Belong by Washed Out

In a Treeless Place, Only Snow – John Luther Adams
American Contemporary Music Ensemble
Live at (le) Poisson Rouge
March 14th, 2010

Timo Andres – celeste
Nuiko Wadden – harp
Haruka Fujii, Chris Thompson – vibraphones
Caleb Burhans, Yuki Numata – violins
Nadia Sirota – viola
Clarice Jensen – cello

The entire show, including more John Luther Adams and Kevin Volans, is streaming on Q2 here.

This whole post is an excuse to put up a couple recently uncovered drum corps related items. Here’s some context:

Traditions have a way of sticking for years or decades in drum corps, be they emotional or borderline psychotic. For one, there’s a lot of tradition related to the way the corps moves around before and after the show; 128 people need to get from place to place and on/off the field without breaking character. Stay in step in this situation, walk casually focused in that situation, don’t let people break the ranks, don’t run in uniform, hold your hat this way not that way, it can get pretty military-ish (blah). But the post show playoff is a cool moment of charming simplicity. Drumlines have been playing parade-ey cadences for ever and ever (some are so great), but I’m not exactly sure when the post-show playoff became the specific responsibility of the bass drum line. Here is the most famous one, if only because of its weirdly ominous simplicity. But here is the classic Santa Clara Vanguard playoff, which has walked the corps off the field for no less than 35 years straight in one form or another, and is referred to by the line as simply “SCV.”

I wanted to post this because I finally got around to uploading a video I’ve been hanging onto for a while: the 1995 bass line, who loved to grab attention in any way they possibly could (it was a long, difficult summer), used to park in front of the stands and extend that cadence into a little post-show. This is the last half of it:

SCV Bass Drum Line 1995 play “Strange Purple Orangoutans” by Ryan Stohs after an early season show in California.

Apologies about embarrassing over-excited drunk guy superfan. That tends to happen. After that summer I had an inspired moment and wrote a playoff of my own, also set up with the classic “SCV” riff, but for the whole drumline. I’m sure nobody ever saw it. I threw it into a box, which I just discovered the other day, omg 15 years later? Crazy. I remember the feeling of writing drumline music back then; it was so exciting to be creating music of my own (I knew next to nothing at that point about writing for pitched instruments, only drums) but also frustrating because I just had to imagine what it might have sounded like. Because of the time involved in learning music and getting 20 kids to play it well enough to be even just recognizable, there just weren’t opportunities for “readings” back then.

Playoff (1995, after “SCV”)
Chris Thompson

But NOW! My computer is full of tiny magical robots that can read music and also play the drums! So all I have to do is put the notes in to the lefty software Sibelius (also crucial here is Tapspace’s “Virtual Drumline,” sample library, which every composer should know about because in addition to having the only library of realistic marching percussion samples, it also has some of the best orchestral percussion samples as well), and I can hear just what that piece of music would sound like, played by a live drumline. And so can you!

(audio file above! If you are using google reader, you have to click through to listen)

If you want to see how this all works on the score, here it is!

I plan to write more drumline music but need to figure out a possible scenario in which that might be appropriate in my life today. I’m open to suggestions.

a) …have a listen to Daníel Bjarnason on Q2. The full recording of his recent show at LPR is now available streaming on the WQXR website here. Daníel is from Iceland and writes contemplative music that features bowed things, absolutely great use of percussion, and gorgeous orchestration.

For example, here’s my favorite bit of Spindrift; the soloist slips into the background and you get a simple pairing of vibe and clarinet with piano and tuned gongs gently hovering above and below. It’s Orchestration We Can Believe In:

Spindrift – by Daníel Bjarnason (Featuring Vicky Chow, pianist)
And that’s also Alicia Lee playing clarinet and Mike Truesdell playing gongs, who has a recital Friday that you should totally go to! (note: if you are using google reader, there is an audio file above you are not seeing, click through to the post to listen).

b) …check out Alex Ross’ followup post on drum corps/marching bands doing Shostakovich. Apparently there were others who wanted to make sure the Phantom Regiment wasn’t overlooked (and also point out a Shostakovich 5 from the mid-70s I literally had NO IDEA EXISTED. Warning: those 70s bugles are a little intense). I realize I could have definitely been clearer in my post about my main point, which is simply that it isn’t just about Shostakovich; these groups have been doing seriously adventurous repertoire by lots of different 20th century composers since at least the early 90s. For example, the group I marched with’s 2010 show is Bartok’s CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA. !!!  Bring. It. On. dotcom. Alas, there are not videos yet. But here’s their plan.

c) …watch some dudes in haz-mat uniforms play crotales made out of saw blades. I feel this requires no further explanation.

