I finally get off my bum and play some music in London. After wowing audiences in Melbourne, Paris, and Hobart, String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) finally gets a live performance locally.
It’s part of Music Orbit’s Vibe Bar series, this Thursday, 28 January*, 7.30pm at the Vibe Bar in The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1 6QL. £7 on the door. The rest of the night includes performances by other string instruments, both real and imaginary, films, and more, probably. If you want to catch my act you better get there early.
* Yeah, I know it’s short notice. I just found out myself.
Filed under: Music, Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Filler By Proxy LXXVI: Poème Electronique
Tuesday 19 January 2010
Jodru at ANABlog went to see the virtual recreation of the Philips Pavilion from the 1958 Brussels World Fair, and has posted a fascinating summary of little-known aspects of the project.
The design of the pavilion, which housed a presentation of Edgar Varèse’s tape composition Poème Electronique, was attributed to Le Corbusier at the time. The title was in fact Le Corbusier’s idea: “I shall not create a pavilion, but a poème électronique. Everything will happen inside: sound, light, color, rhythm…” He then got Iannis Xenakis, his assistant, to design it for him.
At ANABlog you can see a photograph of the World Fair site, showing the size of the Philips Pavilion, compared to those of the USA and the USSR, along with surprising photographs of the pavilion other than the iconic image on the left. There are also more details about how Varèse tried to exploit the acoustic properties of the pavilion’s interior to the fullest, creating an immersive, spatialised sonic experience (and nixed Le Corbusier’s plans to lecture the audience over the top of his music.)
Plenty more goodies at the Virtual Electronic Poem site, including a Dutch documentary made at the time of the pavilion’s construction, and photographs of the other pavilions at the fair. There’s a lot of retro-futuristic architecture, but there are also the names: Atomium, the USSR, the Tobacco Pavilion, Kodak, Pan Am. Watch the film, and see the world in which the pavilion was built, and the fact that this all happened over a half a century ago really hits home. This temple to modernity was planned by hat-wearing men, built by workmen driving creaky lorries and spraying asbestos like it was whipped cream. It’s a future that never happened, but it’s amazing that it got as far as it did.
Filed under: Art, Filler By Proxy, Music by Ben.H
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A Slow Start
Wednesday 13 January 2010
I’m still more interested in redeigning the website than in posting any new content at the moment. I’ve finished updating the categories in the sidebar, thus rendering the old subject index obsolete. The index of names is still there, still out of date. New content soon, with the rest of the website looking betterdifferent.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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“…since they are dead are ghosts and as such inhabit the same world we do.” — John Cage
Monday 11 January 2010
Filed under: Art, Music by Ben.H
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Please Mister Please
Thursday 7 January 2010
Henry Brant, “The Fourth Millennium” (1963). American Brass Quintet.
(9’16”, 12.44 MB, mp3)
(9’16”, 12.44 MB, mp3)
Filed under: Please Mister Please by Ben.H
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This Way to the Miracle
Thursday 7 January 2010
Filed under: Art, London by Ben.H
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Mystery Glass Pieces
Tuesday 5 January 2010
The rather wonderful Other Minds Archive has put up a concert by Philip Glass in San Jose from 1978:
This program include [sic] a number of pieces for organ, written in Glass’ trademark minimalist style, as well as a piece for orchestra and electronics.
You may have noticed that the wording of that sentence is a little bit slippery. The information page for this recording is of no real help, listing an “unidentified piece for orchestra and electronics” by Philip Glass, followed by four “unidentified pieces” for organ, also by Glass.
I find it hard to believe that the first piece is by Glass at all – in that style, for those instruments – so both what it is and who wrote it are mysteries to me. The organ pieces are obviously Glass: Music In Contrary Motion, “Bed” and “Knee Play 4” from Einstein on the Beach, Fourth Series, Part 2 (aka Dance No.2), and, and….
What the hell is that second piece? None of the descriptions in the list of compositions on Glass’ website seem to fit. Is this a solo arrangement of a piece I’ve never heard, or some of his theatre music? It’s too cold to go out to the library, a few minutes’ googling was no help at all, and listening to free samples of likely candidates on Amazon drew a blank.
Here are excerpts from the two mystery pieces:
- unknown piece probably not by Philip Glass, halfway through its 24-minute duration
- unknown organ piece by Philip Glass, start of a 13-minute performance
I presume the organ is being played by Glass himself. Having grown up on his glossy studio productions from the 1980s, it’s sort of nice to hear him hitting all those bum notes here.
Filed under: Music by Ben.H
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New Subscription Feed Redirection
Thursday 31 December 2009
I am trying to seamlessly redirect my blog’s feed from its old address (http://cookylamoo.com/boringlikeadrill/atom.xml) to its new one (http://feeds.feedburner.com/BoringLikeADrillBlog). You can update your own settings if you wish, but it should soon be redirecting automatically, if I’ve figured it out right.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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An Old Look for a New Year
Thursday 31 December 2009
Sorry about the mess. I spent the xmas break moving the blog from Blogger to WordPress (like you care) and trying to get the layout into some coherent, compatible shape. It still needs some tweaking and there are probably some dud links around the place, so please email me if you notice anything particularly ugly or broken.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Please Mister Please
Wednesday 23 December 2009
Jackson 5, “One More Chance” (1970).
(3’01”, 3.45 MB, mp3)
(3’01”, 3.45 MB, mp3)
Filed under: Please Mister Please by Ben.H
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Ignorance achieves wonders.
