File this under the heading Stuff You Don't See Every Day

Photo by Peter Sagal via Twitter.

Yo-Yo Ma gets down with a wombat:

http://www.suntimes.com/9447566-417/yo-yo-ma-and-a-wombat-meet-on-a-bathroom-floor-seriously.html

Alex Ross likes us...he really really likes us!

Alex Ross, classical music critic for The New Yorker, wrote this on his blog, regarding the Oregon Symphony's performance at Carnegie Hall this week:

"OREGONIANS TRIUMPHANT (accompanied by a great photo of Carlos Kalmar with his fantastic conductor hair flying)

Spring for Music is heading into the home stretch, with two concerts remaining. Last night's performance by the Oregon Symphony, under the direction of Carlos Kalmar, was pretty extraordinary; you can listen online. The good folks at NPR Classical are archiving all the concerts in the series. I will have more to say in a future issue of The New Yorker."

I'm a huge fan of Ross' writing; I don't make a habit of reading lots of music criticism, unless it's for work, but he's a cut above everyone else out there today. I'm also kind of in awe of him; he's a year younger than I am, has a dream job and won a MacArthur Fellowship a few years ago for his book, The Rest is Noise. Talk about setting a high bar...

Oh, and the New York Times liked us too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/arts/music/oregon-symphony-at-carnegie-hall-review.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=oregon%20symphony&st=cse

Lists and the people who love them, part deux

I couldn't have timed this better if I were actually in control of what comes over the news wires into my little cyber-space. Here's a list from Anthony Tommasini, classical music critic of the New York Times, of his picks for the ten greatest (dead) classical composers.

As might be expected, all the usual suspects are there. As also might be expected, there are no female composers listed or even discussed. Making lists like this is so reductive as to be a pretty pointless exercise, imo. And yet we continue to make these lists, and people continue to read them and talk about them. So they must serve some purpose. Anyone care to discuss?

I am majorly procrastinating making my own list of music for this week's Yiddish Hour, which is going to be an all-classical extravaganza featuring interviews with composer David Schiff and Linda Magee, Executive Director of Chamber Music Northwest; I'll be playing music from Chamber Music Northwest's upcoming Feb. 2 concert and I'll be talking to Schiff about the world premiere of his newest work, Borscht Belt Follies. Tune in here on Sunday 1/23 at 10am PST; just click on the "listen now" button. Or if you're in Portland, you can listen to us on the air at 90.7fm.

But about those lists...talk amongst yourselves (and leave me a comment too; I really wanna know)

Best news I've heard today

The Oregon Symphony has done something totally unexpected. I must say, after reading so many awful stories about symphonies in dire straits, this is welcome news, and not just 'cause I write for them.

Farewell to all that

Twenty years ago yesterday I gave my senior voice recital at UC Santa Cruz. I haven't considered myself a classical singer in any serious sense of the words in some time, and I haven't sung classical music, as either an amateur or paid professional, in over a decade, so in the rush of getting ready for Pesach I had forgotten about what I did on April 8, 1989.

My senior recital was a major milestone in my life then. It represented more than a year's worth of preparation, and also signaled the end of my college career. My parents, maternal grandfather and brother came from far and wide to hear me sing. My dear friend A, a pianist I had met the summer before at a music festival in Switzerland, and who had first worked on some of my music with me, drove all the way down from Portland to Santa Cruz (alone, I might add, no one to share the drive with), a distance of almost 600 miles and probably 10-12 hours, to lend her support (and cookie-baking expertise for the reception afterwards).

Here's the program:

Three Ladino Songs

Anonymous

Scalerica de Or

Ya Viene el Cativo

Cuando el Rey Nimrod

Three Lieder

Gustav Mahler (1862-1911)

Hans und Grethe (1886)

Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht? (1892)

Das irdische Leben (1893)

Fetes Galantes I (1892)

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

En Sourdine

Clair de Lune

Fantoches

 - I N T E R M I S S I O N -

Yosha's Morning Song

Malcolm Goldstein (b. 1936)

Six from 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson

Aaron Copland (b. 1900)

3. Why do they shut me out of Heaven?

5. Heart, we will forget him

8. When they come back

9. I felt a funeral in my brain

10. I've heard an organ talk sometimes

12. The Chariot

Music nerds among you might notice Aaron Copland's date does not include his death, because he was still alive in 1989. (He died a year later).

I find it interesting that I included the following quotes from the Talmud in my concert booklet. Interesting because I wasn't particularly connected to Judaism during my college years, and I was certainly no Talmud scholar. But here they are in the program, and I couldn't tell you why or where I came across them:

"Nature is saturated with melody; heaven and earth are full of song."

