Category: Articles

Frank J. Oteri Photo by Melissa Richard

This month’s issue of NewMusicBox is particularly personal for me. The first music I ever cared about that lasted longer that three minutes and involved extended musical forms was music written for Broadway musicals. Popular music seemed too obvious and too driven by commercial forces (I’d yet to discover truly alternative rock music), and classical music was music from another place and another time with no seeming relevance to someone growing up in New York City in the second half of the 20th century—the sitcoms I grew up watching never mentioned Ives, Henry Cowell or Ruth Crawford Seeger.

It might seem odd, nowadays, that someone running away from overly commercial music—and trying, at the same time, to steer clear of drippy nostalgia—would turn to Broadway, which seems to offer nothing more than endless revivals of sure-fire hits and committee-manufactured over-the-top spectacles. Way back in the 1970s, we still had Richard Rodgers, whom I even met a couple of times on opening nights of his latest works, and a string of incredibly innovative musicals by Stephen Sondheim. Being taken to Broadway shows during those years gave me my first opportunity to hear great music by living composers—and it made me want to be a composer. Broadway eventually led me to opera, and later, to all things avant-garde and contemporary. I attended the American premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha at the start of my freshman year at Columbia and after that I no longer wanted to write musicals. And then, during the 1980s, Broadway seemed to have lost its creative edge, while American opera, which had been almost utterly neglected by American opera companies in the past, was suddenly flourishing.

Now, it’s 20 years later. Opera companies regularly stage “musicals” and some musical theater composers occasionally write “operas.” Many composers have shaped entire artistic careers defying the expectations of both genres.

No one defies labels more vociferously than Robert Ashley, whose music doesn’t sound anything like any other opera or musical theater I’ve ever heard. In a conversation we had at his Tribeca studio, he spoke at great length about how there is no word to adequately describe what he does. Barry Drogin arrives at a similar conclusion about the current state of the field in his HyperHistory, which is appropriately titled “The Form Without a Name.” Composers Stephen Sondheim, Philip Glass, Elizabeth Swados, Dominic Argento, Mark Adamo and Jack Beeson, and producers Diane Wondisford (of Music-Theatre Group) and Grethe Hollby (of American Opera Projects) have all chimed in their opinions about the differences between opera and musical theater. Their comments reveal as great a variety as currently exists in creative work today. One thing is certain, however: these disparate musical genres have always inspired a great deal more collaboration than most other forms of composition. John Luther Adams invites you to collaborate with your own comments about the unusual process of composing music for the stage.

Perhaps it was this spirit of collaborative experimentation that so inspired me growing up. It is a way of looking at the creative process that can help make artistic endeavors more relevant to a great many people. From my vantage point, sitting in front of a computer in an office slightly west of Broadway, it also seems like one of the few non-Web-based ways of reaching a wide and extremely diverse audience.

The relationship between music and theater has always been controversial – and productive. On one end of the spectrum are pieces in which text is obviously or completely dominant. Though there are no solely text-based pieces in this month’s new discs — if you want one, try Randy Hostetler’s Happily Ever After, featured in the November 2000 Soundtracks — there is Lukas Foss’ Elegy for Anne Frank. In this new recording, excerpts from the young girl’s diary, read aloud by the composer’s daughter, actress Elizabeth Foss, are followed by musical commentary.

The struggle to balance singing with the clarity of spoken speech has plagued musicians since ancient times. Michael Kowalski set out to write music that stayed out of the way of the text in his chamber opera Fraternity of Deceit, and he succeeds admirably. Christopher Mohr took the opposite approach in his opera From the Realm of the Shadow, employing voices purely for sonic value, using no words at all. The two works are antithetical in other ways, as well. Fraternity is a story of two men and the lack of trust that exists between them; Shadow is a story of two women and the way in which their love heals a community (both composers wrote their own libretti). Kowalski’s instrumental accompaniment is restricted to cello and keyboard; Mohr uses many instruments, including a 34-note-to-the-octave Oud.

One of the most interesting uses of text with music that I heard this month was singer Katt Simon’s improvisation with saxophonist Aaron Bennett, recorded live at the Luggage Store Gallery earlier this year. The duet starts with a playful (and loud) interchange between the two musicians – Simon yelling “WHO! WHAT! WHERE!” in response to Bennett’s loud “whonks” on the saxophone. Vocal jazz improvisation also shows its imprint on Meyer Kupferman’s A Soul for the Moon. Conceived as a “solo, story-less opera,” the 15-minute work alternates between desperate, angular music and sensual, throaty, improvised-sounding licks.

