WMV Music Web Log

I finally bit the bullet and sat down for about 12 hours over the weekend to figure out how to scan, correct, and transpose a score using Photoscore and Sibelius. It worked! There was a need: Gary Poster and I are doing a program of songs by African-American composers at the Lithuanian Embassy on September 20, a benefit event involving our artist friend Joyce Ellen Weinstein and Helanius Wilkins' Edgeworks Dance Theater, to bring them all to Europus Parkus in Vilnius. One song by Thomas Kerr (7 pages in length) is just a step too high for Gary's bass voice. I had no previous knowledge of music composition programs, so it was the usual software hell. But I was motivated! Gary and Karyn and Bran came up from Fredericksburg for a rehearsal today, and the songs sound great. One song by Charles Brown is based on a blues song by Blind Willie Johnson. Joyce's art show is up at the Lithuanian Embassy, and Helanius will dance as part of the program. It is open to the public, but tickets are $100, so I don't expect to see many of my friends there. This music software will be quite powerful once I get better at it. I even managed to download Sibelius' Mac version of Kontakt to save the scores as audio files so I can burn them on CD.

Well, the venue we had in mind for DC composers doesn't seem to be working out, but oddly enough the Lithuanian Embassy gig will partly fulfill that purpose - we will do a beautiful song by George Walker. He is a composer I have been eager to perform for years. I have scores for several of his works, including songs, a cello sonata, and especially a really interesting viola sonata. Three violists have turned it down already, but I am still confident that we will perform it when the time is right.

Masatoshi Mitsumoto and I got together to run through the September 11 program without Sally McLain (she's busy until September 1), and I can tell it's going to be exciting. You probably don't know the Piano Trio by Chopin, since it is not in the standard repertoire, but can probably imagine what it is like - there's an awful lot of piano! I figure, why shouldn't I shine once in a while? Reservations are coming in, so I think we'll have a good crowd.

Please pardon my rant of August 1, but what is a blog for if not to rant once in awhile? I've started a fascinating project - assembling a list of Washington area composers, present and past, and their works. Not only have I identified a lot of them (103 on the list so far), but there are already emerging some insights - like how important Howard University has been in the history of music in Washington; also Catholic University and the Library of Congress. Composers from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Argentina, Sweden, England, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland, Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey, Venezuela, Brazil, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Norway have lived and worked in Washington. On my list are 16 African-American composers, 21 women composers, and 15 composers who were born in DC or Baltimore. Interesting facts: Shirley Graham DuBois, the wife of W.E.B. DuBois, was a composer who taught at Howard University. "Jelly Roll" Morton owned and operated a nightclub in DC. Ruth Crawford Seeger lived here, as did Peter Schickele, Frank Zappa, Lester Trimble, and John Corigliano. And of course, both "Duke" Ellington AND John Philip Sousa were born in DC. Unfortunately, many significant composers who lived here seem to have disappeared with hardly a trace - one never hears their music performed, and hardly ever hears their names - a shameful lack of civic pride in our composers! I'm thinking of people like Leo Sowerby, Marion Bauer, Mary Howe, Esther Ballou, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Kurt Roger, Russell Woollen. George Walker (born in DC) recently won the Pulitzer Prize for composition.

I am excited about the idea of Washington Musica Viva taking on this cause. We will need the assistance of scholars, historians, publishers, librarians, and venues. We have already received enthusiastic assistance from the folks at the Martin Luther King DC Library.

Marilyn and I have been chatting with some gallery owners this week (Marilyn is finally becoming interested in finding a commercial gallery to represent her work). Clearly the art world is not in a good place. There is such a feeling of depression and cynicism permeating the business of the arts, apparently in the visual arts as well as classical and contemporary music, with which I am more familiar. Not only are sales slow, but intelligent critical review is lacking, cronyism rules, and the public is frightened of art.

I am sick of the desperation and cynicism in the arts, and it occurred to me that we have lost the exercise of our rights as artists. We don't have access to the press, to public spaces, or even to peoples' walls anymore. What we need is a lawyer! A constitutional lawyer to explain to us what rights we have and have failed to properly exercise. Since Jesse Helms and the destruction of the NEA, the death of public funding for artists, the terror of anything vaguely disturbing anywhere on anyone's artistic horizon, and the exploitation of arts by politicians of the right, things have descended to an intolerable place. We need to talk to a constitutional lawyer! I think I'll invite someone to speak at a future WMV event. I will develop a list of questions. It really doesn't feel like we have a free exercise of artistic speech any longer, and I want to find out why.