WMV Music Web Log

Mack the Knife is up on the mp3 section of the website. This was from a performance of cabaret songs at a downtown DC restaurant, Busboys and Poets. I've got to say I like this music, but most of the audience did not. Someone said it sounded like we hadn't rehearsed, because we were not together - I have a hunch it was Charley's complex rhythms in Mack, which we pretty much nailed. People had a lot of gripes! But Lisa Null sent us this love note:

Hi:

I was there with my friend Martha. I was the woman at a table in the middle of the room with a crutch and a lot of loud cheers. It sounds as if you are soliciting feedback.

Let me start off by saying how much I loved the evening-- the ambience, the informality, the chance to interact with musicians at the end. Whatever technical problems occurred, they did not interfere with that wonderful experience. Also, the second act, after intermission, was markedly better from the first. The singing-- I am oriented to singers as a performing singer myself, as is Martha-- really took off. I think, in large measure this was because your sound problems were solved, the lid was lowered on the piano, and the balance between voice and brass was more finely calibrated. I could hear the words at last! But I also think something else was happening-- the musicians could hear each other so they no longer played in an atomized way. Once the sound problems were resolved, synergy occurred.

I have a feel for this sort of music as it comes from the world of my stepmother, a holocaust survivor, and we grew up with it in our household. In the original Threepenny Opera recordings, Hanns Eisler recordings from this period, the Blue Angel film, and the Comedian Harmonists' recordings their seems to be a blended,cool precision with extraordinary matching of tone, even though the the notes in and of themselves suggest a more raucous approach. I might have liked to see more of the cool blend, as it foregrounds the vocals. I come to this music with classical training but a career in traditional folk music (clubs, pubsl cabarets, festivals, and now house concerts). This may bias me towards sculpting the words for a natural setting.

A music critic would describe the overall tone as smoky and indeed my friend Martha joked about how strange it was to see the performance without the smoke from dozens of cigarettes. She went so far as to suggest dry ice as a suitable alternative!

I am not used to seeing an operatic singer performing this material and feel she did her very best best when simply pouring forth emotion in that lovely voice of hers ("The Sailor's Tango," the Carmen excerpt) rather than molding it around the verbal subtleties of the world-weary, predatorily seductive female stereotype persistent in these songs. She "got" just the right approach for those marvelous compositions of Charley Gerard.

I'm not sure how these reactions of mine jibe with your experiences of the sound or the performance. It's my habit, for good or ill, to dissect what I hear as if I were the performer myself. I used to teach American Musical Life for years at Georgetown which compounds my analytical excesses. None of that, however, interferes with my loving the music or the joy of the experience itself. It matters less that the evening was successful in every aspect than that a highly intelligent group of competent artists pushed the edge and gave this rich complex trove of music their best shot. That's what I always thought chamber music was, in part. Experiment.

This night was a real winner for me and I look forward to others. I cannot come often as I am deeply involved with the Folk Music Society of Greater Washington. We put on many, many concerts and events too. But my interests extend well beyond folk music and your presenting a variety of challenging chamber music in convivial settings make it hard to resist!

With deepest gratitude,

Lisa
Elisabeth Higgins Null

Karren Alenier reviewed the show for Scene4.com:

Is cabaret music ugly? Should it be unpleasant? These were questions raised by Washington Musica Viva's Sex Appeal program that took place on June 18, 2008, at DC's Busboys and Poets. The Dresser stands scratching her head because, generally speaking, she enjoys the clever but raunchy turns of this kind of music.

The program included songs by cabaret greats: Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Friedrich Hollaender. It also included new cabaret music by sax man composer Charley Gerard based on the lyrics of Judith Weinstock. The musical ensemble included: Clea Nemetz, mezzo; Charley Gerard, composer arranger, alto saxophone; John Jensen, trombone; John O'Brien, banjo; and Carl Banner, piano. Featured were three songs by Hollaender: "Sex Appeal," "Take it off Petronella," and "Falling in Love Again," the song from The Blue Angel made famous by Marlene Dietrich. While the Dresser grooved on the moves and throaty voice of Clea Nemetz, the musical accompaniment seemed thin (not ugly) and spiritless. The Dresser was told that Busboys, for whatever reason, didn't allow the musicians time for a sound check and so musical balance didn't happen.

