Deflated Elephants...

As many have duly noted, the republicans are having a really rough time recovering, revamping, recouping, etc. (whoa...way too many r's in that sentence). Anyway, it seemed this week was particularly spotty for the G.O.P. It is just sad and pathetic that Bobby Jindal is their shining star and that they have to pay each other to vote their "convictions." Poor Jindal completely flopped in his response to Obama's speech Tuesday. The entire thing was painful to watch as he looked like a scared little school boy who didn't even believe what he was saying. And Mitt Romney, oh, Mitt Romney, I don't even know what to say. If you think it is a good idea to give money to House Republicans for casting votes against a stimulus bill in the middle of an economic crisis, well, you're more of an ass than I thought.

All in all, watching the Republicans right now is kind of like watching a particularly obnoxious and socially awkward individual go through a painfully unpleasant adolescence while standing on a brightly lit stage next to the coolest kid in school. Oh, and speaking of the coolest kid in school, check this out.

Given their pathetic state, can you imagine how much the republicans hate G.W.B. right now for ruining their collective lives? Almost makes you feel bad for the old bastards. Well, almost.

Notes from the Underworld. Or, confessions of a community college adjunct faculty member (part deux)...

I'd like to preface the following paragraph by mentioning that I love my job and that I teach a great deal of very bright, inquisitive students at the community college where I work. That being said, sometimes a community college is...well...a community college.

And now I will rant.

I have a student in one of my classes this semester who is seriously testing my patience. Here's the latest in a string of tedious and trying interactions: On a listening quiz last week I asked a question about this piece by English renaissance composer William Byrd. The question was simple and straightforward, "When and where was this piece written and in what setting would it have been performed?" All I wanted was for them to regurgitate some basic contextual information from class (i.e. England, late 16th century, sacred/performed in church setting). Some students went so far as to give me a specific date and discuss the fact that it was premiered in London. However, the-kid-about-whom-I-am-ranting wrote on his quiz, "Europe, Renaissance." So, I took off half a point. I gave him "renaissance" but said I at least needed a specific country (as we had spent all week discussing how renaissance music varied between Italy, France, and England) and a setting (sacred or secular). Now, this kid stayed after class for TEN MINUTES arguing with me about this one stupid effing half a point, because, as he said, "the book says this piece was written in Europe." Well, duh. I told him I wanted a country. His response: "I told you Europe." My response: "Europe is a continent, not a country." His response: "The book said Europe was the country."

Ahhhh!!!!!!!!

As my mother used to say, "Patience is a virtue, seldom found in women and never found in men."

I've never been a very virtuous woman.

A few somewhat musically related questions for you to ponder on a monday...

1. A couple weeks ago I went to the Dallas Museum of Art to hear Alex Ross (music critic for the New Yorker and one of my personal musical/literary heroes) give a lecture on twentieth-century music. The lecture was primarily a multi-media walk-through of his book on the same topic. Since that night, I have sporadically been pondering the following: A.R. began his lecture by posing the question (and I paraphrase), "Why is the general public typically more accepting of modern art than modern music?" I agree with the basic assumption here - namely, that the masses are more willing to buy a print of Jackson Pollack's than a recording by John Cage. The case of German expressionism is a good (if not overused) example. Many people struggle with Schoenberg's expressionistic dissonances and use of sprechstimme (vocal technique utilizing sung-like speech). In fact, this music often elicits a violent reaction from first-time listeners. In case you are unfamiliar, here is a classic example:

Pierrot lunaire -The Sick Moon - Arnold Schoenberg

Sure, this music is quite strange. But I believe that is the point. It is German expressionism, afterall. Is it really any more bizarre than, say, Schoenberg's (or Kandinsky's) expressionistic paintings??

Arnold Schoenberg, Self-Portrait (1910)


Wassily Kandinsky, Fragment 2 for Composition VII

In his lecture, A.R. left his question unanswered, but it is worth posing again. Personally, I do not think that modern music is too strange or abstract or even more bizarre than modern art. Perhaps our ears are just more sensitive than our eyes? What do you think? Is it harder to listen to something unfamiliar or uncomfortable (or even unattractive) than to watch/see/look at it? And if so, why? And going a bit farther, how does one teach (or perform or introduce) modern art music to the general public without resorting to a trivial description of this music as nothing more than side-show act ("Come one, come all, and listen to the weird German lady sing ugly music!!")?

2. On Wednesday of last week, I attended our local music teachers association's monthly meeting. My thoughts during and after the meeting included (but are not limited to) the following: 1. If I continue teaching piano, will I inevitably begin to wear pleated khakis, piano key hair accessories, and "comfortable" shoes? 2. How can I avoid this? 3. How can I procure a Steinway when the cost of a Steinway piano is roughly equivalent to my annual income? 4. Does anyone know a young, eligible, recession-proof millionaire looking for a wife and willing to buy her a piano as an engagement present? No? Nobody? Hmm...

