La Fiesta Dixielanda!

Fiesta!; Dallas Wind Symphony; Howard Dunn, conducting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A great musical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terminology

From Fresh Water; Stan Rogers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And her lover’s gone into a white squall.

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

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

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

Laws and proverbs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Road Trip!

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

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

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

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

I’m on the move!!!

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

Favorite art song

Beau Soir; Claude Debussy, composer

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

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

When the rivulets are rosy in the setting sun,

And a mild tremor runs over the wheat fields,

An exhortation to be happy seems to emanate from things

And rises towards the troubled heart.

A yearning to enjoy the charm of being alive

While one is young and the evening is beautiful,

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

The stream to the sea, we to the grave.

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

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

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

Foreign languages

Chant II; The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos

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

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

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

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

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