Sunday 20 December 2009
I’d like to apologise for a fundamental error in my review of the Crumb Total Immersion day. I mistakenly referred to the composer as George Crumb throughout. George Crumb is, of course, the famous cartoonist. The composer’s name is Robert Crumb, as correctly identified by BBC Radio 3.
It’s good to see Radio 3 diligently pursuing its remit to “inform and educate the audience about music and culture”, although when you try to follow the BBC’s own link to its Radio 3 website it in fact takes to you BBC Three, a television station dedicated to programmes like Bashing Booze Birds and Britain’s Most Embarrassing Pets.
There seems to be a webmonkey at the Beeb who gets easily confused over names.
Filed under: Music, Stupidity by Ben.H
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Can’t do nothin’ for ya, man.
Wednesday 16 December 2009
Filed under: Art by Ben.H
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Please Mister Please
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Elliott Carter, “Esprit Rude / Esprit Doux” (1985). Sophie Cherrier, flute; André Trouttet, clarinet.
(4’52”, 7.68 MB, mp3)
(4’52”, 7.68 MB, mp3)
Filed under: Please Mister Please by Ben.H
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Total Immersion: George Crumb
Monday 14 December 2009
George Crumb turned eighty in October, and so was dragged across the Atlantic for the BBC to make a fuss of him for one day of the year. Actually, he probably came willingly, as the night concluded with what must be a rare concert of his orchestral music. He seemed pretty cheerful, seated up in the stalls doing that Rat Pack style double-pointing to the performers at the end of each piece.
I wrote a bit about Crumb’s music earlier in the year after hearing the Nash Ensemble perform it at the Proms:
Crumb’s music really needs to be heard live to appreciate it, not only for the theatrical elements of its performance, or for the spatial placement of sounds (more than once the musicians had to relocate from the stage to one of the balconies to achieve an elusive, distant quality to their sound), but for the subtlety and complexity of the sounds he specifies.
The Proms gig included Claire Booth singing Ancient Voices of Children, also played here by the Guildhall ensemble, with the soprano Anna Patalong (and a real, live boy this time), in between Joanna MacGregor playing the piano works A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979 and Volume 1 of Makrokosmos.
The last time I heard Makrokosmos it was part of an ill-judged mix of music and visuals by Michael Kieran Harvey. Witnessing it performed again reminded me the extent to which Crumb’s music seems to be held together almost by the sheer force of his personality, and how dependent it is on musicians to hold the greater purpose of its disparate elements in focus. MacGregor’s performance was much less theatrical (or histrionic) than Harvey’s, but found and sustained the drama in the music.
The evening gig was a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra of Crumb’s orchestral music – in fact the only three mature orchestral works he has written – culminating in the massive Star-Child. Pure logistical difficulties aside, it seems clear why Crumb tends to keep his music on a more intimate scale. The often episodic nature of his music can be difficult for such a large group of musicians to follow without losing momentum.
The 1967 piece Echoes of Time and the River (Echoes II) is a processional of varying sounds and textures produced by small, discrete groups within the orchestra, to the extent of moving some of the percussionists and brass players on, off, and across the stage in various configurations. In effect, Crumb was attempting to work with the orchestra to his usual scale, while taking advantage of the wider pallette of available sounds. The slow choreography of the musician’s movements added a theatrical, ritualistic aspect that was only slightly more awkward in reality than it doubtless was in the imagination.
A Haunted Landscape (1984) must be more successful in combining all the distinctive facets of Crumb’s music into a seamless whole, because I always remember it as being more conventional than it really is. On the other hand, Star-Child (1977) works hard to present a semblance of cohesiveness between its seven continuous sections. The piece is often referred to as Ivesian, and amongst the many parallels you could make out were the cosmic scope of the music, and its seemingly rough-hewn structure.
The entire 35 or so minutes is suspended from a repeated “music of the spheres” played by the string section throughout, oblivious to all the other goings-on; they form a separate orchestra, with their own conductor. The remaining sections of the orchestra, plus a truckload of extra percussion, half-a-dozen brass players in the balcony, a male speaking choir armed with handbells, and two children’s choirs, require between one and three conductors between them to keep everything together, depending on the music’s complexity. Oh, and there’s a Vox Clamans In Deserto recited antiphonally between a soprano and a trombonist.
Star-Child boldly reaches for profundity with its Latin texts and massed voices and bells, and for once Crumb uses the full force of the orchestra for emphatic, dramatic power. It’s an anomaly in Crumb’s canon, the way he uses brute force and awe to move his audience here, particularly in the apocalyptic middle sections. Thankfully his musical allusions never get too overt or too literary, but the piece is really left to stand or fall on the message Crumb wishes it to convey. The performance itself couldn’t be faulted, but in experiencing it I felt like I was witnessing an attempt to make manifest a grand vision best realised in the imagination, brought to life as best as one can.
Filed under: Music by Ben.H
Tags: George Crumb
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There is no Tooth Fairy, there is only Tooth Jesus.
Sunday 13 December 2009
Sorry I haven’t written this week. My brain took a few days off after seeing a dentist whose idea of relaxing ambience in the surgery was a very loud radio tuned to an evangelical christian station broadcasting an emphatic sermon about Hell. I’d have asked her to turn it off but really you don’t argue with a woman holding a drill to your molars.