Broadway composers generally do their utmost to keep the words “out in front” of the music, and examples of their work are represented this month on several discs. Soprano Sumi Jo has cleverly chosen songs from Gigi and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to highlight the theme of her new CD Prayers. Also in the Broadway vein is Hoagy Carmichael’s Sleepy for You, originally written with Frank Loesser for the Bob Hope movie Thanks for the Memories. You can listen to the “worded” version, recorded at a mostly-Carmichael concert in New Haven last year – be sure to check out the 10-year old jazz piano phenom Christian Sands on tracks 3 and 22 – and then listen to Ken Todd’s quartet in a mellow instrumental interpretation of the same song. Naxos’ new compilation The Best of Gershwin includes excerpts from Girl Crazyand his opera Porgy and Bess – in orchestra arrangements – but then you probably already know the words!

Another opera that is represented this month by (largely) instrumental arrangement is “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s Driver’s Son (he uses one singer in the second excerpt). In both excerpts, isle of the rose apple trees I and II, showcase Tyranny himself improvising in a relaxed way on the piano; the harmonies about halfway through the second excerpt are particularly pungent. There is also Jin Hi Kim’s Jupiter’s Moons, taken from Dong Dong Touching the Moons, a multimedia performance piece. Kim plays the komungo, a six-stringed fretted zither instrument that is native to Korea.

Considering the weight that Shakespeare’s work holds in the realms of both drama and music, it seems fitting that there would be two instrumental works this month that take inspiration from the Bard’s best-known tragedies. MacDowell’s Hamlet and Ophelia is an early work, written after the composer and his wife had seen the play on a trip to London. William Henry Fry’s Overture to Macbeth is notable for the “instrumentalization” of several lines from the play. Namyoung Pak’s Sacred Sonata No. 2for string quartet takes its literary inspiration from another time-honored source: the Bible. Pak attempts to convey an important Biblical moment in each movement: Creation in the first, Crucifixion in the second, and a prophecy from the Book of Revelation in the third. Also descriptive is the last movement of Meyer Kupferman’s Lunar Symphony, which he composed “to simulate a dreamer’s voyage to an enticing planet, seductively distant.” Another kind of voyage is depicted in Eastwood Lane’s Sea Burial, arranged for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra by Ferde Grofé.

A piece that contains at least a literary, if not exactly a theatrical, reference is Mason Williams’ Riding the Low Moon. The title of this South American-flavored guitar piece was taken from Rudyard Kipling’s The Ballad of East and West. And speaking of titles, here’s a double-whammy: Steven Rosenhaus’ piano piece The Kiss, included on the disc Preludes to Passion. For the sake of the pianist, Laura Leon, who has obviously done her work, please ignore the title – the collection of pieces is far too interesting to put on while you’re…well, you get my drift. The title of Nathan Currier’s From the Grotto: A Sonata for Mozart’s Secret Society reflects his intricate interweaving of fantastic and factual references to Mozart and his music. In the third movement, On the loss of family and related species (via K. 310), Currier “cross-references” two deaths in Mozart’s life, that of his mother and that of his pet parakeet, with two of his most significant piano works: the sonata K. 310 and the concerto K. 453.

Words lurk behind the notes of Lantana’s koto improvisation Tanka – Shoko Hirage. The tanka is a short Japanese poetic form consisting of a 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure. Words – two in particular – also seem to lurk behind the opening theme of jazz drummer Matt Wilson’s Final Answer, included on his disc Arts and Crafts. Otto Luening’s Tango, written for pianist Yvar Mishakoff, is theatrical “by default,” if for no other reason than that the dance form itself has such strong dramatic overtones. And, in any discussion of theater, who could fail to include the music of John Cage, for whom all life was theater. If you bought the recording of Four4 we featured in last month’s SoundTracks, then you will enjoy comparing it to this new rendition by the Amadinda Percussion Group. Because Cage leaves choices of instrumentation and note placement up to the performers, I think you will find the two interpretations “dramatically” different.

