WMV Music Web Log

The Kawai arrived! I helped the UPS guy get it up the stairs, and then emptied a huge pile of styrofoam peanuts on the floor to get the keyboard out of the box. Plugged it in - it works! Sounds like a piano, feels like a piano. I got a stand for it, and David is working on getting a hard case. Have Kawai, will travel.

Last night I played a dinner at the Embassy of the Czech Republic for Vaclav Havel and other champions of human rights from China, Burma, Cuba, and elsewhere. It was a real privilege to be there - this was no gathering of empty suits! Several of these men had spent many years in prisons. Three US Senators and half a dozen ambassadors were there as well. Jakub Skalnik of the Czech Embassy got President Havel to autograph the score of a Petr Eben work - one his "Small Portraits" entitled "Simple, Affectionate, Sentimental". Havel signed it with a little heart. I played a lot of Czech music, including Smetana, Dvorak, Martinu, Eben, and Novak, and even some of Ullmann, particularly appropriate as it was written in the concentration camp at Terezin. A Chinese couple asked me to play some Dvorak and Smetana into a pocket recorder.

Tomorrow John Stephens has assembled a small orchestra of which I am a part, to record a Gordon Cyr Symphony. I am very excited about this, as I have never really played as part of an orchestra (quite a different role from piano soloist in a concerto). I am most concerned about being able to follow the conductor's beat, a new skill for me, but one which every other musician present will have perfected over many years. I expect it to be fun, nevertheless.

Altogether over the last few weeks I will have played four concerts, a memorial service, a reception, and a recording session - not bad.

Last week I spoke with Scott Kenison at the Atlas Theater (13th and H NE). They will eventually have four (!) theaters in the complex. The two small theaters are completed - the 140 seat theater is perfect for us. I am very eager to perform there. Maybe we can repeat the July Ratner performance "downtown". I want to start a series based on the DC composer project.

We sent out two mailings this week - the postcard for the June 21 concert at the Ratner, and a spring fundraising mailing. Alice Sims and Richard Richina helped with the envelope stuffing, and it was done in no time. Fundraising appeals have taken on a whole new light: when the bank account dwindles there is no other source of supply.

We met with Sharon Caplan, who has volunteered to try to get us some media coverage - thank you, Sharon!

New MP3s posted - Rhonda graciously allowed me to put up the Hans Gal Suite - now it appears to be the only recording available of this work! Some of the duets from the Brahms concert - they are so beautiful. And John Kamman's Chamber Jazz Sextet from last season - I think it is wonderful, and someone expressed interest in hearing it recently. I've got lots of room on the website, so I am going through the archives for good stuff.

There are a lot of things happening. David Cheng negotiated the ebay purchase of a Kawai MP9500 for me, which should arrive tomorrow. It is a 70 lb electronic piano that feels and sounds like an acoustic piano. My hope is that it will allow me (and WMV) to perform anywhere! I have two particular locations in Silver Spring in mind, and two new performance venues in DC (these with real pianos). Who needs Strathmore Hall, anyway?

My hand hurts - I am trying to do too much. If I could just give it a rest, but it's hard to do with so much music on the piano.

Marilyn went to another opening tonight - oh boy!

"I really think a lot that goes on is about class and who thinks they are above and better than.
No one is supposed to talk about this. I want to find an artist who does strong work about the effects of classicism – ie, treating poorer people as if they are less than fully human.
Maybe that artist will be me, eventually. Meanwhile, isn’t there anyone else?

Tonight we went to another Bethesda gallery opening. Now I am thinking about how all the people there looked so GOOD, if you know what I mean. PRETTY and HANDSOME.
Nothing wrong with that. I am just thinking about Bethesda and the gallery scene and the art buyers who are paying $6000 for art works.
What does this mean?
I’ll let you know as soon as I figure this out!"

