A night in London

Carmina Burana; Carl Orff, composer; Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; Atlanta Boy Choir; Judith Blegen, soprano; Hakan Hagegard, baritone; William Brown, tenor; Robert Shaw, conducting

I remember seeing the trailer, at the movie theater, for the 1981 motion picture “Excalibur”, John Boorman’s magical account of the legend of King Arthur. It featured Nigel Terry as King Arthur, Helen Mirren as Morgana, the great Nicol Williamson as Merlin, and a very young Liam Neeson and an even younger Patrick Stewart as Gawain and Leondegrance. It also featured the always stirring, yet always menacing, “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”.

In 1935 and 1936, Herr Orff composed music to portions of a manuscript of some two-hundred fifty-four poems and dramatic texts from the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries called “Songs from Beuern”, in English, or, in Medieval Latin, “Carmina Burana”. The manuscript was found in a Benedictine monastery in Benediktbeuern, Bavaria in 1803. Golliards, traveling students and clergy contributed songs of morals and mockery, love songs, drinking and gaming songs for this collection.

Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” takes the form of cantata and calls on the talents and capabilities of an ensemble of enormous proportions. A massive percussion section, a very large orchestra, two pianos, a large chorus, a children’s chorus, and soprano, tenor and baritone soloists typically fill to overflowing a concert stage of performers who take on this behemoth. Now and then you encounter performances the ensemble has staged the work with ballet and costumes.

In 1991, I went to Europe as a choir accompanist and chaperone for young people, mostly from South Dakota, who had formed a band and chorus to take a summer tour of London, Paris, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Most of the ensemble members were still in high school. A small number of them were in college. I was to chaperone the college age kids.

When we got to London, I saw that, on our first night in town, there was a concert at Royal Albert Hall. The second half of the concert consisted of the entirety of “Carmina Burana”. I gathered my wards and informed them of this option and to my joy and relief, they all wanted to go to the concert. This was the first time that I ever heard the work and I was blown away.

A few years later, at a band concert, somebody behind me started telling musician jokes during intermission and many others chimed in. I heard the same tired stories that had made the amateur comedy circles for years. But then I heard a choral conductor jump in. “Hey, fellas, listen to this…”

You say Carmina, and I say Carmana.

You say Burina, and I say Burana.

Carmina, Carmana.

Burina, Burana.

Let’s

Carl the whole thing Orff.

Everybody OK?

Credits: To John Boorman, for his gripping story telling of the Arthurian legend. Thank you for using “O Fortuna”.

Brian at the bar.

The Brian Setzer Orchestra; Brian Setzer, guitar and vocals

My cousin T. has worked in downtown Minneapolis for almost his entire career. During this time he has developed around him a sense of community. He knows the man who works in this shop, he knows the guy who works in that office building, he knows the fellow who owns “such and such” a business one block over and he knows some of the workers who have offices in different firms on different floors in his building. T. has also made himself a “now and then” regular at a bar in a hotel nearby; some place where he can take a client or where he can unwind for a few minutes before facing rush hour.

“Hey, T.,” the bartender said one late afternoon. “Come over here. I’d like you to meet someone. T., this is Brian Setzer and his wife. Mr. Setzer, this is my friend T.” T. was absolutely touched. We live in an age where fame and celebrity carry impossibly high status, by far surpassing the actual accomplishments, good deeds or talents of any given “superstar”. Yet, in light of this, the bartender hadn’t set up a full parade of autograph chasers to fawn over the guitar player’s world-wide fame. In a gesture of sheer class, the bartender had singled my cousin out, by virtue of his knowledge of his clients: Mr. Setzer had a son in college, and T. had a son in college.

I picked up this album at the Tower Records in upper Manhattan one beautiful autumn day. They had one of those machines that let you listen to a portion of a song or two through a set of headphones. What had caught my eye was the inclusion of “A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square” and “Route 66”. But I stayed for the guitar-playing.

