The Standing Room

Snowpocalypse III: Volti Strikes Back

2010-02-25T12:22:25-08:00

... But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

—Excerpt from Shoveling Snow with Buddha by Billy Collins

"February" was, I think, number 2 or 3 on the list of reasons to move to California. Here we just sing nostalgically about shoveling snow.

Volti gives three performances this weekend—Friday in Berkeley, Saturday in SF, and Sunday in Marin—which include the premiere of Yu-Hui Chang's setting of Billy Collins' poem above, along with music by Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Felipe Perez Santiago, Jean Ahn, and Mark Winges. Details here.

If you're snowed in, stay warm. Bay Area folks have no such excuse.

The M6 at the Stone - 12/22

2009-12-21T13:25:57-08:00

The second half of this year has been a little crazy. Since the last post here: we moved'; we adopted two kittens (photos forthcoming, naturally); I sang in a 5-night run of Meredith Monk's Songs of Ascension at BAM (warning: audio): my group The M6 recorded Songs of Ascension for ECM with Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble and a string quartet made up of Todd Reynolds, Courtney Orlando, Nadia Sirota, and Ha-Yang Kim; The M6 got a couple of very nice mentions in the November 9 issue of the New Yorker and on Unquiet Thoughts; and Turn the Page, a CD I co-produced for the new-music chamber chorus Volti, got finished and is about to release on Innova. Oh, and I got a root canal.

And now I'm back in NY for the fifth time in three months, gearing up for an M6 performance tomorrow night (Tuesday, 12/22) at The Stone, the East Village performance space established by John Zorn. Our concert is part of a series titled Sing Theory curated by David Garland, who writes about the series on the WQXR blog. The show is at 10pm for $10 -- a steal, right? Come on by; at the very least, it'll be more interesting than the Xmas Muzak you've been assaulted with since Thanksgiving.

TSR will resume at some point, I'm sure.

-----

Sing Theory
22 concerts at The Stone, December 16th through 29th, 2009

The M6 will be performing Tuesday, December 22 at 10pm, singing Dolmen Music by Meredith Monk, as well as selections from Monk’s Book of Days, ATLAS, Volcano Songs, Facing North and American Archeology #1. (Detailed program below.)

Statement by curator David Garland: "The emphasis of my programming at The Stone during the last weeks of 2009 is on musicians who subtly, insistingly, and creatively expand the potential of song. By investing songs with both heart and brain, and by tapping into the alchemy of the understandable and the mysterious, these daring songwriters prove that the ancient combination of words and music can still yield surprises, open new vistas, and permit and promote profound communication.”

The Stone - Corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street, NYC (map)
Admission: $10 per set
Students 13 to 19 admitted half price, children 12 and under free
No advance ticket sales, all admissions are at the door prior to each performance

PROGRAM

Music from Book of Days
Afternoon Melodies - Jewish Storyteller/Dance/Dream - Plague - Eva’s Song

Explorers’ Junctures from ATLAS
Selections from Volcano Songs
Boat Man - Old Lava
Hocket from Facing North
Calling #1 from American Archeology #1

Dolmen Music
with Brian Snow, cello

Links for 2009-10-30 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-31T00:00:00-07:00

My Favorite Intermissions: Tosca II (Scarpia 0)
maybe a prequel?

Links for 2009-10-27 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-28T00:00:00-07:00

On a Pacific Aisle: Half a Century
INSANE BRAIN, OVER.
Music review: 'Einstein' at the beach | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times
"Jacaranda, the West Side’s new music series, concluded its first concert of the season at First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica with excerpts from Philip Glass’ groundbreaking opera"
Daniel Stephen Johnson: Combination Pizza Hut and Analytical Dressing-Down
"I still can't help but think it must sting to get schooled in hip-hop and race by the 'Combination Pizza Hut' guys"
Meredith Monk @ Next Wave Festival at 17 dots
"The Harvey Theater began reverberating with the sound, and I felt the sort of goosebumps raise on my forearms that you don’t experience unless you are in the presence of some truly fearless honesty."

Links for 2009-10-08 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-09T00:00:00-07:00

Gustavo Dudamel | LA Phil | Game
Baton Hero - "Can you achieve the level of super maestro?"

Links for 2009-10-02 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-03T00:00:00-07:00

YSaC, Vol. 442: Philip Glass sells a table. | You Suck at Craigslist
i got a red table for sale! take it for free!