Although I tend to agree with Cage (that all music is theater), for the sake of simplicity I will break down and admit that there are a few discs this month of “absolute” music (yes, I know that is loaded – no need to post to the forum). Foremost among them, I think, is the
53-minute improvisation of The Circle Trio (Pauline Oliveros, India Cooke, and Karolyn van Putten), recorded at the Meridian club in San Francisco. All three musicians are virtuosi in their own right, and the stylistic range and flexibility that they demonstrate as an ensemble is stunning. I particularly loved the moment when Cooke, the violinist, works her way into a kind of hip-grinding, bluesy riff – you can hear a guy cheer in the audience – exactly how I would have responded, had I been there! Sophisticated jazz is also represented on Jorge Sylvester’s In the Ear of the Beholder, particularly his two-part Por la Clav, with its asymmetrical meters and different Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian dance rhythms.

Then there are three disparate discs that I group together under the rubric of “wild sounds.” Scott Rosenberg explores the extended capabilities of flute, bass clarinet, and sopranino saxophone his disc Solo. One note of warning – I love high overtones as much as the next gal, but you might want to take off the headphones for this one. Warren Burt wrote his Book of Symmetries for a kind of “extended piano”: a Yamaha Grand Disklavier hooked up to a sampler. Throughout the piece, samples of a microtonally-tuned piano are played back on small loudspeakers placed on the soundboard of the instrument. The listener hears “normal” piano tones doubled or tripled, but slightly “detuned.” Larry Goldings’ laconic comment about his solo Glass — “the organ has more sounds than I thought” — seems a bit disingenuous after hearing the effects he gets out of the instrument on the rest of the disc. Andy Parsons’ A Whole Nother Storyfeatures the composer on “ewi” (electronic wind instrument); the CD is also worth hearing for Parsons’ opening sax solo on Jaded.

Finally, for those of you out there who only come alive when the days get longer, take heart – not only does April bring Daylight Savings back to many of our American readers, it also brings the disc Summer Sketchesby the Billy Mays trio. These ten songs all have some connection to summer – “Summer Night,” “Indian Summer,” and so forth – including a tune by each member of the combo.

Stephen Sondheim Photo by Michael Le Poer Trench

The only thing I have to say about the difference between opera and musical theater is that opera is musical theater that takes place in an opera house in front of an opera audience. This is perhaps not as meaningless as it sounds. The opera audience brings different expectations to what they see and demands different things from the performers, which affects the casting and the approach to the work at hand. When Menotti’s The Medium was done on Broadway, it was a Broadway musical. When it was done in an opera house, it was an opera, even though the cast may have been the same.

Jack Beeson Photo by Dietrich Dettmann, courtesy Boosey & Hawkes

Surrounded by Columbia composers, faculty and students, Stephen Sondheim was asked, “Since a couple of your musicals have been performed in opera houses, why don’t you write a real opera?” Answer: “Because I don’t like their audiences.” Then he asked, “Why don’t you write musicals, Jack?” And I answered, “Because I don’t like their audiences.” Both answers were flip, but there are audience expectations. In musicals, all the words — miked — are to be understood. Opera audiences, used to libretti in foreign languages, are awed when all the compositional and acoustic conditions are in order, and they understand an English libretto, and forget to watch the supertitles. But they have more to listen to than words: more varied, rangy voices, ensembles, and instruments. Imagine a musical in an unknown tongue!

It’s often forgotten that some musicals are through-composed and that some operas have quite a lot of spoken dialogue. Bernstein’s prediction that American opera would grow out of our musical theater was mistaken, but the ‘Rain in Spain’ scene in My Fair Lady and the Kander and Ebb final Zorba scene are operatic.

Philip Glass Photo courtesy Annie Ohayon Media Relations

I tend to call things “operas” that are done in opera houses. I sometimes will call a piece “music theater” instead of opera, because the producer of the work will request that I change the name because people are afraid of the word “opera,” and I always acquiesce. Basically, I don’t care what you call it…

I sometimes do pieces in small theaters, like In The Penal Colony, which is clearly an opera but is being billed as “music theater” in a new production at CSC. They prefer to call it “music theater” because it fits in with their programming philosophy. However in my catalog it’s listed as an opera, and will be billed as an “opera” when it is presented at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. It’s totally a practical distinction. It’s what the producers and audience feel most comfortable with.