This was new to me. Glenn Miller put the trombone up in front of the band. Harry James but the trumpet up in front. Woody Herman and Bennie Goodman put the clarinet up front. Buddy Rich put the drums up front, for crying out loud. And Harry Connick, Jr., put the band behind a nine-foot Steinway. The guitar’s time had come, and it had come in the guise of Brian Setzer, the Strayin'est Cat you ever saw.

In a shameful way, I’m a little envious of T.’s brush with greatness. I meet famous people a little more frequently than most everybody else. And it happens most frequently on the fly. But it happens because I am hired to play the piano in a place where celebrities orbit. Mind you, I don’t have stars in my eyes. Celebrities are people. I’m a people. You, dear reader, are a people, too. Music can certainly function as a conversation starter with me. But, I am gratified when common ground is found in a completely different field on the farm.

Credits: To my cousin T., and many others, who draw me out of my music world and let me be just a people.

Out of this world!

The Planets; Gustav Holst, composer; Berliner Philharmoniker; Sir Simon Rattle, conducting

In the autumn of 1976, my fifth grade class took a field trip to Marshall, Minnesota. Southwest State University had a planetarium. Mr. S. had been teaching a unit on astronomy and I liked it, which was a change for me. Usually, I didn’t go for the science classes. I suppose the beauty of the stars, points of light against an imponderable backdrop of blackness, captured the attention of one who lives so much of his life on the right side of his brain that he’s practically handicapped.

Mr. S. had talked to us about the planetarium in anticipation of our field trip, but who could make any sense out of what he was talking about; at least until we could see it. And, indeed, for me, the trip was pretty ho-hum; just another place to eat lunch. But, then …

We entered the planetarium. We sat in the comfy seats. We listened to the nice man talk about what we would see. Then he turned down the lights. And all of a sudden the stars were over our heads. We were OUTSIDE … INSIDE. There was no way that I ever could have imagined the impact of this perception that the far-away was confined within a domed darkened room. I was completely transformed. I wanted to come to this school every day from now on so that I could sit under the stars … INSIDE.

The nice man wanted to show us Orion, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, the north star, Canis Major, Sirius, the Southern Cross, Andromeda, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Cassiopeia and Alpha Centauri. Meanwhile, it took everything inside of me not to burst and say, Please, nice man, do you have to talk so much? Can you just be quiet for a little while and let us look at the stars, here, inside? I mean, my God, aren’t they beautiful, sir, don’t you think they’re beautiful?

I don’t remember much about the ride back to the school. I was too stunned to allow the landscape that was whooshing by my window to register inside my head. It was too full of images of the moon, stars, planets, galaxies, the heavens … Creation.

Where I got the idea, I don’t know, but that evening, back home, I took an empty cylindrical oatmeal box and cut off both ends. On one end piece, I poked holes in approximately the places where stars would form the Big Dipper. Then I put it back on the oatmeal box. Then I cut a circle out of the center of the other end piece about the same diameter as the inner tube of a roll of toilet tissue. After slipping the tube through the cut-out circle, I placed that end back onto the oatmeal box, as well. With this, I could pretend that I was looking through a telescope – or sitting inside my very own planetarium; quietly; inside.

I haven’t lost my sense of romance and fascination with planetariums. I’ve gone to them in New York City, Copenhagen, Washington, DC, and at the Terry Redlin Art Museum in Watertown, South Dakota. All of them did a magic number on me. But not like the first one.

The first time I heard the music of Gustav Holst was at my sister K.’s band concert shortly before they went on a band trip to St. Louis, Missouri. They played the “Second Suite in F for Military Band”. Even at that young age, I recognized the English provincial and folkish nature of his music.

In “The Planets – Suite For Large Orchestra”, the composer sounds a little more mainland European, but now and again his British-ness breaks through. Take heed that the thematic character of the piece is decidedly astrological, not astronomical. That’s why there is no “Earth” movement. The order of the planets in the suite corresponds to the increasing distance of each planet from the Earth. Interestingly enough, Pluto was proclaimed a planet just four years before Mr. Holst’s death. He showed no enthusiasm, however, in writing a representational movement for his planetarial collection. Little matter, though, as Pluto was “demoted” in 2006 and Mr. Holst’s work remains a complete representation of our Solar System.