From The Kitchen 3/17/10: I was lingering during sound check; pressed record and happened to catch this quiet, beautiful moment. Had just met some of these guys and really fell in love with their heart and musicianship.
“Breathing Out,” by Doveman: Thomas Bartlett, Sam Amidon, Bryce Dessner, Brian Devendorf, and Oren Bloedow. From the new album.

Alex Ross wrote on Unquiet Thoughts the other day about what he calls the “marching-band Shostakovich underground.” It’s a cool post, and awesome to see some notice of marching music from the greatest living writer on the subject of music. Ross definitely did his research, referencing 13 different videos of high school and college marching bands, but unfortunately still didn’t find the answer to his own question of “when Shostakovich began to catch on with bands across the country.” Also, after all these years he still has the comments turned off, so I’m just going to seize the opportunity to respond in full here and also post some kickass videos. People keep asking me for drum corps 101, so…

Shostakovich 10th Symphony, Scherzo. Phantom Regiment, 2002.

The answer that Ross missed starts with my manifesto: a survey of “marching to Shostakovich” (or “marching to anything” for that matter) that features only high school and college marching bands without any mention of  Drum Corps International (DCI) is like trying to identify the best basketball players in the world without mentioning the NBA.

But I absolutely don’t fault him for not finding it – a google search for “Shostakovich marching band” or even just “Shostakovich marching” brings up nothing related to DCI. Also, drum corps lacks visibility in general and is still a cult phenomenon, known by a very small segment of the population (especially on the east coast, and especially among the classical music community). But that hasn’t kept it from evolving into a high art form in the 30 or so years since it crawled away from it’s military history.

Most of the bands Ross discovered were doing shows derived directly from a handful of highly influential drum corps performances:

Phantom Regiment 2002, featuring parts of the 7th and 10th Symphonies and 2nd piano concerto. Skip right to 1:35 for their badass (and often-imitated) version of that scherzo from the 10th, which I previewed above from the parking lot.

Phantom Regiment 1996, featuring parts of the 1st and 5th Symphonies.

Santa Clara Vanguard 1985, featuring Festive Overture.

In the world of marching music DCI does it first, and inevitably in the next decade or so high schools and college bands imitate. Music companies even sell these shows as package deals to high schools and colleges so that their staffs don’t have to write them (as Ross referenced with the “Fire of Eternal Glory” package). But even those companies aren’t innovating anything, but simply watering down and repackaging the shows created by the pros.

And who are the pros? Obviously there needs to be a creative team of adults to create the content, but what’s amazing about this activity is that the true pros are kids, for a couple of reasons. On the most fundamental level, they are the ones who are actually able to handle the physical stress of it. Check out a vingette about the physical demands on a tenor player:

Second, they are the ones who have nights and weekends all year and entire summers to devote to perfection (and they often pay out of their own pockets to do it). I personally retired from the activity at age 16 but even if someone wanted to continue, everyone is forced to “age out” around age 22. Our average summer in drum corps consisted of camps all weekend until the moment school was out, at which point we started 9 am – 9 pm rehearsals, with usually no more than a day or two off the entire summer. We toured for months on busses, slept on gym floors, rehearsed all day long in some of the hottest places in the country right in the dead of summer and performed at night. It’s simply divine hell on earth.

Back to Shostakovich: Ross referenced another post about the “badassery” dimension of the composer’s music. What does it jump at to prove that point? Of course the famous video of Dudamel doing the Shostakovich 10 scherzo, with the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. It’s natural that an activity full of kids would gravitate toward Shostakovich’s music. Kids do badassery better anyway. Even in orchestras, given the right leadership and guidance, some of the fieriest performances can be given by kids performing works for their first time. Drum corps is that fire and adrenaline multiplied by adding movement.

