domingo, 11 de diciembre de 2011

CONCIERTO EN EL MGB HOY / MGB CONCERT TODAY



2011-12-11

APARECE ABAJO EN ESPAÑOL ...
No profound thoughts here, just sharing my pleasure at the concert I gave today!
With thanks to Kristin Hanson ... "A [wo]man is a success if [s]he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between [s]he does what [s]he wants to do" ~Bob Dylan … Una mujer se puede contar un éxito si se levanta en la mañana y se va a la cama en la noche, y en ese lapso hace lo quiere hacer.

I posted this much-loved quote again in FB a few moments ago because this was indeed a day in which I got up in the morning, and in a while I will go to bed, and in between I did what I wanted to do: I got up and ran with my dogs in the morning and then in the afternoon, I played –with all due modesty- a quite wonderful recital in the Casa-Museo Gene Byron.

A couple of pix (it appears to be impossible to take them of me while I am playing, with any normal camera that is) …


Made a change in the program which was so last-minute that I decided on it in the shower before leaving for the hall. With the addition of Horacio Uribe’s exhilarating heart-throb of a piece –which I couldn’t resist playing— this program was going to be too long and too much to absorb. I changed the order slightly and deleted the Sonata of my beloved Domenico Scarlatti. Not to worry, it will show up in one of the many mixed programs in which I’ll incorporate these splendid Monarca pieces. I’m already thinking of another one, consisting of the Spanish and Mexican composers, with Lirio Garduño reading poems from her amazing Cuaderno de la Monarca (Monarca Notebook) – soon to be published, one by tantalizing one, on the Monarca website (friends and fans, ¡¡¡WATCH THIS SPACE!!).


So the order was:
CPE BACH Sonata
SILVIA BERG El sueño … el vuelo (The Dream … the Flight)
STEPHEN MCNEFF An Evening with doña Eduviges: a Fantasy (Una velada con doña Eduviges: una fantasia)
HORACIO URIBE El viaje nocturno de Quetzalpapálotl (The night voyage of Quetzalpapálotl)
Intermedio
JOELLE WALLACH Lágrimas y Locuras, Mapping the Mind of a Madwoman (cartografiando la mente de una loca): A Fantasy on La Llorona
SCHUBERT-LISZT Gute Nacht
SCHUMANN-LISZT Widmung (Dedicación)
PAUL BARKER La Malinche: Concert Aria
The piano was not in great shape; a good instrument that has, lamentably, not been well maintained (hammers badly need voicing, action needs regulating). I had to work SO hard to get it to speak as I wanted, and by my own standards I wasn’t always completely successful.

So in the end, yes it was wonderful. I suppose that coaxing the piano to sing as I wanted it to added an extra spice for me.

In any case the audience response was PHENOMENAL. I personally have never had a negative audience response to new music. I continue to believe that this is because I pick my repertoire with great care so that I can play it –as CPE said in his great wisdom— “from the heart, and not like a trained bird.”

And what, you may ask, about pieces written for you with which you simply are unable to bond? Ah, that is an important question to be answered at some other writing, which I hope will be soon. For now, I’ll share with you a comment made by my very dear friend M*** (the one with whom I have a special relationship around dance and who has mysterious and awesome instinct about me), who asked me after hearing these particular pieces at a recent house-concert, “Ana, do you think it’s possible that some of the composers who wrote for you in Rumor are now writing for you EVEN BETTER?” You know what? I think she is right.

Nada de pensamientos profundos aquí … ¡sólo quiero compartir mi placer por el recital que di hoy en la tarde!
With thanks to Kristin Hanson ... "A [wo]man is a success if [s]he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between [s]he does what [s]he wants to do" ~Bob Dylan … Una mujer se puede contar un éxito si se levanta en la mañana y se va a la cama en la noche, y en ese lapso hace lo quiere hacer.
Subí esta bienamada cita hace poco en FB porque hoy fue de veraa un día en que me levanté en la mañana, y al ratito iré a la cama, y en ese inter hice lo que yo quise hacer: me levanté y corrí con mis perras y luego en la tarde, interpreté –con toda la debida modestidad—un recital bastante maravilloso en la Casa-Museo Gene Byron.


Hice un cambio en el programa que fue tan del último momento que lo decidí mientras me bañaba antes de salir al foro. Con la adición de la hermosísima pieza de Horacio Uribe –que no pude resistir incluir—este programa iba a ser demasiado largo y demasiado que absorber. Con que cambié tantito el orden y suprimí la Sonata de mi querido Domenico Scarlatti. No os preocupéis, aparecerá en otro de estos programa mixtos en que incorporaré estas espléndidas piezas Monarca. Ya estoy ideando uno, de los compositores españoles y mexicanos, con Lirio Garduño leyendo poemas de su maravilloso Cuaderno de la Monarca – que pronto se editarán (uno por uno para mayor suspenso) en el nuevo portal Monarca. ¡¡¡Amigos y fans, estén al pendiente!!!
Con que el orden fue …
CPE BACH Sonata
SILVIA BERG El sueño … el vuelo (The Dream … the Flight)
STEPHEN MCNEFF An Evening with doña Eduviges: a Fantasy (Una velada con doña Eduviges: una fantasia)
HORACIO URIBE El viaje nocturno de Quetzalpapálotl (The night voyage of Quetzalpapálotl)
Intermedio
JOELLE WALLACH Lágrimas y Locuras, Mapping the Mind of a Madwoman (cartografiando la mente de una loca): A Fantasy on La Llorona
SCHUBERT-LISZT Gute Nacht
SCHUMANN-LISZT Widmung (Dedicación)
PAUL BARKER La Malinche: Concert Aria

El piano no está en maravillosas condiciones: un buen instrumento a que lamentablemente no se ha dado el mantenimiento necesario: martinetes urgidos de entonación, y la pulsación necesita regulación. Me costó MUCHO trabajo hacer que hablara como yo querría, y según mis criterios no siempre lo logré. Ni modo.
Pero total que sí, fue maravilloso. Supongo que el trabajo que costó sonsacar al piano a que cantara como yo querría agregó una pizca extra de sabor para mí.
En todo caso la respuesta del público fue fenomenal. Yo en lo personal nunca he tenido una respuesta negativa a música nueva. Sigo creyendo que esto es porque escojo mi repertorio con sumo cuidado precisamente para que yo pueda tocarlo –como dice CPE Bach en su gran sabiduría—“desde el corazón, y no como un pájaro bien entrenado”.
¿Y qué –bien se puede preguntar—de las obras que se han escrito para ti con que simplemente no te has podido acoplar? Ah, es una pregunta importante a que se responderá en un escrito en un futuro –ojalá—no muy lejano. Por lo pronto, comparto con uds el comentario de mi queridísima amiga M*** (la con quien tengo una relación especial en lo que concierne la danza, dotada de un misterioso y asombroso instinto en torno a mí), quien me preguntó después de un reciente concierto casero, “Ana, crees tú que es posible que algunos de los compositores que escribieron para ti para Rumor ahora están escribiendo para ti AÚN MEJOR?” ¿Saben qué?—creo que tiene toda la razón.

viernes, 11 de noviembre de 2011

SOBRE DANIEL CATÁN

Tarde-tarde-tarde, para variar, pero aquí 'stá ...


2011-10-29

THOUGHTS … ON Daniel Catán’s El Cartero (Il Postino)

Voz auténtica. Brasil. La pregunta de Rodolfo Coelho. And now it’s come full circle, over the decades.

I’m writing more on what this has to do with my last Brazil trip, a year ago. Meanwhile, Daniel Catán… I went, the penultimate night of the Festival Internacional Cervantino, to hear his opera El Cartero (based on the film Il Postino) in the Teatro Juárez. In effect, Daniel’s last COMPLETE opera, the one in whose WP in the LA Opera Plácido Domingo sang Pablo Neruda. The one which was done to considerable acclaim in Paris a few months ago … after Dani died, quietly in his sleep, last Spring.

En eso estoy, escribiendo más sobre lo que esto tiene que ver con mi último viaje a Brasil hace un año. Mientras tanto, Daniel Catán … Fui, la penúltima noche del Festival Internacional Cervantino, a escuchar su ópera El Cartero (basada en la peli Il Postino) en el Teatro Juárez. En efecto, su última opera completa, la en cuyo estreno absoluto Plácido Domingo cantaba Neruda. La que se montó a considerable elogio en París, hace unos meses … después de que Dani falleció, tranquilamente mientras dormía, la primavera pasada.

