My mother, who is a non-musician but an avid listener, made an inter­est­ing comment to me after hearing us play Clamber Music on Saturday, some­thing along the lines of “I like the parts where there are so many rhythms going on at once that you can’t hear which one is the actual rhythm”. I thought this was partic­u­larly astute because those are the parts I like best, too. 

If music is ulti­mately about repe­ti­tion or the lack thereof, then it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that listen­ers’ percep­tion of tempo and rhythm is relative. They have to be able to perceive some­thing in the first place in order for it to be distorted. This exactly why the first movement of Adés’s Concerto Conciso is such visceral fun to listen to, despite its surface complexity: 

Thomas Adés: “Concerto Conciso, Op. 18: 1.”

The same thing is going on in this passage from Schu­man­n’s Fantasia in C, in the middle of the first movement, only the other way around: the music starts out shifted forward by an eighth note, and keeps shifting back and forth every couple of seconds, giving the whole passage a stum­bling forward momentum, like someone excit­edly trying to say too many words at once: 

Robert Schumann: “Fantasia in C, Op. 17: 1.” [excerpt]

At the root of the issue is that you can write music that’s as clever (or as dumb) as you want, but people like to be able to hear at least some of what’s going on. In art, it doesn’t matter how smart you are if you lack the capacity to express yourself clearly. At least that’s what my mother always told me.

Since I’m done cramming my own art down people’s throats (at least for the next few weeks) I thought I’d use the oppor­tu­nity to recom­mend some new work by two friends, both perfect for this prema­turely crepus­cu­lar Sunday afternoon. 

Jon Ehren­berg is a visual artist who I got to know recently. Though a painter by training, he’s made some lovely live-animated short films which are being shown for the next month or so at Nicelle Beauch­ene Gallery. You can see some excerpts from his work at his website, though I recom­mend going to see them in person because, full disclo­sure, I wrote new music for two of them: Seed and Moth. Oh well, so much for the break from self-promotion. 

I wasn’t able to attend this year’s New Music New Haven orches­tra concert (in fact, it’s the first one I’ve missed since my freshman year at Yale!) but I strongly suggest you take a listen to Adrian Knight’s lovely and expan­sive Comblé. It’s one of those gener­ously-propor­tioned pieces that would defi­nitely be too long if not for the fact that it’s incred­i­bly detailed and well-balanced. It’s also just refresh­ing to hear a student orches­tra work that’s not your standard 8‑minute crowd-pleaser.

Through a combi­na­tion of clever sched­ul­ing and happen­stance, I’ve got the day off before my upcoming hat trick. This is great because it allows me to take care of all those little things that pop up before a concert— last-minute comps, ironing, finger­nail clipping, face shaving (some­thing I only have to do every three or four days), fake yoga (or fauxga), and where am I going to take my family to eat afterwards? 

I also like a day off’s effect on my playing— after becoming so entrenched in a piece, it suddenly sounds fresher, more alive, after a little break. In this case, I have the luxury of being able to practice on the piano I’ll be perform­ing on. It always helps to have a few days to get accli­mated. It’s a Bösendor­fer, a seven-footer like mine, though with quite a differ­ent person­al­ity— extremely respon­sive, built for the Autobahn, whereas mine is much more forgiv­ing. It makes me nervous to think of the damage I could incur. 

The other thing making me nervous is that somehow I got myself into this situ­a­tion where I’m expected to perform Schu­man­n’s Kreis­le­ri­ana tomorrow! It feels very differ­ent from when I was a teenager, and would blithely tackle any piano reper­toire, the longer and more demand­ing the better. Now, I’m more acutely aware of my lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Playing a piece that’s so familiar to the audience is like walking a tightrope; there’s a tension in the air, as if every­one’s waiting for you to fall. I’ll play your world première any day. Here’s a little conver­sa­tion I had with Metrop­o­lis Ensem­ble’s Nate Bach­hu­ber (note the double H) about the thinking behind tomor­row’s concert and various other trivia. 

Speaking of which, I’ve been assem­bling press kits lately, at the behest of and with much help from my friend Emily. If you get one of these in the mail, it means: please hire me! I’ll play a concert, compose some music, do your dishes, tune up your bike, etc. 

The NY Phil­har­monic, in their newfound quest to be “hip and with it”, contin­ues to hand out comps to anything resem­bling a blogger, so here I am, blogging. Chris and I had high hopes for last night’s CONTACT! show at Sympho­ny­Space; we were partic­u­larly excited to hear Gerard Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil, a huge song cycle written just before his death in 1998. Grisey’s music isn’t played very often here in New York, I assume because of the daunting demands it places on musi­cians, audi­ences, and stage managers alike; his language incor­po­rates micro­tones (grada­tions of pitch outside the 12-note chro­matic scale) as well as about half an acre of differ­ently-sized gongs. 