Links for 2009-10-01 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-02T00:00:00-07:00

Civic Center: Il Trittico at the San Francisco Opera
once again, sfmike and i are basically completely aligned

Links for 2009-09-17 [del.icio.us]

2009-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

Wonkette : WHAT WAS METRO THINKING?
"Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas wants — in the words of the WSJ here, okay? — 'an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services. ... Back in July HR3288, a Transportation and HUD appropriations bill, came up for a vote. It included $150 million for emergency maintenance funding for the DC Metro. Brady voted against it.'”
The Opera Tattler: Rückert Lieder at SFS
"The woman in Row L Seat 7 of the orchestra got a text message on her iPhone at the end of the second movement and she updated her Facebook page during much of the following Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen. Naturally she clapped quite heartily at the end and joined in for the standing ovation."
Small Town Hall | Marketplace From American Public Media
"We keep hearing that the money we spend now and the decisions we make could place a huge burden on our children. But we rarely ask them what they think. So we convened a “Small Town Hall.” Marketplace's Scott Jagow sat down with a few kids to listen to their ideas about money, the economy and the future." I LOVE THESE KIDS

Links for 2009-09-13 [del.icio.us]

2009-09-14T00:00:00-07:00

Posthumous Gratitude | n+1
"n+1 remembers David Foster Wallace, who died on September 12, 2008" an interesting insight
ted hearne - indulged in a decadent visit to the pancake carousel this morning...
on Katrina Ballads being awarded the Gaudeamus Prize and 'political music'

13 Ways of Looking at a Music Festival: Ojai 2009, Part I: Friday

2009-06-23T01:29:50-07:00

I must agree with the old fogeys that tweeting during performances is completely unacceptable. However, I thought I'd try tweeting in between performances during my recent trip to the 63rd Ojai Music Festival, a West Coast new music mainstay. Herewith, an annotated compilation of tweets from the weekend, or, if you prefer, a Twit's View of Ojai.

thestandingroom is driving down to Ojai. http://bit.ly/RBdc8 #fb 9:35 AM Jun 12th from TweetDeck

I picked up my car from Enterprise Friday morning. @linernotesdanny later said, "you DROVE, are you INSANE?", but really, I'm not sure there was any better option. I explored taking the train, but this NY Times article, coincidentally published on the same weekend, explains why that would have been folly. And Ojai is an inland community, nestled among mountains, an hour up a winding road from Santa Barbara. So I loaded up the iPod with plenty of driving music, geared up for the long ride and set out on my solo road trip down 101.

Twenty minutes out of SF, the stereo stopped working.

thestandingroom is sure there are other nonwhite folks around. #fb 8:03 PM Jun 12th from Tweetie

I pulled into this small town, full of horses and spas, and walked over to the Libbey Bowl, an outdoor shell where most of the concerts were to take place. For various reasons I've never been free on this weekend in June, so this was my first experience in Ojai. And my initial, honest, immediate reaction was, well, that the Ojai Music Festival might well deserve slot #127 on the list of Stuff White People Like. Now, this is not meant to trigger a round of hand-wringing about diversity or a bout of white guilt or anything; I'm merely observing that normally the only other times I'm so aware of my own non-whiteness, living in California, is when I get hired to sing in churches where people say things like, "It is meet and right so to do." (It didn't help matters when I was the only person in my vicinity asked, by an usher, to confirm that I wasn't a plebeian interloper from the lawn, trying to snag an unclaimed seat.)

Official Ojai Festival photo

thestandingroom Tin Hat just finished a set where every piece led some women to say "mmmmm..." quietly to themselves in the silence before the applause. 8:42 PM Jun 12th from Tweetie

So with that I settled into 48 hours of concert-going, during which I heard seven and a half exceptional concerts. There's an unmistakeable romantic charm about hearing music outdoors in the dark, amid the sounds of nighttime insects and wind blowing through leaves, and Tin Hat, the 4-member composer/improvisor collective, were well suited to the environment with their quiet, Satie-inspired music, created from an assemblage of instruments ranging from violin and guitar to harmonium and the dark-hued contra alto clarinet.

Official Ojai Festival photo

thestandingroom sat through an entire performance with contacts reversed left/right. Luckily it was a theater piece about images that are out of focus. #fb 10:40 PM Jun 12th from Tweetie

The concert closed with eighth blackbird (the music directors of this year's festival), Rinde Eckert, and Steven Mackey performing the world premiere of Slide, a multimedia staged work structured around a narrative about a psychologist doing a test about human perception: if we look at an image out of focus and are asked to make a decision about what it is, how long after it comes into focus does it take us to recognize the truth, if we were wrong? And since, as it turns out, those who make an early guess take longer to see reality after it emerges than those who have not made a premature decision, what does this reveal about our preconceptions and prejudices generally?

I had somehow confused my two contacts when I put them in before the concert, so appropriately enough the whole thing was a little fuzzy throughout. But I could see enough to know (or did I make guesses based on preconceptions? hmmm...) that Rinde sang, acted, and danced his dance; Steve played electric guitar and narrated the tale; a projected slide, slide of, slide of a dog, slide of a dog running, dog running, running (with Steve's slide guitar underlay) was impossible to ignore; and eighth blackbird acted, moved props, gave a serious go at rocking out while singing and playing an electric bass, turned lights on and off... oh, and played their instruments like fiends, as they always do. But the most memorable part of the piece was not when the extroverted theatrical machine was in motion; rather, it was at the end, when it moved into the quiet, introspective place where Tin Hat had started, with Rinde softly intoning in his falsetto "and I sleep here like a baby...", permuting the phrase over and over, lulling us into the night.

thestandingroom Ventura women scream wooooooo! in the streets at 2am. 2:06 AM Jun 13th from Tweetie

P.S. I do not recommend staying in downtown Ventura.