Un caudal de memorias, para mí. Dani aún con sus veinte-tantos, pero ya sabiendo muy bien lo que quiso escribir. Cómo batallaba en Princeton, queriendo escribir la música que ya escuchaba en su oído interno, allá en ese mar hirviente de serialismo. Pero sí que logró salir con todo y pergamino del doctorado. Y lo que es más, con la voz intacta.

Claro, después la voz maduró, y considerablemente. Pero aún así la obra de su tesis fue digna de grabarse.

Parece que siempre tuvo que batallar para hacer lo que tenía que hacer.

Tradicional la voz, se puede decir, ¿y qué? A mi ver lo importante es que fue absolutamente suya –y, cabe mencionar, de no poca destreza y elocuencia. Y además, ¿cuántos compositores hay de ópera en español, en este hemisferio? Ibarra, Catán, son contadísimos.

Ay de mí, ¿porqué tantos tienen que morir antes de recibir su justo reconocimiento?

Fuertes ecos de Verdi en el sentido de lo político, a mi ver. Par mí fue muy claro que esta ópera hace su declaración en cuanto a la capacidad de la poesía –y, por extensión, el arte en general—de cambiar la vida individual y así el mundo. Por lento y penoso que sea el camino.

Cuando Dani Catán falleció, escribí, “In the end music enters us first through our pores, through our physical organism, maybe sometime later through intellect and all that. Hearing is the first sense to develop neonatally. In the end if music touches us in that way, if we want to listen to it again and again even if it wrenches our hearts, that is what is important, that's the acid test, it has little to do with good or bad. This is why people still listen to Puccini, why Puccini evokes in many listeners --this one included-- tears of joy and humility and pride to be human. So if Daniel's music sounded to these listeners like Puccini ... so much the better, so much more collective pride for all of us to be human. That we are able to be touched by such beauty is great humility and great pride. Carajo, I am so sad that he is gone.

"A la postre la música nos entra primero a través de nuestros poros, nuestro organismo físico, quizás tiempo después por el intelecto y todo aquello. El sentido auditivo es el primero en desarrollarse en el feto. A la postre si una obra nos toca de esa manera, si la quisiéramos escuchar una y otra vez aún si nos desgarra el corazón, eso es lo importante, eso es la prueba de fuego, que poco tiene que ver con bueno o malo. Por esto la gente todavía escucha a Bach, a Brahms, a Puccini, por esto Puccini evoca en tantos escuchas –incluída ésta—lágrimas de regocijo, de humildad y de orgullo por ser humano. Así que si la música de Daniel, para ciertos escuchas, sonaba a Puccini … pues mejor que mejor, que así sea, más orgullo colectivo para todos nosotros de ser humano. Que podemos ser conmovidos por tamaña hermosura es gran humildad y gran orgullo. Carajo, estoy tan triste que se ha ido.”

jueves, 10 de noviembre de 2011

HAPPILY RANTING INSPIRED BY EJ DIONNE

2011-11-10 THOUGHTS ON US POLITICS


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-right-wings-shellacking/2011/11/09/gIQADgGq5M_story.html

My wonderful Cousin H**** sends me this really good essay by EJ Dionne in the WashPost (check it out!) and I responded. It turned into a rant so I post it here … with names disguised to protect the innocent of course, as always …

This is a wonderful piece, dear H***, and MANY thanks for sending it on. Jiminy, if these election results don't show it's long past time for politicians to stop running scared from these Tea Party people, I don't know what will. I like the quote from Jerry Lewis in Arizona, that this was a victory for "restoring a civil tone to politics.' One of the many things that's been missing for some decades now, I feel.

"This was a case of old-fashioned conservatism beating the Tea Party variety", says Dionne. I have to say that I’ve felt since the very beginning that the Tea Party has little or nothing to do with real conservatism. The best conservatives were people like Warren Rudman, the Senator from New Hampshire-- who were real strict-constructionists and with whom, I imagine, one could have a real discussion about substantive public-policy issues. Rudman at least, I feel quite sure, would fight to the death for my right to disagree with him, and I, in fact, for his to disagree with me.

The TP folks, on the other hand, out of their own mouths have the utmost contempt for government and for public policy. There are strong grounds to suspect that not one of those people has any idea what public policy even is. And much less about dying for my right to disagree with them, or they with me. For some time I have felt pretty sure that they don't even know --or if they do know, that they care-- about the Bill of Rights.

I feel it's justifiable, in fact, to call them cynical and opportunist. I've said it before and I feel everything that's happened in the last year justifies saying it again: What right do these people have to be in government when they openly profess nothing but complete unbelief in government? They want to take us back to way before the City-State, for heaven's sake. So they have no right to form part of the government, and much less to benefit from that participation. More than anything else, because they have collectively and individually offered not one single constructive proposal about ANY of the things which ail us as a country.

So they are just happily collecting their bennies --unlike the people who are out of work, for whom they have zero compassion!-- and railing on against the very government which has arranged for them to have said bennies. Cynical is a pretty good adjective, I say. And opportunist sticks pretty well too: at least pigs at the trough are just following their natural Pig Instincts.

Anyway, I am enormously happy that The People Have Spoken in these elections, and that they have been Speaking these last few weeks, in the various Occupied Places. Enormously happy that the unions have taken strength from the Occupy folks. I hope people will stop running scared from these Naked Tea-Party Emperors and laugh them out of the house they have have no right to rule. I'll stop ranting now ... ;=))

jueves, 20 de octubre de 2011

2011-10-20 THOUGHTS ON DANCE LEMI PONIFASIO “MAU: DANCE WITH SKYMIRRORS”

2011-10-20 THOUGHTS ON DANCE
LEMI PONIFASIO “MAU: DANCE WITH SKYMIRRORS”

Not perfect, this; not refined or well–edited … but no matter, I won’t fall prey, this night, to perfectionism, I want to get this out there.
Have always felt, for years now, that musicians are also dancers, or ought to be; just that the movement is sometimes so inside, so subtle … but as Lettvin said, the grace notes are the flick of the fingers, the subtle movement of the eyes … we are ALL dancers, we humans.

SO HERE IT IS …
How it begins: man rear stage L … or is it a man? I have the impression that he has the head of a beast, a lion or a bear, magnificently hirsute. All we really see is the beautifully-muscled torso, and the hands –which seem immense—placed on the fronts of his thighs. He scarcely moves. Just breathing, in and out.

Then the woman –front stage R—almost entirely naked, very pale body, high-heeled shoes, completely and pitilessly lit, a brusque contrast to the man’s mystery.
Her song, not lamenting or nostalgic or conventionally beautiful: no, it is a war-dance song. At the end --a jump-out-of-your-seat shock to many-- a raucous scream that sounds like the shriek of a bird of prey.

The geometry of the stage. All square but often asymmetrical. Never a circle.

The geometry of the space they define. At a certain point about halfway through I notice that not once have the arms been lifted above shoulder level. No lifting-up of torsos, no reaching to heaven. Someone says afterwards when we are talking about this, “Like birds”. But later still, I realise that’s not true: some birds at least –like raptors—DO lift their wings enormously as they plunge.

Somewhere about halfway through –and I continued to observe this as I assimilated and the piece progressed—I realized that no one ever touches anyone else, there is ZERO physical contact between or among the dancers.

Their own bodies, as the piece progresses, become percussion instruments. This is beautifully set up from the beginning with tiny hints of what is to come …

That rapid gliding through space. Feet so soundlessly GLIDING across the stage. Once you look carefully you realize it is the feet, but even so it looks like something a human could not do.

It all challenged me to think about my ideas of Dance.

At some climactic point about 2/3 of the way through, the image projected on the backlit screen behind the dancers, is of a bird half-drowned in oil, struggling to lift its wings and escape from the filth in which it’s mired. Repeatedly projected. The dance going on in front of this horrific image just goes on.

The music, at this point, intentionally and almost unbearably brutal, repetitive, violent. I say intentionally because it MUST be: the music before is so well done as a backdrop, an accompaniment to the other sound events and to the dance, and sometimes it takes more of a protagonist’s role.