Since our fifth grade unit on astronomy, I have seen several meteor showers and two comets. I’ve seen two planets and the moon occupy the same tiny piece of sky. I’ve seen both solar and lunar eclipses. You can keep your Broadway and West End theatres. The best stage of all is straight up … OUTSIDE.

Credits: To Mr. S., our fifth grade and sixth science and creative writing instructor. Thank you for the planetarium trip. Sorry about my F in Oceanography. But it’s your fault. You didn’t take us to an Aquarium.

January 1, 2000

Benjamin Britten, composer; Piano Concerto; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; Paavo Jarvi, conducting; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

I bought this CD because I didn’t know that English composer Benjamin Britten had written a piano concerto. But I did know that any performance by Leif Ove Andsnes would be worth the price. The surprise came when I found out that the EMI label had recorded these performances live in front of a concert hall full of people.

The Britten Piano Concerto doesn’t get played very often. That is a shame. From Mr. Andsnes’ dazzling performance, I hear a world class work, worthy of the attention of the world’s great pianists. Mr. Britten sounds, here, like a tamer, yet no less exciting, Sergei Prokofiev. The performance sparks and ignites from the get go with resplendent thematic flint flying from the keyboard and inside the presumably open-lidded piano.

Tower Records had a store in Annapolis up until 2006. On January 1, 2000, I went to Tower Records to see what they had to offer in the new millenium, and they presented me with this wonderful lineup. With this, New Year’s Day 2000 was a very happy day.

Credits: To Benjamin Britten, for creating a unique English voice in classical music.

But is it art?

Hooked On Classics; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Louis Clark, conducting

At about the same time that I initiated a love affair with classical music, that is to say when I was sixteen years old, the world and I encountered a very strange phenomenon. I didn’t think it strange at the time, but looking back at it now, the popularity of a series of recordings called “Hooked On Classics” seems a little ridiculous. Yet these recordings took the American and British culture by storm.

I’m sure that the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, in London, England, and Louis Clark, at one time the keyboardist and arranger of string charts for the Electric Light Orchestra, made lots of money from these albums. But it must have been an enormous gamble to produce. I mean, they paid a full orchestra for many hours of studio time. And who was their target audience? And, more importantly, would their target audience like it, much less buy it?

I find it doubtful that they were trying to reach the international classical music community. They – ahem, we – typically have our noses waaaaaayyyy up in the air at the notion of a classical music medley. The idea of a Reader’s Digest version of any of the great musical masterworks offends them – us. The moment you cut up a masterpiece, it ceases to be the thing that it was to begin with. The finest peaks in classical music stand on the shoulders of the measures and moments that come before, that work the ground, that pave the way, that point to the these passionate summits, and yet are instances of beauty and bliss in and of themselves. Would you cut those portions of music away in the interest of efficiency? “Here’s the very best of classical music … in just four minutes!”

Who was their target audience? I dare say that it was me. I knew that I loved classical music, but I had no list of works telling me which classical music pieces I should love. This album provided that need. It was kind of like shopping. Okay, I liked that symphony theme. Maybe not THAT one so much. Oooo. Now, that’s very nice. How much for this one? And so on.

The inside cover of the cassette tape – I bought the CD several years later at a pawn shop for a dollar and a half – listed all of the pieces included in each medley. This turned out to be a boon when studying for my Music Lit classes in college. I already knew what most of the music sounded like.

So, I’m a bit torn over the whole concept. It’s a thing, made out of pieces of art, but is that thing, itself, art? On the other hand, something that I would not listen to today established a foundation on which I could erect an infrastructure … with massive walls where my boundless and sweeping music gallery could fasten.

My friend David says that these medleys offered the opportunity to delight the world with segments of the world’s finest and most beautiful music ever – by virtue of a two-by-four.

Credits: To members of orchestras all over the world, who trust, each and every day, that a sizeable cross-section of the world’s population will actuate and nurture a passion for this wonderful genre of music that was written many generations before them. I share and admire your faith.

