Horn.

Credits: To the South Dakota State University athletic teams. GO JACKRABBITS!!!

This is the forty-third of my final forty-five CD’s.

Junior high chorus

2010-10-10T23:55:00.005-04:00

Cloudburst and Other Choral Works; Eric Whitacre, composer; Polyphony; Stephen Layton, conducting

Junior High started in the autumn of 1978. Every kid that advances out of elementary school has his or her list of anticipated freedoms, new found rights and privileges. Mine? Lockers, candy bars for lunch … and study hall. I looked forward to the study hall the most. We never had anything like this in elementary school. Imagine … getting your homework done at school, leaving it in your locker (LOCKER!!! Yea!!!) for the next day, keeping a light book bag, and more time to watch TV in the evening … or play the piano. The cost … Ha! Cost! … of this study hall was a sabbatical from all things singy, chorussy and choiry. I could live with that. Band was enough. Besides, I was a scholar and I needed my study time. Yup. My priorities were absolutely in “oar-dair”. More studying, parents would love that, conscience clear, cased closed.

All it took was the prettiest girl in my class to come to my desk, at the end of my first study hall, and say, “Erik, what are you doing in here? You’re the best musician in our school. We need more boy singers. Won’t you come sing with us?” And then she turned on the baby seal eyes and said, “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaase?” I rallied every speck, every morsel, every smidgen, dram and dollop of academic integrity in order to invoke a justified harangue about my supplemental scholarly requirements, the narrow, lonely path to a 4.0 and the extra free time at home with my Mom, Dad, sisters and kitty … and said, Okay.

I’d been pathetic before, and I’ve been since – but that was the most pitiable plummet I’ve ever sustained. If I’m thirty minutes smarter today than I would have been at my high school graduation commencement ceremony in May of 1984, it came from my one and only study hall on the first day of Junior High.

In January of 1999, I accompanied the twenty-fifth South Dakota Honors Choir when they performed for the regional convention of the American Choral Directors Association in Sioux Falls. The ACDA had invited the choir to repeat their concert from the summer before. It provided me with the opportunity to work again with the great choral conductor Dr. A. In addition to his concert with the Honors Choir at the convention, he brought his own choir to present a concert. And on that concert, I heard, for the first time, the music of Eric Whitacre.

Mr. Whitacre is an internationally renowned choral composer, conductor and clinician. He looks like a surfer dude. And young people absolutely love him.

Eric Whitacre has, many times, claimed that he never participated in anything … ANYTHING … musical, in school or at home, before attending the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. He had grown up in Las Vegas and enrollment in the local University was only logical. He had announced no academic major at the time. All of his classes served to fulfill basic academic requirements.

On the first day of classes, Eric’s roommate burst into their dorm room and declared, “Dude! You gotta come join the chorus! They need men. And the chicks – are – AWESOME!” When he walked into the choral rehearsal room the next day, the chorus was rehearsing for a performance of Mozart’s Requiem. Mr. Whitacre typically concludes his story by saying that “I came for the chicks – but I stayed for Mozart”.

His biography from that point on renders one of the strangest, yet motivating, transformations I’ve ever stumbled across in the classical music biz. Without any appreciable history of musical instruction of any kind, he began to hear and compose music in his head. Not just happy, little thirty-two measure long ditties – but complex, harmonically innovative structures that can easily underpin the weight of the deepest, most esoteric text of any culture. After graduating from UNLV, he went on to study at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Since that time, he has received commissions, commissioning awards, honors and invitations to conduct all over the world. His compositions range from the very serious and moving “When David Heard” to the very entertaining and ridiculous “Godzilla Eats Las Vegas”.

I admit it. I am envious of his success. Although, turnabout is fair play, I suppose. All humility in tact, I would guess that others have envied the relative ease in which music flows through my ears and under my fingers. Somebody has to be near the top of the envy chain. I’m sincerely glad of his monumental success. He probably had more study halls than I did.

Credits: To Dr. A. What big ears you’ve got, Maestro. It’s always a pleasure to work with you.

This is the forty-second of my final forty-five CD’s.

Looking forward, looking back

2010-10-09T23:39:00.009-04:00

Both Sides Now (2000); Joni Mitchell, vocal

Joni Mitchell was twenty-four years old when she penned the words and music to “Both Sides Now”. It’s a work of genius. Rolling Stone magazine placed the song at number 170 on its list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

Genius? Yes. The perspective from which she philosophizes, in the lyrics, seems to emerge from a lifetime of loves, experiences, life encounters, friends and lovers. Life, as depicted from this mature point-of-view, has brought, to the person in the song, vistas that afford prospects from many different angles. A little toy dump truck may, in the end, be just a little toy dump truck – but what it means to a six-year-old boy may mean more to a sixty-five-year-old man.

I Corinthians 13 remarks that:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Of course, the Apostle Paul takes a longer view than Ms. Mitchell, but parallels manage to materialize, nonetheless.

Why is it genius? Joni Mitchell was only twenty-four when she wrote the lyrics! To the rest of us, she hadn’t lived nearly enough of life to intuitively, yet accurately, presuppose and conceive of the nostalgic outlook of one in their twilight years. But, Mozart wrote music beyond his years. I suppose Mitchell can write lyrics beyond hers.

We learned this song in junior high chorus. I remember Mrs. B. playing a recording of Ms. Mitchell singing this song before we started learning it. It sounded, to my ears, like a well-written folk song. And I thought it was very pretty.

I like the movie “The Player”. Robert Altman directed this movie in 1992. Tim Robbins – the player - plays the part of a producer at a studio in Hollywood. He begins to receive death threats and “unintentionally” kills the person that he thinks is writing them. Yet, after the killing, he continues to get death threats. The police can’t produce a witness to prove that the producer killed the guy. But the writer of the death threats knows that he did it. The producer and the death threat writer, at the end of the picture, come to an agreement: no more death threats – if – the producer makes a movie about the whole ordeal and gives writing credit to the death threat writer. And – all of a sudden – the movie turns into itself. Cool, huh?

When my friend L. told me to download Joni Mitchell’s 2000 re-recording of “Both Sides Now”, L. hadn’t properly prepared me … bless her heart … for the impact of emotion, depth and charge of Mitchell’s presentation. All of the notes in the melody, and the words in the lyrics, remained the same. But the landscape of the harmonic foundation, orchestration and ethereal atmosphere, matched with Joni’s later-in-life dusky contralto, laid out the terrain of a life frought with trees, pock marks, lawns, dumps, oceans, deserts, sunshine, storms, unions, attacks, affection, war, balloons, disease, picnics, homelessness, clouds, love and life.

In short, when Joni Mitchell sang this song thirty-three years after she wrote it – her song turned into itself. Cool, huh?

Tears and fears and feeling proud

To say “I love you” right out loud

Dream and schemes and circus crowds

I’ve looked at life that way

__________

But now old friends are acting strange

They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed

Well, something’s lost, but something’s gained

In living every day

__________

I’ve looked at life from both sides now

From win and lose and still somehow

It’s life’s illusions I recall

I really don’t know life at all

As I approach the end of my writings, October, 2010, doesn’t appear much different from October, 2009. Same job, same truck, same friends, same family, same gigs, same computer, same electric fan, same favorite soup place, same wallet. Different printer, different glasses, different house, new socks. Despite the sameness … and not because of the newness … I’m a little different. I’m one year different. And some things have a little more meaning than they did before. I understand a little better how I’m different – yup, that’s the word I’m going to use – from you.

And God bless you.

Credits: To Paul of Tarsus, model Christian, before there was any such thing as a Christian.

This is my normal Saturday individual track posting.

Curtis

2010-10-08T23:57:00.006-04:00

The Calling; Dianne Reeves

Dianne Reeves came to Annapolis in January of 2002. I saw it in the newspaper and had to call Curtis. Hey, Curtis. “Hello.” Dianne Reeves is coming to town. Do you want to go? “Oh, YEAH! Get a ticket for me.”

I met Curtis on February 11, 1994, in Auckland, New Zealand. He was the first person I met after disembarking the shuttle from the airport to the Royal Odyssey. “You the new piano player?” Yeah, my name’s Erik. “The bass player D. was talking about you as the shuttle pulled up. Have you had lunch?” Oh, is that what I’m supposed to eat next? I thought I had dinner a couple of hours ago. “Put your gear in your room and I’ll show you what a New Zealand hamburger tastes like.” He was an instant friend.

Curtis worked on the ship as an illusionist and as a hypnotist; comedic on both accounts. I thoroughly enjoyed playing for and watching his shows. He had a quick wit and always kept things fun and clean. After he had hypnotized his – victims? – during his hypnotism show, he got very creative with the people on stage. My favorite was when he told them, while “under”, that the number eight didn’t exist. When he brought them out, he would ask one of them to count their fingers. Then, they would count to eleven, and the look on their face was worth the price of a cruise.

At the end of his contract about six weeks later, I told him that I was sorry to see him go. “Don’t worry. Royal Cruise Line likes me. We’ll see each other again soon.” And he was right. Three months later, he came to work on the Star Odyssey. Curtis! What a surprise! “I told you. Royal Cruise Line likes me.” His contract had him stay for three months while we traversed the peaceful waters of Alaska. How do you know so much about Alaska? “I grew up in Skagway.” Curtis came and went two or three more times during the rest of my voyages on the Star Odyssey.

I lost track of him for about two or three years. But then, I found a telephone number in my address book, so I called to see what would happen. It led me to another number – and then another number. Finally, I found him in Annapolis, Maryland. AND … he had gotten married. “Are you coming to visit?” I’m going to do you one better. “What, you’re moving in?” Then I told him about “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band and how they were about to become burdened with me as their new piano player.

The first time I went to his house, I met his wonderful new wife Susan. She was an instant friend. Together, they became as good as family. It was always a pleasure to let them know where and when I was playing around town and it was a treat to see them.

In 2006, my good friend Curtis passed away, after enduring the weight and load of a monster, whose encumbrance proved too substantial to bear. During his ordeal, it was made plain to me that I was part of his family and Susan’s family and, to this very day, they are very special to me.

Curtis and I walked the few short blocks from his home to see Dianne Reeves that January and she totally blew us away. During the concert she announced that she would be singing during the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, in just a few weeks and that she would be singing “Fascinating Rhythm” from her new album.

Curtis bought her new CD for me that night.

It’s special. And it’s awesome.

Credits: To the memory of my friend Curtis. All of your troubles are gone, my friend. It must feel wonderful. And to my friend Susan. You are a rock.

This is the forty-first of my final forty-five CD’s.

Piano lessons

2010-10-07T23:55:00.005-04:00

Rhapsody in Blue; Piano Concerto in F; An American in Paris; Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; Andre Previn, conducting and piano

I took piano lessons from Nadine for about eleven years. The same year that I started kindergarten, I started taking piano lessons. “The boy is learning some bad habits at the piano,” Nadine had told my mom after church one Sunday. “We’ve got to teach him how to read notes.”

I have to tell you, piano lessons sucked all of the fun out of playing the piano. I didn’t want to play their way. I wanted to play my way. Their way was boring. My way was fast. Their way was tedious, monotonous, mundane, banal and unstimulating. My way was fast.

So, I didn’t let on for quite some time that I hadn’t yet really learned how to read notes. Right at the end of the lesson, before sending us home, Nadine would play the next week’s piano lesson pieces out of my lesson books, like she did for all the other kids. It took her a while to realize that I memorized the next week’s lesson songs while she played them, and I practiced them from memory when I got home. Yeah, I was sneaky.

But I paid for my crimes. How? She stopped playing my lesson songs for me, and I had to figure out how they went by myself. And they were tedious, monotonous, mundane, banal and unstimulating.

After I got the hang of whole, half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes, major and minor keys, time signatures and tempos, I moved along fairly quickly. Nadine knew how to task a young country boy: contests. My sisters and I played in so many piano contests. Then she moved me on to something called Guild, where I had to play something like twelve piano pieces from memory.

The last competitive setting in which Nadine had me participate was the South Dakota Music Teachers Association auditions. I only had to learn three pieces. But … they were much harder … AND … I competed against piano students from all over the state. This was an eye opener. I had never heard other serious piano students my age. They kind’a scared me.

So, I vowed to wow them the next year. Nadine, I need something really showy. “How about Prelude No. 3 by George Gershwin?” Is it fast? “{sigh} Yes.” Let’s do it. She had piles of music all over her studio. She moved things here, she moved things there. She climbed up on one of her piano benches to reach some of the stuff on the top shelf. “Here, hold this.” There, in my hands, she placed the sheet music for “Rhapsody In Blue”.

Time stopped. I’ve heard of this. I want to play this. Look at what this does. And there … oh, that’ cool. Where have you been all my life?

“Here you go.” What? “The Prelude No. 3. Here you go.” Then she looked at my eyes, then at what she had placed in my hands, then back at my face … and she knew the end was near.

I learned the Prelude No. 3. It’s a marvelous piece and I still enjoy playing it; maybe not quite so fast, now. After the SDMTA contest was over, I cautiously asked Nadine if I could take the “Rhapsody In Blue” home – for just a week – pleeeeeeease? “Yes, you can. But bring it back next week. And be careful with it. That copy is forty years old.” I learned as much as I could in a week.

At the next week’s lesson, I played a bunch of it for her. She had a big smile on her face. “Erik, that was wonderful. Thank you for playing that for me.” Then she looked serious and said, “Erik, you have to move on. I don’t teach ‘Rhapsody In Blue’. I teach ‘Down In The Valley’, 'The Merry Farmer', ‘Brave Indian Chief’ and ‘Bill Grogan’s Goat’. I’ve talked with Dr. P. at SDSU about you. He's a fine piano teacher. Go home and think about it."

For Christmas, that year, I got my own copy of “Rhapsody In Blue”. I still have it. There’s a Santa Claus sticker over the price.

Nadine was more than a piano teacher. She was a major musical force in the community. And she wasn’t scared of anything. She played the organ, she directed the church choir, she accompanied soloists at church … she even directed the bicentennial band on a float in Bruce’s bicentennial parade in 1976.

With piano lessons, her technique was "hands on". With everything else, it was "lead by example". Those lessons were just as important.

Not counting my Mom and Dad, she was my very first fan.

Credits: To Nadine Anderson. I miss you terribly and will love you always.

This is the fortieth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Oh, Good Grief

2010-10-06T23:56:00.002-04:00

Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown!; Various Artists from the GRP label

Charlie Brown taught me how to read. He taught me the word “sigh”. He taught me the word “touché”. He taught me the word “fussbudget” … and “psychiatrist” … and “enigma”. And the learning didn’t stop with reading.

You shouldn’t look directly at a solar eclipse. They cover the pitcher’s mound with a tarp during a rainstorm in the big leagues. Beethoven was born on December 16. Coyotes eat bunnies. They hold the annual World Wrist-Wresting Championship in Petaluma, California. Wintergreen candies make little blue sparks in the dark when you bite down on them. And little girls can punch just as hard as little boys – if not harder.

My association with Peanuts started within a few days of my birth. O. brought me a Linus pillow the first time she ever saw me. And “A Charlie Brown Christmas” aired exactly eight weeks after I arrived in this world.

When I was in high school, I wanted to take part in the annual all-school play. But each year, Mr. H. would catch me in the hall and tell me that he needed me to play the piano for the play. The plays weren’t musicals, but there were a few songs to be sung, and that would knock me out of a part in the play. The last year, however, my senior year, Mr. H. decided to do “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown” and he cast me as Charlie Brown. All humility in tact – I was a great Charlie Brown.

I never really outgrew my love for Peanuts. I found other interests, but my eye will forever catch the passing reference to Charlie Brown, Sally, Lucy, Linus, Shroeder, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Snoopy, Woodstock, Patty, Violet, Franklin and Shermy. The storylines were always squeaky clean. Charles Schultz once commented that over the course of fifty years of strips, with a particularly prominent pooch in the mix, not one strip included a reference to a fire hydrant. The comic strip was never about that at all.

It was about childhood, and what it would be like to go through it with a psychiatrist at your side. It was about never getting to kick a football. It was about never winning a baseball game. It was about practicing the piano and playing catcher. It was about unrequited love. It was about having a crabby big sister. It was about Joe Cool and the World War I Flying Ace. It was about suppertime at five o’clock. It was about a hockey-playing grandmother. It was about a security blanket.

It was about sustaining the daily afflictions that eight-year-olds undergo all over the world - and, in the end, to live another day.

Credits: To Charles Schultz, one of my greatest heroes – ever.

This is the thirty-ninth of my final forty-five CD’s.

An apology

2010-10-05T23:55:00.005-04:00

Piano Concerto in A Minor; Edvard Grieg,
composer; Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; Dimitri Kitayenko, conducting; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Dad’s cousin L. lives in Norfolk, Nebraska. The locals call their town “Nor’fork”, a derivative of “North Fork”. The tenth largest city in Nebraska, it claims Jeromey Clarey, an offensive tackle for the San Diego Chargers, Jim Buchanan, a pitcher for the St. Louis Browns, Johnny Carson, from The Tonight Show, and Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger and the singer of “You’re A Mean One, Mister Grinch” as notable home town boys.

Through the many years of family reunions, weddings and funerals, L. and his family always came up to South Dakota to see us. I decided, one day back in the spring of 1993, to make the trek down to Nor’fork to see the family. On the way down US Highway 81, I listened to Public Radio. Just as soon as I came up out of the Missouri River Valley that separates the eastern part of the southern border of South Dakota and Nebraska, South Dakota Public Radio was gone and I had to look for Nebraska Public Radio.

It was a special afternoon. In just a few day’s time, the great violinist Itzak Perlman was performing Johannes Brahm’s Violin Concerto with the Omaha Symphony. Nebraska Public Radio studios in Lincoln had invited the violin master to spend this afternoon with its radio hosts. For the occasion, they had asked Mr. Perlman to bring his favorite recordings. Expecting a folder of CD’s, they about filled their pants to discover that he had brought along reel-to-reel recordings from several years’ worth of live performances.

Over the course of the conversations and portions of violin repertoire, the inevitable question presented itself: “Mr. Perlman, don’t you ever get tired of playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto?” “I cannot allow myself to go there,” replied Mr. Perlman. “You know, as well as I, that each and every day, someone discovers the Pachelbel Canon for the very first time and it opens a gate into a brand new world. I have certainly heard the piece to my life-long satisfaction … but we can’t just stop playing it because we’re tired of it. The Pachelbel Canon, whether we like it or not, is a classical music beacon and it leads the way for those wonderful people who don’t know that they want to become classical music aficionados – until they hear the Canon.”

That was the day that I woke up to my classical music snobbery. It’s one thing to be aware that you’re a snob and be comfortable with it – and quite another to shamefacedly discover that you’re neck-deep in it.

Here is the degree to which snobbery had suffused my being: I knew that the Piano Concerto in A Minor by Edvard Grieg was one of the most popular piano and orchestra pieces around. Everybody knew, knows, the first few moments of the piece. Get a load of this: I never got around to listening to the rest of the piece – because, I figured that if Joe Q. Public liked this concerto, then it must not “measure up” musically with the other piano concertos. This was “pop” classical music. And I didn’t have time for it.

World, … I apologize. To all of you. You are not shallow. You just know what you like. If ninety percent of you love the same portion of music, who am I to declare that all of you are under some type of delusion? I stand in front of you all with my head hanging low … begging for your pardon.

In the fall of 1993, I entered a CD shop in Bergen, Norway, and heard the opening crashing chords of the Grieg Piano Concerto. I thought, Maybe I better listen to the whole thing some time. So, I checked out the recording at the register. Norwegian pianist with a Norwegian orchestra playing the music of a Norwegian composer – how can you go wrong there?