It is after this, I think, that there’s a sequence with the six men, in which they all end up stage front, bent over on their knees (like yoga child’s pose), with arms bound behind them. Well, but they are NOT bound, they are only holding their hands together. But nevertheless they writhe and struggle as tho’ they were bound. Beautiful, beautiful back muscles, deltoids, biceps.

Is part of the idea that we SEE that they’re not really bound, that all they have to do is loose their own hands (bonds) and they will be free? An incredible tension generated by this feeling.

Anyway, they all draw back to the rear, disappearing into the shadows, still struggling on their knees. All except one, who manages to rise to his feet, hands still (self-)bound behind him, and stays stage front for a while, gradually drawing back. Still on his feet, I praying from guts and heart for his liberation, he arches his back –finally we see the torso fully open … but then after a very long time, what seems like an eternity, he too draws back into the shadows, vanquished.

So much. I tried to remember everything, EVERYTHING so as to tell my very dear friend M*** the Dancer, with whom I have a Special Bond About Dance. I’m not telling everything here because it’s late and it would take so much time. Every time I think about it I remember more, altho’ not always in the correct sequence.

I think at first I was dismayed because there seemed to be no opening up of the body, no leaps, that striving toward the heavens that I so love and which seems to me one of the particular gifts to us of dance, it was always the closest we could get to flying. The dream, and the doom, of Icarus: to defy gravity. But now, just as I am writing this, I realize that it’s that GLIDING across the floor that’s the defiance of gravity in this dance.

That rapid fluttering of the fingers, that we see almost from the beginning. I find out in the after-conversation, from Australian friends who know about such things, that this is an element in hakka (sp., correct I think, check it out on Google) a war-dance of the Maori. I knew something about hakka but no details. Fascinating. Is it modelled on birds and their movements, I wonder? Didn’t occur to me to ask them in the moment.

After that climactic and awful half-drowned bird moment (that goes on forever), a bird-man appears on stage, in the same place as the beast-man at the beginning: with the head of (I think) an albatross or frigate-bird. Extensively tattooed all around the waist. We’ve seen him before as one of the six male dancers, I remember the tattoos peeking out from his trousers or whatever. Now he is naked, except for the gigantic bird’s head, and a sort of codpiece affair which is half prick and half tail, because it extends to his knees and curls around looking almost, at that point, like a ram’s horn. Nothing even remotely sensual about it. He looks hieratic, and at the same time oddly innocent. His movements are not hieratic: when he turns slowly this way and that it is only the torso, and not completely somehow; I think that is where the innocence part comes in for me.

When he starts to move directionally, still to the rear and towards stage right, it is with the gait of a bird, or rather with the gait of a man become half-bird, the legs look unnaturally long, the relation of the thorax to the waist which is no longer exactly a waist … eery, terribly sad, because he walks off and we know he is gone forever, like the bird struggling to fly out of the oil. Maybe this is the human memory and incarnation of that bird. How we preserve it, keep it sacred.

So this piece, evoking the relationship of human with animal and bird in its most profound way, that is in how we as humans have sought to put ourselves INTO THEIR BODIES, their fur, their feathers; run with their joyful legs and soar with their tireless wings … says an awful –awe-full— lot about that magical relationship in all its mystery, without in any way trying to explain it, which would of course be fatal.

It was so dense, so complex. The impact took a while to take effect. I just wanted to be quiet and alone afterwards but then there is the talking which is also interesting. It wasn’t until I gave a goodnight hug and kiss to L***’s assistant Juan that I practically collapsed into his arms and burst into tears. Almost.

martes, 11 de octubre de 2011

RANDOM RAMBLINGS: SOCIETY, RAIN, MUSIC & TIME

2011-10-11 RANDOM RAMBLINGS

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/10/beijing-chill.html ...

I read this brief piece by Alex Ross, and then the Nick Frisch NYT piece he cites, and am struck by several things:

1. What happened with Ay Wei Wei earlier this year, and the shameful silence about it on the part of a major USian museum, which was also about to embark, if memory serves, on some sort of collaboration with the People’s Republic. And speaking of Ay, the news has been rather silent on that score of late, I think.

2.The not-so-veiled implication in Frisch’s article that institutions (including arts ones) in the US are prepared to forgive China a great deal because they have a great deal of cash. Pretty yucky. Especially now that the Occupy Wall Street people’s movement seems to be catching on. As Paul Krugman and now a bunch of others have pointed out, the mere fact that the OWS folk are attracting the ire of the bankers, and the politicians they bankroll, is enough to tell us that what they’re saying hits home.

Had a lovely coffee today with dear friend T*** who is a very fine writer. We got to talking about something I’ve written about before: how in the US art and society in general have persistently failed to knit themselves together. He told me about some mutual friends, people really committed to the arts, just returned from a 6-month sabbatical based in Barcelona. While working and everything, they still managed to take some trips around Europe –I mean really, who wouldn’t? Both said that what they brought away from this experience was primordially how every European country they visited has incorporated the arts into its life AND its ECONOMY.
To many, this may sound like a “DUH” sort of situation, but I think it’s close to the heart of at least one of the significant fault-lines that I see opening up in the US.

Let historians and economists deal with the minutiae of this question: to me it is clear that to have a more humane country –with a lower infant-mortality rate and a far lower percentage of its people in prison, just to pick two salient examples– you MUST have a country in which people are engaged with dance, with theatre, with music, with poetry.

And not only that -- I mean engaged AS PARTICIPANTS. Why? Because when you are trying to make a poem on something you really care about, suddenly you have something to lose apart from the miserable paycheck you more than earn. If you make an enormous paycheck which you can’t even imagine how to earn, the experience will give you humility. When you yearn to play the fiddle or the guitar like one of your heroes, in order to see if you are progressing you must really listen to yourself. From this you can learn both critical thinking and listening, as well as compassion. And, when you accomplish part or all of what you strove for, you get to experience well-deserved pride.

When all this is part of a group or collective effort, as in chamber music, in a choir, or in something like the Venezuelan “El Sistema” youth orchestras, the critical thinking, the humility, the compassion, and the pride –most of all the love— are multiplied a thousand-fold … and you also learn the epiphany of collective effort. If you don’t know about “El Sistema”, google it. It should be part of everyone’s store of everyday knowledge.

I live in the state of Guanajuato, in México. This is far from being a mushy liberal tree-hugger sort of state. Nevertheless, in practically every town –even the tiniest and most remote— there is a “Casa de la Cultura” -- literally translated, a House of Culture. In FIFTY-FIVE of them there is a PIANO. There are many things that can be improved, but at the end of the day the fact that this exists signifies that there is some sort of awareness here. There is also, just by the way, the Seguro Popular, which is completely gratis and which is basically free health insurance for people who can’t afford anything else. And you know what? I believe you can enroll in it even if you are a foreigner.

***

Enough about society and justice and all, that was my rant for the day. Things that
are really beautiful here the last couple of days:

IT IS RAINING. We have been horribly short of rain this year. This is High Desert, geographically. Normally it rains –if one can talk about “normal” weather anymore, which I guess we can’t—starting in late May or early June. There is a gradual crescendo from a little afternoon shower during the first few weeks to a daily rainstorm in August; always in the afternoon to late evening. Then in September it starts to taper off, and there is a gradual decrescendo to late October. Then it Stops Raining –I mean Completely –until late May or early June of the following year. It’s not unusual that it starts raining late, but it always generates uneasiness.

This year, as in 2009, it started late and never really got into its rhythm. Now, suddenly in late September-early October, it is starting to act almost like August. A couple of sweet slow rains that go on for hours: just what we need to fill the presas, the reservoirs; and our souls.

WHAT TIME DOES TO MUSIC: TO LISZT, TO URIBE, TO CABRERA BERG. Nothing new here, just that every time it happens, it feels like an epiphany, a miracle. I work on these pieces really hard, with the utmost concentration; I perform them, I record them at home, I meditate on them and then play again. And then I let them rest, in this case just for a few days … and ¡¡EPIPHANY!! All that patient incremental work suddenly bears fruit and they take flight. It is indeed a miracle.
When that happens I think, Ay dios, let me just be in my cavern, holed up and listening, listening and playing, listening and meditating, playing and listening.