Accident

Wait; Cyndi Frame, vocals

In May of 2000, I accepted an invitation to cover for an organist friend of mine at her Sunday morning worship service while she and her husband stepped out of town for a week. I had played there before, but I needed some time at the instrument to remember which buttons played loud and which ones played louder. So, Nelson and I left at quarter past six in the blessed AM to make sure I got to the church in plenty of time.

At around seven o’clock, I got to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge at the bottom of the Capital Beltway that spans from Maryland into Virginia. A section of the bridge closer to the Virginia side supports a draw mechanism. In my few years driving across this bridge, I had seldom seen the drawbridge up. On this morning, it was up. But from my vantage point, I could see that it was coming down. I carefully pulled up behind the car in front of me, and ten seconds later …

WHAM!!!

Nelson got hit from behind. But the car behind me didn’t cause the accident. It was the car behind that one. And I hit the car in front of me. The young woman in the car in front of me seemed a little shaken but relatively okay. The folks in the car behind me, on the other hand, probably didn’t need this to happen to them on this day. It appeared to me that they had nearly everything that they owned in the vehicle with them; including five dogs.

The first thing we did, while someone called for emergency help, was round up the dogs and put leashes on them. The woman in that car wasn’t in great shape. And her husband had a head wound. My job, as the only victim not to get hurt, was to hold onto the leashes of the five dogs.

The emergency teams came and began to care for the other people. I continued to hold charge over the five dogs. As it turned out, the woman in the car ahead of me suffered a little more personal damage than she initially let on. In the end, I was the only person involved in the accident that didn’t get taken away in a helicopter. And after they left, I was still hanging on to the leashes of the five dogs.

All of the dogs behaved admirably throughout the ordeal. One of the dogs was a rottweiler and, like the others, she sat quietly. After a while, though, she started to become unresponsive. I called someone from the emergency team over to check her out, and after doing a quick once over, she said that the poor dog was going into shock and that I should hand over the leash. I didn’t see where they took her.

About that time, a tow-truck had arrived to take Nelson to a lot until someone could get him on Monday. Someone had taken over responsibility of the other dogs and I fished around the inside of my truck for my cell phone to call the church. “Hello.” Yes, I’m your organist this morning. I’ve been involved in an accident on the beltway. “You’re part of that mess?” Yes, I’m afraid so. I can’t drive to your church because my vehicle is damaged, but if someone will come and pick me up, I’ll still play for your church service. “We’re sending someone right now.” All told, the traffic on the bridge was held up for an hour and a half.

We made it to the service with three minutes to spare, with one minute spent on the applause upon my entrance. Some portions of the service were loud when they should have been louder, and vice versa, but, really, those moments only solicited friendly expressions of “Oops. Oh, well. We’re thankful you made it.”

Three weeks later, I got a call from a guitar player friend, K.A. who asked me if I could play piano at a church service in Fairfax, Virginia. Yup. “Drive over to my place on Sunday morning, and I’ll drive the rest of the way, okay?” Okay.

He nervously listened to traffic news along the way. “Normally I wouldn’t be so jumpy about traffic, but three weeks ago, I got stuck on the Wilson Bridge for an hour and a half because of an accident and I missed the first worship service.” Really? Let me tell you a funny story …

The worship leader that morning, a very fine singer named Cyndi Frame, approached me after the second worship service of the morning to inform me that she was in the middle of a recording project. She had two original songs that she wanted on her CD. She had intended to play the piano part herself. But she liked the way I played that morning. “Do you have time to come out to the recording studio and lay down a couple piano tracks?” Yes, ma’am.

This was my very first recording session and I was very excited. She paid me a little money after we finished. But I value the CD a whole lot more, beecause, like so many others, it sits on my iPod and tells a story.

Credits: To my Mom, and mothers everywhere, natural, adoptive and spiritual. Thank you for the meals, the hugs, the kisses, the band-aids, the worrying, the concern, the care and the love. D., K. and I love you, Mom.