One day later, I was sleeping in, in my stateroom aboard the Crown Odyssey, and I got a phone call. “Get yourself up here!” Where? “On the deck!” Why? “Fjords!” Really? “Yes! Now!” I looked out the window and saw solid rock ushering past. I rushed upstairs to come face to face with … the ... most ... beautiful ... scenery … ever. I asked myself, Is it really this beautiful? Or is it beautiful because I’m Norwegian?

Later that day, toward evening, I listened to Mr. Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor by the moonlight. What I heard was the aural, musical personification of everything I had seen that day: the water, the mountains, the snow, the waterfalls, the green, green grass, it was all in the music.

I LOVE Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor.

Credits: Mr. Pachelbel, for your lovely Canon. In D. Indeed.

This is the thirty-eighth of my final forty-five CD’s.

NYC

2010-10-04T23:53:00.005-04:00

On The Town; Turtle Island String Quartet

I’m like Barnaby from “Hello Dolly”. I’m more inclined to spend the money to see the giant whale at Barnum’s than I am to go out to dinner, drinks, a show and then dancing. The dinner part sounds like fun; and going to see a play, or a musical, or a concert. But, by the end of the evening, I will have thrown down possibly two to three hundred dollars if I took a guest. That’s not me. So, when I go to the Big Apple, I tend to see things that amuse me at a smaller cost than the aforementioned “night on the town”.

In 1987, I went to New York City for the first time to attend the national convention of the Music Teachers National Association. My friend D. had won a spot in the national brass auditions in conjunction with the convention. During free time, I saw the Statue of Liberty – went all the way up to the crown – saw Madison Square Garden, Times Square, the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building.

I accompanied two South Dakota music teachers to the top of the Empire State Building. After a special afternoon concert, we figured that we had enough time to catch the late afternoon view from the ESB, enjoy a little dinner and make it back for the evening recital at the hotel. So, we hailed a cab. “Where to?” Empire State Building. “I’ll have you there in a minute.” And he wasn’t kidding. He drove fifty-five miles per hour up Sixth Avenue, the Avenue of the Americas, passing cars, changing lanes, honking his horn, barely missing pedestrians, talking on the radio – all the while, eating a sandwich. Three grassy prairie Lutherans sat in his back seat, completely immobilized phonetically, unable to watch what was happening, yet couldn’t stop looking – and all the while crossing ourselves. Everything after that paled in comparison.

I visited the Empire State Building a few months ago with my friend J. He is from New Jersey and had never been up there and was completely blown away. We followed it up with some sushi.

That’s what I like to do when I’m … on the town.

Credits: To Jerry Herman, for “Hello Dolly”. Hey, Mr. Herman, I went to CCM, too.

This is the thirty-seventh of my final forty-five CD’s.

Music to eat to

2010-10-03T23:56:00.010-04:00

Four Parables ~ Four Souvenirs ~ Cafe Music; Paul Schoenfield, composer; James Ahnes, violin; Edward Arron, cello; Andrew Russo, piano

It’s rare for a Marine to be standing where he or she stands without proper paperwork authorizing him or her to be standing where he or she stands. That’s why I found it a little unnerving for the Chief Warrant Officer to send me over to the White House one snowy December morning without a security list. A Marine, you may surmise, without a security list is a lost Marine, indeed.

This particular White House job had come to the attention of the Marine Band Operations office very early in the morning and they called me at zero-five-thirty. At ten-hundred hours, my driver chauffeured me over to the White House, and all the while there I couldn’t stop thinking, How am I going to talk my way into the White House? “What are you doing here without a security list, Marine?” The President needs me. “Nonsense! He’s been here for eight years and never needed you before!” But his piano isn’t getting played. “That’s no work for a Marine! Go back to the barracks and clean your gun, Jarhead!”

So, what really happened is this: As I was just about to show the security guard my military ID, he looked at me and asked, “You Apland?” Yes, sir. “Go on in.” Now, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

I really didn’t know what function I was playing for. Everything had happened so fast. I think I heard something about lunch. When I got to the head usher’s office, he asked, “What are you doing here?” Um, lunch? “Ohhhhhhh. Say. Well, you’re going to have something to talk about when you go home tonight.” Oh? “Wait here for about thirty minutes and I’ll take you upstairs.”

After about a half hour, the head usher escorted me up to the private residence … in the private elevator … and shepherded me over to the grand piano. Ten minutes later, President Clinton and President-Elect Bush galumphed through the atrium, bid me hello and sat down at a table in the next room to have Presidential lunch. It seems that I was there to protect my Commander in Chief and his successor from bad lunch music. And, may I say, I was victorious.

I have been all over the world and have seen it as the penultimate symbol of high class and status: live music while dining. A perk historically reserved only for kings and queens, high-appointed officials and parents of music students who practice at mealtime, the joy of munching, crunching and chomping to the lovely strains of “The Beautiful Blue Danube”, “Moonlight Serenade”, “Embraceable You”, “Feelings”, “Memory” from Cats, “Let’s Give Them Something To Talk About” and “Take This Job And Shove It” has descended from its lofty peaks and spilled over into much more common and mainstream venues like sidewalk cafes, country clubs, tea rooms and McDonald’s.

Murray’s Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge has been a part of the Minneapolis dining scene since 1946 and remains one of the few independently owned eating establishments of its kind in the Twin Cities. They have had, through the years, and still have, live music for dining. I’ve never visited this place, but they have piano and strings. Quaint, huh?

Composer Paul Schoenfield writes about his piece called “Café Music”:

"The idea to compose Café Music first came to me in 1985 after sitting in one night for the pianist at Murray’s Restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Murray’s employs a house trio which plays entertaining dinner music in a wide variety of styles. My intention was to write a kind of high-class dinner music – music which could be played at a restaurant, but might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall. The work draws on many of the types of music played by the trio at Murray’s … 20^th century American, Viennese, light classical, gypsy, and Broadway styles are all represented.”

I love this piece. And I’m going to play it some day.

By the way, President Clinton spilled something on his tie and had to tap into his necktie stash before heading back down to the office. President-Elect Bush remained tidy-tied during the whole experience. I got bread crumbs on my red coat during my lunch, which, I must tell you, occurred without any music ... and without any security list.

Credits: To Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, for “Moonlight Serenade”, “In The Mood” and “String Of Pearls”. Good stuff, fellas!

This is the thirty-sixth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Small Towns

2010-10-02T22:55:00.004-04:00

The Land Of Might-Have-Been; Jeremy Northam, vocal; Christopher Northam, piano

Tiny as it is, Bruce, South Dakota, has an American Legion Post. Dad belonged to this company of military veterans for many years. As long as I can remember, Dad held the office of post adjutant and took on the job of making telephone calls and sending out post cards to alert members of upcoming meetings and events. Dad’s friend, E., was treasurer of the organization. He and Dad worked well together, along with other officers, to make it a serviceable group. They gave out scholarships to students, organized weekly bingo, provided help for unfortunates, put together a Memorial Day program every May and did much, much more.

E. worked at the bank. Whenever Dad needed to discuss financial issues concerning the farm, he would drive into town and talk to E.

More than likely, at stome point, Dad and E. served time together on the council at Grace Lutheran Church. In addition to all of this, they shared an interest in guns and hunting.

I could tell you similar stories about my Mom and her involvement with the ladies organizations at church and with the American Legion Auxiliary. There’s an awful lot of crossover as far as memberships are concerned.

Oh, and by the way, to top it all off, as I have been told and reminded for almost forty-five years, most of the citizens of the town of Bruce are related to each other.

Community in Small Town America, as you can see, is a dense network of relationships. It’s not about if you know each other. It’s about the ways that you know each other.

In the big cities, you can create sudo-communities. You can put together bunches of people that have similar interests. For that matter, you can also ignore people that live in your general vicinity. I suppose it more resembles a club … than a functioning community. As human beings, we (mostly) have that “herd” mentality in common. There’s more efficiency in working together than in working alone. So, I don’t begrudge the tightly-knit circles of friends that form in thickly populated areas.

But if you want to experience a real community – where your place is not conditional upon race, vocation, politics, beliefs, religion, health, level of education, work ethic, abilities or opinions – just you and who you are, being a body amongst a few other bodies, offering who you are to, and what you can do for, the general needs of the collective – a willingness to coalesce a lattice of kinsmanship or kinswomanship amidst a microcosm of the world so far away – to belong if only because this is where you live – then park your laurels in a small town for a season. When population precludes quantity, the bonds of rapport, camaraderie, amity and friendship have sinews of steel.

You really have to pay attention for the first half hour of the motion picture “Gosford Park”. Director Robert Altman assembled a “dream” ensemble cast for an upstairs/downstairs-type murder mystery in which every member of the sixty-one member company is important. At the outset of the show, family and guests arrive at the English country home, Gosford Park, of Sir William McCordle. And they all bring their butlers, maids and chauffeurs. Your job, as a viewer, is to keep track of which butler, maid, or chauffeur downstairs belongs to which family member or guest upstairs. As you can imagine, the result is not very unlike the matrix of social and family connections in a small town.

The film takes place in the 1930’s. One of the characters in the movie is the British composer and actor Ivor Novello. His claim to fame is the writing of the World War I song “Keep The Home Fires Burning”. Several times during the picture, actor Jeremy Northam, as Ivor Novello, sits at the piano and performs several of Novello’s songs. But one stands out: “The Land Of Might-Have-Been”. Director Altman chose it for the movie’s closing scene where the cars are driving away from the mansion.

Somewhere there’s another land

Different from this world below,

Far more mercifully planned

Than the cruel place we know.

Innocence and peace are there –

All is good that is desired.

Faces there are always fair;

Love grows never old nor tired.

__________

Shall we ever find that lovely

Land of might-have-been?

Will I ever be your king

Or you at last my queen?

Days may pass and years may pass

And seas may lie between –

Shall we ever find that lovely

Land of might-have-been

Credits: To the citizens of Bruce, South Dakota, complete with faults and strengths, still, a community extraordinaire.

This is my normal Saturday individual track posting.

A grown-up movie

2010-10-01T23:58:00.005-04:00

Soundtrack to On Golden Pond; Dave Grusin, composer

I don’t like to swear. I don’t swear. Swear words have always made ugly sounds in my ears. I don’t even have to make a concerted effort not to swear. In fact, it would take a concerted effort to bring myself to form the swear words with my mouth. Know, for sure, friends, that if I swear in your presence … then I’m pretty damn mad.

I’m not entirely convinced that Mom and Dad knew what kind of movie they were dropping their fourteen- sixteen- and nineteen-year-old kids off to see when “On Golden Pond” came to town in 1981. I suppose the title is a bit disarming. In retrospect, the language in the movie really isn’t any worse than anything in the movie houses today. But back then, D. and I had never encountered a movie like this before, and we kind of giggled whenever a BS-bomb tickled our protected ears.

Still, it was enough that I felt kind of guilty for a few weeks; guilty that I had heard these words. Isn’t that weird? I swear, it’s true.

But I walked away from the movie having seen beautiful cinematography and heard a soundtrack to match. Dave Grusin brought a new sound, a new aspect to cinema underscore. It’s hip, it’s touching, it’s tender, it’s goldish, it’s pondish.

I bought the LP soundtrack a few years later. The LP includes dialogue from the movie. I’ve listened to it enough that I can do a fairly respectable impression of Katherine Hepburn. If you happen to remember when you next see me, ask me to conjur it up for you. It’ll be as much fun for me as it should be for you.

What made D. and me laugh the hardest?

Bill: Uh, are there any bears around here?

Norman: Oh, sure … Black bears, grizzlies. One came around last month and ate an old lesbian.

Credits: To Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda, two class acts at their finest.

This is the thirty-fifth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Favorite songs

2010-09-30T23:56:00.007-04:00

Mel And George Do World War II; Mel Torme, vocal; George Shearing, piano

One of my favorite times in music comes when somebody approaches me after a concert, or during a reception, and says, “I loved it when you played ______. My husband and I used to dance to that song.” Or, “That was my mother’s favorite song. You don’t hear it very much any more.” Or, “My father used to play that song on his clarinet late in the evening while my sisters and I would drift off to sleep.”

As much as I revel in the velvet tones of ever-so-smooth Mel Torme, I must confess that I favor that portion of “Mel and George Do World War II” where George Shearing plays a few numbers without Mr. Torme “backing him up”. I’ve never heard “I’ve Heard That Song Before” with more subtlety, class and elegance. The girl in the German song “Lili Marlene” never looked more glamorous, arresting and forlorn. But I heard the angels sing when Mr. Shearing serenaded me with “I Know Why And So Do You”.

I played this song at a reception following a concert a few years ago. It’s one of my top ten “first-call” songs when I provide a backdrop of music at the piano. Three days later at a rehearsal, a lovely woman came to the piano and asked, “How in the world do you happen to know the song ‘I Know Why And So Do You’? You’re way too young.” I heard it on a World War II album. “Thank you for playing it. It was my husband’s favorite song”.

The melody of the tune is out of this world. But, even better than the melody, are these words:

Why do robins sing in December

Long before the spring time is due

And even though it’s snowing,

Violets are growing

I know why and so do you

__________

Why do breezes sigh every evening

Whispering your name as they do

And why have I the feeling

Stars are on my ceiling

I know why and so do you

__________

When you smile at me

I hear gypsy violins

When you dance with me

I’m in heaven when the music begins

__________

I can see the sun when it’s raining

Hiding every cloud from my view

And why do I see rainbows

When you’re in my arms

I know why and so do you

THAT. Is a lyric, my friend. I would fall in love with anyone who could express themselves like that.

Credits: To George Shearing, jazz pianist extraordinaire. Fan: “Mr. Shearing, have you been blind your whole life?” Mr. Shearing: “Nope. Not yet.” Inspired!!!

This is the thirty-fourth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Food

2010-09-29T23:54:00.007-04:00

Four Parables ~ Vaudeville ~ Klezmer Rondo; Paul Schoenfield, composer; The New World Symphony; John Nelson, conducting; Jeffrey Kahane, piano

I would suppose that the first food that I learned to prepare by myself was cereal; Cap’n Crunch, Froot Loops, Quisp and Apple Jacks. And probably toast. I don’t remember the lessons. But I do remember when Mom taught me how to steam a hot dog. That’s all I ate for the next full week in an effort to perfect my technique. Scrambled eggs came soon after. Popcorn came on the heels of scrambled eggs and then rice.

Around the time that I turned nine years old, Mom saw a contraption at the local Coast to Coast store called a PrestoBurger. Put the ground beef on the hot part of the gadget, press the lid down on the beef and you had a perfectly round hamburger in about two minutes. Shortly after that, she bought the Presto FryBaby. We really lived high on the hog from then on. I mean, honest-to-God crinkle-cut french fries … just like at the restaurants.

Soon I learned how to make macaroni and cheese, molasses cookies, Shake-N-Bake, grilled cheese sandwiches and oyster stew. Of course, I didn’t need the talent to make any of these things while I was in college. But, when I went to CCM, I had to summon all of the cooking and baking competence that I had achieved up to that time. While I can’t boast of a wide variety of food that I kept in the kitchen of my apartment, I can tell of how I ate out only four times during the first three months of my post-collegiate matriculation.

The summer of 1995 found me between jobs. Dad had always told us kids, “If you need to come home for a while after college, your rooms will always be here. There’s plenty for you to do around here until you figure out what comes next.” So, I stacked bales, cultivated corn and hauled grain wagons for Dad during July and August.

I remember the first day … about an hour before noon. Dad said, “Son, why don’t you go inside and fix us something for lunch.” I complied. Whatever it was that I prepared, apparently, hit the spot because the same thing happened the next day. “Son, why don’t you go inside and fix us something to eat.” I tried different things; pancakes, french toast, pork chops, beef stew. A couple of times I rustled up some home-made soup.

Now, on a scale of one hundred miles, with a carnivore on one end and a vegetarian on the other, my plot on the scale is about ninety-nine miles away from the vegetarian. But, can you believe that during that summer, I found that one-mile degree difference between my father and me? One day I made home-made cream of vegetable soup for lunch. He tasted it and said, “Say, this is pretty good. Maybe next time you can find some meat to add to it.” Full-blooded carnivore. I suppose it’s asking a lot for a man with a herd of cattle to sustain a plate of food that didn’t give up an awful lot to make an appearance at his table.

While I was fixing lunch one day, I heard on public radio an incredible piece called “Four Parables” for piano and orchestra. Someone had suggested to the composer that he compose a piece based on stories from his life. The suggestion resulted in these “Parables”. The story associated with the last movement of this wonderfully creative work involved his neighbor’s children and the death of the family dog. He found the children crying near the curb one day upon his arrival at home. To console them, he cheered them up with the story of doggy heaven, where the streets are lined with bones and there’s a fire hydrant on every corner. And, so, the last movement of “Four Parables” is what he imagines a jazz bar would be like in “Doggy Heaven”. It’s kind of like if Igor Stravinsky wrote “Rhapsody In Blue”. Mark my words: I am going to learn this piece and play it with an orchestra some day. Just you wait.

On the issue of vegetables, let me relate what I heard a friend say: With regards to pizza, I prefer not to include vegetables. If it didn’t die a horrible, horrible death, I don’t want it on mypizza.

Credits: To the Quaker Oats Company, maker of Cap’n Crunch, “an important part of this nutritious breakfast”.

This is the thirty-third of my final forty-five CD’s.

Nickel Creek!

2010-09-28T23:51:00.004-04:00

This Side; Nickel Creek

I have held off for as long as I can. I’m frankly surprised that I could last three hundred fifty-one days before blurting out this inborn, personal truth: I LOVE LOVE LOVE Nickel Creek!

From their CD’s – the only way that I have encountered this group, by the way – I perceive a spiritual, artistic and musically virtuosic deftness … a youthful effervescence, an almost athletic exuberance that draws ebullience from a charged and bottomless well of animation, verve, fire and dash. And all of that without the assistance of a drummer.

I purchased this CD in 2002 shortly before my trek home for Christmas. And, while I certainly enjoyed it on the way to South Dakota, it was while I cruised around Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico to get back to San Antonio, Texas, after my Christmas break, that the inspired music on this CD carved a niche in my soul. As with other CD’s when I traveled around in other places, “This Side” provided a travelogue soundtrack as I drank in the raw, open and wild Southwest.

Credits: To Nickel Creek. Wow! Wow! All I can say is Wow!

This is the thirty-second of my final forty-five CD’s.

On the road to Cincinnati

2010-09-27T23:55:00.007-04:00

'Round Midnight; Nelson Riddle and his Orhestra; Linda Ronstadt, vocal

The word German word “bitte” means “please”. If you wanted to politely ask for a menu during your trip to Dusseldorf, you would say, “Ein Speisekarte, bitte.” It’s a very nice word. The Germans also use the word in the same way that we Americans say, “what?” or “huh?” or “I beg your pardon?” or “What’s that you say?” or “Could you repeat that?” or “I’m sorry?”.

Cincinnati is a German town. Her first mayor, David Ziegler, a veteran from the Revolutionary War, came from Heidelberg. Her Oktoberfest is the largest in the U.S. and she finds a sister city in Munich.

It is common to find native Cincinnatians whose vernacular allows them to use the English translation for the word “bitte” when they ask for people to repeat a statement, saying, “Please?” if the speaker’s words became lost in the wind.

I didn’t know that when I came rolling into town in August of 1988. Dad had bought me a car for three hundred dollars from D. who lived just down the road. “Would you drive it a thousand miles to get to Ohio?”, Dad asked. “Yup,” said D. “I’d change the oil first.” That was good enough for Dad. I had spent some time with family in the Twin Cities and then headed on down the road, bound for the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

I pulled into town right at noon. So, I stopped at the Wendy’s Hamburgers drive-thru. The following exchange took place.

Wendy’s Employee (WE): Welcome to Wendy’s. Can I take your order?

Me: Yes. I’ll take a bacon double cheeseburger with no ketchup, a large fries and a medium coke.

WE: Please?

Me: ….. Okay, I’ll play your silly little game. I’ll take a bacon double cheeseburger with no ketchup, a large fries and medium coke, PLEASE!

