Since I now no longer drink Coke, just Diet Coke, this category on my blog is doomed to insignificance. Well, relatively speaking 😉
Today, however, I went along to my favourite local café – La Boulangerie – to find that they didn’t have *any* diet fizzy drinks. Shock! Seriously, kind of a weird stock decision. So, I’m having a Coke. It’s delicious. As is the ham and cheese croissant. Come to Camden Street!
I just found this video for OK Go’s song, ‘This Too Shall Pass’, via Graham Linehan’s feast of a blog, ‘Why That’s Delightful’. There’s something about the surprise elements of this video (and the other, amazing domino-machine one) that takes my breath away. For some reason, too, the song itself appealed to me much more in the context of the marching band video than it did in the domino one. Live performance…especially when we can see those lovely glockenspiel breaks…and the gradual expansion of the cast (creating, like in the domino video, a continual sense of delight). Great stuff. Truly important, bar-raising art for an internet age of living, loving human beings.
Read the band’s guitarist’s piece in the NY Times, too, about the short-sightedness of record companies. Specifically EMI in this case. If we enjoy watching videos on YouTube, and we love music, then we should know about this stuff.
I was introduced to the Mouth Off! podcast this week, an intoxicating mix of gushing enthusiasm, Americanisms that would make a Dublin Southside teenager blush, and great contemporary acapella music. I loved it and will definitely be listening again.
They reviewed The Swingle Singers’ latest album, ‘Ferris Wheel’, and I was all for buying it but couldn’t find it on iTunes. One of their recommendations I did find, though, was Riltons Vänner. Check out this sexy, slick slice of singing:
I accompanied Suzanne McDonnell today at her mid-term performance exam at Dundalk IT. She did really well and I was happy that we did a good set. She opened with a solo piece by Morton Feldman called ‘Only’ and then I joined her for the rest: Antonio Carlos Jobim’s ‘Chovendo na roseira’, Erykah Badu’s ‘Green Eyes’, and a bluesy original called ‘Play Me’.
The three other students who did their exams today all did great pieces. First up was Cathal Johnston, a trad. harmonica player, who did one of my favourite tunes, O’Carolan’s ‘Sà Bheag, Sà Mhór’, amongst others. Another soprano, Siobhain Murphy, did Sondheim’s ‘Green Finch and Linnet Bird’ – Johanna’s song about captivity from Sweeney Todd – and three of Britten’s ‘Cabaret Songs’ (all settings of Britten’s friend W.H. Auden): ‘Oh tell me the truth about love’, ‘Funeral Blues’, and ‘Johnny’. Finally Mark Nutley did Edward Gregson’s Tuba Concerto which I really enjoyed. A great gig!
I’ve been working on choral pieces which I’ll do a seperate blog post about. My friend Jonny Boyle let me know about an SATB carol competition being judged by Bob Chilcott and James Macmillan. Macmillan is one of my absolute favourite composers, so it would be a real thrill to have him judge something I’d written. The search is on for a Christmas/winter text…
The Guardian today featured an impressive array of top novelists all offering advice on writing.
It makes for inspiring reading: http://bit.ly/dmYsJB
I want to compose music. Well, I do compose music, rather, I want to grasp the sense of vocation that speaks through the hard-won wisdom of these writers.
Last night a good friend of mine listened to a rough recording of my latest piece in a noisy pub, her hands cupped around her earbudded pinnae, her body hunched over my iPhone. She was able to give me some really good feedback and to help me towards fixing some of the problems with the piece; as was her friend, whose non-musical language was really insightful.
So much of what I was thinking about was echoed and expanded by the Guardian article and I think I’ll be reading it over and over during the next while.
My friend Jonny posted this as his facebok status about an hour ago:
POISONED BY MACDONALDS BLUES went to macd’s for a wispa mcflurry now im running to the toilet in a hurry went to macd’s, got me a big mac spent the next day flat on my back went to macd’s for a diet coke outta my way im gonna boke went to macd’s, got me some fries now i feel like im gonna die i aint ever goin back to eat that food although i hear the big tasty is quite good i got those poisoned by macdonalds blues
So I did a wee recording.