I’ll take a para­graph now to address the NY Phil’s PR depart­ment directly: “live-tweeting” Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil is bathetic on the level of “photo-blogging” your meal at Alinea; it speaks only of the tweeter himself. Take a step back and think, now; what does one hope to achieve by contribut­ing 160 tren­chant char­ac­ters to the #nyphilcon­tact bucket? Nothing beyond “concert good” or “concert bad” means much to someone who wasn’t also present, expe­ri­enc­ing the same sounds and images. A composer I vaguely recog­nized was sitting alone across the aisle from me, face perpet­u­ally bathed in his iPhone’s glow; was his twitter feed a stand-in for an absent compan­ion? Here’s the other thing. Arts insti­tu­tions are all about intro­duc­ing tech­no­log­i­cal gimmicks in the name of “outreach” and “embrac­ing new audi­ences”, but what audience do we see contribut­ing to the afore­men­tioned bucket? Composers, PR people, hardcore new-music bloggers, the occa­sional “real critic”, i.e. the audience who would come to the concert anyway, and pay for it happily, too. 

But I’m being mean and negative, and the Grisey was truly, spec­tac­u­larly good. Chris and I agreed that the piece conforms to our rules for How to Not Be Boring. Namely: 

1. use sharply defined, instantly recog­niz­able musical materials;
2. struc­ture your mate­ri­als in a way that is audible;
3. don’t use too much, or extra­ne­ous material.

If you, too want to write a 50-minute micro­tonal rumi­na­tion on the tran­sience of life, civi­liza­tion, and the human race, then you should probably follow these rules. Inci­den­tally, Not Being Boring should be the absolute bare minimum, and beside its value as virtu­osic spec­ta­cle, I found Quatre chants quite moving; La Mort de la Civil­i­sa­tion was partic­u­larly beau­ti­ful, a glacial, methodic reading of partially destroyed inscrip­tions on Egyptian sarcophagi. 

Of course, it also helped that Alan Gilbert, the small group of NY Phil musi­cians, and most of all, Barbara Hannigan (a soprano/total fox) gave a commit­ted and riveting perfor­mance. It takes the charisma of a great stage actor to hold an audi­ence’s atten­tion for 50 minutes, espe­cially while remain­ing still and silent during, say, a five-minute drum inter­lude; anyone who saw Le Grand Macabre last spring (or, as I did, watched the videos on YouTube) knew that Hannigan would be up to the task: 

Seems likely she’ll become a regular at Gilbert’s Phil­har­monic, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Thanks for the beers, Phil, and until next time.

I added a couple of recent concerts to the piano section. They are the stel­lated ones, up top. Some Schumann, some regur­gi­tated Mozart.

Post post-apoc­a­lyp­tic Sufjan, pre twee Sufjan.

Happy to have been Gabe’s last-minute +1 for yester­day’s Sufjan Stevens show at the Beacon. I’ve been listen­ing to The Age of Adz for the past several weeks and have grown pretty accus­tomed to its strange­ness— a kind of campy, DIY electro-futurism seem­ingly calcu­lated to flummox fans of the precious, ideal­ized-campfire-singa­long Sufjan. During the first half of the perfor­mance, which was mostly new material, the audience seemed almost cowed; it wasn’t until after the 25-minute epic Impos­si­ble Soul and the band played the inevitable Chicago that we heard girls scream­ing “Sufjan, you changed my life!” 

When I listen to the record, Impos­si­ble Soul seems like about five separate songs roughly stitched together, but live, it was unac­count­ably satis­fy­ing. It’s the same kind of sense one has trying to under­stand the last movement of Mahler’s 2^nd symphony; if you’re not almost bodily involved in the music, it can sound episodic, or even nonsen­si­cal (but then, Mahler doesn’t have mid-movement dance parties, or release balloons from the ceiling). It makes me so, so happy to see a “pop” composer exper­i­ment­ing with large-scale forms, and even happier to hear them work so well. I can’t exactly even say why it works, but it has some­thing to do with its place on the album, and in the show, and the thinning and thick­en­ing of textures, and the pacing of events. I suppose those qual­i­ties decide why most music succeeds or fails. 