The poor little waif that took my money at the window had nothing but scowls for me. And I had no way of knowing why … until about three weeks later when one of my professors happened to mention the regional idiosyncracy during class. Have you ever experienced delayed embarrassment? I have. I did. I think I turned beet red just sitting in class and reliving my encounter with the Wendy woman.

All the way across Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, I listened to my dual cassette ghetto blaster. No CD’s, yet. Just cassette tapes. The one I listened to the most on my way to Ohio was Linda Ronstadt’s jazz album trilogy “What’s New?”, “Lush Life” and “For Sentimental Reasons”. All of the songs were arranged by Nelson Riddle. He passed away shortly after these albums. His last chart was for the tune “Goodbye”.

Credits: To D., for selling me a car.

This is the thirty-first of my final forty-five CD’s.

Uncle Paul and Aunt Vi

2010-09-26T23:51:00.005-04:00

Give Me Jesus ~ Spirituals; The Moses Hogan Singers; Barbara Hendricks, soprano

Every once in a while, on the way home from church, Dad would say, “When we get home, I’m gonna feed the cows, let’s have a quick bite to eat … and then let’s go visit Uncle Paul and Aunt Vi.” Typically, whenever Dad made that announcement, there was a celebration of jubilee in the back seat. My sisters and I spent some of the best Sunday summer afternoons of our lives at the home of our Uncle Paul and Aunt Vi. What about our favorite great aunt and uncle captivated us? To be sure, lots of things.

Number one: a cuckoo clock. We didn’t know anybody else who had one. Parents, take note. Few things will quiet the children more than the anticipation of an impending cuckoo.

Number two: a windmill. When we turned south of the main highway that came west out of Oldham, South Dakota, we could see an old windmill that appeared on the horizon right after a rise in the gravel road. It amused all of us to no end because it looked like it stood right in the middle of the road, and that, were we to drive a little further than Uncle Paul and Aunt Vi’s farm, we would have to drive around it.

Number three: a magnificent backyard. Our aunt and uncle had thinned out the trees in the backyard just enough to provide a canopy from the hot rays of the sun. They had a huge stone chimney barbeque grill right in the middle of it all.

Number four: the coolest barn ever. We had a barn on our own farm, of course, and many hours of good times were had there by my sisters and me. But Uncle Paul’s barn had a haymow full of fresh hay and a Tarzan vine from which to plunge into the heaps of dried grass and alfalfa. If you have a mother, it is best not to tell her how much fun you can have in a barn until you are thirty-seven.

Number five: a reel-to-reel tape player. We listened to a seemingly endless barrage of stories from Bill Cosby one evening.

Number six: five hundred photo albums. We would sit in chairs and pour for hours over pictures of families, trips, graduations, baptisms and weddings. My sisters and I learned a lot about our family history by looking at those photo albums and listening to Uncle Paul and Aunt Vi tell stories.

Number seven: lunch. Aunt Vi must have had a section of the refrigerator set aside for when our family came over. She could lay out such a spread – usually involving cookies and pumpkin bread.

I could also tell you about a motorcycle, a spookhouse in the barn, a vegetable garden in last year’s cowyard, family picnics, new tractors and a bank of toys. Uncle Paul had that zest for life and story-telling that characterized the wagon load of Aplands that drove up to South Dakota out of Iowa one summer in the late 1800’s. He found a woman who matched his ardor, ounce for passionate ounce. And, together, they passed on their joie de vivre to three sons; who have also done the same.

In the fall of 1995, Dr. C. told me, “Erik, you have to come up and listen to my choir sing ‘Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho.” Ah, the old chestnut. “Oh, no. I have the new arrangement by Moses Hogan.” Moses Hogan. Moses Hogan. Moses Hogan. Where have I heard that name before? “I don’t know, but the brother can arrange a spiritual, I can tell you dat.” Moses Hogan. Moses Ho…

Ah, HA!! Yes!! I remember!! Moses Hogan was the pianist who played Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky piano concertos with the Minnesota Pops Orchestra under Mitch Miller at Orchestra Hall so many years before; the night that I knew that I wanted to be a professional musician. After hearing how Mr. Hogan had transformed this traditional spiritual into a heated sermon, I knew that I needed more.

In January of 2003, I received the news that Uncle Paul had passed. I couldn’t go to the funeral. So I did the next best thing. I dug through my CD’s, searching for solace amongst the spirituals sung by the Moses Hogan Singers and soprano Barbara Hendricks. After finding it, I commissioned them to bear me up in light of this segment of childhood that had slipped away. They failed me only once – when they sang that ….

There’s a man going round taking names.

He has taken my father’s name,

And he’s left my heart in pain.

There’s a man going round taking names.

__________

Death is that man taking names.

He has taken my mother’s name,

And he’s left my heart in pain

Death is that man taking names.

__________

There’s a man going round taking names.

He has taken my brother’s name,

And he’s left my heart in pain.

There’s a man going round taking names.

I listened to this album twice within a month. The second time I heard it was upon the death of Moses Hogan, himself. He died on February 11, 2003, at the age of forty-five of a brain tumor. Within a month, two stalwart men,my favorite uncle and the man who awoke the inspiration for a musical career, entered the heavenly farm and concert hall of the Lord. These were “growing-up” moments.

Credits: To my great-grandfather Elias Apland, for moving to South Dakota. I hope you were as happy to move there as I was to grow up there.

This is the thirtieth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Thank you

2010-09-25T23:32:00.004-04:00

Danke Schoen; Wayne Newton

In the spring of 1979, the music teacher for kindergarten through eighth grade at Sioux Valley Schools had the elementary school students perform a program of music through the decades with the first-graders singing a couple songs from the 1910’s, second graders singing songs from the 1920’s, and so on. When she got to programming music for the 1950’s, she decided that she wanted some bass and drums added to the piano. She also wanted to free herself up from the piano. She asked me to play the piano for the fifth and sixth grade classes. She also asked my friends John, who played bass, and Troy, who played drums, to play as well. Guess what. We were a huge hit. Guess what also what. We were terrible. But it didn’t matter. We were fourteen and fifteen years old. We made chord coordinated noise while somebody banged on a drum. That’s all you need at that age.

I always looked up to John. He was one of those “bigger than life” characters that all of us meet on the highway of life. He was more than the class clown. He was more than a show-off. He had pizzazz. He had panache. He had moxie, razzle, dazzle and zeal. He’s the only person I’ve ever met whose comedic and social shenanigans operated under a consistently full measure of serendipity and je nais sais quoi.

When I saw the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, I didn’t see Matthew Broderick on the screen. I saw my friend John. Like Ferris, John did funny things. Like Ferris, John said funny things. Like Ferris, John invented his own fast lane, and made it his own private drive.

Of course, the high point of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is when Mr. Bueller jumps on the float in the parade and lip synchs to Wayne Newton’s “Danke Schoen” and then “Twist And Shout”. I don’t know if John would have been in possession of the wherewithal of hipness to know the words to “Danke Schoen”. But he might have known the lyrics to “Twist And Shout”.

In 1999, the lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., - called the Pageant of Peace – featured classical soprano Renee Fleming, country and bluegrass artist Marty Stuart and … you guessed it … your friend and mine … Mr. Las Vegas, his own ‘sef … Wayne Newton. “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band had been chosen to be the “house” band that year. And I had been chosen to be in the “house” band. We rehearsed with the musical guests on the day before the pageant at the Marine barracks. Wayne Newton, along with all of the other musical talent, was there to rehearse his numbers, was very personable, and took the time to talk with anyone who wanted to strike up a conversation with him. He wasn’t asked to sing “Danke Schoen”, for which he said “Thank you.”

Credits: To Wayne Newton, for warming hearts with your music and for his work with the USO. You’re a good man, Newt. And to John. I, to this day, revel in your impulsive, impromptu and expeditious nature.

Only three months until Christmas. Stores are open until ten o’clock after Thanksgiving.

This is my normal Saturday individual track posting.

Shakespeare under the stars

2010-09-24T23:54:00.005-04:00

Scenes from Shakespeare; William Walton, composer; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; Sir Neville Marriner, conducting; Sir John Gielgud, actor; Christopher Plummer, actor

My first exposure to William Shakespeare, post-high school, occurred during the summer of 1987 when I worked at the Grand Lake Lodge at Grand Lake, Colorado. Six of us employees, one day, realized that we had the same night off. “Who wants to take a trip to Boulder?” Well, that sounds like fun. Okay. Count me in.

As soon as we got into town, we started looking for something to do in the evening. One of my friends said, “Hey, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival is going on and they’re doing a production of ‘The Tempest’ tonight. How does that sound to everybody?” “Yeah.” “Yeah.” “Yeah.” “Yeah.” Really? Hmmm. That’s what you want to do tonight? Well. I guess so. Let’s get tickets.

This production of “The Tempest” took place outdoors and not one cloud blotted out the stars. We sat in comfortable chairs in the throes of a cool summer evening breeze. I figured the weather would be the best part of the evening. Wrong.

I never imagined that I would get turned on by the acting out of a play by William Shakespeare. And, yet, I sat there amidst all the elements of an idyllic Colorado alfresco experience … and hardly noticed them … nor the time that went by. When Prospero, shorn of his powers, invited the audience to set him free from the island with their applause, I steadfastly refused. I wanted more. Right now. More.

I found out later that the Colorado Shakespeare Festival is one of the three finest of its kind in the country. And I don’t doubt it. To turn an unbeliever into a believer within the confines of a couple of hours is a rare feat. I would like some day to go back.

When Lawrence Olivier directed his Shakespearean “Trilogy” for the cinema – Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III – he called on one of his fellow countrymen, British composer Sir William Walton, to provide the soundtrack. The music for each film speaks of regality, bravery, heart and hope.

The music for these films has been put into suite form. When Neville Marriner decided to record this music, he asked Shakespearean actors Christopher Plummer and John Gielgud to recite specific soliloquies between the suite selections. William Shakespeare, William Walton, Christopher Plummber, John Gielgud, Neville Marriner – noble Englishmen all. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Credits: To Laurence Olivier, for excellence in Shakespeare interpretation. Chris, Johnny – you’re pretty good, too. Bravo.

This is the twenty-ninth of my final forty-five CD's.

Another guitar album

2010-09-23T23:55:00.009-04:00

Let It Fall; Sean Watkins, guitar

When I listen to some of my instrumental jazz and pop CD’s, I tend to consider them as a whole. It usually happens when I don’t know any of the tunes that the artists choose to play. If I should chance to listen to an Oscar Peterson album where he features music by Master George Gershwin, then I will, typically, mentally compartmentalize each tune on the recording because I know so much of the music of Mr. Gershwin. I can compare his interpretation to one by other artists … not from a standpoint that one is any better than another … but from a perspective that the differences in style therein are absolutely valid and can be celebrated.

When I listen to Sean Watkins’ 2001 CD “Let It Fall”, I hear a complete work. I don’t sit in a chair and listen to the recording with the set list in front of me. Since they are instrumental and I’ve never heard them before, the titles don’t really mean that much to me. But the music does. And I like to listen to how each tune connects to the next. I suppose you could conjecture that I listen to the music in the same way that I would listen to a symphony.

Beethoven didn’t construct a symphony by pasting together a bunch of pretty tunes. In his head, each movement related to each other. In a similar fashion, I have to believe that Mr. Watkins had a iron-clad conception of how his tunes – all of the tunes, except one, on this album, by the way, came from the pen of Sean Watkins – would fit together on this album.

I’m not saying that this is the “right” way to listen to an album. It is, however, the way that I listen to instrumental jazz recordings.

There is one exception: the title song, “Let It Fall”. It has words and, in my mind, stands separate from the others. It’s a beautiful song. They say that Mr. Watkins wrote this song with a specific singer … a famous singer … in mind. And when it came time to record the song, he went to the famous singer and asked him if he would. I have to say that it takes a special kind of fiber, determination and pluck to ask a recognized musical artist to come and sing a song on your album. But that’s what happened.

Glen Phillips played guitar, sang vocals and wrote songs with and for the alternative rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket. When Sean approached Mr. Phillips with the song, he tried it and liked it. It takes the number two position on the album “Let It Fall”.

My kingdom’s walls have fallen down

But I know that

I don’t wear an undeserved crown

And though it seemed to fit me well

Underneath it

I would certainly fall down

__________

Last summer we left things unsaid

That should be now a long time dead

And now it seems that time has put it well

The words can chase away a friend

But to a lie they’ll bring an end

And Throw it down the darkest, deepest well

__________

Let it fall

Let go.

I found this album at Rock’n Rudy’s in Missoula, Montana, during the Christmas of 2001. I like the orange color on the front of the case. It reminds me of when I came back to my sister’s apartment after purchasing the CD. Mom and my sister K. had been feeding my nephew N. carrots one right after the other. His face was completely orange.

Credits: To Glen Phillips, for a wonderful singing voice and for choosing a great name for a band. Toad The Wet Sprocket. Wow!

This is the twenty-eighth of my final forty-five CD's.

A Chance Meeting

2010-09-22T23:56:00.005-04:00

Take 6; Take 6

In 2001, President George W. Bush extended invitations to several African-American musicians to help celebrate “Black Music Month” with an afternoon gala at the White House on June 30. In attendance were Shirley Caesar, the Blind Boys of Alabama, James Brown, the Harlem Jazz Museum Artists and Lionel Hampton. The acapella vocal Gospel ensemble Take 6 and Jazz/Gospel artist Regina Belle entertained the capacity crowd.

The White House had requested a pianist from “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band to play the grand Steinway for the guests as they came up the stairs, through the entrance and cross hall, and into the East Room for the occasion. The Marine Band volunteered me.

It was a Friday afternoon and President Bush had business up at Camp David over the weekend. After the hour-long celebration in the East Room, the President invited all of the guests to approach the south windows to watch him and Mrs. Bush take off on Marine One. Since the function had concluded, the head usher asked me to begin playing the piano. All of the guests, however, remained at the windows to watch the President’s helicopter take off. All of them except one.

While I was playing the piano, here came this short energetic man around the corner, heading for the stairs. I thought to myself, There’s only one man in the world with a coif like that. And for just a few seconds, two universes collided. The “hardest working man in show business” and the straight-laced, corn-fed, All-American, Midwestern, Marine Band piano player had an encounter.

James Brown, with his smile setting at Dazzle Thirty-Seven, he looked at me and something like “You … {unintelligible} … piano … {again, unintelligible} … good!” I smiled right back at him and said, Thank you, Mr. Brown. He responded with, “Hyeah!” And he went out the front door like he owned the place.

I heard the great and powerful music of Take 6 that day, a group I have adored for over fifteen years. They have a unique sound. When I left the barracks that day for the White House, I knew that they would be there and I was excited. They didn’t disappoint. But their visit was eclipsed by a chance meeting with James Brown.

Credits: To Lionel Hampton, one of the greatest vibes players ever. I’m glad I got to see you, sir. Well done.

This is the twenty-seventh of my final forty-five CD’s.

John Williams

2010-09-21T23:38:00.005-04:00

By Request ... The Best of John Williams and the Boston Pops; Boston Pops Orchestra; John Williams, conducting; John Williams, composer

Friends, this is probably the easiest entry that I have.

John Williams.

I have nothing else to say.

Credits: To John Williams. I still have nothing else to say.

This is the twenty-sixth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Beautiful Islands and lost music

2010-09-20T23:33:00.006-04:00

Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini; Sergei Rachmaninov, composer; Piano Concerto No. 1; Dimitri Shostakovich, composer; Paganini Variations; Witold Lutoslawski, composer; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Vladimir Ashkenazy, conducting; Peter Jablonski, piano

My sister K. once told me a story about an Independence Day parade in a small Minnesota town. It seems that in the late evening hours that lead into the day of the parade, some shameless, knife-brandishing rascals slinked surreptitiously through town and slashed all of the tires on all of the floats that the fine Minnesota citizens of said town had decorated for their parade. Refusing to succumb to the general ill-will, malignity and rancor of these miserable, dispiriting scamps, the parade committee decided to continue with their plans for the parade, having each of the entries –flat-tired floats, marching bands, horse troops, boy scouts, girl scouts, drill teams, corvette clubs, fire trucks, Masons, service clubs and pooper scoopers – line up in parade order. At the time the parade was to start, they asked the parade-watching public to, please, make their way along the parade route … in a type of “un”-parade … so that everyone could see the floats, in addition to all of the other entries.

This scene played through my mind in 1991 and 1993 each time the Crown Odyssey negotiated her way through the parade of islands that line the shipping lanes through Sweden’s archipelago east of Stockholm. For almost three hours, either preceding an entrance to, or after a departure from, the beautiful harbor of Stockholm, I was witness to oasis after oasis; tiny bits of land, big enough for a house, a yard, a dock and a boat; completely surrounded by water. Truthfully, this was one of the quaintest marriages of land- and sea-scape that I ever saw during my time on the high seas.

I found a fantastic CD shop in the busiest part of downtown Stockholm. When I entered the store, I heard the majestic eighteenth variation from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, bringing me to the realization that I didn’t have a recording of this great work. When I approached the register, I saw the recording that was being fed into the shop’s sound system. Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski had recorded, not only the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, but also the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Dmitiri Shostakovich and the “Paganini Variations” by Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski.

Composers have been haunted by the twenty-fourth caprice of Nicolo Paganini’s Twenty-Four Caprices for Solo Violin before the ink was even dry on the parchment. Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and Mr. Rachmaninoff are just a few who have found inspiration in the Italian’s virtuosic show piece.

During World War II, Witold Lutoslawski formed a piano duo with fellow pianist and composer Andrzej Panufnik, and for this ensemble Mr. Lutoslawski had written some two-hundred arrangements, of which “Paganini Variations” was the most famous. A few days before the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, Lutoslawski and his mother left Warsaw, taking with him just a few scores, sketches and … the “Paganini Variations”. None of the rest of his compositions survived the destruction of the city.

“Paganini Variations” has become one of the most popular compositions in the two-piano repertoire. Based on Franz Liszt’s version of the variations, Mr. Lutoslawski’s take on the Caprice lasts about eight minutes. In 1978, a concert pianist, I don’t remember who, approached the Polish composer and asked if he would orchestrate the piece for piano and orchestra. The result is a brilliant lesson in orchestration. He didn’t orchestrate just one piano part; he orchestrated both. So that each variation would be played twice back to back; once with the piano playing the part of piano one and the orchestra playing the part of piano two, and then again with each entity switching parts. It is one of the most glorious ten minutes of music on my iPod.

The joy of seeing these two pieces, with a single melody in common, bookend this album was enough for me. But, wait, there’s more. Peter Jablonski is a pianist for the ages. I hear brilliance, excitement and sensitivity in his playing. Rhythmically, he is as solid a player as I’ve ever heard. Let me tell you why. When he was seven years old, he was named the best jazz drummer in Sweden.

Credits: To Witold Lutoslawski, an outstanding composer. Two-hundred two piano arrangements – lost. That’s rough, pal. We are so thankful for your variations. Bravo.

This is the twenty-fifth of my final forty-five CD's.

My friend Larry

2010-09-19T23:57:00.006-04:00

From Paris To Rio; Karrin Allyson, piano, vocal

Larry Skinner was one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever met and with whom I’ve ever had the opportunity to play music. When I started working on the Delta Queen steamboat in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the January of 1997, Larry was the trumpet player and leader of the “Riverboat Five” Dixieland band on board. He was an instant friend; not only of mine, but of virtually anyone he met. The way he interacted with the staff and, most importantly, the passengers endeared him to me and my fellow band members.

His abilities with Dixieland and jazz were matched by skills in classical music. It is rare, in the realm of jazz, to find a trumpet player who could play the lead trumpet book in a jazz band, and then take the second chair solo position. Larry accomplished this with ease.