Why o why is it so hard to Protect my Time? But the truth is that, while I must as always work to protect my own time, I would also feel fundamentally incomplete if I didn’t participate in the artistic community of which I am a part, and even in the community of my barrio, my neighborhood, which had absolutely no idea of what I do, or appreciation of it, however much I said about it … until they saw me on TV a couple of months ago.

This DOES have to do with the voice of the interpreter, and centrally. I must write about this, it’s something about which I’ve thought so much. Rodolfo Coelho’s penetrating question a little over a year ago brought it to the forefront once again. What I wrote then got lost with Laptop Theft Number Four. A large part of the almost unmitigated rage I felt about that was the loss of some writing I’d done which was not recoverable. I guess I’m largely over that now, and so can start to re-stitch that particular lost thread. I’ll do it soon.

I leave you all with this quote from Arrau on the interpretation of Liszt, which Russell Sherman –another hero of mine— quotes in his amazing book “Piano Pieces,” jam-packed with wisdom, passion, and humor:

Claudio Arrau on Liszt: “Declamation. Uninhibited expression. One must not feel ashamed of playing this music. The idea that he can be ‘corrected’ by understatement is utterly wrong.
“Continuing: ‘In general, when actors in this country [speaking of the US] do Shakespeare, they almost always underplay. They act as if they are ashamed of their roles and lives. They think people will laugh at them. If they would go all out, all the way, they would find that people would not laugh but be riveted. They would weep. Certain performances must make you weep, either for the sheer beauty of it of for the depth of feeling.’ [From The Essential Piano Quarterly].”

I will go a step further, and say, One must not feel ashamed of playing ANY music. If you feel ashamed about it, or even NEUTRAL, you shouldn’t be playing it. Find a way to be utterly convinced and passionate about it, or find other repertoire.

CPE Bach: “Play from the heart, not like a well-trained bird.”

domingo, 9 de octubre de 2011

THOUGHTS ON DIPLOMACY READING ABOUT THIS VAN BUREN THING ...

2011-10-09 THOUGHTS ON DIPLOMACY ETC

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/world/us-envoy-peter-van-buren-takes-caustic-pen-to-iraq-war.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

I know various people in the diplomatic service who work honourably, giving their imagination and compassion as well as their entire professionalism to the work they do as diplomats. Which at the end of the day, in my eyes, is a very noble work indeed.

The NYT article seems to say that State Dep’t colleagues feel that Van Buren is a sort of traitor for speaking out as openly as he has. Oh hell, I don’t know. This is a true moral dilemma, one of the oldest I suspect. Do you try to work through channels, give the process time to do its glacial work? Or do you finally decide that the more immediate moral imperative is indeed more urgent, and can’t wait for the process to do its work, especially considering that there’s a very real chance it won’t be able to do that? I imagine that the brave person who sneaked those photos in Abu-Ghraib –and then even more bravely decided to make them public (or was that second choice already made in the moment of taking the photos? perhaps … ) was moving towards such a decision and then made it, in the blinding flash of a moment teetering over the abyss. Countless millions of other such choices over the course of history, I am sure.

I feel as tho’ this script is already written, for something like the Iraq version of Robin Williams’ Good Morning Vietnam. (Too bad I’m such a movie illiterate: maybe someone has already MADE this movie.) I mean, nothing I read in this article is in any way surprising. This is my rule for reading stuff in the paper: will it surprise me, will I learn anything from it? If it’s just something I already intuit, or that looks as tho’ it won’t challenge me, I don’t read it: life is too short.

Not quite sure why I read this one: perhaps because a friend sent it, perhaps because one way or another, and over the years, I have come to know people in the diplomatic service. Because of the kind of people they are, as I mention above, I persist in believing that being a diplomat is a noble calling. Also because, at its best, it has to do with communication, and what I do has so fundamentally to do with communication.

The resignation letter –dated 7 Feb 2003, I find when I miraculously locate it in some file rescued after the theft of THREE laptops-- written by John Brady Kiesling, a career diplomat whose last post was, as far as I know, as Political Attaché in Athens, sticks in my mind, in this connection. I re-read that letter and still find it moving and compelling. I am going to try and attach it here, hope this works … OH POOEY, for some reason it doesn't want to accept a PDF. What to do? Oh well, here it is as Raw Text, who uses THAT anymore?
JOHN BRADY KIESLING RESIGNATION LETTER, AS PUBLISHED IN THE NYT (amazing that I found it stashed in my PEACE WORK folder after all these years; SO SAD how it is still so present). The intro is from a former US Ambassador, colleague of a cousin of mine who served long and honorably as a Foreign Service officer.
Subject: Patriotism of the highest caliber
Here's an example of patriotism of the highest quality. It's the letter of resignation by an American diplomat, printed today in the New York Times. His reference to "oderint dum metuant" means "Let them hate so long as they fear." (A favorite saying of Caligula. I didn't know this. I had to look it up).
"February 27, 2003 U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation
The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7.
I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.
It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world.
I believe it no longer. The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.
The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam.
The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to do to ourselves.
Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo? We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners.
Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests.
Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.
We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal.
Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials? Has "oderint dum metuant" really become our motto?
I urge you to listen to America's friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership.
When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?
Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far.
We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America's ability to defend its interests.
I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share."

I wrote to my cousin, who’d sent this on to me from his friend the retired Ambassador:
This letter gives me great sadness, and also great pride. Sadness, because John Brady Kiesling expresses with great precision and eloquence my own feelings as an American citizen --and former Fulbrighter!-- when he says "my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country ... My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal ... the United States ... as a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet ...". I never have had a diplomatic arsenal, in any narrow sense, but that feeling of the US being a beacon was always, for me, a powerful part of my own personal patriotism. So I am sad because of the great disillusion and pain I read between the lines of Mr. Kiesling's letter; feelings which I share. Here he is, someone for whom being a career Foreign Service officer was a "dream job", giving up the thing that most impassioned him, because the job, under the current administration, no longer permitted him to do what he most values: be a diplomat and proudly represent his country.
I feel pride because Mr Kiesling elected to do what I too feel was the moral choice remaining to him: resign and make public his reasons for doing so. For me this shows that he is truly a diplomat, not only by career but by passion. As I read his letter, he elected to exit from a situation which, if he'd stayed on, would have required him, effectively, to lie about what is central to him, not only as a professional but as a human being.
During my Fulbright year and afterwards, I've had the opportunity to meet and get to know some people in the Foreign Service both of Mexico and of the US. The good ones are people of vision, thoughtfulness and, often, contagious enthusiasm, who really believe in the ability of diplomacy to make a difference in our sorely troubled human affairs. Obviously Mr Kiesling is one of those, and of a very high order. He shows his quality in the choice he made here, which cannot have been an easy one.
I saw an excerpt from Mr Kiesling's letter in a MoveOn.org mailing this evening ... it came as a grateful surprise to receive the full text from you a few minutes later. Thank you so much for sending it on ... and thanks to Don Pelton for the translation of the Latin. I not only wasn't sure of the translation, I didn't know it was uttered by Caligula (which, sadly, ought not by now to surprise us ...)
Love to you from
Ana

jueves, 18 de agosto de 2011

¡¡¡LIEDER DE LISZT!!!

Hace un par de semanas escribí que esperaba --estando nosotros en el Año Liszt-- que no sólo pianistas sino también cantantes estuvieran ensayando Liszt. Porque sus lieder son entre las más hermosas canciones de todo el catálogo decimonónico. Comenté, no del todo bromeando, que sería poco probable porque hay quizás cuatro o cinco pianistas sobre la faz de la tierra capaces de hacerle justicia a esa música.

Bueno, exageré, pero no mucho. El hecho es que las partes del piano de esos lieder de Liszt son, según yo, más difíciles de lo que se puede pensar, porque aquí el pianista no puede salirse con la suya, o sea con puro griterío, porque hay que acoplarse con la voz. Así que pese a su densidad, esta escritura tiene que tocarse con la máxima sutileza y control. Lo cual es cierto de TODA la música de Liszt, sólo que algunos pianistas se dejan llevar por la cantidad de notas que escribió el Maestro.

Pues no llores más Cervantes ... porque acabo de regresar a casa de un concierto que interpretaron la soprano Lourdes Ambriz con Alberto Cruzprieto al piano, ambos excelsos intérpretes mexicanos ... de Debussy ¡Y LISZT! Fue extraordinario. Ambos compositores visionarios y para ambos instrumentos. Titularon al programa "C'est l'Extase", y fue un nombre muy adecuado: yo salí flotando sobre una nube en el paraíso, en la écstasis total.