And how they move:

It is a fact that when these shows are imitated by high schools and colleges, the first thing to get watered down is the movement. It’s impossible, dangerous even, to try to do this stuff without hundreds of hours of rehearsal. The level this activity has reached is astounding, yet the majority of the country doesn’t even know it exists. And Shostakovich isn’t the only difficult 20th century composer they are tackling. Drum corps is where I first learned about John Adams, Philip Glass, Samuel Barber, Bela Bartok, among many others, when I was 14 years old. One might think an attempt at Shostakovich by a marching band is a ballsy cult-like venture if one still thinks the pinnacle of the activity is high school kids waddling around a football field playing Beatles arrangements. But do a quick search for Bartok or Stravinsky at this corps repertoire site. It is quite enlightening to the contrary.

Star of Indiana Rehearsing Barber’s “Medea,” 1993.

Moral of the story: sometimes I reaaaaly want to comment on Alex Ross’ blog. But also, summer is coming! The pros will be in your town soon. If anyone is interested I’ll write lots more on this over the course of the summer.

Just released: DVD & CD live album from the Mono/Wordless Music shows last May. I wrote about those shows here. My ears are still ringing. (in the best possible way…)

Available now at temporaryresidence.com

Kazoos, socks, and almglocken packed; flight cancelled.

Guess I’ll wait this one out.

File under: Things Bartok Said In 1940 That No Longer Apply:

I guess the premier of the Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion didn’t go so well? If only he had Dan Druckman, Jim Baker, Steve Gosling, and Steve Beck back then. This Monday, the foursome play new works for 2 pianos and 2 percussion by Charles Wuorinen, Michael Jarrell, and Rolf Wallin at Merkin Hall. I’m so bummed I can’t go but I figure that if everyone live-texts it to me from the concert I can live vicariously and still revel in the awesomeness. Seriously, this is one not to be missed.

More on the NYNME site.

Dirty Projectors at the Allen Room with Alarm Will Sound 2/19/10. (NYTimes)

David Longstreth’s beautiful 2005 album “The Getty Address” has been arranged for Alarm Will Sound by Matt Marks, and last night at the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center we did the first show of two recreating the album live with his band the Dirty Projectors. The second show is Friday night at Disney Hall in Los Angeles. The other half of that concert is an awesome program of Ligeti, Wagner, and Ravel with the Los Angeles Philharmonic featuring Alarm Will Sound’s pianist John Orfe. The whole process of putting this project together has been really fun, and Luke and I are seizing the opportunity to get creative with percussion sounds; we microtonalize a marimba and xylophone with wall putty and close-mic gaff tape, among other more traditional percussion parts, in service of a faithful reproduction of the original album. There is also this letter from David Longstreth to Don Henley, which I’m not even going to try to understand, but which I think is awesome.

The LA Phil did a similar pairing last year of a Stravinski, Britten, Boccherini first half with a Grizzly Bear second half and it’s no surprise to hear that it was a huge success; here in NY we’ve enjoyed the similarly awesome Wordless Music series, and the concept is simple: instead of whining about aging audiences and predicting the death of classical music, start curating programs for younger different people. Grizzly Bear fans are probably going to be totally into that Britten, and Dirty Projectors fans are probably going to be fascinated by that Ligeti. They just might not know it exists yet. I mentioned this last spring when Wordless paired the Japanese band MONO with Arvo Pärt and the result was two evenings of complete rapture for everyone involved. Sure, you can still sneak that Rihm onto a subscription program of Mozart and have your subscribers grumble and leave at intermission if you like. But these days the chamber music world is finding a better model for drawing in young different audiences and it is great to see orchestras start using it as well.

Speaking of MONO, they are coming back to NY in May, and also releasing a CD/DVD and 3xLP/DVD limited edition recording of their two night set from last year. Haruka and I played percussion for those shows with the Wordless Orchestra and are psyched to see how it all turned out. More info on the film, titled Holy Ground: NYC Live with the Wordless Music Orchestra, at Brooklyn Vegan. It comes out April 27.

Alarm is also camped out in NY this week for a program of Caleb Burhans’ music at Le Poisson Rouge Tuesday night. The late show will be Burhans’ band itsnotyouitsme and Son Lux.