My favorite time of the week on the boat came on Sunday. The staff would get together to lead a church service. Larry always attended the service and played special music with me toward the end of worship, right before the benediction.

After leaving the Delta Queen at the end of 1998 to begin my four-year stint in “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, I heard from him periodically. He would be in port somewhere and take the time to call me. It meant a lot to me.

The last time that I talked to him, he was excited about a singer whose most recent CD he had purchased just a few days before. Her name was Karrin Allyson. He made me promise that I would go to the CD store … that day … to pick up my own copy.

“From Paris to Rio” has wonderful songs that Ms. Allyson sings in English, French and Portuguese. I have three favorites: the opening song, “Sous Le Ciel de Paris”, “That Day” from the film “Cinema Paradiso” and the one that Larry liked called “O Pato”, or, in English, “The Duck”.

Larry passed away in 2000 from complications after a stroke. I miss him dearly. But I get to think of him whenever I listen to “The Duck”.

Credits: To Larry Skinner. An excellent musician and a first class friend.

This is the twenty-fourth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Talent contest

2010-09-18T14:16:00.006-04:00

Taylor the Latte Boy; Kristin Chenoweth, vocal

When I was in the sixth grade, Mom entered me into a talent contest in Brookings. It was associated with the Snow Queen contest.

Now, allow me to say right here, so as to nip in the bud, right here, right now, any jokes that you are forming … and you are … concerning me and the Snow Queen contest. I was not entered in the Snow Queen contest. Do you understand? I was entered in the talent contest. The Snow Queen contest was a qualifier for young women to participate in the Miss South Dakota contest. If a young woman won the local Snow Queen contest, she got to participate in the State Snow Queen contest. And that’s really all I know … and all I want to know about the Snow Queen contest.

Well, I won the talent contest. That meant that I went on to compete in the state talent contest at the … aforementioned … {ahem} … Snow Queen contest. Well, guess what. I won the state contest!! I came home with a trophy; the only trophy I’ve ever picked up. And I still have it.

Mom had actually entered me in the same talent contest the year before. The local coordinators had set up a junior division and a senior division in the talent contest. I won the junior division, but the winners of the senior division were given the opportunity to go to the state contest.

It was blizzard conditions during that first contest. We had talked about stopping for a bite to eat at evening’s end. But Dad said, “Let’s get home.” It’s a good thing that we did, too, because, after we got home, the blizzard turned itself up to eleven and socked us in for five days.

Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” on National Public Radio has the atmosphere of a talent or variety show. It harkens back to the brief but brilliant Stan Freberg Show from 1957 when the crafty host would feature acrobats, jugglers and skating penguins on his radio show. Mr. Keillor has a virtual encyclopedia of sound effects (in the form of soundman Tim Russell) to create the acoustic atmosphere suitable for his skits, poems and stories.

When Mr. Keillor brings musical talent on board, I would guess that he encourages material that would respond well to both a live and a radio audience. And it is under these circumstances that I once heard the refreshing soprano Kristin Chenoweth since a campy little song called “Taylor, the Latte Boy”. With her classically trained, yet child-like, voice, she plays the part of a young, grown-up seventeen-year-old who stops to get her double latte from the boy who works at Starbucks.

So today at 8:11 when he smiled and said, “How are you?”

I said, “Fine, and my name’s Kristin”

And he softly answered, “Hey.”

And I said, “My name is Kristen, and thank you for the extra … foam …”

And he said his name was Taylor,

Which provides the inspiration for this … poem …

Rhyming “foam” with “poem”. Brilliant. It reminds me of the song “Old Joe’s Place” by the Folkmen when they sang:

There’s a puppy in the parlor

And a skillet on the stove

And a smelly old blanket

That a Navajo wove

Now, that’s inspired.

Credits: To Tim Russell, a latter day Jonathan Winters. I remember you from WCCO radio in Minneapolis. I love your Julia Child impression.

This is my normal Saturday individual track posting.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

2010-09-17T17:58:00.005-04:00

Violin Concertos; Samuel Barber, composer; William Walton, composer; Baal Shem; Ernest Bloch, composer; Blatimore Symphony Orchestra; David Zinman, conducting; Joshua Bell, violin

An old Jewish legend has it that, when God permitted the waters of the Red Sea to return upon the Egyptian army as it attempted to follow the exodus of the Jews out of Egypt, the angels rejoiced, singing and praising God. But, as the legend continues, God stops them during their celebration. “Can’t you see,” He asks, “that some of my Egyptian children are drowning?!?”

Every year, during the season of Lent, Passover and Easter, I seem to encounter those folk who choose to “remind” me that I, as a Christian, blame the Jews for the death of Jesus Christ. If I ever had the opportunity to respond to that “reminder”, I would say that I don’t blame the Jews for any such thing. Christ’s death occurred at the hands of some people who happened to be Jewish, and were responding to the ministry of Christ in a way that they thought was right. I can hardly blame an entire Jewish nation, and world-wide community, for an incident that occurred under very specific circumstances almost two thousand years ago.

Lent and Easter is also when I come to grips with one of the greatest ironies of ironies. I worship and honor my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ … who was Jewish. I’m not Jewish. And, yet, I devote my life to the veneration and exaltation of one who, when He walked this earth, lived the Jewish life. If I follow His teachings, though, I’m not Jewish.

I view that season of the year as a little divisive. Not a lot; just a little. Thankfully, on the other side of the year, the High Holy Days … Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur … occur. Why, you may ask, do I say “thankfully”?

This year, for the fourth time, I sit at the keyboard, at the Temple Beth Shalom to provide service music, along with members of the Annapolis Chamber Chorus, for their congregation on the holiest days of the Jewish year. For me, it is a place, a figurative place, where I, and other Christians, can meet the people of the Jewish faith. They have a need, and we are able to fulfill it. Nothing is said about differences. The differences are not what the High Holy Days are about. Not for them; not for us. It’s about caring. It’s about community. It’s about giving, imparting and offering.

Jewish composer Ernest Bloch was born in 1880 of Jewish-Swiss parents. He found his way to the United States by accepting an invitation to conduct the Maude Allen Dance Troupe on an extended tour through the US. Upon their arrival, however, they discovered that the troupe was bankrupt! Rather than consider himself stranded, he decided to stay in the US, becoming a professor at Mannes School of Music, and eventually becoming the Director of the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Mr. Bloch said, “It is the Jewish soul that interests me … it is the better part of me. It is this which I endeavor to transcribe in my music; the venerable soul of (our) race.” From this fire came “Hebrew Meditation”, “From Jewish Life” and “Nigun”.

Joshua Bell included a powerful three-movement work by Ernest Bloch entitled “Baal Shem – Three Pictures of Chasidic Life” on his 1997 album that featured Violin Concertos by Samuel Barber and William Walton. I bought the album for the Barber Violin Concerto. It’s fantastic. So is “Baal Shem”.

Credits: To Ernest Bloch, for staying in the United States. Like he had a choice. We’re glad you stayed anyway. Beautiful music. Shalom.

This is the twenty-third of my final forty-five CD's.

Cartoons and Superman

2010-09-16T21:51:00.005-04:00

Inside Wants Out; John Mayer, guitar, vocal

Whoever invented the concept of Saturday morning cartoons knew my, and my generation’s, prepubescent profile implicitly. You couldn’t drag my age group away from the TV on Saturday mornings. In the days before Saturday morning soccer, ballet, baseball, music lessons and art classes, executives at the major TV networks figured out that a very specific viewing audience had more time than anyone else to watch television before "The Wide, Wide, World of" football, baseball, basketball and golf. And that audience was me and my friends.

I couldn’t get enough Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear, Captain Caveman, Speed Buggy, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, The Pink Panther, “Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle” and “Help!...It’s the Hair-Bear Bunch!”. So many other shows were intermingled with all of these classics and I had the whole morning’s schedule memorized. I knew when to change the channel for what show and when I had time to take a shower.

Bugs Bunny was my all-time favorite. I also liked Superfriends and the League of Justice with Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and those stupid Wonder Twins.

In 1974, a live-action show debuted on the Saturday morning line-up called “Shazam!”. When someone cried for help, young Billy Batson would yell, “Shazam!”, lightning would strike him, and he’d turn into DC Comics’ superhero Captain Marvel. For a long time, I thought it was Captain Marble. But somebody turned me around on that. It was kind of like Superman, but there didn’t seem to be any really cool villains like Lex Luthor or the Penguin.

To this day, I’ve never had the opportunity to watch any episodes from the old “Adventures of Superman” series that ran in the 1950’s. All I knew about Superman was what I saw on Saturday morning. But when I saw a trailer for the 1978 movie “Superman” and was told that I would “believe a man can fly!”, I had to go. And I did. And I was impressed. I didn’t go running around the house afterward, with an “S” plastered onto my chest, and a blue cape behind my neck. No, sir, not with two sisters in the vicinity.

In the movie, they jumped fairly quickly from three-year-old Clark Kent’s ship landing on earth to teenage Clark Kent running home from school. And shortly after that, to his interview at “The Daily Planet” and Metropolis. I always wondered, How do you raise a superhero?

In 2001, when the W.B. station announced a show called “Smallville” that told of the early years of Clark Kent, I thought, Aha! Very clever! Television had once more read my profile and provided for my needs. Good for you, TV. Always looking out for your friend from so long ago. Thank you.

The production team of Smallville, from the beginning, adopted a process where, in addition to musical underscore, each episode would have its own soundtrack, comprising one or more songs by musical bands. Toward the end of the first season of “Smallville”, a song caught my ear on “Obscura”, the second to last episode.

“Welcome to the real world”, she said to me

Condescendingly

"Take a seat

Take your life

Plot it out in black and white"

__________

Well, I never lived the dreams of the prom kings

And the drama queens

I’d like to think the best of me

Is still hiding up my sleeve

__________

They love to tell you

“Stay inside the lines”

But something’s better

On the other side

The soundtrack for that episode had included John Mayer’s song “No Such Thing” from his album “Room For Squares”. And it was like John Mayer was reading my profile.

My talents, and the way that they “operate” the goings-on in my life, don’t conform to orthodoxy. The varying things that I can do actually prevent me from being “pigeon-holed”. Some may think that they have me figured out … pigeon-holed … and then they find out that I can do something else … and something else … and then something else.

I haven’t, yet, at the tender age of forty-four years and eleven months, figured out what my lasting contribution will be to our planet and its human race. Maybe it’s been done. I hope not. I have this glimmering hunch, this hopeful sense, this foggiest, this faintest, this sometimes overwhelming suggestion that … the best of me is still hiding up my sleeve.

I can be impulsive. When I heard this song toward the end of that episode of “Smallville”, I drove straight to Tower Records to find the album that featured it. “Room For Squares” sat on the shelf next to another John Mayer album called “Inside Wants Out”. The latter was the recording he made before garnering a Sony contract. At the time, he didn’t have his own band. There were other instruments included on some of the tracks. But mostly, it was just him and his guitar. And I was utterly knocked out by the quantity and quality of music that emanated from the body and accessory of one guy – just one guy. To me, a bass, a drum, a saxophone … even a piano … would have been a distraction.

John Mayer is a major pop artist now and still writes excellent songs, despite fame and fortune. The last part of his song “No Such Thing” he wrote for himself.

I just can’t wait till my ten year reunion

I’m gonna bust down the double doors

And when I stand on these tables before you

You will know what all this time was for

Credits: To Christopher Reeve, for a complete life, regardless of its brevity. “Noises Off” was good. “Superman” was great.

This is the twenty-second of my final forty-five CD's.

A world class concert career

2010-09-15T23:57:00.007-04:00

Poeme; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Andrew Litton, conducting; Joshua Bell, violin

If you’ve been hanging around my blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed the number of CD’s in my collection that feature Joshua Bell. I certainly have many of his recordings. He is a master of the violin and internationally renowned for his impeccable musicianship.

I follow his career with interest for two reasons. First of all, he comes from my generation. Although, I think that I have the advantage over him by about two years.

Let me say that I thank God everyday for the level of musicianship and technical pianistic facility that He has left in my care. Yes, as I always say, all humility intact, piano-playing comes pretty easy for me; not that I don’t work at it. I do. I really do. But there’s a shameful side, that I typically keep to myself, that wishes “for a little more”. Isn’t that selfish? If the musical aptitude could have been just – a – little – bit – bigger – well, maybe I could have had that world-tramping concert career that every classical musician pines for when they’re young.

So, in a sense, there’s a quiet part of me that lives vicariously through the musical life of someone my own age: Joshua Bell, violinist.

I also follow this young musician’s career because he is one of the few musicians who was able to break out of that “child prodigy” mold, becoming a serious, adult, concert artist. So many of his recordings, made when he was in his teens, have this handsome high school student on the cover … and it’s hard to make that connection between the virtuoso playing and that dimpled grin holding a fiddle.

With “Poeme”, recorded in 1992, he leaped out of that adolescent template, grabbed a hold of his public and made them see a grown man who has artistic integrity, a passion for music that has matured way beyond what anyone could ask of a “high school kid” and an ability to draw the enthusiasm, zeal and fervency out of an audience. Every CD since has stood on the shoulders of the one before it.

Mr. Bell is a talented artist who will always hold my attention and represent that which I will forever hope that I had.

Credits: To Mr. Joshua Bell, for finding his way out of adolescence to the world’s concert stages. Bravo.

This is the twenty-first of my final forty-five CD’s.

Honors and Tributes

2010-09-14T23:56:00.003-04:00

Tribute; The Keith Jarrett Trio

I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that when they close the book on TV and all of us move on to – whatever it will be that surpasses TV – critics and enthusiasts will agree that some of the best television EVER came from Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show”.

I don’t ever remember Mom or Dad having to tell us kids that it was time for bed. It seems to me that my sisters and I voluntarily hit the hay when exhaustion came home to roost. But, now and then, I allowed myself the opportunity to indulge in the sophisticated, interesting and witty banter between the Hollywood set and Mr. Carson behind his desk. It was the good old days. Naturally funny people brought funny stories to tell. Everybody was friends with everyone else and, to my eyes and ears, sincerity and innocence prevailed simultaneously

One time, when Don Rickles was guest hosting the show, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and John Wayne all walked out onto the stage together, right in the middle of Mr. Rickles’ monologue, apparently without his knowledge that it was about to happen. Four huge stars in one place, and no battle of egos (egi?) to mar the interaction. Just good clean fun.

Back in the day when Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, The Smothers Brothers, Flip Wilson, Andy Williams and many others had their own show on TV, they would honor other musicians or actors by having them as guests on their show. They don’t have those kind of shows anymore. I haven’t even seen a Christmas special for years.

So how do stars, Hollywood or musical, honor each other anymore? About eighteen years ago, Tony Bennett released an album called “Perfectly Frank” as a tribute to Frank Sinatra. The group called The King’s Singers put out an album that honors the Beach Boys. Mel Torme honored Bing Crosby with an album entirely devoted to the elder crooner’s songbook.

I’m not really a fan of Keith Jarrett. He is a fine pianist. He has fought many personal demons and come out on the other side still playing music. I don’t know why, but I don’t particularly care for his style…

…Except on his album called Tribute. For some reason, what he has to offer musically truly resonates with me. He honors singer Nancy Wilson with the tune “Little Girl Blue”. He remembers saxophonist Charlie Parker by playing “Just In Time”. “All Of You” is dedicated to Miles Davis. Coleman Hawkins makes Mr. Jarrett think of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”. There are many others. My favorite has the trio recalling singer Anita O’Day with “The Ballad of the Sad Young Men.”

I wonder what song anybody would play to honor me? I know what my sisters would pick: The Root Beer Rag.

Credits: To The King’s Singers. I love your versatility, your humor and your music. Bravo.

This is the twentieth of my final forty-five CD's.

Train music

2010-09-13T23:57:00.004-04:00

Spider Dreams; Turtle Island String Quartet

Since I was very young, I have been captivated by the notion of an oasis. The thought of a place of fresh water, vegetation and respite from ruthless, even deadly, desert surroundings of massive proportions is powerful to me. I’ve never been to, or seen, a real oasis. But I encounter them all the time.

My 2008 Chevy Trailblazer is an oasis. I set the temperature to a cool sixty-two degrees, turn on the Sirius/XM radio – or local radio – and the outside world keeps its troubles to itself. All I have to do is drive around the troubles.

My house during a snowstorm … or during a ninety degree summer day … is an oasis. The wilderness is outside. Pancakes, maple syrup, puzzles, movies and board games are inside.

The cruise ships on which I worked … oases. The lap of luxury completely hemmed in by thousands of square miles of water. My cabin on the Delta Queen, without a port hole, because it was below the waterline – definitely an oasis – a retreat from the nasty brackiness that passed by only inches from my pillow.

The first time I took the Amtrak out to Montana in 1997, I couldn’t stop thinking about the quarter-mile long oasis on wheels – on tracks – transporting me across the plains, carrying me through parts of the earth that seem to have been impacted very little by our fancy modern times. I looked outside to see the world as nature chose to present itself in these lonely, grassy and treeless places. Then I looked inside and saw the carpeted floor, an comfortable chair, a place to put my cup and a resting place for my feet. Now, HERE was an oasis.

On that trip I listened to “Spider Dreams” by the Turtle Island String Quartet, released in 1992. I had bought it some months before, but I had only listened to it once. It had sounded like something that needed my focus. That is to say that it didn’t provide particularly soothing background music. So I chose it for this trip. Interestingly enough, since the new music coincided with the new landscape, they bonded. Now, whenever I listen to this album on my iPod, I have a silent North Dakota/Montana travelogue reel that plays endlessly inside my mind. How ‘bout that? A mental oasis. Beautiful.

Credits: To Aunt Jemima and her pancake mix. You bring so much happiness to the first few hours of the morning. God bless you.

This is the nineteenth of my final forty-five CD's.

Stained-glass windows and fireworks

2010-09-12T23:52:00.006-04:00

Church Windows; Brazilian Impressions; Roman Festivals; Ottorino Respighi, composer; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; Jesus Lopez-Cobos, conducting

I don’t know what made me come to the following realization, but the vividness and intensity of fireworks and the warm glow and brilliance of stained glass windows, for me, produce the same effect. The marriage of color and light, I suppose, sparkle easily on the mind’s inner easel, allowing the imagination to conjure up the type of magic that suspends hue, pigment and spectrum in time and space against the night’s dark sky, or the day’s bright sun.

I’ve seen fireworks at many different places. Walt Disney World has presented Illuminations at Epcot Center for years. In 1997 and 1998, I saw fireworks shot off over the Mississippi River from the deck of the Delta Queen and reflected in the mirror-like stainless steel of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. I’ve seen the Capitol Fourth fireworks on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I saw excellent fireworks in Brookings, South Dakota, after an athletic polka to a rhythmically unstable, yet spirited, performance of “The Stars and Stripes Forever”. And I saw fireworks in Washington, D.C., from high atop the Freedom Forum building in Arlington, Virginia, the evening before President Clinton’s second inauguration.

The stained-glass windows at the Grace Lutheran Church in my hometown of Bruce, South Dakota, were probably the first of its kind to capture my attention. I may be the only worshipper there that ever noticed that all five windows in the sanctuary are exactly the same. The glass designer set various shapes of red, green, yellow and blue pieces of glass in such a way to make you think that placement was random. But it wasn’t. Still pretty, though.

When a friend heard that I would soon visit Paris, he sought me out. “Do you know where you need to go in Paris?” Eiffel Tower? “No.” The Louvre? “No.” Notre Dame? “No.” Sacre Coeur? “No.” Arch de Triomphe? “No.” The Champs Elysees? “No.” The Opera? “Nope.” The Musee d’Orsay? “Nope.” The Latin Quarter? “Would you be quiet, please?” Yes.