De Debussy, cuatro canciones misceláneas empezando con "Beau Soir" -muy temprana- y terminando con "Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maisons" -muy tardía, con un texto del propio Debussy lamentando los niños que quedaron abandonados y sin techo después de la Primera Guerra Mundial: urgente, chocante, terriblemente triste. Falleció poco después, entre otras razones porque no aguantó lo terrible que fue esa guerra. (Sólo hay que escuchar "En Blanc et Noir" para darse cuenta.) Luego "Ariettes Oubliées" sobre esos poemas inolvidables de Verlaine.

La segunda parte fue puro Liszt: constaba de dos lieder "sueltos" y luego los "Tre Sonetti de Petrarca". Aquí sí que entramos en un lugar muy hermoso y especial, como un terreno reservado para los benditos -- así lo sentía yo. Yo conozco estas canciones pero confieso que mejor en las versiones para piano solo que hizo el propio Liszt: he leído las canciones pero nunca las he interpretado. Lourdes me hizo oír lo ITALIANO de sus líneas vocales, emparejándose con la poesía de Petrarca. ¡Cómo serpean esas líneas, cómo vuelan, cómo su figuración hace respuesta a la poesía y la realzan!

Y Alberto al piano, Alberto que sabe como pocos cómo hacerlo ... hace del piano otra voz, un coro, una orquesta, quizás alguna vez un oboe plañidero, un violonchelo ... Lourdes ha de contarse muy afortunada de tener tamaño colaborador. Los dos nos hicieron escuchar lo medular de esta música que es, en algún sentido lo medular de estos dos compositores, una dosis concentrada de su alma musical. ¡¡BRAVI!!

viernes, 5 de agosto de 2011

LISZT AND ME.1

SOMETIME IN APRIL? WHY DO I NOT DATE THESE RAMBLINGS??

LISZT AND ME.1 …

A MORE EXTENSIVE VERSION WILL BE FOUND IN THE "REFLECTIONS" PART OF MY WEBSITE, ASSUMING MY WEBWIZARD RETURNS FROM VACATION … ;=))

Well, this is the Liszt Year, so I suppose everyone is thinking about Liszt, or at least an awful lot of pianists are practicing Liszt. I do hope they are also thinking about Liszt, because he is indeed a marvel. I hope some singers are programming Liszt –I see one or two here in México- supposing they can find a pianist collaborator who can deal with those scores, because Liszt’s lieder (German for "songs", pronounced like "leader" in English) are extraordinary, and extraordinarily underplayed.

For various reasons I’ll go into later, I myself recently re-entered the Lisztian Universe. And I am enchanted.

I came late to Liszt. I’ve been thinking a bit about why and suppose it’s because right when I was physically almost ready for his music, I changed teachers for the first real time in my life: I left the teacher I’d had since I was about eight years old –the one I had after my mother— to go away to university where I had another teacher.

I want to write about Liszt and my late-blooming relationship with him, so this may go on for several entries.

I was aware that Liszt was important, but I think that in my twenties I simply wasn’t ready to understand why. Part of this was fear, of course: part of the Received Wisdom about Liszt is that his music is horrendously difficult. It is. But at that time in my musical development I was completely unequipped to understand the how and the why of its difficulty – which are quite different from the Received Wisdom.
A couple of years ago, coming out of Solo Rumores, I began to get the itch to explore Liszt. There is no way to explain this, as there is no way to explain why, at more than 40 years of age, I got a dog for the first time and now cannot imagine living without one. Or rather, the explanations would be long, complex, and interior: and thus of little interest to anyone but myself and a close friend or two over a bottle of wine.

It was similar to what happened when I was irresistibly drawn –sometime in 2000, I believe it was-- to learn Arturo Márquez’ Días de Mar y Río, a work which I have played countless times and which, I suppose, has become something of a signature piece for me. I had the very clear sense that it was the moment for me to play a big, muscular, virtuosic piece and I very much wanted the challenge –musical, physical, mental— of doing that.

And there are other similarities. What I found with Márquez, over the long haul, is that for that piece to work well I have to think of … Mozart. Clarity, delicacy, how close Mozart is to CPE Bach and his lightning changes of Affekt. Galvanic strength when the moment is right, but the rest is Mozart; even, in certain spots, the woody, intimate sound of a fortepiano.

There is so much stereotyping of Liszt, particularly around the idea that virtuoso playing has to do with a lot of pounding, a lot of sound and fury. Oh dear. I make my way into Liszt, these last few years, finally ready –I feel— to understand him, and I realize how close Liszt is to CPE Bach. Affekt …

Liszt’s abiding love of song, and of words. Schumann, Schubert, Petrarch.

Here, with Liszt, the piano becomes a new kind of extension of the voice, and of all the emotions the voice can communicate –something CPE Bach sought eternally in his music. The carefully calculated arpeggios, which are sometimes anacruses (upbeats) and sometimes portamenti (impossible to translate, like when the voice slides up or down to a note and somehow sings a bunch of the notes in between); the voicing of chords, all are ways of summoning up the resonances, the harmonic series with which a great singer infuses his or her tones.

It’s so easy, as a pianist, to become drunk with the amount of sound you can make -- just pure sound. Much has been written about how Liszt was the first real R&R hero: how women tore off their clothes and hurled those garments at him on stage. I think a lot of this has to do with that enormous passion which his vision enabled him to communicate, and with the sound that he summoned up to bring it to his listeners.

What we sometimes forget is that that sound must often have been as delicate and tenuous as angels’ wings brushing our temples, as warm and tender as a lover’s arm around us after making love … much more that than thundering octaves. We forget that the power of our sound has as much to do with one single line, parlando (as though spoken), heartbreakingly eloquent, as it does with those thundering octaves and chords. I always remember Ysayë (as quoted by Gingold) saying that true virtuosity is to be able to play a scale and draw tears from your listener.

miércoles, 3 de agosto de 2011

I PROMISE TO BLOG! / ¡PROMETO BLOGUEAR!

2011-08-03 (3 August) I PROMISE TO BLOG! / ¡PROMETO BLOGUEAR!

I am blogging again for two reasons:
Roosevelt NJ and what happened there; and
Amanda F. Palmer

THE ROOSEVELT NJ PART … On what has now become my Annual Fly-By to Roosevelt, NJ where I lived and made music for quite some time, I decided to play some of this new Monarca music for some very dear old friends there, people who are like family for me. One of them –in those times my almost-next-door neighbor had said during last year’s Fly-By, “I miss my soundtrack”. Back then many of these people were my guinea-pigs, I would tie them to the couch, bribe them with wine, and make them listen to what I was working on at the time. They were, in effect, part of my musical as well as my personal life (same difference), some of my dearest friends, my most intimate audience.

I thought of that this year and decided to share with them most of the concert I’d played a couple of weeks before, here in Guanajuato. It was the whole program, in fact, except Wallach and McNeff, just because I couldn’t schlep scores with me. So I played Scarlatti and CPE; Liszt’s riveting versions (covers you could say) of Schubert’s Gute Nacht and Schumann’s Widmung; and I played the two Monarca pieces I have memorized: Silvia Cabrera Berg’s El Sueño … el vuelo and Paul Barker’s La Malinche. Explaining a little as I always do, about each piece before I played it – here a little more because not everyone in the US knows about Kahlo’s Casa Azul or who Malintzín was. At the end we were all pretty welled up.

I mentioned to R*** something about her soundtrack remark last year and we both started crying. It made me realize something really, deeply important: These are My People. As Jamie Shaler (one of the finest singer-songwriters I know altho’ he is not a Household Name) writes in one of his songs, “The people we love are what we believe in”. That was when I realized: these people have never once scolded me, they have always been completely loving and compassionate about my disappearances … but –I say this without narcissism because I felt it so intensely at that moment— they were missing that sense of being part of what I do.

I simply can’t get so deep into my cavern, concentrating on what I do, that I shut these people OUT of it. And the best way to keep them in touch, that’s feasible for me with all the almost-overwhelming amount of Stuff I have to attend to, is to BLOG. So it’s not a chore anymore, it’s like a phone call or two, like R*** coming over for wine after I’ve finished practicing and I play her a tune or two, or just some bits and pieces.