Sweeney Todd was done at City Opera and I think of it as an opera, whereas other works by Sondheim are more clearly musical theater. But it’s quite subjective, isn’t it?

Elizabeth Swados Photo by Rosalind Lichter

I don’t think those words apply anymore to the creations of this time. “Opera” and “Musical Theater” are terms that come from specific times in history and we need new terms for our life in the present tense. New forms are fusing and colliding with old forms and it’s an exciting reinterpretation of theater and music.

Dominick Argento Photo by Tom Foley, courtesy Boosey & Hawkes

When I think of opera, characters such as Figaro, Iago, Octavian and Mimi come to mind. When I think of musical comedy, songs such as “Old Man River,” Some Enchanted Evening,” “Tonight,” and “Send In The Clowns” come to mind. This is because operatic music is primarily concerned with defining characters and creating atmosphere, whereas the tunes of musical comedy are essentially decorative and ancillary. Notable exceptions exist on both sides of that distinction but the fact that the opera composer–unlike the musical comedy composer–is always the orchestrator permits, through the accompanying instrumental tone color and timbre, a much greater focus on the character’s persona. “Old Man River” is a beautiful song and practically any orchestration of it is adequate to make that point. “Iago’s Credo” is not especially beautiful (it was never meant to be) but its orchestration is indispensable for limning Iago and what drives him.

Musical comedy composers can specify the tempo of the songs but the pace of the drama, its point of view, color, etc., is determined by another party, the stage director. The piece can change significantly as it moves from production to production. In opera, tempo and atmosphere, character and situation, from beginning to end, are controlled by a single mind. That sort of artistic integrity explains why I believe La Bohéme will still be playing somewhere in the year 2100 while Rent will be a footnote in Broadway history.

It’s a funny thing how our weaknesses work, sometimes. My improvising abilities are pitiful – put something down on paper, I’ll play it, but ask me to make it up, and I’m just reading the inside of my eyeballs. The good aspect of the situation is this: I stand in awe of composer-performers who improvise. I just think it’s the coolest thing. And because of this awe (not unmixed with envy), I listen better.

Whatever your motive for liking improvised music, there are surely new notes to suit your fancy in this month’s SoundTracks. Even the five improvised jazz discs cover a wide range. Mark Elf’s Swingin’ lives up to its name, with tunes by American song kings Jerome Kern and Cole Porter and others, as well as some by Elf himself. The soulful sounds of the steel guitar haunt Bill Frisell’s new disc blues dream, which is also worth purchasing for the fantastic black-and-white photo on the cover. On first hearing, the music on Ben Allison’s new CD Riding the Nuclear Tiger sounds deceptively simple; then you go back and realize that Charlie Brown’s Psychedelic Christmas is bitonal – and there are more such surprises… The improvised jazz of W.O.O. Revelator has definite alternative rock overtones, although certainly not in the sense of having any kind of heavy back-beat. Just take my word for it that their song Windmills in Spaceis worth the disc – unfortunately, you won’t see what I mean until you purchase the disc and put on a good pair of headphones. Anthony Braxton and Scott Rosenberg’s Compositions and Improvisationsare mind-boggling, and worth every ounce of the concentration necessary to appreciate them.

An interesting “hybrid” of notated music and the free jazz of artists like Braxton and Rosenberg can be found in Wadada Leo Smith’s Betty Shabazz: A Consistent Voice of Love, An Inspiration for Life. In this piece, the jazz composer and trumpeter has allowed bass clarinetist Marty Walker and Vicki Ray freedom in how they coordinate the parts he has written. More traditional “fully-notated” jazz is the subject of two discs: Italian pianist Marco Fumo’s Rhapsody in Black and White, and the multi-composer disc Shades of Blue. Along with the solo transcription of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Fumo has included jazz great James P. Johnson’s “answer” to the Rhapsody, called Yamekraw, a portrait of life in the South. Shades of Bluefeatures David Baker’s four-movement work of the same name, H. Leslie Adams jazz-influenced Ode to Life, and Stephen Michael Newby’s Gospel Songs for baritone and strings. Jazz makes a more subtle appearance in the late Irwin Bazelon’s brass quintet, part of a retrospective disc of his music issued by CRI. Surprisingly, the contrabassoon concerto of Gunther Schuller, the father of “third stream music,” contains no reference to the jazz idiom. I am not particularly partial to the sound of the solo contra, but I found the piece worth a second listen – the way he balances the orchestra (here in a piano reduction) around the low instrument is particularly interesting.