Perhaps this is unfair, but in the Dresser's experience the touchstone for cabaret is The Three Penny Opera by Kurt Weill with libretto by Bertolt Brecht. And yes, the WMV program included "Mack the Knife," the most well known song from The Three Penny Opera and no, Clea Nemetz sounded nothing like Lotte Lenya or Ute Lemper. Nemetz was squeaky clean sexy in her English and interesting to watch, but she didn't have that German cabaret edge with the guttural rolls of the Rs and that insane vibrato that causes audience to scoot up on their seat and wonder what this singer would be like in bed. Oops, the Dresser can't help it if the raunch slips out. And yes, the Dresser likes a squonky sax and 'bone with the strumming of the banjo and the beating of the ivories but she really missed a bass to ground the overall sound.

The second half of the program featured mostly original songs by Gerard and Weinstock. The Dresser's favorite was "I Hate My Ex" but in truth this piece sounded like contemporary opera and not cabaret. So the Dresser thinks Charley Gerard and Carl Banner should put their heads back together and do up another program like The Weary Blues, which was a smash hit at Busboys.

Ed Lyle writes to let us know about some real music that we might not yet have encountered: "Alt Country". I watched a bunch of YouTube videos from the artists he mentions, and they are pretty incredible.

Hi Carl,

I enjoyed talking with you last night about lots of things at Rix's party. I have gone to YouTube and now have the first movement of Brahms' Second Clarinet Sonata going in the background.

Gee, you really can play the piano!

Truly remarkable for a guy who did all those years in administration at NIH.

You were mentioning last night that you were interested in Bob Dylan songs because of their poetic nature. On the way home, that made me think that you might be interested in spending a little time in the world of Alternative Country music.

Alt Country isn't the pablum that now passes for country music on the radio. It's the stuff that can't get on the radio. It's some of what country music was like before SonyMusic and other record labels hijacked the genre in Nashville about 15 years ago. They brought in pretty boys, dressed em up as cowboys, and had them sing country pablum in an effort to get 20-somethings to "go country" rather than something else.

Most of AltCountry comes out of hardscrabble Texas. It's honest and doesn't kow-tow to anyone. A lot of it is "message" music. For a starter list of notables you might want to go to www.lyricsfreak.com, enter "Townes van Zandt," and, after perhaps going through some of his lyrics (try "Pancho and Lefty," which you may have heard), scroll down to the bottom of the page for the list.
Dylan is on the list. Another is Kris Kristofferson, who you may have heard of.

This list does not include a number of others, however, who I think are equally good as singer/songwriters: Tom Russell, Billy Joe Shaver, Joe Ely, Willie Nelson for starters. One of Tom Russell's themes, for instance, is what the white man continues to do to others in this world. It ain't the most refined poetry, but it comes through like a freight train. An example is his "Who's Gonna Build Your Wall," part of which goes as follows: "We've got fundamentalist muslims, we've got fundamentalist jews, we've got fundamentalist Christians, they'll blow the whole thing up for you. But as I travel around this big old world, the one thing I most fear, is a white man in a golf shirt, with a cell phone in his ear."

Another "messenger" is Billy Joe Shaver. He's been through three heart attacks, had his wife, mother and son die almost simultaneously, lost a finger off one hand but adapted in playing the guitar, as tough as they come, salt of the earth, and a wonderful, wonderful poet and performer. An example is the way he mocks his own naivete as a young man on "Fast Train to Georgia" or the naivete of soldiers on "Feedom's Child." Shaver played a date in Falls Church, Virginia about four years ago, and I just loved him.