He told me to see the Sainte Chapelle. And he was right. Built by Louis IX in the 13^th century, it is comprised of two chapels: the lower chapel and the upper chapel. I didn’t know quite what to tell my friend when I entered the lower chapel. It was nice and all, but nothing to write home about. Then I went upstairs, and it was like climbing into a giant jewel box. The stained-glass windows towered over the inner expanse and went all the way to the ceiling. The proprietors claim that roughly two-thirds of the window structure is authentic. It’s the most beautiful stained-glass window work I’ve ever seen.

I don’t know where Ottorino Respighi saw his church windows, but if they are as beautiful as the music inspired by them, they are worthy to adorn the wall’s of God’s Cathedral in Heaven. This is some of my favorite music, ever. The soundtrack-type etchings that Mr. Respighi designed from these windows portray four specific scenes, resplendent in dazzling light and glorious color.

“The Flight into Egypt” is filled with action. “St. Michael Archangel” removes all doubt as to why conversations with visiting angels have to start with “Fear not.” “The Matins of St. Clare” are a solemn occasion indeed. And “St. Gregory the Great”, as the force behind Gregorian chant, is justified here in his title as patron saint of musicians. Music, light and color. This is grand stuff.

My sisters and I used to enjoy shooting off firecrackers and bottle rockets during the daylight hours leading up to the evening of the fourth of July. But we knew to wait with some of the more spectacular stuff until the backdrop of night. And Dad was out there with us, having just as much fun. Or more.

When do you like to see stained-glass windows? From inside during the day, with the light outside? Or from outside during the night, with the light inside?

Credits: To Brookings Fireworks. You got a lot of our allowance money. But it was beautiful. Loved the Roman candles!

This is the eighteenth of my final forty-five CD's.

A Mature Choral Work

2010-09-11T22:57:00.003-04:00

Os Justi; Anton Bruckner, composer; Christ Church Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, Indianapolis

The 1982 South Dakota All-State Honors Choir truly sang great repertoire. Inasmuch as I considered Haydn’s “Te Deum” to be the “grown up” piece on the concert, after twenty-eight years of consideration, I tend to place Anton Bruckner’s motet setting of “Os justi meditabitur” on a loftier peak of maturity. I would guess that I found beauty in the piece at the time that we performed it, but, now, I daresay that I find deeper eloquence, more wholehearted significance and a deeper rooted essence of musical depth and fine compositional craft.

During the year that I conducted the girls’ and concert choirs at Brookings High School, I reacquainted myself with this excellent piece and hoped upon hope that the exceptional musicians that formed the concert choir would find a place in their souls for the exalted peals that Mr. Bruckner’s “Os justi” could summon.

Dr. C., Director of Choral Activities at SDSU at the time, invited the BHS Concert Choir to share a concert in March of 1996. Each ensemble would sing four or five selections, and then the combined choirs sang two pieces together. At the end of our single combined rehearsal, Dr. C. said, “I think we have time for your choir to sing something for our choir.” Okay, choir, Dr. C. has invited us to sing something for them right now. What would you like it to be? Fifty-six voices out of fifty-six voices called out, “Bruckner”. I was never so proud.

The Latin text, “Os justi meditabitur sapientiam …”, is Psalm 37, verses thirty and thirty-one:

The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment.

The law of his God is in his heart.

It ends with a very humble:

Alleluia.

Some time in the last four or five years, I reached out into the wi-fi saturated atmosphere of my house, latched onto that world-wide interweb, lassoed a hunk of that Bruckner “Os justi”, hauled her on in, and injected her shanks of moral and modal goodness onto my iPod.

Credits: To the Brookings High School Concert Choir of 1995-1996. You folk were a towering bastion of musical, social and law-abiding fiber. I miss you.

This is my normal Saturday individual track posting.

A new kind of chanty

2010-09-10T14:48:00.004-04:00

Home In Halifax; Stan Rogers

My favorite attraction at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, has always been the film “O Canada!” at the Canadian Pavilion at Epcot Center. To view the film, Disney World guests enter a circular room that has a designated front and back. Nine silver screens surround the room on which is shown the 360 degree film “O Canada!”; displayed in such a way that the viewer experiences the illusion that he or she has been transported to the Calgary Stampede, the Victoria Gardens, Vancouver Harbour, the frozen Ottawa River, the Canadian Rockies and many other places. When guests face the acknowledged front of the room, they see where they are going. The view to the rear of the room shows where they’ve been. Glance to the left and right and they see where they are.

During a segment about Nova Scotia, they focus on a famous fishing and racing schooner called the Bluenose. The Bluenose was built in 1921 and celebrated for her reputation in the racing world. After World War II, fishing schooners became obsolete in Canada and the United States. She was acquired by a fishing company in the West Indies and foundered on a reef off the coast of Haiti and sank in 1946.

In commemoration of her glorious history and because of the reverence that the people of Nova Scotia still had for their sleek and beautiful racing ship – even as late as 1963 – a local company built a replica using the same exact plans of the original, calling her, naturally, Bluenose II. Bluenose II has mostly promotional, state and tourism duties. Over forty years later, she continues to sail during the summer out of Lunenburg in Nova Scotia.

The soundtrack, at this point of the film “O Canada!”, includes a spirited song that immediately sets the tone for a coastal setting. As the lyrical and musical personification of the sea-going vessel whose bow rises …

Free of Mother Sea

In a sunburst cloud of spray

That stings the cheek while the rigging will speak

Of sea-miles gone away

She is always best under full press

Hard over as she’ll lay

And who will know the Bluenose in the sun?

This song, "The Bluenose", haunted me for many years, with the singer’s powerful voice relaying the sentiment of robust and stalwart seaboard folk who know the labor required to thrive in the fishing industry and to buoy up the kind of speed that wins racing cups out in the cold and briny depths.

In 2007, Walt Disney World announced that “O Canada!” at the Canadian Pavilion would play for the final time on August 6 of that year. It had played for twenty-five years. A new travelogue type feature debuted on September 1.

In an effort to hear the song, outside of its place in the film, I did some research to find out who wrote and sang the song. As you can imagine, the singer and the song-writer were the same person. Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers wrote traditional-sounding songs that were frequently inspired by Canadian history and the daily lives of hard working people who lived in the Maritime provinces.

At about the time that he began to garner international recognition for his singing and writing craft, he was a victim of a fire that sprouted aboard Air Canada Flight 797 on the ground at the Greater Cincinnati Airport in June of 1983. He died, most likely, of smoke inhalation at the age of thirty-three. He was on his way home after performing at the Kerrville Folk Festival near Kerrville, Texas.

In 1993, the Fogarty’s Cove Music label released Stan Rogers’ live album that he had recorded in 1982. Through this album and many others, Mr. Rogers’ influence on Canadian folk music has been deep and lasting. I have become a fan of his music, but my favorite starts like this:

Once again with the tide she slips her lines

Turns her head and comes awake

Where she lay so still there at Privateer’s Wharf

Now she quickly gathers way

She will range far south from the harbour mouth

And rejoice with every wave

Who will know the Bluenose in the sun?

Credits: To Walt Disney World, for recognizing the talent of Stan Rogers’ and featuring him for twenty-five years. Thank you for Epcot Center. That’s a fun day out.

This is the seventeenth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Music of our Parents?

2010-09-09T23:55:00.004-04:00

Greatest Hits; The Mamas and The Papas; Cass Elliot, John Phillips, Denny Doherty and Michelle Phillips

I really don’t have any history to speak of with the Mamas and the Papas. But I do enjoy their music and their unique sound and blend. I suppose that fans would regard “California Dreamin’” and “Monday, Monday” as the two penultimate Mama/Papa songs. It would be hard to argue with that assessment, what with “California Dreamin’” holding the position of eighty-nine on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of all Time”.

My favorite is “Dedicated to the One I Love”. Originally a hit of The Shirelles in 1961, the Mamas and the Papas recorded a more famous remake of the Ralph Bass and Lowman Pauling tune in 1967. Why do I like it? There’s a gouging little dissonance that bores into my ear on the word “little” when they sing:

Each night before you go to bed, my baby

Whisper a little prayer for me, my baby

And then they take this little harmonic detour on the word “all” in the following line:

And tell all the stars above.

This is dedicated to the one I love.

The genius in this scoring is what I label “Brian Wilson” genius. I think it’s fantastic.

I wanted to end my time with you today with a joke about how this is “Dedicated to My One-Eyed Glove”, but I can’t think of a plot to go with the punch line. Sorry.

Credits: To Mama Cass Elliot, for one of the most gorgeous voices of her generation. You left us too soon, Mama. I love "Dream a Little Dream of Me".

This is the sixteenth of my final forty-five CD's.

Good melody or Great melody?

2010-09-08T14:15:00.005-04:00

West Side Story Suite; Leonard Bernstein, composer; Philharmonia Orchestra; David Zinman, conducting; Joshua Bell, violin

“Erik,” said my new friend Ollie Zinsmeister, on only our third encounter at Heritage Harbour Chorus rehearsals, “I'm ninety-five years old and I want you to play at my funeral. Can you do that?” Well, Mr. Zinsmeister … “Please, call me Ollie.” Yes, Mr. Zinsmeister. Excuse me for being blunt … but you started it. You don’t look like you’re ready for a funeral. “No, but it’s coming.” Anything special you want me to play? “Yes. I want you to play the second movement of the Concerto No. 5 of Beethoven. You know, the ‘Emperor’.” You know, of course, sir, that the performance of a piano concerto movement requires two pianos; one for the soloist and one for the accompanying piano, don’t you? “Yeah,” he said with a smile, “but we both know, {wink} that you don’t need no second piano to make that piece work. Do ‘ya?” {sigh} No, Mr. Zinsmeister.

I might have mentioned before that Mr. Beethoven wasn’t the great melodist. However, he had the talent of making you think that you’re hearing a great melody by infusing that melody with majesty, pomp and resplendence. “So, what keeps the melody from actually being great if my ear makes me think that it is?” Good question. The sentiment bears resemblance to Mark Twain’s claim that Richard Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

In my humble opinion … well, it’s pretty humble … a great melody has its focus on the pitches to make it lyrical. The focus on Beethoven’s melodies is in the rhythm. His abilities, or lack thereof, to write truly great melodies are compromised by his tendency to compose in arpeggios. He frequently outlines chords in his melodic lines. To make them more interesting, memorable and musical, however, he laces them with stately and powerful rhythms. Like the first few measures of his Symphony No. 5. There is no real melody. But there’s lots of rhythm.

In the second movement of the “Emperor” Concerto of Mr. Beethoven, there is, indeed, one of those “pretty good” melodies … one that bears a suspicious likeness to “There’s A Place For Us” from Leonard Bernstein’s score to “West Side Story”. In Beethoven’s version of the short snippet of a melody, “Us” in “There’s A Place For Us” is one scale degree lower than Mr. Bernstein’s version. Did Bern borrow from Bee? I shrug my bloggy shoulders at you. I have never heard, one way or the other. But one makes you think of the other

Ollie passed away in the spring of 2008. I got the call from his daughter, asking if I could play the second movement of Piano Concerto No. 5 by Beethoven. Will there be a second piano available? “Nope.” I almost felt like I heard her winking over the phone. Is there an app for winking?

Credits: To Leonard Bernstein, for living a great American life. You made us hear what America sounded like.

This is the fifteenth of my final forty-five CD's

Hamburger, no ketchup.

2010-09-07T18:46:00.004-04:00

Dear Mr. Cole; John Pizzarelli

In the spring of 1976, my fourth grade class took a field trip to Mitchell, South Dakota, to visit the world’s only Corn Palace. For years, the Corn Palace has provided a venue for headliner entertainment in “The Mount Rushmore State”. Mom and Dad once took a trip to Mitchell to see Dick Van Dyke and his brother Jerry Van Dyke when we kids were very young.

The inside isn’t particularly remarkable. It is a combination gymnasium/auditorium. The outside is where all the action happens. Each fall, the outside walls receive a decoration job. Murals are thrown up using nothing but corn – the cob, the kernels, the husk – the whole stalk. It looks fantastic. In February, as I recall, they need to replace portions of the murals that have been eaten by birds. They also paint the Moorish domes and minarets to coincide with the color and décor of the murals.

It’s “corny” for sure. But South Dakotans are proud of it, so I am proud of it. In the early fall of 1987, I played third trumpet in the orchestra that played for the “Prairie Repertory Theatre” production of “South Pacific” at the Corn Palace.

On that day in 1976, I thought that the Corn Palace was one of the most exotic places I had ever seen. And to mark the occasion, I bought a little plastic buffalo about two inches tall. For years it sat on my desk to remind me that I went to the Corn Palace in 1976.

Do you know what else marked that day? I went to a McDonald’s for the first time in my life. Mom handed me five dollars – a fortune to a ten-year-old in the mid-1970’s - as I was heading out the door to wait for the bus. “Your teacher says that you’re going to McDonald’s for lunch. What are you going to get?” Do they have hamburgers? “I think so.” Then I want a hamburger. “Okay. Then you need to remember to ask them for no ketchup on your hamburger. Can you do that?” Yes. And I did. My first McDonald’s visit was a complete success.

Today, I am at McDonald’s. They have free Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi at home is on hiatus.

In 1994, Mr. John Pizzarelli recorded an album devoted to the music of Nat King Cole. In the spirit of the great jazz pianist’s trio, pianist Benny Gren and bassist Christian McBride join guitarist Pizzarelli for a romp through some King Cole standards, featuring a memorable scamper through the always fun “Sweet Georgia Brown”. This is my second favorite Nat King Cole album.

And now, it’s time for a hamburger. No Ketchup.

Credits: To Jerry Van Dyke, for making my dad laugh. He talked about you for years afterward. And to Dick Van Dyke, for “Mary Poppins”. You made me laugh when I saw “Mary Poppins” in 1973. Oh, yes. I remember.

This is the fourteenth of my forty-five CD's.

No trees

2010-09-06T23:50:00.005-04:00

In the Steppes of Central Asia; Symphony No. 1 and 2; Alexander Borodin, composer; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Vladimir Ashkenazy, conducting

Victor Borge speaks: I’m going to play for you now a piece by a Danish composer … Mozart. Hans Christian Mozart. … Mozart was what we call a bust. He only went from [the chest] up. Yet, despite this physical handicap, scholars insist that Mozart was fairly happily married. But Mrs. Mozart wasn’t. She went all the way to the floor.

Do you know what I like best about the central region of the United States? When you finally emerge from the trees, gasping for air and dumbfounded at the scope and perspective of the terrain and topography in front of you, you can at long, long last see that the sky, in every direction, does, indeed, … go all the way to the horizon.

In the east, a sunset doesn’t exist. The star at the center of our solar system unceremoniously sneaks away from view over and above the ever-present copse of trees and shrubbery, rather than the dramatic “retirement of colors” behind the peripheral ambit, breadth and sweep of the earth itself. We’re lucky in Annapolis; we can see semblances of sunsets from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the Severn River. But even then, it’s still not the display of cosmic wonder and amazement that happens on the western horizon out in the wide, open and treeless prairie.

Prairie and plains are how we typically designate the lay of the land in Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, and all the way up to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. When we hear the word “steppe”, we tend to think of something Russian or Ukrainian. But, really, the definition for “steppe” doesn’t differ very much at all from “prairie” and “plains”: an extensive plain, especially one without trees.

You could easily find a scene like this anywhere in the states that I mentioned above. This bare scene might be a bit of a stretch for a steppe … but I don’t see any trees.

I find panoramas like these extremely powerful. Grass and sky – nothing else. For hundreds of miles. The different ways that people respond and react to the spread of such landscape varies widely. And I would agree with some of the descriptions that many may offer. Stark? Oh, yes. Very stark. Barren? Mm-hmm. You’re right on the money there. Harsh? Probably. Austere? Good word, y’all. Yup, austere. Somber? I’ll accept a little somber there, just because I tend to be a little melancholy, myself. Desolate, bleak, Godforsaken, cheerless, grim, dismal? No, no, nope, try a little riddlin, nada, aaaaaand … no.

Some people have lived behind trees for so long that they would immediately feel the need to duck and cover if they encountered land like this first hand. I suppose I’m used to it. Although, I grew up in a farm community. The pioneers who broke ground out in God’s country knew to surround their homes and acreages with trees for protection during blizzards and wind storms. But the further west you go, the sparer the range.

During my vacation, Mom and I drove to the state capital of Pierre, South Dakota. We took a road that neither of us had taken before. Several times during our journey, we would crawl over a hill only to find a purview completely devoid of trees and buildings. Just an open road before us that disappeared into infinity.

“In the Steppes of Central Asia”, by Russian composer Alexander Borodin, perhaps isn’t so vacant of friend and unvarnished feature. He portrays a caravan of Asians crossing the expanse under the protection of Russian troops. Two exotic and ethnic melodies provide a “traveling” theme that represent plodding hooves of horses and camels along the Silk Road to the Orient.

In one of the Peanuts comic strips, Linus tells Charlie Brown about a claim that he once heard his grandfather allege. With Snoopy and Woodstock standing nearby during his retelling of his grandfather’s story, Linus says, “When the first Europeans came to the New World, a squirrel could run through the top of the trees from the coast of the Atlantic Ocean to the banks of the Mississippi River.” Snoopy and Woodstock look at each other, shrug, then leap from tree to tree for a few yards. Then – Bonk! – they land on their heads. And the thought balloon above Snoopy’s head says, “Either the old man was telling the truth – or that was some squirrel.”

Credits: To Hans Christian Mozart. Yeah, right. Now there would have been a great Dane.

This is the thirteenth of my final forty-five CD's.

Vices

2010-09-05T23:55:00.004-04:00

All for You: A dedication to the Nat King Cole Trio; Diana Krall

I think that I’ve mentioned before that I don’t smoke. I’ve never smoked. Anything. Ever. I don’t drink alcohol, either, other than the annual glass of wine with which I toast the Christmas holiday with Mom and my sister K. I abhor, revolt and yes, even fear, the inability I would have in maintaining control of thought, speech and bodily function due to the effects of alcohol. A can of beer or a bottle of scotch doesn’t tantalize me in the least.

I never knew Mom to smoke. Or drink. She does like coffee, though. And waffles. I can scarcely bring myself to label a penchant for waffles as a vice.

I remember when Dad used to smoke cigars. He used to keep them in the pickup. They got expensive at some point, however, so he quit. Then he took to smoking a pipe for a while. But then the pipe fell out of his shirt pocket out in the outhouse one day. And that was the end of that.

I’ve remained fairly sheltered from the world wide smoking community. I have a few friends who still light up now and then. At some point during our friendship, I search for the proper time to tell them that they should stop. Usually they tell me that they would like to, but the opportunity to do so hadn’t reared its head yet. It must be horribly difficult to quit. Those friends and family members who have been able put their lighter away have my undying love and respect. They are my heroes.

My vice is food. The good Lord has, so far, only given me strength sufficient enough to say, Maybe … maybe … I shouldn’t eat that brownie. Or that Oreo. Or the rest of that pizza. The word “maybe” is a coward’s word. It serves me daily in allowing me to “not need to justify” indulging in a Rice Krispie treat, Aunt Gladys’ blueberry crisp or a Little Debbie Nutty Bar. Perhaps I have fully spent my entire reservoir of willpower and stamina in my lifelong sanctions of drink and smoke.

Nat King Cole was one of the finest jazz pianists of the 20^th century. The instrumentation of his jazz trio … piano, guitar and bass … held sway over the stylings of other jazz pianists after him: Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal and Ray Charles. For me, it’s not so much the presence of a guitar that distinguishes the sound. No drums. That’s golden.

Mind you, I like to play with outstanding drummers. But, I like the rhythmic excitement that comes from the acoustical sounds of a piano, upright bass and … whataever … sax, trumpet, trombone or guitar. A drum set covers all that up. There, I said it.

I suppose Mr. King Cole had a great voice. I listen to it and hear the same beauty and style that everybody else does. But that impression is discolored by the knowledge that he smoked Kool menthol cigarettes heavily – often smoking several in rapid succession before stepping in front of the microphone – in the belief that smoking kept his voice low. He died of lung cancer on February 15, 1965, at the age of forty-five.