Finally, I’m looking forward to playing the music of Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason at Le Poisson Rouge upon returning from LA. Bjarnason has an album out on Bedroom Community, which Nico posted on earlier today; this composer is incredibly talented across different types of instrumentation and is just as comfortable with electronic sounds as he is with the orchestra. And while I’m so focused on pairings I should point out that, in getting familiar with the album, I suddenly remembered Christopher Rouse’s Gorgon, and have been alternating the two all day. What do you say New York Phil, how about a Bjarnason/Rouse show? I’d go. My studio will lend you our giant ratchet.

ACME has a great program prepared with pianist Simone Dinnerstein; it airs live tomorrow night on WQXR (and WQXR.org) and we will perform it again Saturday night, 8 PM, at Miller Theater. As a percussionist I never assume I’ll get opportunities to play Bach (except the occasional orchestral suite timpani part), so I’m hyped. The string quartet portion of ACME has already been touring this program with Simone and this version will be slightly larger ensemble: Flute, Bass Clarinet, Vibraphone, Harmonium, 2 Violins, Viola, and Cello.

The program:
Bach: Keyboard Concerto in D Minor, first movement
Cage: String Quartet, excerpt
Bach: Selected Prelude & Fugue
Bach: Selections from Art of the Fugue
Bach: Keyboard Concerto in F Minor

Throughout the performance, Ms. Dinnerstein and ACME will join in conversation with WQXR host David Garland. The entire evening will air live on 105.9 FM and stream at WQXR.org on Friday at 7PM.

Just when all inspiration had evaporated and the blah boring same old music is all there seems to be EVERYwhere, oh hello! the most awesomest electric sounds and synchronized moving pictures were on The Internet just waiting to be discovered:

Acid Girls – Lightworks OFFICIAL VIDEO dir. Steven Ilous from Steven Ilous on Vimeo.

Side chained four on the floor CAKE IN YOUR FACE.

10/27: Line C3 releases Carl Schimmel’s Serving Size 4 Bunnies.

Serving Size 4 Bunnies is now available on iTunes, or as a CD single (email me and I’ll send you one). Line C3 wants to thank Carl Schimmel for allowing us to independently record and release his music, as well as for letting us run with it and even adopt some of its personality on ourselves as a group. Here is the official press release (via Christina Jensen PR).

4 movements, 4 anthropomorphized bunnies in deliciously fragile emotional states: depressed, irascible, anxious, deliriously happy. Carl wrote for squeaky toys in each of the four movements, but instead of just relying on the obvious comedy inherent in them, he instead used them as thematic glue. Over the course of the piece the listener is introduced to their various expressive possibilities, along with a battery of other small instruments and found objects like noisemakers, qtips, kazoos, and an air horn.

Excerpt from “In which a bunny, delirious from the sugary fumes, degenerates into a hysterical grinagog.”

Haruka recording Kazoos at 2 AM

Comp geeks may delight in Carl’s use of the Fibonacci sequence, also known as the “Bunny Problem.” Percussion geeks will appreciate the unusually thoughtful writing for marimba, an instrument often overused but underutilized. Bunnies really represents an ideal for the kind of repertoire we set out to find from the beginning: music that 1) is fun to watch, 2) is fun to play, 3) is compositionally fascinating, and 4) requires me to blow bubbles on stage (see 1 and 2, above). Over the process of learning, performing, and recording the piece, I admit I have become a bit obsessed – I find more in it each time we come back to it.

Serving Size 4 Bunnies
I. In which a bunny ponders its meaningless existence.
II. In which an irascible bunny takes out its frustrations on others.
III. In which a lavender bunny is a yellow chicken.
IV. In which a bunny, delirious from the sugary fumes, degenerates into a hysterical grinagog

Music by Carl Schimmel

Performed by Line C3:
Haruka Fujii
John Ostrowski
Sam Solomon
Chris Thompson

Recorded by Ryan Streber and Michael Rice
Mixed by Ryan Streber and Chris Thompson

www.LineC3.com
www.CarlSchimmel.com

9/25: Line C3 shares a bill with Nadia Sirota for the opening night of New Amsterdam Records’ “Archipelago” series at Galapagos Art Space.