I promise not to disappear, I promise to include you, dear friends.

THE AMANDA F. PALMER PART … a little while back Thomas Cott on his clipping service sent around three Commencement addresses. One from Mark Morris, one from I can’t remember who at this moment, and one from Amanda Palmer. They were all just splendid, compelling and coherent -- as well as REALLY funny at certain moments – but the one that grabbed me in the most immediate way was Amanda Palmer’s. http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=18041.0

Now I knew Amanda’s name but must confess that –due to the afore-mentioned cavern stuff— I didn’t know much about her or about her music. Well, that has certainly changed. Haven’t listened to the Dresden Dolls stuff yet but what I hear of her solo music I like hugely. There is something enormously fragile, open, vulnerable here, which is of course what makes it so strong.

And I have become a Regular Reader of her blog. It is funny, moving, passionate. I feel a kinship with this woman, however weird it may seem to those who believe in the labels I so heartily detest: it seems to me we have in common a belief in “No Plan B”, a lack of interest in faking it, a sense of the absolute necessity of direct connection with the people who listen to our music. Apart from the business of being a self-represented artist who doesn’t fit into anyone else’s manufactured labels and has no desire to anyway.

So I see Amanda Palmer busy, running around like me, having amazing and amusing and epiphany sorts of experiences like me … and still managing to STAY IN TOUCH WITH HER PEOPLE …via her blog. OK, I said, if she can do it so can I.

So thank you, Amanda F. Palmer. I hope we can be in touch. I hope we can trade CDs. I hope the music I make will touch you as yours touches me.

2011-08-03 (3 agosto)

Vuelvo a “bloguear” por dos razones:

Roosevelt, Nueva Jersey (EU) y lo que sucedió ahí;
Amanda F. Palmer

LA PARTE DE ROOSEVELT, NJ … Hace un par de semanas, en lo que ya se conoce como el Annual Fly-By (La visita anual de volada) a Roosevelt, NJ (EU) donde viví y hice mucha música durante un buen, decidí tocar algo de esta nueva música Monarca para unos amigos amiguísimos, gente que es como familia para mí. Una de estas personas –en aquel entonces mi vecina—me había dicho en la visita del año pasado, “Extraño mi banda sonora”. En aquel entonces, muchas de esas personas fueron mis conejillos de la India, mis “guinea-pigs” como yo las llamaba: les amarraba al sillón, les daba mordidas de vino, les obligaba a escuchar a la música en que estaba trabajando a la sazón. En efecto, fueron parte tanto de mi vida musical como de la personal (da igual), mis más queridos amigos, mi más íntimo público.

Pensé en esto, este año, y decidí compartir con ellos gran parte del recital que había tocado aquí en Guanajuato dos semanas antes. De hecho, fue toda esa música, salvo Wallach y McNeff, sólo porque no tenía ganas de arrastrar partituras conmigo. Con que toqué Scarlatti y CPE; las formidables versiones de Liszt de Gute Nacht de Schubert y Widmung de Schumann; y las piezas Monarca que tengo memorizadas: El sueño … el vuelo de Silvia Cabrera Berg y La Malinche de Paul Barker. Explicando tantito antes de tocar como siempre hago, aquí un poco más porque no todo mundo en EU sabe de la Casa Azul de Kahlo y de quién es Malíntzín/Malinche. Cuado terminé estábamos todos bastante emocionados.

Mencioné a R*** algo acerca de lo de “mi banda sonora” y las dos empezábamos a llorar. Me hizo darme cuenta de algo importantísimo: Estas personas son Mi Gente. Como dice Jamie Shaler (uno de los más grandes cantautores que conozco aunque no sea famoso) en una de sus canciones, “The people we love are what we believe in”. Fue en ese momento que me cayó el veinte. Esos amigos siempre han comprendido mis ausencias y nunca me han regañado … pero mi di cuenta –y lo digo sin narcisismo, porque lo sentí tan intensamente en ese momento— que extrañaban profundamente la sensación de formar parte de lo que hago.

Simplemente, no puedo adentrarme tanto en mi caverna que les dejo fuera de lo que hago. Y la mejor manera de mantenerles incluidos, que es factible para mí con toda la cantidad casi abrumadora de Cosas a que Tengo Que Atender … es a través del blog.
Así que ya no es obligación, ya no es tarea, es como echar un telefonazo, como cuando R*** venía a tomar una copa en la noche después de mis ensayos y yo le tocaba unos fragmentitos de lo que estaba estudiando.

Prometo no desaparecer, prometo incluirles, mis queridos.

LA PARTE DE AMANDA F. PALMER … hace ratito en su servicio de recortes Thomas Cott giró los vínculos para tres discursos de graduación en escuelas de arte. Uno de Mark Morris, otro de no recuerdo quien, y uno de Amanda Palmer. Todos espléndidos, contundentes y coherentes –además de MUY chistosos en ciertos momentos— pero lo que me agarró con total inmediatez fue lo de Amanda Palmer. http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=18041.0

Ahora bien, conocía el nombre pero confieso que –debido al arriba-mencionada enfrascadura en mi caverna— poco sabía de ella o de su música. Bien, todo eso ha cambiado. No he escuchado todavía la música de los Dresden Dolls pero lo que escucho de su trabajo solo me gusta un chorro. He aquí algo enormemente frágil, abierto, vulnerable, que es por supuesto lo que lo hace tan fuerte.

Y me he hecho parroquiana de su blog. Es hilarante a veces, conmovedor, apasionado. Siento cierto parentesco con esta mujer, por raro que parezca a aquellos que creen en esas etiquetas que yo tan cordialmente detesto: creo que tenemos en común la creencia en el “No Plan B”, una total falta de interés en mentiras acerca de lo que nos importa medularmente, un sentido de la absoluta necesidad de una conexión directa con la gente que escucha la música que hacemos. Dejando al lado lo de ser artista auto-representada que no quepa en las etiquetas manufacturadas y que de todas maneras no desea tener ahí cabida.

Con que veo a Amanda Palmer súper-ocupada, corriendo como yo, experimentando momentos asombrosos, divertidos e incluso tipo epifanía como yo … y aún así logrando estar en contacto con su gente … por medio de su blog. Vale, dije, si ella puede yo también.

Así que gracias, Amanda Palmer. Espero que podamos estar en contacto. Espero que podamos trocar discos y que a ti te hable, de alguna manera, la música que hago yo como la tuya me habla a mí.

VARIOUS THOUGHTS ABR-MAY 2011

VARIOUS THOUGHTS ABR-MAY 2011


A couple of these never-until-now-posted entries seem rather laughable in the light of the recently “resolved” debt crisis in the US … but oh well.

2011 17 abr

Part of the reason it is good to learn a new piece of music every once in a while is that it serves to remember HOW to learn a piece of music. Particularly a rather difficult one, by a composer whose music one hasn’t played much.

Wael Ghonim at the IMF roundtable, 15 April 2011:
“We wanted our dignity back. And dignity does have an economic aspect.” He was talking about the Tahrir Square events, the “Arab Spring”. This is why economists should not only study history but also listen to music, read –and maybe even write!-- poetry. It’s the only chance they have of understanding such realities, given their largely insular formation.


2011-5 APR
Speaker of the House John Boehner claims that the “poor and lazy” caused the current economic crisis during an interview with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone

http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-new-york/boehner-s-poor-and-lazy-comments-to-rolling-stone-reflect-his-party-s-beliefs?fb_comment=31606156

As I think about this it occurs to me that is Mr. Boehner himself who is both poor and lazy. He shows himself to be spiritually impoverished --which is what really counts in this world and in the next, supposing it exists; and intellectually lazy, by which I mean his apparently total refusal to undertake the work of overcoming his ignorance.

This would all be pretty small potatoes if we were just talking about the local dogcatcher or something; but Mr. Boehner is in a position to do real harm to the people he deems "poor and lazy", through his own poverty and laziness.