Diana Krall emulates Nat King Cole with this faultless and stylistically rich album of fun, polish, poise and elegance. This – is my favorite Nat King Cole album.

Credits: To restaurateur Maurice Vermersch, who sold his Brussels waffles under the name “Bel-Gem” waffles at New York’s 1964 World’s Fair. MMMMmmmmmmmm. Waffles.

This is the twelfth of my final forty-five CD's.

When did I hear Sam?

2010-09-04T16:39:00.005-04:00

I Wan'na Be Like You; Louis Prima; Sam Butera and The Witnesses; Phil Harris

My friend, A.D., had told me many stories about Sam Butera before I decided to take the job as the piano player in his band. Sam had worked with almost everybody in Hollywood during the 1950’s and the 1960’s. He also had worked with nearly every big name in the recording industry. He made an album with Sammy Davis, Jr., and went on tour with Frank Sinatra. Sam worked and lived on the fringes of the big time.

While driving to Las Vegas, I tried to figure out when I ever would have seen or heard Sam Butera – on the radio or on TV. “Did you see him on the Ed Sullivan Show?” A.D. asked. No. I’ve never seen the Ed Sullivan Show. “Well, certainly you heard him on ‘Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody’.” Nope. I’ve only heard the David Lee Roth version. “Did you ever see the movie ‘Hey, Boy. Hey, Girl’?” Uh-uh. “Okay, then, how ‘bout ‘The Jungle Book’?” Disney’s “Jungle Book”? “Yup.” He was in that? “He was a monkey.”

Sam, I understand you were in “The Jungle Book”. “Yup. I was a monkey.” Well. How ‘bout that for verification? Did you have a speaking line? “Uh. I don’t remember. But I did vocal back up for Louis Prima’s song in the movie.” Which song? “I Wanna’ Be Like You”.

I had always thought that song was pretty cool. And, now … it was even cooler. One of my favorite songs on my iPod.

Credits: To David Lee Roth, for doing “Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody” the same way Sam did it. I know Sam gave you a hard time for doing the song. Thanks for singing it, anyway.

This is my normal Saturday individual track posting.

Firsts

2010-09-03T23:55:00.007-04:00

Missa in Angustiis "Nelson Mass"; Te Deum; Franz Joseph Haydn, composer; The English concert and Choir; Trevor Pinnock, conducting

During the first season of “The Family Guy”, one of my favorite shows, Stewie, the one-year-old who talks with a British accent, hates his mother and can only be understood by the family dog named Brian, has his first birthday party. Lois, the mother, is adamant in declaring that all family members will be there. When Meg, the daughter, isn’t at the party, Peter has to go and get her.

Peter: Meg, your mother wants the family together today.

Meg: It’s just Stewie’s birthday. So what if I’m not there? Who’s going to remember?

Peter: Huh, your mom will. Trust me, she remembers everything. In fact, she always says the best memories she has are when you kids were born. Ah, jeez, Meg! That’s it! This day’s more for your mom than it is for Stewie.

Earlier in the episode, Lois voices the sentiment that to celebrate Stewie’s birthday is to honor “the day our family became whole”.

Some of the “first” things that each of us do in our young lives mean more to our parents than to us. Our parents remember our first pair of shoes, our first steps, our first hiccup, our first hat, our first bowl of soup, our first day of kindergarten, our first day of junior high, our first day of senior high, etc. They look forward to those days even before we, the children, are born.

Along the way, though, are the unexpected firsts. Like the day that Mom and Dad forgot to teach my sister K. how to use a straw when she was two years old – and blew a whole chocolate malt up into her face. And the day that my other sister, D., had grown just enough over night, when she was two, and could no longer walk under the table. KONG!! Dad always claimed that D. had been a very quiet baby - up to that point. Things weren't as peaceful after that.

How about the first day that I was allowed to drive the pickup home from the field – and drove it into the lilac bush at the end of the driveway? I didn’t live that one down for quite some time.

My favorite first, however, probably didn’t mean all that much to Mom and Dad. In 1982, at the South Dakota All-State Honors Choir, I finally got to sing grown-up music. The conductor had included Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Te Deum” on the concert. It was loud, it was exciting, it was ten-minutes long and it was in Latin. I had never played or sung adult music such as this before. I liked it. And I couldn’t wait for more.

I remember the conductor telling us men that, “If you want to have a good time, marry a soprano. But if you want to have a good wife, marry an alto.” Somebody asked, “What about your wife?” “When I first married her, she was a soprano,” he replied, “but now she’s an alto.”

Credits: To my cousin, W., who makes FANTASTIC chocolate malts. MMMMmmmmmm. Chocolate malts.

This is the eleventh of my final forty-five CD's.

A Grand Night Out

2010-09-02T23:54:00.008-04:00

Porgy and Bess; Ella Fitzgerald, vocal; Louis Armstrong; trumpet and vocal

I have an LP recording of the Houston Grand Opera when they staged George Gershwin’s and DuBose Heyward’s “Porgy and Bess” in 1976. The composer and librettist had conceived the work as an “American folk opera”, and saw its premier in New York in 1935, featuring a classically trained, all African-American cast. As you can imagine, this was very daring for its time. For reasons unknown, certain portions of the opera got cut.

When the Houston Grand Opera mounted a brand new production of “Porgy and Bess”, presented in its entirety as part of the United States’ bicentennial, Gershwin and Heyward’s operatic masterwork received, for the first time, the acceptance and respect it so richly deserves as a legitimate opera. The HGO took its production to Broadway and received the very first Tony Award for “Best Revival”, although, at the time, the award was called “Most Innovative Production of a Revival". It was also the first time that an opera had received a Tony Award. The cast recording of this production won a Grammy award in 1977.

During the summer of 1987, I worked at the Grand Lake Lodge near the west entrance of “Rocky Mountain National Park” in Colorado. I tried to make the entire experience as rustic as possible. And I met my endeavor with a certain measure of success. However, when I saw in the Denver Post that the Houston Grand Opera was bringing its production of “Porgy and Bess” to “The Mile High City”, the option “not to go” never presented itself.My friend J. and I borrowed a colleague’s car, traveled the one hundred miles to Denver and got near front row balcony seats for this once in a lifetime performance.

Who am I, as a junior in college, to say that any one performance, of anything, really, is superior to any other? Nobody, is the answer to that query. However, I believe that all of us can detect greatness when it stands within our various vicinities. Greatness took its place on the stage fifty to seventy-five feet before my balcony seat.

At the close of the intermission following the second act, a voice over the intercom announced that the artist who had been singing the role of Porgy had become suddenly “indisposed”. The singer who had been playing the part of “Sportin’ Life” would continue the role of Porgy to the end of the show.

I have heard this truism, that if a performer, in this case, a singer, has a secondary role in a production or a performance, regardless of level of talent or musicianship, he or she will “stand aside” and let the “star” take up most of the performing space on the stage. The man who sang the role of “Sportin’ Life” during the first two acts of the opera relied mostly on his sense of musical style to bring his character to life. But, let me tell you, when he burst onto the stage as “Porgy”, it was every baritone for himself. In the first ten seconds of his entrance in his new role, he received a major, major ovation from his audience. I will never forget it.

A full twenty years before the “powers what be” on the Houston Grand Opera board even considered taking a run at “Porgy and Bess”, ol’ Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong and Miss Ella Fitzgerald took on the roles of Mr. Porgy and Miss Bess, and many other characters from the opera as well. And while the original score hinted at the jazz and the blues, this recording came forth with full disclosure concerning jazz and the blues. It, in fact, swings us all to death.

In 2001, Fitzgerald and Armstrong’s “Porgy and Bess” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, an award established in 1973 to honor recordings that have “qualitative or historical significance”.

I ask you, who can stay awake if you’re being sung to with these words?

Summertime and the livin’ is easy

Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high

Your daddy’s rich, and your ma is good lookin’

So hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

__________

One of these mornings, you’re gonna rise up singin'

You’re gonna spread your wings and you’ll take to the sky

But till that mornin’, there’s a’nothin’ can harm you

With your daddy and mammy standing by.

Credits: To the Houston Grand Opera. Good show! Bravo.

This is the tenth of my final forty-five CD's.

Water music

2010-09-01T23:53:00.002-04:00

26 Miles; Sean Watkins, guitar and vocal

Sean Watkins plays guitar with the group Nickel Creek. He contributes to the ensemble not only as an instrumentalist and vocalist, but also as a composer. On this, his second solo album, “26 Miles” features his own music with each song played in a different style.

Mr. Watkins had heard at one time that the furthest anyone can see across a large body of water before the horizon begins to bend is twenty-six miles. The song “26 Miles” is about a walk on the beach …

Twenty six miles to my left, and not a single man,

There’s not much in front of me, below are feet and sand

So I turn and I sit and stare, in my lap this pen and pad

I watch the water rise and fall, recede and then advance

I’ve never been a beach man. But I’ve spent an appreciable amount of time on the water. So I feel a closeness to the sentiments he catches and pens on his pad.

Isn’t it a neat cover? I like the colors.

Credits: To you, again, faithful and loyal reader. You’ve come a very long way. I hope you’re not too tired. The journey back home is only about six weeks long. Stay tuned.

This is the ninth of my final forty-five CD’s.

Elephants don't forget

2010-08-31T23:55:00.005-04:00

Scheherazade; Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, composer; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Kirill Kondrashin, conducting

Hey. Do you want to see something funny? Watch this TV advertisement for Rolos, the chocolate-covered caramel candy.

Isn’t that funny? I’ve always loved that commercial. The name of the piece played by the violin when the boy pulls the candy away from the baby elephant eluded me for years. But when I bought my copy of “Scheherazade” (pronounced sha-HAIR-uh-ZOD, not SCARES-ee-AH-dee) by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff, I recognized the violin solo immediately.

The music, in the hands of Mr. Rimsky-Korsakoff, possesses rich and dazzling orchestrations and gets its stylistic features from the East. Historically, Rimsky-Korsakoff wanted the hearer to relate the music with tales from “The Arabian Nights”. In the end, however, he wanted the music to be enjoyed on its own merits, and not merely a page by page depiction of a musical picture book.

This is some of the most beautiful and exotic music I’ve ever heard. It gets played frequently on my iPod.

Credits: To The Hershey Company, for making Rolos since 1969. Do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rolo?

This is the eighth of my final forty-five CD's.

Piano Man

2010-08-30T23:56:00.003-04:00

Billy Joel ~ Greatest Hits Volume I and Volume II; Billy Joel, piano and vocal

I remember the day, back in high school, when our band director, Mr. D., pointed out the hip and funny little lick that Billy Joel plays on the piano during the song “My Life”. It occurs right before back-up singers Peter Cetera and Donnie Dacus, from the band Chicago, sing “Keep it to yourself, it’s my life”. The fact that Mr. D. listened to music like this told me that, maybe, it was okay for me to listen to this stuff, too. That there was value to be found in … some … of that music that, in my mind, I had to stoop to listen to.

As I’ve indicated several times, I’m not a rocker, I’m not a roller. I like my music to come at me from the perspective of harmony, melody and some rhythmic elements to keep it all organized. Anything beyond that is just for gimmick purposes.

But I took to the song “My Life”, learned it by listening to it, and found that I liked it. The same thing happened with “Just The Way You Are”. And then again with “New York State of Mind”.

I guess this constitutes being a fan, I decided. I’d never been a fan of something before. What do you do when you’re a fan of somebody, I asked my friend Mark. “Greatest hits album.” They make those? He rolled his eyes at me.

The fact that all of Billy Joel’s songs are different from each other indicated genius to me. I had always associated the marriage of genius to music as something that happened only in classical music: Bach, Mozart and that bunch. It has taken me a while to recognize the genius of Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney and John Lennon from The Beatles, and Donald Fagen from Steely Dan.

People always want to hear Billy Joel play his first hit “Piano Man”. He has always claimed that it’s not that great of a song. It repeats the same eight bars over and over again, with a little interlude here and there. The verses use the same chords as the chorus. But in a way, that’s what makes it genius. A person who plays in a bar like the one in the song wouldn’t want to learn anything more elaborate than “Piano Man”. Art imitates life.

Credits: To the band Chicago. Great tunes, guys. It took me a long time to understand the title “Twenty-five or Six to Four”. But I got it. No need to write back. Thanks.

This is the seventh of my final forty-five CD's.

Late to the concert

2010-08-29T23:51:00.003-04:00

Symphony No. 3 "Organ"; Camille Saint-Saens, composer; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; Herbert von Karajan, conducting; Pierre Cochereau, organ

In a previous entry, I told you about a concert I attended at Royal Albert Hall in London. The work featured on the second half of the concert was none other than the great “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff. A group of us had rushed from dinner to try to make it to the concert on time. However, we arrived five minutes late. The British like their concerts to start on time. If you come late, you’ll just have to wait to be seated.

We had chosen seats up and behind the orchestra, but couldn’t get to them until the first half of the piece had finished. After we sat down, the second movement began with busy passage work in the strings, starting first at the Allegro Moderato tempo marking, then working up to the Presto speed limit. It was all very exciting up to the point at which …

The Great C Major Chord of the Maestoso, announced by the one-hundred forty-seven rank pipe organ that stood four feet to our IMMEDIATE right, cooked our insides and bruised our ribs, with one girl announcing the next morning that she might have gotten pregnant. It was under those circumstances that we (kind of) heard Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” on the second half of the concert.

Credits: To the Royal Albert Hall organ. Oh, baby.

This is the sixth of my final forty-five CD's.

A Queen and a Princess

2010-08-28T23:20:00.005-04:00

Song For Athene; Sir John Tavener, composer; The Choir of King's College, Cambridge; Stephen Cleobury, conducting

In late August of 1997, the Delta Queen steamboat headed her stern up the Kanawha River in West Virginia for the first time. She had been invited to preside over the annual paddlewheeler festival in the capital city of Charleston over the Labor Day weekend. So, to prepare for the event, the company had sent out special brochures to trumpet the esteemed event, and the crew had spruced up the old girl to show her at her finest.

Then the news came a few weeks before the Delta Queen’s grand arrival. The brand, spankin’ new Winfield Lock and Dam, thirty-one miles upriver from the mouth of the Kanawha River at Point Pleasant, wouldn’t be finished in time for the Labor Day weekend. We had no way of getting the boat all the way up river. I was disappointed. It’s always fun when a boat or a ship makes a first stop in a city. But, our hosts in Charleston promised us that the lock would be finished in time for the event the following year.

In the mean time, the lovely Delta Queen remained tied up in Point Pleasant for a couple of days. It was here, in the quiet of an early evening, that we heard about the passing of Diana, Princess of Wales. Just a few weeks before, I had taken leave to grieve with my family upon the death of my Uncle M. To have this happen so quickly on the heals of the other only served to rekindle my awareness of the preciousness of human life.

I immediately recognized the category in which the Princess would now be seen. She would remain forever timeless, bathed in the beauty of youth. It’s a popular club. President John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy, Jr., James Dean, Princess Grace Kelly, Buddy Holly, Michael Jackson, Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others. People who are bigger than life itself, who speak encyclopedia volumes by merely stepping out of a car, or smiling at the right camera, or, and this is my favorite, by speaking intelligently.

I recall two instances during the course of the Princess’ funeral. The image of the Princes, Charles, William and Harry, and Charles, the Ninth Earl Spencer, brother to the Princess, following the funeral procession to the Abbey will never go away. But it was while her coffin was carried out of the Abbey on the shoulders of eight Welsh Guards that I heard something musical with which I could mark and remember this hour and this day.

“Song for Athene”, by British composer John Tavener, seemingly sent the Princess to Heaven on the wings of seven “Alleluias”, the sixth of which finds a climax when “weeping at the grave creates the song: Allelulia”. A drone continues throughout the four-minute work.

The following year, the Delta Queen made her triumphal arrival and reigned over the Labor Day weekend festivities. It was a much happier occasion. I don’t recall any deaths or funerals.

Credits: To the Winfield Lock and Dam. You were late but you are beautiful.

This is my normal Saturday individual track posting.

A new piece of old music

2010-08-27T23:23:00.005-04:00

Symphony No. 5; Fantasia on a Themeby Thomas Tallis; Serenade To Music; Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Chorus; Robert Spano, conducting

A few years ago, I encountered one of those instances where I heard a piece of absolutely gorgeous music that I’m pretty sure I had never heard before. So I started telling all my friends about it … and received a uniform reply each time: “You’ve never heard that before? Where’ve you been? Didn’t you say you went to college?”

Film director Mel Gibson included “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” in his 2004 motion picture “The Passion of the Christ”. I saw the movie, but I don’t remember hearing this heartfelt work.

English Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis contributed nine songs to the Psalter of 1567 for the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. While editing the English Hymnal of 1906, Ralph VaughanWilliams included the Thomas Tallis melody of Psalm 2. The words go like this:

“Why fum’th in fight the Gentiles spite, in fury raging stout?

Why tak’th in hand the people fond, vain things to bring about?

The Kings arise, the Lords devise, in counsels met thereto,

Against the Lord with false accord, against His Christ they go.”

So taken was Mr. Vaughan Williams with Mr. Tallis’ melody that he wrote this inspired, marvelous work for string orchestra.

As much as it plays the dickens with my pride, I hope that I find scores (!) of other masterpieces that somehow fell by the wayside over the course of my young years.

Credits: To Thomas Tallis, for writing brilliant melodies. And for using the word “fum’th”.

This is the fum'th ... I mean fifth ... of my final forty-five CD's.

Talks of chamber music

2010-08-26T11:32:00.005-04:00

Ernest Chausson ~ Concerto for Piano, Violin and String Quartet; Maurice Ravel ~ Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello; Takacs Quartet; Steven Isserlis, cello; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano; Joshua Bell, violin

For several years, I have played with an ensemble that provides music for the holiday season at the Baltimore Country Club located in, oddly enough, Baltimore, Maryland. We play for about three hours over the course of five to six evenings during the annual Christmas Feast that they offer to their members. I marvel at the décor every year – with a giant fireplace, wreaths in all of the Christmas light laden windows, holly and berries surrounding the carving tables and a simply humongous tree, strewn with thousands of lights, and a star on its top almost brushing the twenty-foot ceiling of their old-fashioned lodge.

During our break one evening, when we played together in 1999, my friend K. got to talking about chamber music repertoire that he loved but had never afforded himself the opportunity to perform. “You know, I’ve always wanted to play the Concerto for Piano, Violin and String Quartet by Ernest Chausson.” You know that piece? “Oh, yeah. It’s one of my favorites. So, you know about it, too?” Yes, sir. A few years back I found a recording of the Piano Trio of Maurice Ravel and it included the Chausson. I knew that I would enjoy the Ravel, but the Chausson totally took me by surprise. I would really like to play it. “Then let’s play it.” Okay.

K. played violin in “The President’s Own” United States Marine Chamber Orchestra. He came to me a few months after our Baltimore Country Club gig to tell me that he had put together the quartet and violinist for the piece. And for me to get to practicin’, ‘cause he was going to get it programmed in the fall for the USMB chamber music series.

We actually didn’t play it until the spring of 2001. The performance took place in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress. In addition to the Chausson concerto, my friend D. and I played Samuel Barber’s Sonata for Piano and Cello – also a big piece. After our turn on the stage, I asked D. if she would turn pages for me on the Chausson, which she readily agreed to do. She did a smashing job, but afterward, she said that she was more nervous turning pages than during our performance of the Barber Sonata.

Mom and my sister K. flew in for the recital. We went out afterward to Old Ebbitt Grill just around the corner from the White House.

I have my sights, now, on the Ravel Piano Trio. I haven’t found people willing to play it. I may have to bring it up when I see K. at the Baltimore Country Club.