3. Yesterday, I went to Fort Worth to hear screening recitals for this year's Van Cliburn competition. FYI, there is still time to hear the recitals (for free!) through tomorrow night, Tuesday, Feb. 24. Thoughts: 1. Pedaling is important. Two of the three performers I watched had shockingly poor pedaling skills. 2. Dr. Phillips was right in his Wed. morning lecture to the khaki-pants wearing music teachers of Dallas; it is impossible to have a musical performance when technical skill is lacking and one can tell within the first two minutes of an audition if the performer is going to pass the audition. 3. Prokofiev's Piano Sonata #7 is one of my favorite pieces to hear performed live (this despite the fact (or maybe because?) the second movement begins with the melody of "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas"). Questions: 1. Why do old ladies in Fort Worth think that unwrapping a cough drop as slowly as is humanly possible is less distracting than unwrapping said cough drop quickly or just coughing? 2. Why do these same old ladies always insist on unwrapping cough drops as slowly as is humanly possible during the slow movement of a sonata??

Here's a song for you, %&$@#& $%&@#$!!!

Everyone needs a teenage-angst-filled song now and again that uses every curse word your mother told you not to say...and then some. So, because upbeat music with an angry message can make you smile whilst at the exact same moment providing you with the perfect lyrics for a giant "Fuck You!!" to The Man or The Universe or that boy (or girl), you should listen to this:

The Sarcastic Dharma Society's cover of Meyercord's Shit On My Heart.

Oh, and to be clear, I'm not remotely angry at anyone or anything at the moment. I'm just sharing. Because that's what friends are for. So, fold up this song and put it in your back pocket and save it for a rainy day. It just might come in handy.

A jazz trio covers Stravinsky. Finally! It's about time, sheesh...

On their new record, For All I Care, The Bad Plus succeeds in creating near perfect neoclassical jazz in their cover of Stravinsky's Apollo Variation. This is very good news to my ears and endears them to me greatly. The perfection is achieved primarily (in my opinion) through clarity of structure and the restraint and angularity of Ethan Iverson's melodies at the piano. If I'm gushing a bit here, just know I have an affinity for Stravinsky's neoclassicism (and for pianistic angularity and restraint in particular) that borders on the obsessive. Anyway, it's a great piece (obsession aside). And heaven came down and glory filled my soul...





**Sincere apologies for the utterly meaningless and completely context-less quotation of Baptist hymn lyrics above. Sometimes phrases from old hymns slip into my conversation or appear on my computer screen unexpectedly. Just the other day a kid in my music appreciation class said, "I have a question." Now, it really annoys me when students take the time to state that fact. Just ASK the goddamn question! Anyway, I almost snapped back snarkily, "What can wash away your sins??? Nothing but the blood of Jesus, duh." Clearly I kept this thought to myself, but that is what popped into my head. Does this tourette-like spouting of hymn lyrics happen to anyone else out there in inter-web-wide-world-land, or is it just me? I know, I know, it's just me. And I'm starting to regret bringing this up. Good night, world (and moon) and may peace like a river attendeth your soul...

John Updike says (quote of the day)...

"No matter in how many ways our lives are demonstrated to be insignificant, we can only live them as if they were not..."

From A Month of Sundays

Better late than never...

The San Diego school district apologized to Pete Seegar this week for demanding he sign an anti-communism oath nearly 50 years ago before performing at a high school.

This story proves that if you sing for Barack Obama and company on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial wearing a hat and looking like an adorable grandpa, old foes will be struck with guilt and apologize for past misdeeds.

Good job, San Diego.

The Grammy's. Or, I'm going to talk about clothes instead of music...

Question of the day: Who looked more ridiculous at last night's Grammy Awards?
(Hint: The answer is Coldplay)

M.I.A....


Katie Perry...


Or Coldplay...

Keep in mind that M.I.A. was performing live....9 months pregnant.....ON HER DUE DATE. Polka dots aside, she's a bad ass. There is no excuse for Katie Perry's lame performance, pathetic "dance" moves, or the bananas on her hips. And Coldplay, oh, Coldplay, please stop wearing costumes that make you look like you are on a PBS children's show doing an episode about pirates.

Alright, maybe just a tiny bit about the music...

1. Allison Kraus and Robert Plant are great. But are they 5 Grammy's great??
2. Grammy performances are always a little lame. Performances that didn't totally suck last night included Radiohead with the USC marching band, Estelle and Kanye doing American Boy, Adele with Sugarland, and Paul McCartney with Dave Grohl.
3. Pinch hitters of the night: When Chris Brown got arrested and Rhianna didn't show (because Chris Brown had just beaten her up. Sheesh, people. Get a grip!), Justin Timberlake, Al Green, Boys II Men, and Keith Urban stepped up to the plate. It actually worked.
4. All the small things: Blink 182 is back together. "Say it ain't so..."
5. Stevie Wonder performed with the Jonas Brothers. That was sweet of him.

It's February. Hearts and roses and tea-stained sheet music and stuff...

Valentine's day is a week away. As I was perusing the interwebs this morning, I came across this photograph. If this isn't romance, I don't know what is...



Hungarian composer/pianist György Kurtág and his wife, Marta Kurtág during their New York debut in a concert of works by Mr. Kurtag and others at Zankel Hall on Feb. 1, 2009. They met in the 1940s when they were both studying at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest.