2011_19 abr

NYT today: “How far can a presidential candidate get with fame and money, but with no knowledge of policy or governing?” … speaking of Donald Trump. Well, given many of the people who won in the midterm elections it seems the answer might be “Quite far”. Those “tea-baggers” as people have started to call them, appear not only to have no knowledge of policy or governing, but also no respect for same; and are proud of their ignorance. Thus, I suppose, their anti-education stance.

miércoles, 13 de julio de 2011

CONCERT 30 JUNE: LIED, CONNECTING THREADS & ENERGY ...

Lied, programs, connecting threads and energy …

It was sometime in the Spring-early Summer of 2006, just about five years ago. I was pretty deep inside my cavern, working on the Rumor de Páramo pieces that I had then – if memory serves, Jack Fortner and Charles Griffin of the US, Tomás Marco and Carlos Cruz de Castro of Spain, Horacio Uribe, Georgina Derbez and Marcela Rodríguez of México … I can’t remember which others. I’d come down to the center from the tiny studio in which I was living at the time, and passed through one of the principal watering-holes of the time, the Café Zilch of blessed memory, into which the Café Dada, also of blessed memory, had metamorphosed. NOT morphed. Is that even a word? Good heavens.

Anyway, I bumped into a former student – I still remember that it was Paúl León, a very gifted young Guanajuato composer. Just to give you an idea: Paúl felt very little affinity for the piano, surely as a result of poor instruction received to complete the obligatory piano part of his long struggled-for composition degree. Long struggled-for, I should add, not because of any inadequacy on his part but rather because of the extraordinary inadequacy of the school in which he had the misfortune to be enrolled. Anyway, his solution to this problem was to undertake the composition of pieces for STUDENT pianists. It was a solution which awed me with its imagination, humility and tenderness.

So Paúl, knowing that I was in the very middle of this enormous commissioning and recording project, asked me very gently how it was going. I’d just come out of my cave, remember, come down to the center to buy fruits and veggies and probably coffee; and so I was naked, in a way, no social defenses in place; as one is at moments like that. And anyway, it was Paúl, who asked me that question, with that sweet wry smile; so I was disposed to be honest. I suddenly realized that I was VERY tired. It was the kind of tired that comes after running slightly more than you thought you could, or than you planned to; a good tired from which you need only a little rest to return with renewed energy – but tired. Probably Paúl, as smart and intuitive as he is, asked my WHY it was so tiring. I’d been thinking about that myself: heavens, I have learned many, many notes in my time, bonded with much music of many many voices – why, I had indeed been asking myself, was this so tiring? At that moment, with Paúl in the Zilch, I realized why, as the words jumped out of my mouth: it was like learning a whole recital of lieder. So many different voices, so many different vocabularies, and each piece so intense, an entire world unto itself. As an interpreter, you have to transform yourself into a different being with each piece: an enormous effort of imagination and concentration.

What this comes down to is programming – I mean, how to organize a program. I think about this a lot, and surely, given the number of my colleagues who do really interesting programming, I am not alone. I share wholeheartedly the metaphor of wonderful Mexican guitarist Juan Carlos Laguna: that a musical program is like a meal. It must be carefully –lovingly!— designed so as to whet and gratify the palate, from start to finish.

But I think I’d never thought about this so specifically as like a recital of LIEDER, until that moment. Curiously, once I voiced that idea, the fatigue became manageable. As often happens in such situations, I’d come to understand the phenomenon: now we were friends.

This idea surfaced several years afterwards, when I came into communication with another of those writers whom I’m privileged to have in my circle of acquaintances – Joseph Mailander. He remarked, in one email, that he was struck by how I’d organized the order of the pieces in my REDCAT recital in Los Angeles, and by the order of the pieces on the two Rumor recordings – as though, he said, they were a recital of lieder. SO amazing! And particularly when talking about a recording, good heavens. Am I a “classical” pianist who still believes in what the R&R world calls a “concept album”? Heavens.

This idea continues to be very alive, with Canto de la Monarca / Song of the Monarch, my current commissioning and recording project.

Since sometime in 1998, I’ve wanted to make a program called Songs of Love and Despair/ Canciones de Amor y Desesperación. Somehow other ideas were always on the front burner; but the memory remained alive. Really, I suppose, all music is about this, because these are the two poles, aren’t they: Eros and Thanatos.

Now, with some of this Monarca music, I’ve finally made a program with that title. (Probably there will be more than one, but we shall see.) There are two hilos-conector –connecting threads— of which first and foremost is the idea of SONG. Not just of song but of THE VOICE – since CPE Bach, with his fundamental and primordial loyalty to the voice and its expressive qualities, is one of the wellsprings of this program. The other is this somewhat amorphous notion of VERSIONS of songs. In Spanish we have this term, versión. It is delicately but definitively distinct from the English translation or paraphrase. In English, the R&R term “cover” is the closest we come.

Liszt, deeply moved by the lieder of Schubert and of Schumann, made versiones for solo piano of many of these songs – all of Winterreise, for starters!. In English we say “transcription” but I find the Spanish versión more in tune with my personal perception of these amazing pieces.

I decided to put some of these Liszt versions into dialogue with several of the Monarca pieces which, as it happens, are also versiones of various kinds.

La Malinche, Paul Barker’s Monarca piece –which amazingly manages to be both voluptuous and austere, as well as movingly triumphant— is a versión of an aria from his own opera of the same name, dating from the ‘80s. In his program note for the piece, Paul says of the opera that it “was written for 3 soloists (Malinche, Cortés and Xicoténcatl) and a ten-part chorus of six sopranos and 4 baritones, each with a named part, who act also as an orchestra. The only instruments are two trumpeters who play conch-shells and one percussionist, who perform on stage with the cast, who sing in Nahuátl, Latin, Spanish and English”.

There is a moment when you can very clearly hear the trumpets – if you can’t, something is lacking in my piano-playing.

So the whole second half was versiones. It started with Lágrimas y Locuras (Tears and Madness): Mapping the mind of a Madwoman, JOELLE WALLACH’s amazing and Lisztian piece, which is a Fantasy –a versión of— La llorona.

Then, Liszt’s versión of the first song of Schubert’s Winterreise: Gute Nacht (variously translated as Good night or Farewell). A man walking alone in a winter night, remembering lost happiness.

Because this is a profound downer, altho’ very beautiful, I followed with Liszt’s versión of Schumann’s Widmung (from his cycle Myrthen) usually translated as Dedication. Heart-stoppingly beautiful evocation of total love and exaltation. Sorry for the purple prose but no other way to describe it.

And I ended with Barker’s La Malinche. Austere, voluptuous, proud.

Well, not quite ended: since they wouldn’t let me go and I didn’t want to either, my encore was the last of Nin-Culmell’s 12 Cuban Dances, itself a versión of 19th-century Cuban composer Ignacio Cervantes’ No llores más (Don’t cry anymore). Cool programming, if I do say so myself.

It enchants me that these pieces are so clearly in a tradition which Liszt basically invented.

I opened with a Scarlatti Sonata which for me is all about delicacy and seduction, and an affectionate “so long, hasta luego”; then STEPHEN MCNEFF’s fabulous An Evening with doña Eduviges: a Fantasy. They have in common lightning changes in Affekt, delicacy and seduction also. McNeff ranges from spidery-silvery almost-nothing sound to sudden brutality to some of his patented gorgeous melodies. At the end, a grave solo which at first I thought was a soliloquy but which, after spending some time with the piece, I realized is a dialogue. A grave dialogue –as I wrote him a while back—from the grave. Those of you who know Pedro Páramo will understand this. Those of you who don’t, check it out. The good English translation is by Margaret Sayers Peden and is published by Grove.

Then there was CPE Bach –see that earlier entry—one of the great loves of my musical life. This is a somewhat early Sonata, dating from his Berlin days, but has within it the seeds of the greatness that happened only a few years later. It is Innocence and Experience. In both sections of the first movement, it strays momentarily into the minor: like a premonition of what Life might bring. The second movement is terribly sad. In the third movement the sun comes out again and we are happy again … tho’ less innocent now, I feel, than at the beginning of the first movement.

Berg, Silvia Cabrera Berg … about this piece I will write more extensively. For now, suffice to say: rigorous architecture, worthy of CPE Bach, with a wild lyricism and love atop it that –now that it’s memorized, this splendid piece—really fly. There is a moment when the wings start to beat, wings that scarcely imagine how powerful they are … and when they take off, when they take flight, it is an awesome moment. Silvia said to me, “I suppose it is a rather romantic piece. Well, love IS romantic.”