A lot of Alt Country is wonderfully funny and satirical. An example is a song written about seven years ago by Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill and sung by The Notorious Cherry Bombs. Its title is, "It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long." This, too, wasn't played by country radio stations.

You can get to these other folks either through YouTube or Google.

And then there are the queens, among the foremost of whom are Patsy Cline and Emmylou Harris. Each is a queen in both Austin and Nashville, though, again, neither is played much on the radio these days. If you've never heard Patsy Cline, go to YouTube and listen. What clarity in her voice! Try "Sweet Dreams" or "I Fall to Pieces" or "Crazy." You'll need only five seconds or so to get the idea.

Back in the early 70s, Harris was the girlfriend of Gram Parsons, who is widely viewed as the first to bring country and rock music together before he died of cocaine. One of her most famous songs is "Boulder to Birmingham," which she wrote about him after his death.

Both Patsy and Emmylou were from northern Virginia (Cline from Winchester, Harris was valedictorian of her class at Gar-Field High School about 40 miles from here in Woodbridge). Cline died in a plane crash in 1963. Emmylou continues on, three times divorced, pushing 60 and gray haired, but still a gorgeous "folkie" in country garb with a wonderfully sweet voice.

Finally, there's something called "South by Southwest" or "SXSW," which is a week-long annual festival of Alt Country music and films in Austin, Texas, the heart of Alt Country. Music-wise, it's a little like reading Nietzsche: sorting through the mud to find the diamonds. But the diamonds are there, and SXSW has a lot of music discussion groups and other things that I think you might find interesting. One of the greatest, cheapest experiences in America is go to down to the bars on 6th and 8th Avenues in Austin and listen to the music for the price of a few beers. It's that same gut-bucket honesty, delivered for pennies.

OK, that's enough for background on Alt Country. The clock is now ticking. And the question now is: How long will it take Carl to appear with his ensemble doing "Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?" as a sonata? Remember, somebody's gotta do the vocals!

When Carl puts that together, I want a free invitation!

Regards,

Ed

The Brahms 175th birthday concert went well! Here are links to the songs op. 105:

Wie Melodien

Immer leiser

Auf dem Kirchhofe

And here are the songs with viola Op. 91:

Gestillte Sehnsucht

Geistliche Wiegenlied

I think he would have been pleased. An audience member was heard to remark about Karyn Friedman in astonishment, “What is she doing here? She sounds like Kathleen Ferrier!” Well, life is funny like that, isn't it.

Betty Hauck was in great form too. We get to play some more tomorrow, with Ben Redwine, at a house concert for major supporters of WMV. We are doing Schumann, Bruch, and Mozart Trios, and some other stuff. Some of this we recorded with Pierre Sprey at Mapleshade Studios, just before a fire in the studio put our CD on hold. Well anyway, we know this music very well.

Sally McLain delivered an absolutely knock-out premiere performance of Dina Koston's work "For Solo Violin". The audience was spellbound, including me. It was achingly beautiful. Here is the recording.

Labels: Brahms 175th birthday concert

Rehearsal in Fredericksburg with Karyn Friedman yesterday. Here are the Brahms Op. 105 songs:

Wie Melodien
Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer
Auf dem Kirchhofe

Labels: Brahms Op. 105, Karyn Friedman

I just gave away two books on aesthetics - I had had enough of them. However, it must have jogged my thinking. One of the books is an attempt at a Christian basis for aesthetics. Very tedious! And some foolish attempts to define "bad" or anti-social, or anti-Christian art. However, I do agree with some parts of it.

All the various artistic enterprises base themselves on a spiritual stance, which is the foundation of the relevant aesthetics. That is, aesthetics talks essentially about the relation between art and spirituality.

Two relevant (approximate) quotes: "You ask if it is good music. I answer, good for what?" (Pete Seeger). "It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you've got to serve somebody" (Bob Dylan). You can see this worked out obviously in any aesthetic sphere. Good to make money, good to advance a career, good to sell something, good to avoid offense, good to pander to the corporations, to the owning class, to the middle class, to the working class, or to the poor.