Happy almost fall! Everyone is playing concerts. Tonight I have to decide between like 5 different friends’ shows and that is such a good problem to have! Line C3 is back, this Friday night, with a homecoming concert in our native Dumbo! This one is brought to you by New Amsterdam records, but mostly by Nadia Sirota, who is so lovely and who graciously invited us to share the gig with her!

Keeping with Line C3 tradition, there will be extremely serious compositionally sophisticated squeaky toys and whimsically titled metrically modulating bubbles. We may even pull out our secret stock of seasonal marshmallow confections, made available to you at a time of year when they are otherwise forbidden!

Line C3 with Nadia Sirota at Galapagos Art Space
Archipelago: A New Monthly Chamber Music Series
September 25, 2009, 8 PM

Galapagos Art Space
16 Main St.
Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY
GET TICKETS

Presented by New Amsterdam Records and Galapagos Art Space.
An integrated set of percussion and solo viola, featuring world premieres by Marcos Balter and William Brittelle, along with recent works of Nico Muhly, David T. Little and Carl Schimmel.

Here’s a preview…

9/15: Nonesuch releases Alarm Will Sound’s “a/rhythmia,” a collection of works “taking ideas akin to minimalism and refracting them through a fun house mirror.”

I’m so excited about September because it would seem this is the month in which all the recordings I’ve worked on the past 2 years are magically available! First and foremost, Alarm Will Sound’s “a/rhythmia.” There is much info available on the Nonesuch page for this release, and it is of course available on iTunes. So all I really have to offer is a picture of me playing agogo bells with a screwdriver!

(From the nonesuch press release): Nonesuch will release a/rhythmia, the new album from Alarm Will Sound, the 20-member group described by the New York Times as “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene,” on September 15; it is available to pre-order now in the Nonesuch Store.

Though known for its focus on contemporary music, on a/rhythmia Alarm Will Sound performs 14 pieces from composers spanning six centuries, united by a common purpose. Each was inspired by and/or was attempting to explore the concept of “arrhythmia”: “want of rhythm or regularity, specifically of the pulse.” The resulting work, on the ensemble’s fifth album and its first complete album on Nonesuch, upends order and expectation, often taking ideas akin to minimalism and refracting them through a fun-house mirror.

Central to the disc is the player piano work by Conlon Nancarrow, who has intrigued composers like György Ligeti, also represented by a piece here, as are short pieces from English composer-filmmaker Benedict Mason’s Animals and the Origins of Dance and longer works by such artists as Michael Gordon, electronic-music duo Autechre, and the 15th-century composer Josquin des Prez.

After the group performed several of these pieces in a Carnegie Hall program last year, the New York Times declared that “Alarm Will Sound shows an admirable commitment and a spirit of adventure.” New York magazine, in its Year in Culture survey, cited the concert as one of the Top Ten Classical Events of 2008.

5/8 – 5/10: ACME and the Wordless Orchestra with MONO at Ethical Culture and (le) Poisson Rouge. 
It was a super fun week meeting and playing 2 shows with the Japanese band MONO, who demonstrate the perfect balance between an ultra-rockstar performance style on stage and a musically curious and completely down to earth personality off stage. 

First, a clip from the rockstar portion of the show:
Mono, Excerpt From “Wordless Music” Show @ The New York Ethical Society

Note: Look close and see Jeff Milarsky, one of the leading conductors of contemporary music, in front of the orchestra. I know I always talk about this, and to a certain extent is has received some publicity, but most people in contemporary music circles haven’t yet fully understood the magic of the Wordless Music series until they experience it in person. On the first half of the above show, as well as the following night at Le Poisson Rouge, Jeff and the Wordless Orchestra presented the East Coast premier of Arvo Pärt’s subtle, brooding Symphony #4, for string orchestra and percussion. Chalk it up to the programming genius of Ronen and Nadia; I can say with some degree of confidence that there has not previously been a performance of Arvo Pärt’s music to a sold-out standing room only audience of 20-something post-rock fans, which received rapt, focused attention and an exhilarated ovation. 