And desperate too, especially when it goes away. But “better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all” – I wish I could remember which poet said that. I suppose that is what this program is all about.
Caramba, I DID post that stuff about interpretation ... but it's buried a mile deep in my blogging about the London trip in November. http://anacervantespiano.blogspot.com/2010/12/bonus-day-of-being-tourist-and-great.html ... for those who care to dig about in these things. And for those who don't, well here it is, just posted!

LATE, LATE LATE, but oh well ... THOUGHTS ON INTERPRETATION FROM *AUTUMN* 2010

I can't BELIEVE I wrote this and then never posted it. Mid-year resolution, Note To Self: keep up on Blogging!! Oh well, here it is. And a lot more to come as I have been thinking about this Quite A Lot. Debo traducir también, ¡Agghh! Ni modo, va ...

Pulling together some thoughts that have crystallized over the last few months, especially during my visits to Brazil and then London … and in the course of making my way into, and preparing interpretations of, these ten new pieces of Canto de la Monarca. It makes more sense to have these thoughts here in one place, since they are more about musical thoughts and journeys than about physical voyages.

Junto aquí varios pensamientos que se han cuajado sobre unos cuantos meses, sobre todo durante mis visitas a Brasil y después a Londres … y en el transcurso de adentrarme en y preparar interpretaciones de, estas diez piezas nuevas de Canto de la Monarca. Tiene más caso tener estas observaciones aquí en un solo sitio, como se tratan más de pensamientos y viajes musicales que de viajes físicos.

LONDON SATURDAY 20 Nov. a really wonderful meeting with a British music writer whom I greatly respect. Wonderful to meet in person someone whose writing I so like. Lots of stuff during our conversation but one issue in particular came up: I was asked, What about this business of composers writing –and being commissioned to write—new music for old instruments?? Hmmm … This is another of those disquisitions on which I clearly need to write more, but for now these are my thoughts: There should be no limit to what a composer’s sonic imagination can engage with. I suppose one could say that this is just a trend, but really we don’t have the perspective, right now –see, THIS is why I think context is so valuable!— to be able to judge that. And in any case, it may not be, I think, just a passing fancy: Horacio Franco, here in México, has commissioned significant quantities of music for all the recorders (flauta de pico, flûte à bec), as has Anna Margules in Spain. Last year Stockhausen’s daughter commissioned a piece for basset-horn (how ‘bout THEM Haydn-apples?!) and orchestra from Ana Lara of México, and has commissioned other works from numerous living composers. So yes, if the idea is interesting to a composer and to an interpreter, then let the good times roll, as they say.

I have to note as well that I think it’s really important for us as interpreters to have very present the sounds of other instruments. Axiomatic, of course, that a pianist should have the sound of an oboe (including a BASS oboe! – quite different from that of a bassoon) and of a ’cello, for example, present in her or his inner ear … but I think it’s also essential to keep in mind what Brahms’ preferred Erard piano must have sounded like. You look at the denseness of Brahms’ left hand writing and you have to imagine –so as to reproduce!– the clarity of that piano’s lower register, unless you want the result to be mud. Even French pianos of more recent vintage give us ample clues to what that must have been like. I remember playing in Cuba (¡in Cuba!) a Gavot. Another pianist who’d played the piano a day or two before complained --rather peevishly, I thought-- that if you just breathed on the damned thing, it made a sound. OK, difficult; but as I’ve written before, that’s part of what we itinerant piano-players do, unless we are prepared to lead the kind of life necessitated by bringing our own instrument with us. What an opportunity to experience the unearthly sensitivity of such an instrument, such a conception of piano sound. A DIFFERENT unearthly sensitivity, I should immediately note, from that of a Hamburg Steinway with a Renner action. Even I as a Yamaha Concert Artist have to admit that the latter can be a celestial experience!

I also wonder about the opportunity to bring to an audience the experience of such small but expressive sound, in our daily sonic context of assault-sound. And I definitely do NOT mean in the too-often exquisitely precious context of an "original-instrument" concert -- unless such a concert is performed with the idea of magically and inclusively recreating the context in which that music was originally shared with listeners whatever their walk of life: no airplanes, automobiles, televisions, sound-reproduction systems. Does this sound a bit Luddite? no matter, I'm prepared to say that anything which stimulates our imaginative faculty is healthy.

Which brings me full circle: if a composer wants to write for that sonic universe … well, why not? And perhaps even more important, for me at least: why not be able to conjure up, on a modern Yamaha or Steinway, the ILLUSION of the sound of that Gavot or Erard, or even of a clavichord? We interpreters are, among other things, illusionists, ilusionistas, conjurers of illusions and dreams and yearnings. For people who molest me with original instrument dogma, I remind them that Emmanuel Bach knew the harpsichord, organs of various types, and the earliest versions of the pianoforte as well as, of course, the fortepiano; and that on consideration, his favourite instrument was still the clavichord – because in spite of its tiny sound, its expressiveness was unexcelled among the other keyboard instruments. In other words, and he himself says it, the clavichord was capable of the most VOCAL sound.

viernes, 22 de abril de 2011

SOME THOUGHTS ON "SOFT" POWER

17 April 2011

A State Department friend whom I met when I played in Madrid for the first time in January '06 put up on Facebook the link to this article by Joseph Nye in Foreign Policy, which I found excellent. So excellent, in fact, that I felt moved to comment. After I shared these thoughts with some friends and colleagues via email, I thought of an addendum, which appears below …

Joseph Nye, “The War on Soft Power”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/12/the_war_on_soft_power


As a concert pianist and former Fulbright-García Robles Senior Scholar to México (1999-2000) I have brought music of living US composers to México, Brazil, and Spain under the auspices of the State Department's Cultural Specialist Program. I am disappointed and concerned by the fact that practically no one who's commented on Mr Nye's article --which I found excellent-- has mentioned THE ARTS as a powerful part of US foreign policy. Those who might find that characterization laughable are sad, because of the lack of imagination and education they reveal.

In my view, the commentators on this article who complain of the lack of statistics on the effects of "soft power" do Mr Nye the great favor of proving his point when he comments that "The payoffs for exchange and assistance programs are often measured in decades, not weeks or months" -- and goes on to say that "Increasing the size of the Foreign Service, for instance, would cost less than the price of one C-17 transport aircraft, yet there are no good ways to assess such a tradeoff in the current form of budgeting." I would argue that we have no good ways to assess these tradeoffs because we haven't bothered to design them, and also because it may simply not be possible.

Cultural export and exchange are about far more than feel-good frosting on top of the "real" work. Although they are not always susceptible to the standard forms of measurement, they help us communicate with other peoples in ways that can be lasting. When I bring the music of US composers like Anne LeBaron, George Walker, Alex Shapiro, and Jack Fortner (to name a few) to audiences in Sao Paulo, Madrid, and Mexico City and it receives ovations, I am sowing seeds. There is no way to know where they will fall, how many of them will germinate or when -- and what their flowers or fruit may look like. But sow them we must, or reap the bitter harvest of severely limited communication represented by "hard" power.

Ana Cervantes

... and the ADDENDUM:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/12/the_war_on_soft_power#comment-586401

AN ADDENDUM

I play so much music in so many places that I forgot to mention one more event that I feel supports this precious idea of "soft" power through the arts: When I played in Spain for the first time in 2006, in Madrid, it was at the invitation of the Cultural Section of the US Embassy there. I played a "mixed" program of works from the standard repertoire together with newer pieces of US composers. One of these pairings was of Chopin's gorgeous first Nocturne with Charles B. Griffin's extraordinary little gem "Prelude: Homage to Chopin". By a lucky coincidence Charles was there to hear the première in Spain of his piece. The audience was delighted to see him take a bow and gave him a huge ovation.

Later, while living in Latvia (goodness, what assonance) Charles gave a whole series of talks about jazz to a number of audiences all over that country ... sponsored by the Public Affairs section of the US Embassy there.

I return to my point, proceeding from Dr Nye's, about the "assessibility" of the arts: Do we know how many people were touched, and will continue to be touched by these events, maybe during their entire lives? No, because it is not given to us to know that. Do we stop sending children to school because we have no way of knowing which will turn out to be the next Nobel Peace Prize winner, or the best carpenter in her town?

Ana Cervantes