I love this clip of the two of them performing his piece, Quarrel from the Jatekok:

The Zombies are coming!! Or, my favorite news story of the week...

According to the Austin American Statesman, "Someone reprogrammed two city construction road signs near the University of Texas early Monday morning in an attempt to warn Austin of an imminent zombie attack. Messages that typically alert Lamar Boulevard drivers to a detour for Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard splashed several warnings like “Caution! Zombies Ahead!” and “Nazi Zombies! Run!!!”

According to project manner for the Public Works Department, Dennis Crabill, “It’s a pretty childish prank."

Come on, Dennis, isn't it also just a tiny bit fun? In fact, I'd imagine it's one of the more hilarious things that has ever occured during your illustrious tenure as "project manager" for the Public Works Department. It's okay to laugh...

Two for the price of one. Or, John Updike says (quotes of the day)...

Prompted by the sad news of John Updike's death, I started reading A Month of Sundays last week. It was a rather arbitrary pick. I just grabbed something of Updike's I'd never read before off the shelf at Half Price Books. I should have read it sooner. And I will probably read it twice. The protagonist is a minister who is the son of a minister and grew up in a parsonage. As the daughter of a minister who grew up in a parsonage, I am enjoying it on a very personal level. A sampling:

"How the fallen world sparkled, now that my faith was decisively lost!"

"I vowed to abjure the word "love," yet write of little else. Let us think of it as the spiritual twin of gravity -- no crude force, "exerted" by the planets in their orbits, but somehow simply, Einsteinly there, a mathematical property of space itself. Some people and places just make us feel heavier than others, is all."

Speaking of heavy things, that last sentence reminds me of this:

Dan Auerbach's live video of "Trouble Weighs a Ton" (duet with his uncle, James Quine)

"Trouble Weighs a Ton"

Excuse me while I talk shop...

In case you didn't catch the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's performance this Sunday because you were, oh, i don't know, watching the Super Bowl game or something, here's what you missed: Brahms Hungarian Dances (1-6), Liszt's First Piano Concerto (with 21-year old Natasha Paremski), and Béla Bartók's Miraculous Mandarin Suite.

Thoughts:
Without a full symphony in the second half, the concert felt light and easy to swallow, perfect for a Sunday afternoon. (I say this despite the Bartók, which is not light and probably hard for some to swallow. Its brevity counterbalanced its heavy dose of German expressionism.)

The Brahms dances were split in the program with three at the beginning of each half. I found I enjoyed them more when presented this way, mostly because 2, 3, and 4 didn't get lost in the middle and each one was able to shine when grouped so sparsely. Guest conductor Gilbert Varga (who is Hungarian) treated the Brahms more subtly than I expected but still reveled in the happy, lurching, hemiola-filled energy of the dances. And 5 pleased the crowd. No disappointment there.

The Liszt was thoroughly engaging. Natasha Paremski's rich, bold, touch made me want to hear her play Beethoven. Also, bold: red patent leather shoes on stage. Thank god (and Natasha (and Liszt?)) for a wee bit of fashion on the concert stage. Also, thanks to Liszt (or Natasha (or god?)), I became intensely preoccupied with the idea of purchasing a piano ASAP during the last movement. I was insanely jealous of Ms. Paremski and felt an urgent need to practice every day. Specifically, I felt like practicing Chopin's A Maj. "Military" Polonaise, a piece I have not played since I butchered it in 8th grade.

This intense desire to practice was an unexpected urge. (Brace yourself for impending unnecessary and over-wrought metaphor...) Imagine owning an ice cream shop. (I told you.) You clearly love ice cream - one might even say it is your passion - but after years of excessive frozen consumption, you have to take a break from eating ice cream every day. You still love serving ice cream, picking out flavors, etc., but you just don't want to taste it for a long time. Then imagine you are at the beach on the hottest day of the summer and the kid next to you is eating two enormous scoops of the drippiest, most indulgent scoop of chocolate ice cream you have ever seen. Suddenly, you want ice cream. You have to have it. Anyway, Liszt is chocolate ice cream for pianists and I still want to buy a piano... (Apologies for the last paragraph. You can't say you weren't warned.)

Back to the concert. After all that chocolate ice cream (there I go again) and Hungarian dancing, Bartók's decidedly modern work was the perfect finish. I was not terribly familiar with this piece and I really enjoyed it. Originally written to accompany a "grotesque pantomime," it is hyper-programmatic (you can read the sensational and somewhat pornographic plot here). Before the performance, Varga took the time to explain the story and the musical relationship to each character or image. His conducting was at its best during the Bartók. The piece is busy with rhythmic and melodic interest and is orchestrated uniquely (and expansively). Interesting musicological factoid: Boulez attributes his conducting career to a performance of this piece. Less musicological but still interesting factoid: Michelle Kwan skated to this piece.

Oh, and I did watch some of the Super Bowl after the concert. At a bar. Like a good American. Perhaps I should have titled this post, "From Brahms to The Boss."