Credits: To Old Ebbitt Grill, for serving fine food to Washingtonians since 1856. Don’t miss the Sixteenth Annual Oyster Riot on November 19 and 20. Tickets go on sale on September 7.

This is the fourth of my final forty-five CD's.

Macaroni and Cheese

2010-08-25T23:57:00.006-04:00

The Time-Life Treasury of Christmas

I love macaroni and cheese. I always have. I’m a bit of a mac-n-cheese snob, as a matter of fact. My mom made Creamettes Macaroni and put in cubes of Land-O-Lakes American cheese. And it spoiled me. I can hang with my niece and nephew when they want to have Kraft Mac-N-Cheese, dinner-in-a-box lunch with their Uncle Roni. But some day, when they’re open to change, I’m going to make some of the real thing for them. It’s going to be a great day.

Schroeder, from “Peanuts”, once made the claim to Lucy that Beethoven’s favorite dish was macaroni and cheese. That touched my soul. Here was a man whose spirit and essence soared in the rafters of “high art” in music, but a simple comfort food brought him immense joy.

Anton Ego, the food critic from Walt Disney’s animated motion picture “Ratatouille”, proclaims this great truth towards the end of the feature:

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so … “

You, dear reader, have seen the height of my horse when it comes to my taste in Christmas music – Opera star Thomas Hampson, the King’s College Choir in Cambridge, the Turtle Island String Quartet, the choir of Westminster Abbey, and so forth. I will declare here, with a little humility, or maybe even a little humiliation, that my nose high in the air gets scratches itself on the ceiling a little more than often.

I don’t imply that the performances found on the “Time Life Treasury of Christmas” constitute “the average piece of junk”. But it’s a little closer to earth than others. And the innocence of days gone by, with sincerity to burn, shines through bright and clear. It's my Christmas comfort food. You can't go wrong with Julie Andrews, Perry Como, Percy Faith, Burl Ives, Dolly Parton and a little B-B-B-B-Bing Crosby. With maybe not just a little cheese on top.

Credits: To the Creamettes company, for their pasta products. Them’s good eatin’.

Only four more months until Christmas!

This is the third of my final forty-five CD's.

Cold birds

2010-08-24T23:57:00.004-04:00

Cantus Arcticus (1972); String Quartet No. 4 (1975); Symphony No. 5 (1988); Sirius String Quartet; Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra; Max Pommer, conducting

I’ll be completely frank with you on this one – right from the very start. I bought this CD because of the great cover. And before anybody says, “Huh?”, hear me out. Believe, me. The image to the right doesn’t do the actual cover justice. Imagine, if you will, transparent tissue paper. Sturdy transparent tissue paper, as a matter of fact. The folks who designed the CD stapled a white section of aforementioned tissue paper at the crease of the cover of the inner sleeve.

If there was even a millimeter of space between the tissue paper and the actual cover (with the photograph) of the CD sleeve, the man walking away in the photograph looked like he was either walking in a fog thick as oyster stew or walking in a blinding snow storm. I loved the effect. I love oyster stew. And, as it turns out, I love, love, love this CD.

Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara wrote “Cantus Arcticus”, Op. 61 as a concerto for birds and orchestra. A tape recording, that partners with the score of Rautavaara’s composition, plays birdsong that Mr. Rautavaara recorded near the Arctic Circle and on the bogs of Liminka in northern Finland in 1972. The performance of the score functions in the manner of a soundtrack, making the birds sounds “extra-musical”. The composer gives the masterful piece of music form by dividing it up like so:

I. The Bog

II. Melancholy

III. Swans Migrating

The name “Cantus Arcticus” is a nod to a compositional technique called Cantus Firmus, where a portion of a generally recognized melody, usually a Gregorian chant, provided the melody in a four part vocal composition. One of the voices would sing the Cantus Firmus and the other voices would have newly composed music to sing around it. In this case, the birds take on the role of providing the Cantus Firmus and the orchestra takes on the role of accompaniment.

I lent this CD to Mr. C., the conductor of the SDSU Civic Symphony some time in the 1990's, he liked it, and programmed it immediately. He asked me to play the celeste part on the concert.

I lucked out on this one. I had never heard of the composer, nor the composition. This is gold. Seek it out. My Aunt J. loves this CD.

Credits: To Artic birds, for seeming to be willing, yet more realistically unwitting, soloists. But, hey, you’re big, big stars! You get more airplay than I do.

This is the second of my final forty-five CD's.

Nine years old

2010-08-23T23:56:00.007-04:00

Quiet After The Storm; Dianne Reeves, vocal

I admired First Lady Hillary Clinton’s adage that “It takes a village to raise a child.” She’s right, of course. I think, however, that Mrs. Clinton presented the image of a small child surrounded by a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, a librarian, a fireman, a milkman, a grocer, a coach, a sanitation person, a construction worker, a cook, a gas station attendant, a taylor, a brother, a sister, a grandmother, a grandfather, a Mommy and a Daddy.

My vision of Mrs. Clinton’s “village” aphorism comes from a more organic perspective. In our little town of Bruce, during my adolescent years, if my behavior belied the proper upbringing my parents provided, virtually nobody in our “village” would hesitate to alert me to the inappropriate nature of my actions. At the same time, they wouldn’t shirk from the opportunity to have a little playtime with our town’s children.

My Aunt Gladys would always get down on the floor to play with us nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews whenever we asked her to come play with us. She listened to us – and quickly deciphered the essence and character of the game in play. She was one of us. She was in.

In the song “Nine”, track eight on Dianne Reeves’ album “Quiet After The Storm”, the fine jazz singer brings the playful demeanor and disposition of a nine-year-old to a lively and bustling 7/4 meter, a highly difficult feat to pull off. Yet with the innocence and exuberance of a young one who just does without thinking of how or why, Ms Reeves traipses about within this rocking and funky groove like a natural … runnin’ … jumpin’ … skippin’ … and laughin’ …

I remember nine

As if it were yesterday

I can hear my friends outside of my window

Say, “Can you come out and play?”

Anna brought a bag of her mama’s cooking spoons

So we could dig a hole, to try to reach China

And get there by early noon.

_____

Our imaginations soared on golden wings

Across a sky filled with dreams

Any child could wear a paper crown

And be a king or queen …

… At nine …

_____

I remember days of playing without a care

Then coming home with sniffles and clothes hanging off me

With leaves in my hair

Everybody’s child belonged to the neighborhood

You could tell your troubles to old Aunt Savannah

Cause she always understood

_____

Running endless through a field

Of emerald green beneath a broad open sky

I will treasure all my days when

I was innocent and free …

… At nine …

When D. and I were very young, we decided all by ourselves that we would ride the trike and pull the wagon to the neighbor’s house a half of a mile to the east to have a few hours’ play time with our pal R. After we arrived, anxious for the adventures to begin, Mrs. H. quickly and suddenly put us, the trike and the wagon into the station wagon to drive us home. We had behaved, apparently, in an inappropriate manner.

Credits: To E. H., our neighbor to the east for bring us home. Thanks.

This, dear reader, is the first of my final forty-five CD's. I've saved the best for last and I'm on the home stretch!

A grim quartet

2010-08-22T23:55:00.004-04:00

Quatuor pour la fin du Temps; Olivier Messiaen, composer; Joshua Bell, violin; Steven Isserlis, cello; Olli Mustonen, piano; Michael Collins, clarinet

I remember how a news crew from KELO TV in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, once took their cameras, on April 15, to ask the ultimate question to hundreds of people standing in line at the local post office: Why did you wait until today to file your taxes? The news crew received many answers – excuses, mostly. One answer, though, stood out from all of the others: “Oh, I had my taxes done weeks ago. I waited until today so that I could make new friends while I was standing in line.”

The scene was truly pathetic when a new clarinet friend of mine at CCM at the University of Cincinnati asked me, “Hey, Erik. Would you like to play Olivier Messiaen’s ‘Quartet For The End Of Time’ with me and two other people?” Would I?!? It’s only my favorite piece in the whole world!! So beautiful! “Okay,” she said, “You’ve never heard this piece have you?” Um, … no. “Well, then, why did you respond the way you did?” I was afraid you might ask somebody else … and I could use some new friends. Pathetic.

By agreeing to play such a piece without taking the time to investigate its magnitude of difficulty first, I found myself with a bowlful of stiffer cookie dough than I anticipated. The piano part was about as strenuous and complex as anything I had ever tackled. But I got to work on it right away and, pretty soon, fellow piano students who had heard me practicing it in the practice rooms came to me to ask, “How did you find people to play this with you?” I just shrug my shoulders, smiled and said, They came to me.

Olivier Messaien was captured by the German army during World War II and placed in a prisoner of war camp. En route to the prisoner of war camp, M. Messaien met three other professional musicians – a clarinetist, a violinist and a cellist. For these new friends, he wrote a trio which eventually developed into the monumental eight movement work called “Quatuor pour la fin du temps” for piano, clarinet, violin and cello. It was first performed for about four hundred fellow prisoners and prison guards on January 15, 1941. The composer once recalled, “Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.”

M. Messaien, a devout Catholic for his entire life, couldn’t see a positive end of World War II. He was convinced that the apocalypse had come and was haunted and inspired by the passage of scripture from the tenth chapter of the Book of Revelation:

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire … and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth … And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever … that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished …

Using musical, numerical and theological symbolism, Oliver Messiaen composed a masterpiece of elegance, excitement and optimism.

On a whim, in the summer of 1994, my friends D. and G. convinced me to join them on a visit to Dakau. In many ways it was right to do so. But I wasn’t prepared for it. I don’t know how one prepares for it, but I keep thinking I could have properly tensed and steeled myself for the onslaught of emotions that I encountered. I haven’t recovered. So, I ask you this: Do you recover? and Should you recover?

Credits: To my friend J. for asking me to play the "Quartet For The End Of Time". You guys were great "new" friends.

Music of Scripture

2010-08-21T22:13:00.005-04:00

I Will Greatly Rejoice In The Lord; Knut Nystedt, composer

When the nine-hundred ninety-six voices of the 1980 South Dakota All-State Chorus made their first moments of music in Huron, South Dakota, they did so while singing “I Will Greatly Rejoice” composed by the Norwegian composer Knut Nystedt. The music has stuck in my head these thirty years. Mr. Nystedt gets his text from the book of Isaiah, chapter sixty-one, verses ten and eleven:

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,

For my soul shall exalt in my God;

For He has clothed me in the garments of salvation,

He has covered me in the robes of righteousness,

As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,

And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the Earth brings forth its shoots,

And as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,

So the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise

To spring up before all the nations.

I don’t specifically remember hearing this passage of scripture during my young years in church, although I would imagine it was read in my hearing at some point, for it’s very beautiful. Ever since my All-State Chorus experience in 1980, whenever I hear this portion of scripture, in or out of church, … I hear music … in my head. The sentiment expressed by the prophet Isaiah will forever remain couched in melody and harmony. While the music swirls and echoes, the words hang in the air, bringing glory to God and peace to my soul.

Credits: To the other nine-hundred ninety-five voices of the 1980 South Dakota All-State Chorus. Thank you.

Lunch in New York

2010-08-20T23:53:00.004-04:00

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

I was never more proud, during my “cruise ship” years, than in October of 1994 when my Mom and Dad came aboard the Star Odyssey in New York City for a cruise up the Northeastern seaboard. Neither Mom nor Dad had been any further east than Ohio and they decided that a trip to the Big Apple presented the opportunity to visit family who had made the trek to South Dakota soooooooo many times.

On the weekend before the cruise, they spent some time with Mom’s sister and family in New Jersey. They had a good visit, took an expedition to Atlantic City, went to their church on Sunday morning and had an all around good time. They had made plans to buy tickets for the bus on Monday morning to go to NYC and then meet a cousin of my Dad’s, P. and her husband T., for lunch at The Top of the Sixes restaurant.

On Monday morning, they found out that the bus to NYC was FULL! No room. So Uncle D. #2 (Uncle D. #1 lives in Minnesota) said, “Quick. Get in the car. You’ll have to take the train.

Meanwhile, in the days before cell phones, South Dakota boy in the big city is waiting at the Port Authority Bus Terminal when he hears over the massive public address system, “Courtesy call for Erik Apland on the red phone.” Nothing chills the bones on a warm October morning like an invitation to a red phone in a massive bus terminal in Manhattan. “Erik, this is Uncle D. (#2), your parents are coming to Pennsylvania Station on the train in twenty minutes.” Okay. “Goodbye.” Wait… What train? Which track? Arriving from where? … Hello?

I arrived at Pennsylvania Station twenty-five minutes later and couldn’t make sense of the schedule. Mom and Dad had received strict instructions from me to go to the ship at the Port Authority if they didn’t see me when they arrived in New York. When I didn’t see them at the train station, I assumed that they went to the ship, so I headed back to the Star Odyssey. It was a looooong wait. But, finally, at around two o’clock in the afternoon, Mom and Dad tramped across the gangway, luggage in tow, and onto their floating home for the next seven days.

In the same way that many Americans sustain misperceptions of South Dakotans, or even Midwesterners, so do countless Americans carry a faulty image of the average New Yorker, presuming rudeness and boisterousness, and a reliance on enormous volumes of sound and obnoxiousness in order to obtain attention. “This is the way I do business, buddy, and if you don’t like it, there are other places in this town that can help you out.”

Typically, the restaurant for our lunch date with Dad’s cousin closed down at three o’clock, after the lunch rush. At two forty-five, the elevators opened at The Top of the Sixes with Mom, Dad and me inside … and P. and T. standing on the other side of the doors waiting to board the elevator to go down. After bearing witness to our warm embraces and passionate pleas to forgive our tardiness, a waiter standing nearby said, “Don’t leave yet,” and stepped into the kitchen. He re-emerged a few moments later to say, with a gracious smile, “You’ve waited a long time for lunch. Come sit down and we’ll get you some menus.” Mom and Dad, for years, recalled that moment as a highlight of the trip.

After reboarding the ship, Mom and Dad had dinner, danced to the music of my band, enjoyed the cabaret show, then watched our eleven o’clock departure from The City That Never Sleeps, sailing only a few hundred yards away from the Statue of Liberty. The next six days had us visiting Bar Harbor, Maine, Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a side trip to Peggy’s Cove, an excursion through the Saint Lawrence Seaway, Quebec City, Quebec and a disembarkation in Montreal, Quebec.

While in Bar Harbor, we each had a lobster sandwich, then boarded a mini bus that took us up Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. At the summit, we observed the lovely pink granite of Mount Desert Island and the tall spruce and pine trees that receive our nation’s first morning kiss from the sun.

Credits: To our New York waiter, for prompting us to cast off our preconceived notions of a New Yorker stereotype. We saw and see our American New York brothers and sisters with new eyes.

Big Pianist on Campus

2010-08-19T12:58:00.004-04:00

George Gershwin - Piano Concerto in F; Aaron Copland - El Salon Mexico ~ Piano Blues No. 3; Samuel Barber - Ballade; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Vladimir Ashkenazy, conducting; Peter Jablonski, piano

During my sophomore year at SDSU, a guest artist came to our fair university, stayed for a week and made an impact on me which lasted for many years. Master pianist Leon Bates had a last minute cancellation which cleared up his schedule for a five day period prior to scheduled performances with the SDSU Civic Symphony and on the Brookings Chamber Music Society Series. I had never met an actual concert pianist before this. The way that he rehearsed, the manner in which he interacted with other musicians, the joy he expressed in what he did for a living each and every day confirmed all of my suspicions. I wanted to do what he did.

During the week, he did a lot of practicing. For a few days he holed himself up in Dr. P.’s office, making a huge racket down at that end of the hall. The cancellation of his previous engagement couldn’t have come at a better time, he told us, as he needed the extra rehearsal time for his performance repertoire on a concert a few weeks later.

On Saturday night, he shared a recital with the Emerson Quartet. Mr. Bates performed Beethoven’s Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, - the so-called “Appassionata”. I think the quartet played a Haydn quartet. Then, together, Leon Bates and the Emerson Quartet performed Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major, Op. 44. Absolutely astounding performances.

On Sunday afternoon, the SDSU Civic Symphony performed an all-Gershwin program, opening with George Gershwin’s Cuban Overture. Mr. Bates then took to the stage to play the everlasting “Rhapsody in Blue”. After intermission, he returned to the piano for a spirited trek through Mr. Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F. Again, he knocked me out.

Leon Bates had become, at the time, somewhat of an authority on George Gershwin’s piano works. Whenever he made his debut with an orchestra, if it worked to include it within the orchestra’s concert season, he would program Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F. Two of my friends in college traveled to New York City to see him make his first appearance with the New York Philharmonic and heard him play that piece.

Earlier in the week, Mr. Bates graciously offered me some of his time to give me a piano lesson. I had prepared Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor for a piano competition, and with me at the bigger Mason & Hamlin and him at the smaller Steinway in Dr. P.’s office, he sight-read the second piano part without a struggle and played louder than I did. There’s a reason.

Leon Bates is a bodybuilder. He's absolutely huge. He told us that it clears his mind and gets him out of the practice room to do something other than music. Whenever he sits down at a piano, it looks like it’s going to lose.

During his week at SDSU, he went to the gym to work out and received an unexpected ... well, I guess you say ... audience. Other weight-lifters came over to him for tips and advise. In fact, some of the weight-training instructors and football coaches invited him over to the arena to speak with some of the athletes and students in a forum. Naturally, he told them all about the concerts on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

Most of the football players and weight-trainers came to the concert on Sunday afternoon. Let me say, I have seen better attended concerts. But I have never seen a “bigger” audience.

Credits: To Leon Bates, for his work on stage, in the classroom and with children. I like that you drive a pickup.

The ASO

2010-08-18T23:58:00.004-04:00

Tangazo; Astor Piazzolla, composer; Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal; Charles Dutoit, conducting; Daniel Binelli, Bandoneon; Eduardo Isaac, Guitar

Mom had a stratagem that she would use on my sisters and me when we came to her with, “Mom, can we get this?” She would say, “Not today. But if you’re still thinking about it three days from now, we can talk about it.” It saved her lots of spending money because – well – what six- to eleven-year old has that kind of focus?

Last February, I played celeste with the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra. I had a part on Bela Bartok’s “The Miraculous Mandarin”, Richard Strauss’ “Dance of the Seven Veils” from his opera “Salome” and Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero”. Playing the celeste is odd, because, for all of the tinkly, twinkly, Mr. Rogers neighborhood, music box sounds that emit from the instrument, the action at its keyboard takes three to four times the strength required to play even the stiffest Steinway. I didn’t have a part on Cesar Franck’s “Pyche” and I didn’t have a part on Astor Piazzolla’s “Tangazo”.

The conductor opened the concert with the Franck. Just as well, it was the most boring piece on the program. The second half of the program started with Mr. Piazzolla’s “Tangazo”. After intermission of each of the performances, I found a place behind the curtain where it was dark, where I could sit in a chair, close my eyes and lose myself in the culture of Argentina and in the magical and spicy, musical playground of Astor Piazzolla. With his unorthodox use of the shrieking violins and the soaring French horn solos, Mr. Piazzolla had me at “Hola”.

Six months later, I was still thinking about it. Had to have it. Bought it with a Christmas gift certificate on iTunes. It’s marvelous!

Credits: To the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra. Thanks for letting me play with you.

South Dakota, my home

2010-08-17T11:58:00.003-04:00

The Spirit of South Dakota; The National Park Series; Randy Petersen, composer

CBS News used to have a feature called “Eye On America”. The local CBS affiliate in South Dakota, KELO in Sioux Falls, did their own take on the large media conglomerate’s nightly five-minute commentary that they called “Eye On KELO-land”. I was featured once on “Eye On KELO-land” after my acceptance into “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band”. As I recall, they did a really nice job.

