Metropolis Ensemble performing David Bruce's arrangement of 'If ye love me' by Thomas Tallis at Sunday's concert.
Many congratulations to Metropolis Ensemble on garnering their first New York Times review for Sunday's Benefit concert and on raising over $6500 for Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that provides medical care in Haiti.
My friends at Metropolis Ensemble are pulling out all the stops to organise a fantastic Valentine's Day concert in aid of Haiti (Partners In Health), at Le Poisson Rouge this Sunday, Feb 14th 7pm. 20+ of New York's finest young classical musicians will be playing a whole range of music, including harpist Bridget Kibbey performing a movement from Caja de Musica.
At conductor Andrew Cyr's request, I've also made a brand new arrangement to close the concert, of Tallis's gorgeous If Ye Love Me featuring all the performers who are coming. The text speaks of both love and comfort and I can think of little more comforting than an amazing collection of musicians getting together to give a bit of love back to the world.
Ensemble ACJW has the most amazing collection of the nicest people and the finest musicians around. I had a great time on my residency at Skidmore with them, and then clarinettist Sarah Beaty and the ACJW quartet topped it all off by giving a really remarkable performance of Gumboots on Friday. The first part in particular sounded spectacular in the fine new Zankel Hall, and I'm sure it's only going to grow and be even better in both the forthcoming concert at Weill Hall on Tuesday (details here N.B. 7.30pm start), and at performances in Europe later in the year.
Here's a nice picture of me and the gang right after the performance in Saratoga:
And here's a very cool promotional video that Carnegie Hall organised for my concert on Tuesday at Weill Hall, featuring shots of us rehearsing the piece up in Skidmore College.
We're up in Skidmore College, Saratoga in upstate New York for a performance of Gumboots tomorrow night with the fabulous players of Carnegie's ACJW. Today we had our first rehearsal in the amazing new Arthur Zankel Hall here and the results are stunning - a beautiful hall and a rich, resonant acoustic. We have the tremendous privilege and honour of giving the first ever concert in the hall.
Next week I'm off to the US again for some performances of Gumboots with Ensemble ACJW. In preparation for the performances, which include one at Carnegie's Weill Hall on the 9th Feb, Carnegie Hall have reposted on their Sound Insights blog an interview I did with them about the piece and some of the thought-processes that helped create it.
Tears and laughter seem to be a common mixture in British culture, from Shakespeare, right through to the films of Richard Curtis. The mixture is something I've noticed time and again in my own work (though American born, I am culturally entirely British) without ever consciously placing it there. When I came to making a selection of pieces to arrange by John Dowland for Metropolis Ensemble's concert this February, I became aware that Dowland needed to be added to that list of laughing and crying Brits - he is of course famous for his melancholy songs (of which I have included two beautiful examples in my arrangements) but when not in mournful mode his music is light and witty. Even the titles conjur comical images: 'My Lady Hundson's Puffe' and 'Mrs Winters' Jump'. What it is about us British that delights in this mixture of tragedy and laughter I am not sure, but it certainly goes back a long way.
I've been wanting to write more for recorder for some time. I included some recorders in Push! but they were played by non-recorder players and were more of an added splash of colour than a genuine exploration of the instrument. But I've long felt they deserve a greater role in chamber music and I've heard some amazing players in my time. The latest such player is Daphna Mor, whom I met on my last trip to NYC, when she made a blistering cameo appearance at a concert some friends were playing in Brooklyn.
So when Metropolis Ensemble asked me if I would arrange some music for string quartet their forthcoming chamber concert this April, I asked if they would allow me to include a part for Daphna.
I'm setting a mixture of Dowland pieces, and I'm really enjoying exploring more of the colours available from the instrument(s). Hopefully this will be not only an exciting project but also lead to more original work for recorders in the future.
For an example of some astonishing recorder playing, check out this video of Giovanni Antonini with Il Giardino Armonico playing a Vivaldi recorder concerto.
"To understand all is to forgive all, the French saying goes. In "Zoli," a novel about the Gypsies of Eastern Europe, Colum McCann imagines a deeper, darker watchword for this immemorially wandering and persecuted people: to be understood, even in part, is to be violated and destroyed." NY Times review of Zoli by Colum McCann
One of the fascinating themes of the novel Zoli (and I promise all this does relate to composing!), is the difference in attitudes between the Western/White attitude to the meaning and permanence of culture; and that of the Gypsies. Where the non-Gypsy protagonists in the story attempt to 'save for posterity' Zoli's brilliance as a poet and singer, the Gypsies find this very notion absurd and eventually outcast Zoli for what they see as her betrayal of their culture by allowing her words to be written down. At the end of the novel Zoli sends a message to her English/Czech former-lover and documenter who has spent lovesick years trying to find her again. The one thing she has to say to him after all this time is "nothing is ever fully understood" - that the white man's impulse to attempt to understand and document everything is doomed to failure. Culture and meaning are impermanent, incorporeal, impossible to capture. Indeed, like a quantum particle, the very act of looking changes their meaning.
Whilst I am a composer whose method of expression is tied completely to writing down my music, I can't help feeling us 21st Century composers fall far too far into the very trap the book so beautifully portrays. When we fetishize every last detail of how a note should be played, we are trying to turn music into something it is not. Our compositions are not physical, quantifiable things, however much spotlessly perfect CD recordings and Sibelius midi playbacks might lead us to believe they are. The meaning of a piece is passed by a performer from paper to the vibrating air the same intangible way friendship is sustained - through trust and respect, thoughtfulness, attention and understanding. Those are things you can't notate. A good musician will bring those things to your score however many dots and lines you add to a note. And in the spirit of friendship I believe it's important to give that trust back to the player as much as you can. If you love someone, set them free...
A few days ago I met up with the amazing Nicki Wells whom I heard singing last month with Nitin Sawhney at the Akram Khan show at Sadlers Wells. Although raised mostly in the West, Nicki surprised everyone by beautifully singing a Shloka which is a sansrik poem or prayer - I say surprised because I've never heard a non-Indian reproduce the tones and embellishments of Indian music so movingly and effectively, and singing at first hidden behind a wall of fabric, blonde hair was not the most expected site to see when she finally emerged!
Nicki kindly wrote a list for me of some of her favourite Indian musicians, and partly for my own sake I am writing them down here for future reference:
Qawwali
Nusrat fateh ali Khan
Warsi Brothers
The sabri brothers
Ghazal
Ghulam Ali
Bollywood
Lata Mangeshkar (female singer)
Sonu Ningam (female singer)
Also some bollywood films she recommended
Jodha Akbar (and the song Khwaja mere Khwaja )
Lagaan
Guru
Kuch kuch Hota hai
Taal
Devdas (and the hit song dhola re)
Asoka
Paheli
Water (song: piya Ho)
In the run up to Christmas, the wonderful Chroma are putting on a great children's concert in Berkhamsted on Dec 18th called Gypsies and Dancers featuring excerpts from my Clarinet Quintet Gumboots, a storyteller and lots more fun. Then in the evening they will perform the full Gumboots, alongside Golijov's crazy, tender and divine 'Dreams and Prayers' - I think this is my first candelit performance! So anyone in the home counties to the North of London please come and enjoy this wonderful group! Details below.
"To understand all is to forgive all, the French saying goes. In "Zoli," a novel about the Gypsies of Eastern Europe, Colum McCann imagines a deeper, darker watchword for this immemorially wandering and persecuted people: to be understood, even in part, is to be violated and destroyed." NY Times review of Zoli by Colum McCann
