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.

Taking a break

Songs For Swingin' Lovers; Frank Sinatra.

It’s a beautiful summer day in South Dakota here in Maryland. I can’t stay indoors. So I’m playing hooky. I’m going AWOL. I’m going to ply a little bit of truancy. I’m bunkin’. I’m ditchin’, I’m slackin’, I’m skippin’. I’m taking a personal day. Please forgive me.

And while I’m doing all of those things, I will be listening to Frank Sinatra’s “Songs For Swinging’ Lovers”. In my opinion, this is one of his most successful albums. Everything swings, just like the title claims. Isn’t it nice to indulge once in a while in something that actually delivers what it proclaims?

Credits: To you, again, dear reader, for letting me take the day of off. The birds are singing, the grass and leaves are green, and I gotta’ get out there and enjoy it before the temperature ruins it all by getting up in the 80’s. Have a good day. On me.

Boredom in Paradise

20; Harry Connick, Jr.

I have to admit that the scene I stepped into when I joined the crew and band on board the S.S. Oceanic at Port Canaveral shortly after the new year in 1991 more closely resembled the vision I had in mind when I first conceived of the idea of cruise ship musician. Clear water, white sand, palm trees and hammocks; barbeques, colored drinks with little umbrellas and Calypso music; late night buffet, evening star-lit skies and refreshing tropical breezes. Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh. Paradise.

Well, for a while. I made friends quickly. I had my own room. The person who occupied my room before me had bunked the bed so that it sat level with the port-hole window. The first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning was the sea. We had every Saturday off. The band was outstanding, the food was delicious, the weather was terrific, the scenery was beautiful, the snorkeling was wonderful. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

The first ship I worked on, the Golden Odyssey, had blown all of my pre-conceived ideas of cruising out of the water. Centuries old cobblestone streets as opposed to sand and surf; museums, cathedrals and castles instead of grass thatched shacks and gaudy casinos; filet mignon, consommé and capers as an alternative to hotdogs, jerk chicken and Jamaican rice. Rome, Venice, Istanbul, Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon and Yalta vs. Cocoa Beach, Florida, and Nassau in The Bahamas.

The template for our itinerary had been laid out long before I arrived. Mondays and Fridays at Cape Canaveral; Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays in Nassau; Thursdays at sea. It only took two weeks for me to realize that boredom and misery were on their way.

I called my contractor and said, I will honor and finish my contract with you and serve on this ship for as long as I said I would. But, after that, I gotta’ go someplace else. I’m going to go stir crazy here. “Well, there’s an opening on the Crown Odyssey in the middle of July. You would meet the ship in London. How does that sound?” Ooooohhh, yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh, baby. That’s more like it. Thank you.

So over the course of the first twenty weeks of 1991, I went to the Bahamas forty times. And, with each passing week, grew more and more jaded with the impression that I had formulated of paradise.

To give myself something to do, I decided to transcribe one of the piano solos from the album “20” by Harry Connick, Jr. “Avalon” stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. It struck me as the quintessential improvisation. He played the tune in the style of New Orleans jazz pianist James Booker and, for all its rambunctiousness, made no mistakes.

Al Jolson, Buddy DeSylva, and Vincent Rose “wrote” “Avalon” in 1920, and several people, including Jolson, of course, have recorded it over the years. I say “wrote” because they lifted the melody from the aria “E Lucevan le Stelle” from Pucinni’s opera “Tosca”. Mr. Pucinni’s publishers sued Jolson and his friends for use of the melody and were awarded twenty-five thousand dollars and all subsequent royalties of the song.

Transcribe means exactly that; to write down, note for note, what the man improvised on the recording. It took me four weeks and ten sheets of staff paper to finish the job. And I did it away from the piano, strictly through listening.

The itinerary on the Crown Odyssey suited me much better than my time on Premier Cruise Line’s Oceanic. Premier Cruise Line gave up the ghost in 2000 and a Japanese cruise line bought the Oceanic.

All things being equal, I have nothing against the beach and palm trees. I just don’t need to go to them. A picture will do just fine.

Credits: To Al Jolson, for his resolve to “never leave the stage until everyone in the audience has been entertained within an inch of their lives.” Thank you for “Avalon” and “The Jazz Singer”.

A perfect afternoon in Oslo

Johannes Brahms: Sonatas for Viola and Piano, Op. 120; Lars Anders Tomter, viola; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

I found this recording of Sonatas for Piano and Viola (or Clarinet) by Johannes Brahms at a CD store in Stockholm, Sweden, in August of 1993. But I didn’t have time to listen to it until I got to Oslo, three days later.

Both of the artists featured on this album come from Norway. Being Norwegian, myself, I almost felt it imperative, not only for my sake, but for the sake of millions of other Norwegian-Americans who would probably never have the opportunity to visit the land of their fathers and mothers – the Holy Land to the North - to listen to a CD of Norwegians while actually visiting Norwegia. When we finally arrived in Oslo, and as soon as the Crown Odyssey passengers had disembarked for their excursions, I headed for the park.

I keep the word “perfect” in a gleaming silver box, lined inside with red velvet, in the back of my sock drawer, under the socks that I never wear because I wash my others before I need to wear those. I almost never take it out. That Sunday in the park in Oslo was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky, mildly breezy, about sixty-five degrees, and every single Oslosian came out to the park for a stroll, a run, a round of Frisbee or a rendezvous with the sun.

I grabbed myself a rumpful of bench underneath an evergreen tree on the outskirts of Frogner Park, slapped some Norwegian Brahms inside my Sony Discman, and allowed these two native sons to compound the perfect with the sublime. At times like these, I am reminded that the great music masters composed beyond consideration of performance venue.

They didn’t write music in order to embellish carpeted cinder blocks with calculated acoustics. Herr Brahms and his musical “brothers” heard music in their heads, that they wanted in your head, but not just for the amount of time that it takes to perform it. They wanted their music to abide in your soul, in your biological iPod, so that you could – so that you can - mentally call it up while you’re hanging out laundry, going to market, preparing dinner, looking at clouds, wandering through a meadow, gazing at the moon or loitering in a park.

Music is for people, not for buildings. What does it do for you?

Music provides me with a sixth sense; a framework from which I can recall people, places, and events, ordinary and monumental.

A few weeks before visiting Oslo on that awesome Sunday afternoon, I happened upon a Saturday afternoon concert where a chamber orchestra and two trumpet players were performing Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Trumpets in C Major on a floating pontoon stage in the harbour a few yards off shore in Copenhagen, Denmark. The performance was marvelous. Do you know why I remember it? Upon completion of their performance and after acknowledgement of their applause, they tossed their trumpets to a couple of violinists, quickly doffed their jackets and plunged into the water. Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!!

Credits: To the builders of that bench in Frogner Park in Oslo. That might have been the crowning element that brought perfection to a happening scene. Anyway, it showed up when I needed it. Thank you.