Historical events

Angel; Massive Attack

I am enchanted by the notion that we remember the circumstances under which we hear the news of catastrophic, or otherwise historical, moments. It probably doesn’t require an awful lot of effort on our part to mentally register a moment of significance. As a matter of fact, I believe that we can actually do no other than to apply that figurative highlighter pen to our personal mental timelines with a subconscious intent to remember where we were, where our family was, what we were wearing, what we were doing – even what we were eating.

Mr. B., my typing teacher in my freshman year of high school, announced during our class, after receiving a notice delivered to all teachers, that President Reagan had been shot.

Before going to Orchestration Class, at SDSU, my classmates and I usually met downstairs in the “pit”, or the student lounge and locker area, and then descended upon Mr. R. and Orchestration Class en masses. One day, before heading up to class, somebody asked D.O. what had happened on “The Young And The Restless” that day. He replied in disgust that TYATR had been pre-empted because of a plane crash. “Oh? Where was the plane crash?” “You know, down in Florida.” “Miami? Orlando? Where?” “At the, ah … ah … oh, come on, you guys. You know, … at Cape Canaveral.” “THE SPACE SHUTTLE?!?” “Yeah. So my show wasn’t on.” Dad told me, at some point, that he had seen the whole thing happen in front of his eyes on TV.

I had bought my new DVD player in August of 2001 and considered that a party was just the occasion under which to Christen it. So, after asking friends when they could come over to watch a movie, I found that the earliest we could convene was on September 10. While trying to decide what kind of food to serve at the party, Mom suggested that I make her hamburger stew. Many of my friends didn’t eat red meat, so I opted to use ground turkey instead of ground beef. The party was a hit and we watched “Dr. Strangelove”.

The next morning, Mom called to see how the party had gone and how the stew had turned out. As we talked, I happened to turn the TV on. Apparently I had watched PBS some time the day before because Barney was splashing purple all over the screen. I quickly switched channels and saw a stationary view of the World Trade Center in New York with smoke coming out one of the top floors. Must be a trailer for a movie, I thought. So I switched channels. There it was again. Mom, are you watching TV? “No.” I think you probably better turn it on. I’ll call you in a little while.

I love the show “The West Wing”. At the end of the “Commencement” episode, shortly before concluding Season Four, President Bartlett’s daughter, Zoey, is abducted. The show ends with chief-of-staff Leo McGarry running from the Oval Office to the residence in the White House to tell the President. It wasn’t uncommon for the producers to underscore one of the show's stories by including a snippet of a pop tune like Don Henley’s “New York Minute”, Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” and Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah”.

Several portions of the final minutes of this episode were shown in succession with the dialogue muted. For an underscore, they chose the beginning of the song “Angel” by the group Massive Attack from their 1998 album “Mezzanine”. It’s more of a techno pop tune with long portions of percussion sequences in the beginning and at the end. The song provided a suitable backdrop for the chaos during the closing minute or two of the episode.

Isn’t that something? I love this show so much that I noted the music during a moment of fictional significance. I don’t like the rest of the song, by the way. And I don't like the cover. But I bought it for a dollar on iTunes, so there it sits. On my iPod.

I accompany the Heritage Harbour Chorus at the Heritage Harbour retirement community on the outskirts of Annapolis, Maryland. On December 7, 2007, Ollie Zinsmeister, conductor emeritus of the Heritage Harbour Chorus, at the age of ninety-six, approached the chorus before a dress rehearsal for a Christmas concert and proclaimed that “Sixty-six years ago today, I and my fellow US Marine Band Members were at the White House to play an early afternoon concert, but we before we could play a single note, we were sent back to the barracks because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor.” Though the youngest person in the room (at the age of forty-two), I was not the only one who gasped. Men and women in their seventies and eighties grasped instantly that we were in the presence of one who had had a direct encounter with White House activities on “a day that will live in infamy.”

That short little statement made such an impact that now, whenever someone mentions Pearl Harbor, I will recall the memory of someone else who remembered, sixty-six years later, a moment of historical significance.

Credits: To Ollie Zinsmeister, an outstanding Marine Bandsman and a life long lover of music. Bravo, Maestro.