Or good to encounter the depths of the human circumstance, to share some love with our brothers and sisters on the planet. Or to stand up for the human species and testify about what is truly good about us. Or to reflect seriously on what it is we really are, before we all redissolve into stardust. My own aesthetic is fundamentally religious - I want to be shook to my core. Aristotle quite agreed!

One more thing: I don't think you can have it both ways.

Labels: aesthetics, spirituality

More translations, in preparation for our May 20 concert, with mezzo soprano Karyn Friedman














Von ewiger Liebe (poem by Josef Wenzig) Brahms, Op. 43#1:

Forever Eternal

Twilight and darkness in forest and field
Evening already quiets the world
Few cottage lights, no chimney smoke
Silent even the song of the lark.

A youth leads a girl out of the village,
They pass the willows, so serious, talking.

Said the youth to the maiden:
“If you fear shame and disgrace,
Let us part quickly, the way that we met.
Like rain, like wind, like our first meeting.”

Then said the maiden, the maiden she said:
“Our love is sacred, we shall part never!
Firm as the rock and strong as iron,
Our love stronger still!
Iron and steel, they melt in a forge.
Love, our love: who can change?
Iron and steel, they perish in time.
Our love, our love is eternal forever!”

Two Songs for voice, viola, and piano, Op. 91:

Still Longing (Gestillte Sehnsucht, Friedrich Rückert)

How solemnly the forest stands
Bathed in golden evening light!
The birds are singing softly in quiet breeze.

What is it they whisper, the birds and the air?
They whisper the world to sleep.

But you, my desires, my heart’s endless longings
When do you rest, when sleep?

By the whispering wind, by gentle bird song,
My wishes, desires,
When do you rest, when sleep?

When soul is drawn no longer by fevered dreams
Toward golden distances
When eye dwells no longer on distant stars,

Then the whispering wind and gentle birdsong,
Along with my longings, will give my life rest.


Cradlesong (after Lope de Vega, by emanuel Geibel)

[Text of old song, not sung, but played by viola:
Joseph, dear one, Joseph mine,
Help me rock the child divine
Heaven will reward your toil
For God, the Son of Virgin
Mary, Mary.]

You who hover in treetops,
You holy angels, in night and wind,
Protect my child, my child who sleeps!

You palms of Bethlehem in riotous wind
How can you blow so angry today?
Be still! Hush,
Nod branches softly, grow quiet.
My child is sleeping!
His hurt softens and melts as he sleeps.

Grim cold blows around us,
With what shall I blanket his limbs?
You angels who fly on the wind
Quiet the branches!
My child is sleeping.

(Translations by Carl Banner)

Labels: geistliches wiegenlied, von ewiger liebe

"Serious", encaustic painting by Marilyn Banner
To me, this painting is like an icon. It shows a little girl who loves the sound of the violin with all her heart, and feels privileged to have and play one.













More translations: Three poems by Klaus Groth, set by Brahms in his Op. 105 songs.

Wie Melodien (As if Melodies)

It is as if melodies drift gently into my mind like blooming flowers, filling me with their fragrance.
I try to capture them in words, but they blow away like mist, like breath.
Only a trace of their scent clings to the rhyme, coaxed from dry buds by tears.

Immer leiser (Ever Lighter)

My sleep is ever lighter
And grief lies over me
Like a trembling veil

In dreams you call outside my door
No one opens for you
And I awake weeping, weeping.

Yes, I must die.
And you will kiss another
When I am clay.

Before May breezes waft
And the thrush sings in the woods
If you would see me
Come soon, come soon!


Im Kirchhöfe (In the churchyard)

On storm-driven rainy day
I wandered among forgotten graves,
Weathered stones and crosses
Faded wreaths, illegible names

On storm-driven rainy day
One word froze on every grave: "Was"

As stormy dead the coffins slept
Dripping from every grave another word: "Healed"

Labels: Brahms Op. 105, Groth, Wie Melodien