what stays with me: john cage

John Cage entered into silence twenty years ago today. Allan Kozinn of The New York Times has a fine appreciation here. My own take on 4'33" is here.

The picture above is from this excellent Cage resource.

Messiaen

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great French composer Olivier Messiaen (he died in 1992). What stays with me about his music is its brilliant color and the sheer exuberance of it, bordering on ecstasy, and often crossing that border.

One of the great privileges of my life as a musician was to lead a performance of the composer's Oiseaux exotiques (Exotic Birds) with the extraordinary John Salmon as pianist. The short concert (the rest of the program was given over to chamber music of Morton Feldman, who produces his own kind of ecstasy) was held in the sanctuary of the Episcopal Student Center in Tallahassee--the design of which is kind of a Scandanavian Modern, with lots of stone and curved walls. The reverb was intense and Messiaen's birds had plenty of room to take flight.

An article I wrote on Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the end of time"), can be found here.

Alex Ross has details of Messiaen 100 celebrations here and here.

End of the Year

The High Hat year-in-review supplement is up. It contains the usual smart and funny writing on movies, music, television, and culture. After some thought on the year in music, I decided not submit a piece, because I thought it would largely be a repeition of the trends I noted last year. I'll have a couple of things to say about the year alittle later, though.

Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry?

The new issue of The High Hat is out, and in addition to literate and insightful articles on a wide variety of cultural and social topics, also contains three things I wrote; an article on place in American music, a review of Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise, and an interview with Mr. Ross.

Enjoy!

Here and There

Alex Ross has a good overview of concert music's web presence here. And speaking of Mr. Ross, today is publication day for his first book, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. I'll have a review of the book and an interview with the author, at a time and place to be announced.

And speaking of people named "Alex", I've been listening to Alex Shapiro's new CD, Notes from the Kelp, also released today. I like this CD very much. Ms. Shapiro handles a wide variety of instruments and idioms with style and expression. My favorite piece so far is Current Events, for string quintet (adding a viola to the traditional quartet). The piece is well-written for the instruments, expressive, and compelling. Ms. Shapiro's music stakes out so much musical territory that I am sure just about everyone will find somethng to like on the program.

I don't usually do politics here, but this post by Phil Nugent, who contributes to The High Hat and elsewhere, is as cogent a staement about where we are as anything I've read recently.

High Hat 8

Just in time for the holiday: The new issues of The High Hat is up. There's a special section on "First Loves" (my article on the trombone is here) as well as the usual commentary on culture pop and non-pop (my piece on Terry Riley's In C is here). Enjoy!

Lee Hyla

Jeremy Eichler of the Boston Globe writes about Lee Hyla (registration may be required to get theough the whole article).

Here's my take on Mr. Hyla, from The High Hat.

Year-Enders

The High Hat year-end supplement is up. My review of news in the concert music world is here.

There's a long goodbye . . .

Robert Altman has died at age 81.

Obituaries and tributes will accumulate on the web and elsewhere, but I want to point again to the recently pulished issue of The High Hat, which contains a special section on Altman, who I believe is one of the greatest artists of the second half of the 20th centruy.

The High Hat

The new issue of The High Hat is up. My article on Pierrot Lunaire is here, and my article on Robert Altman is here.

As usual, the whole issue is worth a read.