Wordless Music makes brilliant pairings of indy-rock (for serious lack of a better term) with contemporary/chamber music (also for lack of a better term), such that if you show up for one, you’ll most likely stay for the other. People have been complaining forever that the audience for concert music are too old… I’m not going to be delusional to think that these people waited in this line for hours to get the best seats to see an Arvo Pärt Symphony premiere. But they did see it, and the general vibe was open, curious, and excited. Its hard for me to put into words how thrilling it is to get a chance to do what I do for this kind of audience. Back in December, Line C3 got to introduce Steve Reich and John Cage to a couple hundred Kieran Hebden fans on a Wordless show at LPR… what could be more natural than moving between glitchy minimal electronica and Reich’s Drumming or a John Cage Construction? It just happens to be one of these amazing moments when everyone is learning from everyone and the possibility of a real scene has emerged. Moral of story: colleagues and friends are slowly learning about and experiencing first hand what’s happening and it was great to bring Mr. Milarsky (who most of us have worked with in very different musical contexts) into the fold.

The venues, specifically Le Poisson Rouge, are also part of the story and what is making it work so well. Galleries are great and I’ve done plenty of contemporary music concerts up in them, but when music is challenging, I think the whole experience benefits from making the environment more relaxed, not less. Sunday night the Wordless Orchestra did two more performances of the Pärt Symphony at LPR, opening with 4 of his riveting string quartets and one work for solo vocal and 2 strings, performed by ACME. A generally warm review in the NYTimes Monday did mention the usual complaints about this kind of music played at a club, but could have told the whole story: a lot of people are excited about the new audience and new approach that inherently comes with playing at a venue like LPR. 

Completely blissed out, we took the rock stars to Umino Ie and devoured stingray fin, monkfish liver, and pork belly. Rapture. 

Upcoming at LPR:
Alarm Will Sound plays Derek Bermel in June and Aphex Twin in July!

ACME shares a Wordless Music show with Johann Johannsson .

In other classical/rockstar pairings:  Stay tuned for ACME with Craig Wedren (of Shudder to Think) playing Jefferson Friedman’s Love Songs at Joe’s Pub in August.

Cans: Joe Tompkins and Chris Thompson
Percussion and Electronics: Michael Caterisano, David Mancuso, Eric Poland, Yuri Yamashita

Yesaroun’ Duo releases “HeavyUpHeavyDown”, I program a synth and sing mating calls to prehistoric space aliens.

From the program note for “Ryoanji” by the Yesaroun’ Duo:

Ryoanji is a rock garden in Kyoto, Japan, in which large beautiful boulders are surrounded by carefully raked fields of sand. The sparse, persistent pulsing of the percussion part designs a musical and temporal texture to represent the surrounding raked sand. Songful, animal-like melodic lines carve out the large boulders. Eight sections of piece, each lasting two minutes, follow eight gardens of Ryoanji.

Excerpt from “Ryoanji”, by John Cage. (Heavy Down)

3 of the sections (or “gardens”) in this piece have additional optional voices. One is me, the second is 100 of me, and the third is a synth patch I made. 

For some of the cues I sang a constant pitch, threw it into Reason’s sampler and drew the pitch curves out, letting the computer bend. For others I sang the line myself with the aid of my computer’s microtonal goodness. For all of them I completely freaked out the painter girl who works in the next studio over.

More importantly: this record, a double CD full of brilliant performances, is a staggering achievement for Eric Hewitt and Sam Solomon, one that has been a long time in the making. Everyone should buy it right away! In case you need convincing, here is some post-apocalyptic rage robot calculus death metal.

Excerpt from Wemcraftor: Limsniffer performed by the Yesaroun’ Duo. (Heavy Up…)

2/18: Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “American Songbook” presents Nico Muhly’s Elements of Style among many other lovely things.

I’m doing the really bad thing again, which is to say Posting After the Fact, but I promise that soon I will be caught up and the great Matt Hensrud will have fixed this site once and for all so that each post takes minutes not hours. (above left to right: Thomas, Nico, Me, Sam, Nadia):

Nico had a great show last week at the Allen Room, of Jazz at Lincoln Center, featuring his song cycle based on texts from Maira Kalman’s illustrated version of The Elements Of Style (yes, the Strunk and White grammar textbook). In addition to regular percussive duties, I helped manage the “amateur percussionists,” who hit stuff, blew bubbles, played with squeaky toys, etc. I also accompanied Nico and Thomas aka Peter Pears, and Samamidon.