Music
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“As One” – a chamber opera
Last night we had the wonderful experience of seeing “As One,” a chamber opera about a transgendered person’s voyage of self-discovery. As a chamber opera, the instrumental music was provided by a string quartet (our resident Fry Street Quartet), the single singing role was shared by a mezzo-soprano and a baritone, and the drama was Continue reading
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On opera
I have long believed that I should love opera. I’m a great fan of “classical” music (a fairly meaningless term, as it encompasses way too much), and view its existence as one of the primary pieces of evidence for believing life is not meaningless. One of the greatest experiences of my life was several years Continue reading
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The aural time traveler
Some years back my musicologist friend introduced me to the charming world of gramophones. (A brief history may be in order: before there were iPods and YouTube, there were CDs; before that, there were vinyl records, still very much in vogue among hipsters today; and before that – from roughly 1895 to 1950 – there Continue reading
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I wanna be a hipster. Who’s with me?
From Wikipedia: In his book Jazz, Frank Tirro defines the 1940s hipster: To the hipster, Bird was a living justification of their philosophy. The hipster is an underground man. He is to the Second World War what the dadaist was to the first. He is amoral, anarchistic, gentle, and overcivilized to the point of decadence. Continue reading
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A tale of two concerts
Maybe my favorite thing about living in Logan is our Chamber Music Series, and the fact that we have an in-house string quartet, the Fry Street Quartet. We heard them play last Tuesday, and on the program were Beethoven, Dohnanyi, and Tchaikovsky. Our 9-year-old son joined us, since he loves classical music and is a Continue reading
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Allen Toussaint
I happened across a recording of Allen Toussaint, a great New Orleans musician, and promptly bought his CD, The Bright Mississippi. Lots of old tunes, with bluesy piano that alternates between the old church style and something more appropriate to a brothel. But it’s the performance of “St. James Infirmary” that really makes the album. Continue reading
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Music update
I’ve been to two chamber music concerts this year, both of them excellent. The first was last September, with the Shanghai Quartet. They played fascinating, difficult, and very compelling pieces by Penderecki and Yi-Wen Jiang. They have an incredibly balanced tone — very unified, and highly expressive. But it was their performance of Schubert’s “Death Continue reading
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Going to Jupiter
We attended a concert last night by the Jupiter String Quartet. Fabulous. Their first piece was Haydn’s last finished quartet, opus 77 # 2. Elegant. The last piece was a quartet Mendelssohn wrote when he was only 18. Lots of late LvB in it — dynamic, evocative, surprising. But the middle piece, opus 83 #4 Continue reading
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Charlie Bowers’ metal-eating bird
There’s weird, and there’s weirder. It’s weird to think of a metal-eating bird, who then lays an egg which hatches into an automobile. It’s weirder, I submit, to think of living in a rural western state, and going out at night to hear gypsy jazz performers play along to silent movies that are almost forgotten. Continue reading
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Pacifica Quartet
Last night we enjoyed a performance by the Pacifica Quartet. This group is fantastic. They have perfected a blending of their voices, so that no single voice overpowers the rest (unless or until the music requires it). And the program was stimulating. They started with a Mendelssohn quartet (op. 44, no. 2), which I gather Continue reading
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Beethoven & German idealism
I’m lucky to have been invited to present three lectures on “Beethoven & Philosophy” to the Beethoven class being held this semester (see below). They’re scheduled for the end of this month, so I’ve been preparing. Philosophers don’t have a lot to say about music. There is discussion of it in aesthetics, of course, and Continue reading
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Beethoven string cycle
We just finished attending all six concerts of Beethoven’s string quartets, performed by the Fry Street Quartet. Their performances were truly splendid: very charged and aggressive, but also tightly coordinated. I have recordings of some top quartets performing these pieces, but found myself enjoying the Fry’s interpretations more — just more passion in them. Along Continue reading
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