Some time in the mid-1990’s, I watched an “Eye On KELO-land” segment that took place in Ree Heights, South Dakota. I don’t remember the subject of the larger story, but I do recall that they focused for a while on business at the local grain elevator. Now and then, transactions necessitated the use of a FAX machine. When such occurrences required them to plug the machine in, they had to sweep the town with the message, “Don’t use your phones for the next twenty minutes.” The telephone lines in this town, and in most small towns in the rural upper Midwest, were, as I used to say, steeped in antiquity. The phone lines weren’t designed to do anything more than carry the sound of the human voice. Subsequently, it took them ten minutes to receive each page during a FAX transmission. If somebody, anywhere in town, talked on the phone during this time, the FAX process would take longer.

I don’t know if the problem has been solved. I doubt it. The real solution, it seems to me in my limited far-sightedness abilities, would require the laying down of hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable in order to provide Americans that live in low population density areas with an efficient method of using communication devices. And, by the time they’re done with this expensive process, who knows if this will still be the way that we electronically and digitally interact? Perhaps we will have learned to read minds!

What I remember most from the news piece, however, is that the South Dakotans who had to do business this way didn’t do any complaining. They acknowledged the inefficient way of accomplishing something fantastic; the notion of receiving a copy of something from over a thousand miles away in mere minutes – wow!! The end result was impeccable. But they had to jump through a bunch of hoops to do it.

The perception of the average South Dakotan as a Neanderthal unwilling to part with his string and coffee can telephone, bear skin and bat-shaped hunting club doesn’t hold water. South Dakotans don’t live where they live in order to stay away from progress and technology. The problem lies in the ability, or lack thereof, for progress and technology to come to them. Americans in South Dakota, North Dakota or any other state that suffers from an undeserved backwoods, clodhopper reputation are, in all actuality, just as willing to shake hands with their American brothers and sisters in Florida and New Mexico as Americans in any other part of the country, whether in the form of an actual easy and friendly handshake or a warm, affectionate e-mail.

Then why would anyone want to live there?

Anybody who asks that question has never put themselves in the sights of that type of query. We all have our needs and priorities. Some people have to live where it’s affordable. Some have to live where they can get work. Some people have to live where they work. Some people need to be surrounded by people. Some people need to live where it’s beautiful. And, if that’s the case, well, as they say, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. So some need to live near mountains. Some need to live near the ocean. Some need only a twenty-foot by thirty-foot back yard. But some people need a five thousand square foot back yard.

Credits: To the people of South Dakota. You have a nice home.

Great Jazz

2010-08-16T08:35:00.000-04:00

How Long Has This Been Going On?; Joe Pass, guitar; Louie Bellson, drums; Ray Brown, bass; Oscar Peterson, piano; Sarah Vaughan, vocal

Friend, I’m going to make it a light day and do little more than mention one of my favorite jazz CD’s. I don’t believe I have anything more than this one album that features Sarah Vaughan. And what a back up band! It doesn’t get any better than this.

Credits: To my friend Alan Dale, for his friendships with jazz musicians, from low on the talent totem pole (me) to the very highest (Louie Bellson). I love making music with you, pal.

Church music in its environs

2010-08-15T09:28:00.004-04:00

English Choral Music; Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge; Christopher Robinson, conducting

At the beginning of the new semester following the Christmas break of 1987, Dr. C. met his SDSU Concert Choir with his typical array of diversity in choral literature. A virtual smorgasbord of heterogeneity. No two pieces alike, all of them coming from a different time period, with a different language and in a different style. I like to quote the king from a Bugs Bunny cartoon where his majesty has just heard the menu for his lunch. The king responds with: “Everyday the same thing … variety.”

Dr. C. handed us the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from composer Herbert Howells’ Collegiate Regale. He explained to us that the EvenSong service of the English Anglican church incorporates these two texts into their liturgy. Composers who set the texts to music typically set them as a pair. And with both texts concluding with the Lesser Doxology or the Gloria Patri:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Composers will typically use the same music for the final portion of each text.

I had never heard Herbert Howells’ music before and it took a long time to get used to his manner of moving around in the field of harmony. Since it was English Church music, Mr. Howells wrote it, as you can imagine, with organ accompaniment. I had to get used to this, as well.

“Do you like it?” Dr. C. asked me after rehearsal one day. I don’t know, I said. I can’t tell yet. “Trust me. You will.”

We sang our concert in February at the annual South Dakota Music Inservice Convention with the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis included on the program. “Did you like it?” Dr. C. asked after the performance. I don’t know. “Trust me. You will.”

About a month later, the SDSU Concert Choir took a tour through Iowa, with a stop at a church with an immense sanctuary in Des Moines on a Sunday morning. We were to be the choir for their worship service. And since the church had a grand pipe organ, Dr. C. included our Herbert Howells pieces in the liturgy mix. As we approached our portion of the service, I wondered, How would this sound? Would the congregation like it? Would I like it? Would God like it?

The organ began and the sopranos came in ... and ...

I finally got it. The church’s cavernous interior allowed for marvelous acoustics, melding choir sounds with organ sounds and carrying one chord over into another for just a moment to create a heavenly sound that was impossible to create in our concert environments. The soaring soprano sounds reverberating over the cacophony of passage work in the organ accompaniment found a place in my ear and never left. THIS was the place for this music to happen.

“Did you like it?”, Dr. C. confidently asked me after the service. Yeah.

Credits: To Herbert Howells, for composing music suitable for the exaltation glorification of God. God seems a lot taller when your music is performed.

Marathon Man

2010-08-14T20:05:00.001-04:00

Singin' in the Rain; Jamie Cullum

I couldn’t understand my friend Sam during my college days. He went for a run every day. Voluntarily. This abstraction stood outside my field of understanding. The only practical use I ever had for running involved a charging bull or a particularly smoochy aunt. Sam must have sustained a deep-seated fear for either or both of these two, admittedly, remote situations to feel the need to train for such an occasion.

Why do you run? “I like to run,” Sam said. The question I asked and the answer he supplied didn’t add up to anything that made the least bit of sense. The only inspiration I could think of to run was that it would feel so good to stop. “Funny,” said Sam. “That’s the inspiration I use to listen to Joan Jett.”

On the last Sunday morning of October in 2001, I had a job at the Market Inn, a restaurant that offered a champagne brunch on Sundays just a few blocks southwest of the Capitol in Washington, DC. On the way to the job, the man on the radio reminded me that the annual Marine Corps Marathon had just started and that some road closures might interfere with local traffic. Oh, no!! The marathon route wound its way around the Capitol building, dangerously close to the Market Inn.

I arrived twenty minutes late to the job. My friend M. stood at the door waiting for me. “That’s okay,” he said. “It happens every year. I should have reminded you about it. Don’t worry about it.”

On my way back to the Durango after the job, I had this evil, diabolical, mischievous, pernicious, inimical, nagging thought: Wouldn’t it be funny if I ran the Marine Corps Marathon one year from now? I laughed, I think audibly, at the notion and moved on to other thoughts. But the idea returned a few hours later. Usually when I laughed hard enough at a silly idea it went away and never came back. But this ridiculous scheme simply wouldn’t go away. Of all the farcical ideas I ever had, why did this one have to be so heavy-duty? It sat there – smoldering – glaring its beady little eyes at me – defying me – frustrating me – daring me – and mocking me.

Six months later, I found myself standing in the “running” section in the sports aisle at Barnes and Noble. What am I doing? I thought to myself. Don’t you remember how much you hate running? But I kept looking. Looking. Looking. Both for a training book and a way out.

“The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer” by David Whitsett, Forrest Dolgener and Tanjala Kole fell into my hands. Guaranteed to condition you to run a 26.2 marathon by training only four days a week and no runs over eighteen miles. Part of me said, Well, this is perfect. As long as you’re going to be ambitious, you might as well do it with the least amount of effort. The other part of me said, Rats. Rats, rats, rats, rats, rats. Rats.

On the first Monday in July of 2002, I ran one mile. I hated it. The next day, I ran two miles. I hated it. On Thursday, I ran one mile. I hated it. On Saturday, I ran three miles. I hated it.

On the next Monday, I ran two miles. I hated it. On Tuesday, I rant four miles. I hated it. On Thursday, I ran two miles. I hated it. And on Saturday, I ran five miles. I hated it. Over the next several weeks, I maintained this sensible training plan and remained consistent with my outlook.

On the second Sunday in September, my training plan called for a sixteen-mile run. During the entire week leading up to my Sunday run, the misery mounted by the hour. Black Saturday came and went and I think I even whimpered as I went to bed that night.

On Sunday morning, I stepped out from under the eaves. It was raining. The temperature was fifty-six degrees. Hmmmmmmmm. What will this be like? I started out. Things went fine for a while. And just when things should have gone downhill … they didn’t. I was soaked to the bone. I was winded. But I wasn’t tired. I saw other runners out on the path with me. As I looked up at them, I noticed … they were smiling. Not just a few people here and there. Everybody that was running … was smiling. People who weren’t running … they were scowling. But everybody on my team, the running team, was on the inside. We knew the punch line to a joke we didn’t need to hear. We were wet. We were cool. We were smiling. And we weren’t tired.

When I reached mile sixteen, I realized that I had forgotten to take a breather during my entire run. I had gotten so caught up in not being miserable that I forgot to stop. And, to tell the truth, I felt like I could have gone further. But, BOY, was I glad I didn’t have to.

Credits: To Sam, for adhering to a principle that I can’t understand. But thank you for adhering to it. You inspire me.

Just add water

2010-08-13T19:41:00.003-04:00

Tchaikovsky ~ Piano Concerto No. 1; Prokofiev ~ Piano Concerto No. 3; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Charles Dutoit, conducting; Berliner Philharmoniker; Claudio Abbado; Martha Argerich, piano

Shortly after graduating from CCM, a friend of mine, W., who had graduated from SDSU a year or so earlier, called me at my parent’s farm when he knew that I was around. “Hey, Erik, let me know when you travel up my way. It would be nice to see you.” Well, I might be up in a few weeks. “Well, then, call me up around that time and I’ll give you directions on how to get here.” Perfect.

When I pulled up into the yard at a beautiful farm out on the northeast plains of South Dakota, W. came out of the house to meet me. “I might have tricked you. I hope you don’t think so. But if you do, I’m sorry.” How did you trick me? “This isn’t my house. This is my Grandma’s house.” So? “I want her to tell you about the house.” Okay. “And something else.” What? “I want you to play her piano for her.” Well. Okay. What do I get out of it? “Cake.” What kind of cake? “Who cares? It’s Grandma cake. What grandma has ever made bad cake?” True. Although, I suspect that this is happening because you want cake. “Busted.”

“My husband and I built this house out of a kit from Montgomery Wards,” W.’s Grandma said as she put a tray of cake down on a red checkerboard tablecloth. “A big truck brought all of the supplies, pre-fabbed, and we put it all together in about four days.” Four days? “Yup. Four days. We had the basement all dug and finished before the big truck came. The rest of it was just … following the directions.” Have you ever had any problems with it? “No. There’s maintenance, just like any home, but we’ve – I’ve never had to replace anything. And it’s been here for fifty-five years. Blizzards, hailstorms and heat.” Wow. That’s all I could say was wow. I had heard of these Montgomery Ward homes before but I’d never been in one. It was very handsome.

The Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major by Sergei Prokoffief is a knuckle-buster. It requires massive loads of performance technique on everyone’s part, but mostly the piano soloist. Mr. Prokoffief took ten years to write this piece, borrowing melodies and rhythmic schemes from other projects that he had sitting on the table. Despite the buffet-like compositional style, everything binds together brilliantly. Most musicologists consider this piece one of the most important compositions of the twentieth century.

When pianists play the Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Liszt concertos, they must bring part of themselves to bear in the music and match their musical integrity, as best they can, with the probity of the composer. With this Prokoffief concerto … not as much. Certainly, a pianist who has reached this level of performance will bring musicianship to the work place with them. But, with few exceptions, all Mr. Prokoffief requires of the pianist who plays his third concerto is … that they follow the directions.

This may sound silly, but ,with the Prokoffief Third Piano Concerto, essentially all of the music is already written into the music. The pianist needn’t invest much time on interpretation; just play the notes and trust the composer to take care of everything else. No further consideration necessary.

This piece is perfect for the last minute requirements of Heidi Schoonover, played by Amy Irving in the movie “The Competition”. When it’s time for Heidi to play her piano concerto, a Mozart concerto, one of the notes on the piano (the D above middle C, as I recall) hasn’t been voiced properly and it “sticks out” from the others; in other words, the D sounds louder. After only a few seconds of her entrance in the piece, she stops playing, breaks down, and runs off stage.

The conductor follows her off the stage and quickly says, “This is a problem that can be fixed. These things happen.” Heidi, like a true diva, declares, “I know longer feel like playing Mozart tonight. I want to play the Prokoffief Third.” After the harrowing experience of folding, freezing in front of an audience and a panel of judges, she blows them out of the water with something brilliant in which she doesn’t have to think.

I played the Piano Concerto No. 3 by Prokoffief when I was at CCM with a second piano playing the orchestral part. I even made it into the finals in the 1989 Concerto Competition at the Concervatory playing this piece. I didn’t win.

Credits: To Grandma’s everywhere, for their cake-baking abilities.

Emotional depth

2010-08-12T23:53:00.005-04:00

Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor"; Piano Sonata No. 23 "Appassionata"; Wiener Philharmoniker; Sir Simon Rattle, conducting; Alfred Brendel, piano

While hanging out with a fellow graduate piano student during my CCM days, I audibly cast out the fleeting thought that I would like to work on the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major by Johannes Brahms. My friend offered to me what his piano teacher had said about this majestic work: “If you are under twenty-five years of age when you take on the great B-Flat concerto by Brahms, you should learn it as best as you can – then put it away for ten to fifteen years. No pianist under the age of thirty has gathered enough of the riches of life to understand, much less plumb the depths of, the emotion, fervency, sentience of feeling and zest for all things savory and piquant that Mr. Brahms requires to adequately carry out this masterwork.” Okay. Well, maybe tomorrow then. I’ll just make sure I live a little bit of life this evening and let it drip it on my fingers in the morning.

Despite the sarcasm, though, even at the tender age of twenty-three, I knew that my friend’s piano teacher spouted truth. It sits in the same chair as that old “Life begins at forty” adage. One can’t credibly extol what one hasn’t seen. If you want to sing about love, then you have to have fallen in love; otherwise you’re just an unmarried marriage counselor.

Subsequently, I have “saved” the exploration of some compositions by some composers for later in life. Gustav Mahler, for instance, composed not so much on a higher emotional plane than other composers but more in a variant musical language that I have yet to completely understand. It’s complex and sophisticated … and complicated. I can hear that Mr. Mahler’s beautiful Ninth Symphony is emotionally charged, but I haven’t figured out what he’s saying. Hopefully, age will bring this wisdom.

I have also "saved for later" much of the work of Ludwig van Beethoven. Mr. Beethoven was the original “tortured soul”. In addition to romantic entanglements and his lack of success in acquiring a wife, he had health issues, he had money problems, he had dysfunctional family matters … and always, always, always, the need to obsess, tirelessly, endlessly,over passages of music, large and small, until they said exactly what he wanted them to say.

There’s a reason that musicologists proclaim Mr. Beethoven to be the harbinger of the Romantic Period in music. Composers like Mozart and Haydn, who wrote during that time leading up to the fruition of Mr. Beethoven’s compositional talent, injected more and more expression into their music. Beethoven had nowhere else to go but full, frontal, emotional assault on his listeners; with this one handicap. While the voices of Heaven flowed from the pens of Herr Mozart and Herr Haydn like oil from a ruptured well, Beethoven created, then smashed, then resurrected, then hacked, then attached, then sanded, then welded, then spliced, then gathered, hewed, mended, lopped, fastened, chopped, patched, slashed, fused, severed, stitched, lacerated, renovated, carved – and, finally, polished, buffed and shined what he knew to be absolutely, unreservedly, categorically, unequivocally and thoroughly – right. To change one note would have made it wrong.

A man or woman who chooses to take on the emotional battering of the hard-earned musical genius of heavy-weight champion Ludwig van Beethoven is serious, indeed. Pianist Paul Dietrich, played by Richard Dreyfuss in the 1980 movie “The Competition”, has reached his thirties and stands at the edge of a cliff. The cut-off age for virtually all piano competitions is thirty-five. He has come to the last one; the final door. He can do no other than to come to the table armed to the teeth with a technical and emotional mastery and understanding of Ludwig van Beethoven’s grand and stately Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major – the “Emperor” concerto. So committed is he to his task, that he declines a job offer from a friend as a music teacher, saying, “If you need to have something to fall back on, well, then, that is exactly what you do – fall back.”

If you haven’t won the accolades of competition judges by the time you reach Mr. Dietrich’s age, should you continue in the music profession as a performer? Be careful with your response, reader. You’re standing perilously close to my cliff.

Credits: To Lee Remick, who, as Gretta Vandemann, tells Paul Dietrich, “It costs extra to carve ‘schmuck’ on a tombstone, but you would be worth the expense.” Ha!

Sadness

2010-08-11T23:55:00.005-04:00

Piano Concerto No. 1; Three Intermezzi; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; Sir Simon Rattle, conducting; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

I wish I better understood the “true” correlation between the concept of major and minor keys and the personification of emotion that we, as humans, connect with them. Mind you, I’m not complaining that this interrelationship exists. After all, what would music mean to us if we couldn’t associate it with the portion and parcel of our lives?

Listen to this E Minor Prelude by Frederic Chopin. It’s nothing if not … sad, isn’t it? Yes, it’s sad. I’m not telling you anything new. If you heard the song on your own, you would probably say, “Boy, that’s really sad.”

What makes it sad? Some would argue that the melody makes it sad. Well, there isn’t really a melody, but what could pass for one certainly contributes to a measure of melancholy. Maybe the tempo; yeah, a little bit. Let me cut to the chase. It’s basically sad because it’s in a minor key.

Minor keys evoke - well, - sadness, anger, despair, disappointment, anguish, disheartenment, misery, worry, gloom, fear … even a little dejection. Excitement can happen in a minor key, absolutely. Many a Rossini overture has pepped right along in a minor key. But it’s an unsettled excitement. If you were promised a happy ending in a composition and it finished in a minor key, you’d think that you got hosed.

Point being: In this day and age where we don’t like to apply labels to anything or anybody, virtually everyone, , on God’s blue and green Earth, including me when they hear a song or composition in a minor key, immediately associates the music with some type of turmoil, whether it’s quiet and beautiful, or agitated and angst-ridden. It’s automatic. We can’t help it. We all do it.

During my cruise ship days, the ship often visited ports of call in the Soviet Union and Russia. When I disembarked the ship to hit the streets of Leningrad, later St. Petersburg, Odessa and Yalta … and peered into the visages of the people of this land, I saw sadness. Not all of the time. But, mostly. Even when their beautiful faces glowed with heart-warming smiles, I still saw sadness. And I, to this day, rightly or wrongly, identify these wonderful people with a little sorrow and a little woe.

Contestant Tatjana Baronov, played by actress Vicki Kriegler in the movie “The Competition”, is from the Soviet Union and constantly stands in the shadow of her formidable teacher, Madame Gorshev, played by Bea Silvern. Madame Gorshev announces to all of the contestants that Miss Baronov will play the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor. Yup. You heard me. D MINOR. The saddest of all keys, according to the folks on “Spinal Tap”.

And to add to the sadness, Madame Gorshev, about two-thirds of the way into the movie, seeks political asylum in the United States. Imagine a young shy contestant in a major piano competition, in the land of the cold war enemy where she doesn’t know the language, watching her teacher and mentor seek to escape all that this girl knows to be right and strong and true. What can I say? Sad.

I saw and heard my friend MC play this piece with the Philharmonia Orchestra during my first quarter at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. For a while, I held a grudge against him for being so much better than me. And so much younger than me. In the words of the great American H. Ross Perot, “Now that’s just sad.”

Credits: To the Russian people, for your beauty. And your sadness.