From the Edge

The Chorus of Westerly presents A Celebration of Twelfth Night this weekend. The annual production is back again serving as the second part to last year’s story. It’s difficult to explain what it’s about, as it is not the same one every year. Not to get it confused with the Shakespeare comedy, it does refer to the twelfth night holiday after an exciting battle between good and evil. It also includes an appearance by Father Christmas and a bunch of crazy characters. A lot of fun will be had.

It runs this friday through sunday. Friday at 7:30. The saturday and sunday performances are at 1pm, 4pm, and 8pm. There are also Peasant Feasts at 6pm and if you like to eat really good food, be there.

For more information and to order tickets to the show and/or peasant feast, visit ChorusOfWesterly.org.

I figured it’s not too late to do a Christmas Advent calendar. Except instead of bad tasting chocolate for each day leading up to Christmas, I’m serving up some of my favorite holiday jazz recordings. I might be a little biased in my picks though, because I favor a lot of the recordings put out by musicians of the bebop era in the 1950s and ’60s.

Today I’m starting off with a trio known for their vocalese: Lambert, Hedricks, and Ross sing Deck Us All with Boston Charlie

Download it: Deck Us All With Boston Charlie [3:16]

I first learned of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks, and Annie Ross from my Jazz History course in college. There was a discussion in class about what differentiated vocalese from scat. Nonetheless I was more confused by the end of it so I can’t say anything about what makes vocalese different from scat singing. I just know that they are both forms of vocal improvisation.

Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross only stayed together for five years, beginning in 1957. Ross was later replaced by Yolande Bevan long enough for them to record three live albums before breaking up altogether in 1964.

I’m not familiar with the origin of this song, but a little Googling and searching on Wikipedia revealed that the lyrics come from a song written by Walt Kelly, an American animator and cartoonist, on the album Songs of the Pogo, which shows that he was also a poet. It’s funny that the lyrics are about as nonsensical as Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross’s vocalese. In this track they start by singing the song straight like the original melody of “Deck the Halls” then they take off with vocalese.

Indeed, the man in that little room was Alec Baldwin, the actor with a restless and tabloid-turbulent career that encompasses all three realms. His latest guise is pitchman for high art, as in Mahler, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. This season Mr. Baldwin became the official announcer of the New York Philharmonic’s weekly radio broadcasts.

Alec Baldwin, from one of my favorite shows 30 Rock, gets involved with the New York Philharmonic. Read the article here.

Master American composer John Adams will deliver the 2009 Tanner Lectures on Human Values on October 28 and 29 at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street. His first talk, “Doctor Faustus and His Composition: Reflections on Thomas Mann’s Fictional Composer,” will be held on October 28, and his second, “Doctor Atomic and His Gadget: Composing the American Mythology,” on October 29. Both talks will take place at 4:30 pm.

Recognized worldwide for the expressive depth, technical range, and compelling themes of his work, Mr. Adams has broadened the aesthetics of contemporary American concert music, moving it away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, profoundly humanist musical language.

I studied John Adams’ controversial opera The Death of Klinghoffer based on a terrorist hijacking of a cruiseliner in the mid 1980s. Despite the controversy that Adams romanticized terrorists or some crazy idea like that, the opera itself was quite good. If you’re familiar with the minimalism writing style made popular by Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, there’s much of that here.

Links: John Adams, Klinghoffer @ Wikipedia, Music @ Yale

I found this blog via Rion of a John Maloof who discovered 30 to 40,000 film negatives taken by Vivian Maier from the mide 1900s in Chicago. He’s only developed a small portion of the negatives so far but what he’s already developed and posted on the blog are excellent examples of great photography. I can’t imagine how excited he must feel to see her pictures and try to imagine the kind of life she lived along with developing the same eye she had in the way she photographed her subjects in Chicago at that time. It’s like he opened a time capsule and have opened my eyes to the city life in the 1950s. It’s fascinating indeed. I can’t wait to see more photos as he publishes them.

Vivian Maier

Last night I had the pleasure of listening to the Tokyo String Quartet perform at Yale in New Haven. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to be in attendance at Morse Recital Hall, so I listened to the whole program live over the internet from home. (I honestly wanted to be there because nothing beats a live performance in an acoustically sound venue but I had to study for class.) I was really happy to know that I could still listen to an exceptional ensemble in real-time, thanks to the Yale School of Music’s website.

One great thing about wider accessibility to world class performances like this is if you’re not able to attend a performance in person, you still have an opportunity to “be there” as long as you have an internet connection. Obstacles such as inability to afford ticket prices, transportation, babysitting, etc. can be overlooked because all you need is a computer. With speakers. And access to high speed internet. That’s all!

Other venues like the Metropolitan Opera have brought their shows outside of Lincoln Center. They offer live audio streams on their website as well as for satellite radio subscribers and through Rhapsody and Real Player. They’ve broadcasted in Times Square and have recently started broadcasting live in HD in movie theaters across the country. So no more excuses that you can’t see/hear big productions because you live all the way out there!

Sorry for being away for a while.

…because who wouldn’t want a little quickie with me?

Anyways. A few updates.

1.) I didn’t make it to the Imogen Heap album signing. My friend was too broke to go and I was too tired from work. We still both bought the album and are both enjoying listening to Imogen at all hours of the day.

2.) Ingrid Michaelson also released a new album on the same day last week, called Everybody. Me and everyone else downloaded it on iTunes and it made it to #1 on the iTunes charts. If you’re an Ingrid fan you won’t be disappointed. Ingrid is one of the few musicians who writes a whole album basically all about love and I don’t feel emo listening to it. I love her voice, it’s like warm butter being spread across toast. (Hey, she blogs, too!)

3.) Other musicians and bands I’ve become a fan of recently: Grizzly Bear, Discovery (i’m on an electronic music kick again), and every remix put out by Steve Aoki. I’m really easy to please when it comes to music. Make me dance and I’ll love you.

4.) I’ve been so bored music-wise (i’m sorry if that’s not really a word english & grammar nazis) this summer that i’ve relapsed with all sorts of music-related projects for the coming months. In addition to the repertoire of the new season with the Chorus of Westerly, I’ve decided to go back to singing with my college choir because I miss my peeps so much. I only left in the first place because I thought everyone graduated and left. To my surprise everyone stayed because most of them stayed at the school for their grad studies also. Who’s embarassed now?

I’m also going to try to learn to play guitar because my sister was nice enough to let me borrow her acoustic AND she bought me Hello Kitty picks and I’d be asking to get my butt kicked if I just decided I don’t want to do it anymore. Plus I promised to play a song at her wedding so I HAVE TO LEARN PERIOD.

Oh yeah and I just remembered I need to remember to play piano so I have to practice that too.

I’ve been working feverishly to complete a few string quartet arrangements that I can work on with my professor this semester. I’d really like to see this project come to fruition one beautiful day with a live performance and four string players with a sense of humor and interest in pop music.

Good luck, you say? THANKS. I NEED IT.