"There are places that open only to music."

My life as a classical music performer has been over, (with no regrets on my part, let me add) for some time. I realized sometime during grad school that for me singing classical music was akin to trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I don't have the voice for it, nor the temperament. I never wanted to be a full-time singer anyway; I definitely didn't have the personality one needs to withstand all the rejection, to live only for your voice. I was never that singleminded. Like the address of my blog suggests, I have always been something of a Renaissance woman when it comes to the breadth of my interests and passions, and I was never willing to sacrifice that to acquire the focus I'd have needed if I were serious about making it as a singer.

Singing classical music was something that brought me joy for a time, but it also brought a lot of baggage and the growing realization that I was better suited, both vocally and temperamentally, to the folk and ethnic music I'd grown up with. Since I never wanted a professional vocal career, this realization was not a huge blow; actually, it was something of a relief: "Oh, right, I don't have to sing this stuff; I can sing the music I really connect with instead." 

But there are moments when I miss all the years I spent as a professional chorister, my occasional solo gigs (I was always more of a collaborative than a solo singer), my life as a paid church musician and soloist in a pre-Vatican II choir that sight-read Gregorian chant in the old block notation every week (I probably know more about the structure of the Catholic Mass than many Catholics, and certainly more of the liturgy, something I find amusing since I'm just a nice Jewish girl from L.A.)

Moments of nostalgia, yes, but not many of them. What I really miss now is a regular venue for singing the sort of stuff I really connect with: folk music, Yiddish theatre, Yiddish folk songs. I fronted a klezmer band for about eight years, but haven't found another group to make music with (in all fairness, musicmaking has not been my priority, either). I've been so focused on jobhunting and networking in the sustainable food community that I've given short shrift to music. The closest thing I have to being a performer these days is hosting the Yiddish Hour, and while that is performance of a kind, it is not the same thing.

Perhaps I'll find the time and energy to bring performance back into my life, as spring unfolds.

Mid-morning thoughts on listening to Mahler's 4th Symphony

I've been spending the past few days researching and writing about Mahler's 4th Symphony for an upcoming Oregon Symphony concert (it's in May, in case you want to check it out, or, if you're like some of my friends, avoid it like plague). 

I understand those who groan when they hear the name Mahler. He's not an easy listening experience. I would never take someone unfamiliar with classical music to a Mahler concert, for several reasons: the shortest Mahler symphony is just under an hour, so it's a lot of music to throw at neophyte ears; his music is complex, with many layers of meaning and subtext; sometimes it's relentlessly dark or ominous (Mahler was tortured, with justification, about a lot of stuff). Listening to Mahler without knowing much about him or his music can be like taking a first-time museum visitor to a Mark Rothko exhibit. (If you're not familiar with Mark Rothko, here are a couple of his paintings):

You look at the paintings, know you're supposed to "understand" them but don't, feel like an uneducated Philistine and give up. This is also some people's experience with Mahler. I get it.

All of Mahler's symphonies are distinct worlds. Listening to them is to enter into a soundscape, to take a journey without necessarily knowing the final destination. But Mahler's 4th Symphony is a complete departure from what we think of as "the Mahler sound." It's one of his shorter symphonies (still close to an hour, though), and its soundscape, its journey, is an exploration of childhood. Not a post-modernist self-consciously ironic portrait of childhood, either. It's cheerful and sunny and graceful, nostalgic without being maudlin.

If you've noticed the labels for this post, you are probably wondering at this point what the (insert favorite expletive here) Mahler's 4th Symphony has to do with gardening, of all things. The last movement of the symphony is a setting of a poem, originally titled "Heaven is hung with violins." (Mahler renamed it "The Heavenly Life" when he set it to music.) It's a child's concept of Heaven, which is a place full of music, dancing and other innocent pleasures. Heaven also offers a variety of delicious foods. What struck me about the poem is the specificity of the foods mentioned: 

"Good greens of all sorts
Grow in the heavenly garden.
Good asparagus, string beans,
And anything we want!...
Good apples, good pears, and good grapes,
And the gardener who permits us everything!"

Kids who love vegetables so much they dream of them in heaven. My kinda place. Of course, I know the poem itself was written by an adult, and perhaps this childish yearning for good asparagus and string beans is simply projected wishful thinking on the author's part, but it still made me smile. Perhaps it only exists in literature, but at least somewhere there are kids who don't balk at eating vegetables.

