WMV Music Web Log

Funny how the subconscious is a little slow to catch up sometimes - I woke up from a dream this morning that I had just been released from a Soviet prison. Still pinching myself - yes, I don't have to go to work AGAIN this morning. I should say, I liked my job with the NIH, especially the last six years or so; but 30 years was a long time to spend my days away from music. It was the slight reduction of freedom, the awareness of "could-have-beens" and "maybes" that made it increasingly difficult to stay on. Now I complain a lot about writing grant proposals, and none of them may get funded; even if they do, the amounts are pretty small. But complaining is just a habit - I feel so much lighter inside. When I was working I somehow made time to read the paper, listen to the radio, and watch the news. Now I have time for none of those. But I do shop and cook a lot more, which is fine with me. Leek soup yesterday and a nice pasta casserole with red chard left over from Wednesday. Here is a very simple recipe for Baba ganoush: slice an eggplant in half, place face down in a lightly oiled pan in a hot oven, bake until soft (about 20-30 minutes). Scoop out the eggplant with a spoon, leaving the skin. Add roasted tahini (variable amounts - a couple of tablespoons is fine), lemon, and maybe a little olive oil. Add salt and pepper; optional: cumin, garlic, cilantro, etc. Eggplant is a magical food.

When I was a kid I remember sitting in a diner having breakfast and saying to somebody that I would never work. The waitress serving us expressed some outrage that I could say such a thing, and I hastened to explain to her that I was musician and did not regard playing music as work. How wrong I was on almost every count! But not that I was a musician; although there were many years that I nearly lost faith in that too. I worked pretty hard at a lot of different jobs, many of them bad fits (I was a really lousy cab driver, and hopeless as a day care worker). And music turned out to be a lot of work too, if work is frustration, labor, rejection, despair, and ultimate small successes. Sometimes people come up to me to express how wonderful it would have been for them had they kept up with their piano lessons. I find this unspeakably funny.

From Mike Strand:
Hi, Carl!

I enjoyed reading your Feb. 19 piece about out-of-tune pianos. A lot of us piano plunkers probably grew up with one, which may be why many of us have accomodating ears. You would love the one I gave to my first daughter a couple of years ago when she moved into her first house. It has a couple of stuck keys and a sweet-and-sour quality that adds the just the right touch to Christmas carols, cowboy songs and home-grown renditions of Jerry Lee Lewis tunes. I don't know for sure, but I can imagine that each home piano (the real ones, not electronic) has a character, a soul of its own. So we should be happy to have pianists that can tolerate and even enjoy such pianos, and even get creative with the idiosyncrasies of the particular instrument they happen to be given to play. We should also applaud listeners who are willing to experience the sounds that may come out of an unfussed-over piano.

Such a light-hearted, free-spirited, even creative attitude may encourage more folks with beloved, if somewhat eccentric-sounding pianos to participate in the WMV salons! Some pianos are just plain hard to tune! That is, some old characters refuse to conform to the tempered approximation/compromise of a "well-tuned" state of being. After all, the most expressive music, including the new atonal compositions, may have arisen through the struggle of a composer to get the most out of a favorite, if frustrating old piano.

Wishing for you to keep having fun at the keyboard,
Mike

Taking a break from grant writing to blog, finally.

Today's topic: out of tune pianos. What's odd is that I like them. It's a challenge to make music on one, plus it's more interesting, it wakes up my ears. Yesterday I played a reception in a retirement home on a Chickering with 2 stuck keys, a twang or two somewhere, generally way out of tune, and with a few real sour notes. I really got into it. I experimented with things I would never have done on a respectable instrument. A rather cultured looking elderly lady came up to me at one point and said, "I love your music, but I sure don't like that piano."

There is another thing about pianos - they are always a little out of tune, and that accounts for the richness of the overtones. Three strings are never going to be exactly in tune after 20 minutes of playing. It is embarrassing, but I dread the perfectly tuned piano that I encounter at the beginning of a concert. It is so loud! The strings all reinforce each other. And the sound is too pure.

Charles Ives and other composers liked out of tune pianos too - there have been attempts by composers to specify the out of tuneness, but that is such hard work. The piano is a pretty blunt instrument, intonation-wise; it is tempered, for goodness sake! Talk about an approximate solution. Every note is out of tune to begin with, except for the octaves and fifths. Amazing what our ears will do to accomodate that messiness.

Gee, it's been so long I almost forgot my password. I'm working much harder since I quit my day job! I am a very hard boss, and Rhonda is no slouch either. The studio event at BannerArts was a spectacular success - we had to turn away about a dozen people, which was really painful. Finally we just sent out a global email that it was completely sold out. Our friends just kept reminding us that this is a good kind of problem. The event was fun throughout. Every performer was superb. I was particularly proud of our performance of Ulf Grahn's Trio, which Anders Lundegard and Kim Buschek played almost flawlessly and with perfect concentration. Eighteen minutes of atonality, and the audience was on the edge of their chairs. The recording came out OK, too.

This is a time of intense activity - the grant writing, the salon project, "strategic planning", progamming for the remainder of the season, and meeting a lot of people. Oh yes, every once in a while I manage to sit down at the piano. Maybe by the end of this period we will have a better grasp of what exactly we are offering the community, and how it can support us to continue to offer it. Now I know what a board can do: Rhonda Buckley advising us daily on the grant writing (as she is walking in and out of meetings); David Cheng dropping by this morning to load new software and update the website; Jon Morris coming over this evening to set up QuickBooks for FY2005. Alice Sims, Rhonda, and David were all at the event Saturday night. (Jon was playing his own gig).

Rehearsed with Karyn Friedman in Fredericksburg - she and her husband Gary Poster bought a piano! We talked about the impossibility of balancing a traditional music career with a normal life - it gave me a larger perspective. Almost all of my favorite musicians have untraditional careers.