I spent the day transcribing DAT (digital audio tape - great sound!) to CD and making labels - worthwhile, since the music was so wonderful. It was the DAT from the Brahms birthday concert and the Craft poems, and it all sounds just as good as I remember it. Something about listening for the real thing - yes, we really did have that rapport, and you can hear it. Yes, there really was deep feeling in that song, and you can hear it. Music is not about fooling people, even though there are elements of illusion. Illusion and allusion - signifying what cannot be specified or articulated; what can't be done can be implied. The illusion designed to dazzle just does not interest me. We musicians are magicians, but magic ranges from vapid entertainment to genuine ritual healing. WMV stands for the latter - this was a community healing ritual, and a successful one. That is what we need more of - not bigger halls and more applause, but music that moves people right before your eyes. You can't really have it both ways, as Dylan says: "You've got to serve somebody...." Either you make the choice to be real no matter what, or you remain cloaked in impeccability.

Happy birthday, Johannes!

The Craft sisters reading their mother's poetry was of course the key that made the event not "just a concert". It was the night before Mothers' Day; Polly passed away close to the beginning of this year. The power of the two young women and the strength they drew from their remarkable mother, obvious through their grief, made a very strong impression on all of us.

Getting closer to the lives of the people who come to hear us and the artists with whom we work makes what we do feel more relevant and less abstract.

I will write about the Brahms birthday concert after I finish transcribing the DAT recording to CDs. Meanwhile, this from Mike Strand:

Dear Carl,

What a concert last Saturday! I felt the deepest admiration and some humility, hearing what Brahms has done with the piano coupled with the human voice. The singers that performed with you did justice to the 172nd birthday of this gifted song-writer.

Gary Poster - like the clearest and strongest of tenors, only in the bass range. I try to sing bass sometimes, so I have some inkling of what it takes to do what Gary does, seemingly so effortlessly. He avoids the muddiness you hear in some professional basses, where you aren't sure of what note they are trying to sing. His performance of the Four Serious Songs moved me to the core. The notes from the Bible and the background he gave concerning Brahms's independent, non-sectarian faith made the experience of Gary's performance all the more effective.

Karyn Friedman - like Gary, only in the Mezzo range (or is it Gary who is like Karyn, only in the bass range?). Both voices a lot like stringed instruments (cello and viola).

This is the first time I heard Elizabeth and Jason, and I thought they were superb.

All four singers, as well as the piano players, projected energy and love for the music they were playing and singing, which made for that emotional and spiritual exchange with the listeners I've talked with you about before.

Thanks again for bringing music like this to our community!

Mike

From composer Michael Strand:

"As for your April 29 blog -- I agree with your perceptions. I, too, often get the feeling that a painting or a piece of music is often a mere reflection or shadow of a beautiful object or feeling or thought that has its full expression in a larger, multi-dimensional reality: The artist manages to capture just enough of its aspects or facets to give the rest of us insight into the larger, amazing reality. In the case of music, the performer plays the important role of interpretation for the listener. If the composer includes too much specification concerning dynamics, phrasing, etc. in an attempt to control the performers, the opportunity for discovering more of the beauty of the "real thing" reflected by the music might be lost. I think of the many variations written for tunes like "Blue Moon" and tangos like "La cumparsita, and the many different ways I've heard Bach pieces performed. I hope you take my own lack of specifications for phrasing and dynamics in my compositions, not as a sign of laziness, but as an invitation to the performers to make the most of what I've written down in cold black and white, based on their own perceptions and feelings and experience. I also don’t mind improvisations on what I write - the notes I put down are often improvisations on whatever I'm trying to capture in sound. Someone else's improvisation may be more successful."

Also from Mike Strand:
"We talked about art economy, and I'll try another wording of my thought: A performance of chamber music for a small audience in a modest-sized hall offers the opportunity for emotional, intellectual, and spiritual exchanges among the audience and the performers that cannot be matched in a large concert hall."

I think this is an important point. We were talking with Mike the other night about a spiritual economy which is parallel and unconnected to the material economy. This is why it is so hard to buy and sell art - it is a transaction between two worlds that have no real connection. And so hard to measure success in the arts. It is easy to see that the degree of financial success and even public acclaim in art have nothing whatsoever to do with values as measured in the universe of "spiritual economics". Small and humble sometimes looks big and significant in this other world, and vice versa. The challenge is to survive materially as artists and at the same time be not at all confused about the very real transactions in the spiritual economy. Because this is the only world in which what we do makes sense, and it is invisible to most people most of the time.