A disc of Paul Schoenfield’s music contains two works that have their roots in improvisation. The jazzy Café Music was inspired by a night sitting in for the pianist at Murray’s restaurant in Minneapolis, while the Slovakian Folk Songsare written-out improvisations on actual folk tunes. The improvised traditions of different world musics show up in the works of several other composers this month, as well. Miguel Frasconi’s Galapagos Gamelan, for instance, is a series of improvised solos for a set of musical glasses. Patrick Grant’s Fields Amazecombines the Pelog tuning of the Balinese gamelan with cross-rhythmic aspects of Latin American and West African musics. Balinese music inspired two of Evan Ziporyn’s Four Impersonations; the Bang On A Can All-Star also uses his clarinet to “impersonate” a Japanese shakuhachi and an East African guitar. Two pieces on composer/pianist Beata Moon’s Perigee and Apogee reveal the influence of improvised traditions. The driving rhythms of Safariseem appropriate to the title, while Antelope Vamp calls to mind images of a Brazilian street café. Similarly, Beth Anderson’s September Swale seems to shift between different “exotic” musics – but again, I’m interpreting here – I heard some Asian-sounding modal material, a lyrical Spanish waltz, and down-home American mandolin-picking, among other “musics.” Finally, American folksongs are the source material of Evan Chambers’ Come Down Henry . The first of the three movements is a setting of one of my all-time favorite songs, John Henry, which tells the story of a contest between a man and a steam-powered drill.

There is improvisation that is neither jazz- or folk-based, of course, and this music takes all shapes. A Zen-like absence from composer control is evident in Cage’s Four4, where he leaves the choice of percussion instruments up to the performers; in addition, they are left to decide where to place the note or note(s) within each specified time bracket. Predating his Zen studies, the 1942 work Credo in USrequires the use of either a phonograph record (of the performers’ choosing) or random radio material during performance. Ellen Band shows the influence of Cage and others in her Radiatore, a nineteen-minute exploration of steam radiator sounds. Ellen Barkin and Benjamin Boretz’s keyboard and synthesizer improvisation sounds comparatively more conventional, harmonies sweet to the point of irony.

Speaking of sweet harmonies, a must-listen this month is definitely David Lang’s The Passing Measures. To really listen to this 42-minute work, you will need to set aside that amount of time in a quiet place – I first tried to listen to it on the subway, which was a mistake. As the composer explains it, this is music that teaches you how to listen to the music, and you will need the first twenty minutes just to “lower your blood pressure” enough to appreciate the slow-moving harmonies.

Good performers can make even the most complex notated music sound improvised. CRI has put out three discs that showcase some of these artists. Xak Bjerken’s High Riseis a tour-de-force, imaginative performances of recent works by Americans Christopher Theofanidis, James Matheson, Karen Tanaka, Roberto Sierra, and Steven Burke. Speaking of piano music, six different artists have recorded James Sellars’ five sonatas and his sonatina; both the performances and the works themselves are remarkably varied. Multiple virtuosi are represented on Riddles, a disc devoted to the music of Robert Maggio. Divide, played here by Daniel Grabois and Colette Valentine, is a welcome addition to the often-neglected horn literature. Love Rejoices</ i>showcases the songwriting of H. Leslie Adams, brought to life by the tenor Darryl Adams – his interpretations of Adams’ Langston Hughes settings are a highlight of the disc.

And finally there are three discs this month that represent some of the directions that traditional large-scale genres are taking. Stephen Dankner’s Song of Solomon: Symphony No.3is as voluptuous, harmonically speaking, as any work by Mahler or Rachmaninoff. Jerry Gerber’s Symphony No. 4also has romantic roots, with the significant difference being the performing forces: the orchestra has been replaced by a “virtual orchestra,” courtesy of the composer’s MIDI setup. David Ward-Steinman combines the best of both worlds in his Chroma Concerto, a sonically enchanting interplay of “fortified” (partially prepared) piano, Prophet-5 synthesizer, celeste, toy piano, percussion, and chamber orchestra. Happy listening!