As for gardening, my sweetie and I are expanding our vegetable patch (more about that in another post), and as I listen to the soprano sing about the delicious veggies I am imagining all the great food we're going to grow this year.

Help for arts organizations in crisis

Heard about this on NPR today, and also got an email about it from the Music Librarian's Association listserve. I'm glad the Kennedy Center is stepping up to help arts organizations, because in our current economic climate, trying to convince either government or individuals that the arts are worthy of help is next to impossible. I'm sure the Republicans who are stonewalling the stimulus package have raised lots of fuss over the proposal to increase funds for the NEA, for example, even though such increases account for a tiny percentage of the overall funds.

Here are some examples of organizations in crisis:

"Indeed, organizations from almost every part of the country have reported belt-tightening measures or worse. The Baltimore Opera Company filed for bankruptcy, the Seattle Repertory Theatre asked its staff to take two weeks of unpaid leave, and the Orlando Ballet
cut live music for The Nutcracker so the dance troupe wouldn't be reduced." (N.B.-The Oregon Ballet Theatre did likewise this past December, without consulting its music director first, I might add, thereby cutting the orchestra's income by approximately half, and with no notice).

"Organizations that have endowments have seen them cut by one-third," said Kennedy Center president Michael M. Kaiser, who is the author of The Art of the Turnaround: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Arts Organizations. "In cities like Detroit that are so dependent on the auto industry, the money is gone. Foundations are forced to cut back, and individuals have seen their wealth reduced."

Historically, Portland has never had a huge pool of private wealth to draw upon, nor do we have a lot of large Fortune 500 type corporations who have the funds to donate to the arts in sufficient amounts to keep performing organizations afloat during tough times. We may not be Detroit, but we're hurting too, and the fact that our civic image is of progressive tech-savvy people further masks how little public and private money there actually is to keep our arts alive and kicking. Thanks, Kennedy Center, for stepping up to help.

Riding the Obama wave into unexpected places

Check out my friend Marty's latest post on her blog, Scanning the Dial, for a thoughtful take on what Obama's election could do for classical music.

Don't believe everything you read

Just when you'd had enough of hearing about struggling arts organizations, here's another story to chew on, from the Portland Business Journal:

Struggling Symphony Fights for Survival

But you should also check out David Stabler's blog in response (see link on right).

All this as I just turned in my first notes of the 2008-09 season. The fun just never stops, I guess.

A kick in the stomach

Just heard about this on our public radio station:

Cascade Festival of Music goes under

Not only is this bad news for classical music fans in Oregon, and for the people of Bend in particular, but this is really bad news for me.

I am (was?) the program annotator for the Cascade Festival of Music, and I've been working on the notes for their festival, which was scheduled to take place the week before Labor Day. I have a Tuesday, July 1 deadline, and I've been hard at work over the past few weeks getting these notes done for them. Now I am out of a job, like all the administrative staff and the musicians, and I assume I won't be seeing any of the money they owe me, even though I have a contract with them.

I've been looking for a full time job for eleven months; in the interim I've been surviving (barely) on my freelance work. This news is a real blow. 

Honda Robot Conducts Detroit Symphony

I first heard about this after seeing videos posted on YouTube and thought it was an interesting gimmick. The real point of the evening was to honor cellist Yo-Yo Ma for his work as a music educator. I guess the Detroit Symphony figured, rightly, that even a world-renowned cellist, considered by most the finest living player of the instrument, wouldn't merit ink unless there was a robot sharing the bill. Need I say any more about why I'm no longer looking for full time work in music?

Not to take anything away from ASIMO; he's kinda cute in a Hello Kitty sort of way.

Honda Robot Conducts Detroit Symphony to warm response

Mozart invades Saudi Arabia

Check this out:

German quartet gives first-ever classical concert in Saudi Arabia for women too

Which repressive regime do you think will be next to open its doors to Western art music? First North Korea, now Saudi Arabia. Let's hope it's a trend...

Classical music and the Democratic presidential candidates

I want to give a shout out to pal Marty and her blog Scanning the Dial.  Marty is a classical music radio producer and her blog, which she co-authors with another classical music broadcast maven, talks about the state of classical music on the airwaves.  

Not your area of interest, you say?  Don't be so sure.  Marty's latest post makes a thoughtful and humorous connection between different aspects of classical music programming and the different styles of our two Democratic presidential candidates.  Give it a try.  C'mon, do it! It won't kill you.  The link is over there, on the left (and yes, I get the political connotation). See what you think.