My friend Brian recommended The Low Anthem to me a few weeks ago and lent me ‘Oh My God, Charlie Darwin’. It’s a mix of beautiful and barnstorming folk and I hadn’t even listened to the whole thing when I noticed, entered, and WON! a ticket competition in the last edition of Le Cool. Le Cool is a great e-zine that highlights interesting things happening in the city* every week. Or, as they more eloquently put it, “a free weekly cultural agenda and alternative city guide”. It works really well on the iPhone, too, with the pages sliding over to the side.
* It’s published for Barcelona, Madrid, Lisboa, London, Istanbul, Moscow, and Budapest, too.
The gig was in Vicar Street, having been moved from Whelan’s due to a large demand for tickets. The whole ground floor of Vicar Street was packed with 20s/30s cool people and older cool people. There were beards and checked shirts in abundance. We had our customary Jameson & Cokes in the bar. I thought it was more of a longneck beer night, but Brian has a predilection for that particular combo which wouldn’t be staved off and I joined him for auld lang syne. It’s a while since we saw each other and so we managed to miss the support act but we wandered into the main venue shortly after nine and contemplated where it would be best to stand. Having found the perfect spot that managed to suit our very different physicalities, we awaited the band’s arrival on stage. Tom Waits played over the PA system…
At about twenty-five past nine they came on, looking just right. The lead singer said they’d be playing three types of songs: songs from ‘Oh My God, Charlie Darwin’, some new songs they’d been working on for the past six weeks, and some old American songs. I’m afraid I didn’t even bother trying to keep a setlist because I don’t know any of the titles and figured I’d have a hard time finding the names of two-thirds of the set anyway. Plus, it’s pretty nerdy to be tapping away on the iPhone during the gig!
It was all pretty chilled out for the first handful of songs and we were treated to the beautiful array of sounds they had brought to play for us: an old reed organ sat on the left of the stage; an upright bass, an electric guitar (Fender Mustang, maybe…?), a less-than-full-size acoustic; a lovely bits-and-pieces drum kit which comprised a proper marching bass drum, a snare drum, high hi-hats that wobbled about satisfyingly when they were played, and two great-sounding cymbals. In one of the early songs, a home-made shaker was produced. The girl interested me most (yeah, yeah, settle down…) as she played clarinet, bass guitar, electric guitar, sang, and played a set of crotales with a bow. Generally doing the kind of multi-instrumental shenanigans that I do 🙂 Her clarinet tone was lovely and I really liked the way she played – using a wide vibrato for the slower, more sonorous songs, rising up on her toes slightly for the higher notes, not shying away from some lovely high lines up at the top end of the instrument’s register… In one of the last songs she and the reed organ player did some sweet harmonies, the sounds blending beautifully, as you’d expect.
When they let rip (on tracks like ‘The Horizon Is A Beltway’), we were riveted for a completely different reason. I was really drawn in by their committed, raw performances. One of the stand-out songs was something about whiskey and women driving you insane (sorry, rubbish not to have a title, I know…!) and on each climax of the chorus they held a chord for *just* a bit longer, the girl going up to the next harmony until they literally couldn’t hold it any more. It’s this kind of thing that makes a live performance trump a recording every time. (If the artists are prepared to take those risks…)
Another lovely moment was in a song where three of the four musicians played wind instruments: the girl’s clarinet being augmented by another and also by a brass band-style horn (i.e. not a French horn). On the last horn break the singer took out two phones (he’d tried to explain this to us, but we didn’t really get it until he did it). He called one with the other and put them on speaker, whistling into them, causing feedback. It made a ghostly, theremin-like noise throughout the crowd (some people had copped on what to do…).
This person got some really good footage from up near the stage. On this song, ‘This God Damn House’, you can hear that lovely clarinet vibrato and then the mobile phone thing from 3’56”.
Here’s a clip of ‘Cage The Songbird’ that I recorded. You can hear the bowed crotales well from about 0’22”.
Here is Damien McGlynn’s review and much better photos than mine, from state.ie.
Question:
Very excited to learn that there will be a composition prize awarded for this year’s Cork Choral Festival.
Here’s the link to the full details: http://www.corkchoral.ie/index.php/education/sean-o-riada-competition.html
I had an interesting conversation after choir a few weeks ago about practice. The next day I came across this great quote from Rob Lear on Twitter:
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. (Aristotle)
One of my fellow choir members, Stephen, who sings tenor II with me, was encouraging me about going for my grade eight this year: he, like me, did the other grades while at school and then had a hiatus for “life etc.”. We talked about the piano as a rather technical problem. It is unlike most other instruments in that it is less physically connected to the player. It’s not like a violin or a clarinet or a trombone which require a lot more effort to even produce a pleasant tone, let alone play the correct notes. With the piano it’s just a matter of pressing the key and the machine does the work.
I love the idea that when a really good piano player plays a piece by, let’s say Beethoven, then they become Beethoven for those moments. They inhabit the physical movements prescribed by the composer in the score. Like an actor stepping into a role, becoming a character.
I’m writing this while eating a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Raising a glass and a half to the taste of world-beating excellence. Please, American Kraft people (and I know you’re reading this blog…), don’t change it. Although I’m still a bigger fan of Quality Street than Roses. Just saying.
Last weekend I was recording with New Dublin Voices – Christmas music – in St Ann’s church on Dawson Street. It’s a lovely church to sing in but it was really cold. We did two sessions (usually three hours between meals in the biz) on both Saturday and Sunday and a rehearsal session on the Friday night, too. Needless to say, by the Sunday I was better prepared, piling on the layers and swapping the shoes-with-a-slight-heel that were recommended to me for singing in for my scruffy-but-comfortable trainers. I also used a music stand both days which saved me having to hold the music the whole time. The recording was produced by Bill Sommerville-Large and he was very good to work with. He guided us through the process and made clear suggestions as to where singers should be positioned. He has a wonderful ear and I’m looking forward to hearing the recordings, which we hope to put out on CD after the summer.
On Sunday, during one of the breaks between takes, I sidled over to the piano and my fingers fell onto a chord – hands centred just either side of middle C, right hand on a 2nd inversion Bb triad, left hand on a 1st inversion Eb triad. It sounded quite beautiful to my ears and over the next few hours I kept slipping back to the keyboard. “That’s the start of my new choral piece!”, I joked to those nearby. There was something cooking, though, and by the time we were packing up, I had a strong sense that this really was a new piece. At home I played it over a number of times, finding another section…
The next day I was in search of a text. I really like the poems of Dennis O’Driscoll but leafing through a volume of his work proved fruitless. Nothing suited the feel of this music. I took myself out to a local café for a cup of tea and grabbed a book on the way – a book of Celtic Verse given to me for my birthday a few years ago. I knew some things about the text I as looking for: it had to have quite short lines and it had to start on the upbeat. I forget the poetry term…<consults Stephen Fry’s excellent book ‘The Ode Less Travelled’>…ah, yes, it’s iambic. Mr Fry also includes a rather nice chocolate reference:
GOLDEN RULE ONE – reading verse can be like eating chocolate, so much more pleasurable when you allow it slowly to melt inside you, so much less rewarding when you snap off big chunks and bolt them whole, all but untasted.
Well, dear reader, I found it. The one. A poem that not only suited my chosen metre but, when I got it home and played it at the piano, seemed to compliment the music beautifully. The piece was finished! I can still hardly believe it. I spent the next day typing it into Sibelius and preparing scores for the choir to sing through it at our rehearsal. Everyone seemed to like it. Here is the poem, by Villiers de L’Isle-Adam (1838-1889):
Confession
Since I have lost the words, the flower
Of youth and the fresh April breeze . . .
Give me thy lips; their perfumed dower
Shall be the whisper of the trees!
Since I have lost the deep sea’s sadness,
Her sobs, her restless surge, her graves . . .
Breathe but a word; its grief or gladness
Shall be the murmur of the waves!
Since in my soul a sombre blossom
Broods, and the suns of yore take flight . . .
O hide me in thy pallid bosom,
And it shall be the calm of night!
My other big task for this week was completing my application for a bursary award from the Arts Council. It would be so great to get it but I’m not going to get my hopes up because only two applicants out of ten have been awarded in the last couple of years. Gathering together the support material made me realise how much stuff I have but also how unclear that is on the website. I plan to do a page with all the recordings I’ve done, with lyrics and a link to a score on Sibelius where possible.
jay wilson :: music 