After which the “encore” section of the show felt like a completely differ­ent set— mostly consist­ing of material from Illinois, with only light contri­bu­tions from the band (by the way, yeah! that was Alex Sopp up there!). Chris Thile’s quip about Arcade Fire— “ten people doing the work of four”— felt apropos here. Sufjan ended the night with the ultimate downer, John Wayne Gacy, Jr., almost whis­pered— you could feel the entire theater collec­tively holding its breath. 

Speaking of songs about serial killers, I’m playing piano in Matt Marks’s The Adven­tures of Albert Fish on what looks to be a wholly crazy show at Gala­pa­gos on December 5^th.

I made myself a new website and this is it. Take some looks around. I moved the entire thing over to Word­Press, and it’s new from the very humblest line of code on up. The theme (which is Word­Press-speak for the look and orga­ni­za­tion of the site) is custom, HTML5-ready, iOS compat­i­ble (not a lick of flash!), it’s called “Irksome­cush­ion” in homage to my very first website, and no, you can’t use it. Moving to Word­Press gives me nice things like RSS feeds and perma­links, as well as a content-manage­ment system that is quite smartly designed. I know, welcome to 2004!

Not every­thing is in place yet, in partic­u­lar the Visuals section, because I haven’t thought of a satis­fac­tory way to organize and display a gallery of pictures. (If anyone has any sugges­tions for a clean, customiz­able gallery frame­work, please leave a reply). That reminds me, comments! I’ve enabled them to start, even though I have mixed feelings about sites with comments. Out of the billions of comment threads on the internet, there are probably about 12 that have ever been inter­est­ing. Also I’ve heard that comment spam is a thing these days; we’ll see if Word­Press’s filters are up to the task. Not only can you reply to posts on this blog, but you can comment on indi­vid­ual pieces in the Works section, and concerts in the Piano section, which I may live to regret. Be nice, everybody! 

Also, if you’re reading this, it means you’re an unwit­ting beta-tester! That’s what the little “beta” up top means—it’s an easy way for me to launch a new website that still might have lots of errors in it, and have them not be my fault. But truly, if you come across anything on this new site that you think is a mistake or bug, please get in touch; I would be most grateful. I’m also grateful to many pseu­do­nyméd people over at the Word­Press commu­nity for answer­ing my ques­tions and gener­ally making life easier, and to Panic (shock­ingly good Mac software™) for making the wonder­ful Coda and Transmit.

Last night was the Brad Mehldau Expe­ri­ence at Zankel Hall, which I’m happy to see got a rather good review in the Times. The concert was pretty much a straight run-through of his double album (more on this in a bit) Highway Rider, for a quintet of soloists and chamber orches­tra. Matt Cham­ber­lain’s drumming was partic­u­larly reve­la­tory to me; I’m not a jazz connois­seur by any means, but it seemed to me that he was having an espe­cially wonder­ful time on stage, foiling and delight­ing with every turn of phrase. Cham­ber­lain doesn’t move the way I’ve seen other good drummers move; he doesn’t look loose or relaxed at all, rather more like a spring-loaded puppet with fewer joints than most humans. Whereas another drummer would flick his wrist, Cham­ber­lain moves his entire arm, like a martial artist; it doesn’t look partic­u­larly comfort­able to me, but I was enthralled by the visual effect of it, and by the incred­i­bly complex layers of rhythm and timbre it produced. 

Brad had let his grey hair grow out a bit, and also gotten thinner and put on a small velvet suit, which gave him a crazy-but-dapper profes­so­r­ial quality, a profes­sor who was also possibly a charis­matic and success­ful cult leader. His playing was char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally inven­tive and virtu­osic, includ­ing what sounded like an impro­vised fugue (!) some­where in the last few move­ments (I don’t think it’s on the CD). I’m not even sure I remember how to write a fugue, much less impro­vise a completely natural and bad-ass sounding one, in a jazz piece. As good as it was, Highway Rider tested the limits of my concert-sitting abil­i­ties; six years of attend­ing New Music New Haven has over-sensi­tized me to long concerts, and around the two hour mark I start to panic and wonder if my bike is still doing OK. Speaking of which, Carnegie Hall really needs some bike parking. It doesn’t have to be an eyesore; it could actually be an oppor­tu­nity to class things up. Hire a black­smith to do some wrought-iron grille work! Or hire David Byrne. Or teach David Byrne how to smith.

I opened the refrig­er­a­tor today and found myself face to face with a large cauli­flower, and nothing else. I’d picked it up at the Ft. Greene farmers’ market last weekend (which I like because it doesn’t over­whelm me). The main chal­lenge with turning a cauli­flower into an entire meal is that, frankly, it’s cauli­flower. But this is a happy story, with a deli­cious ending, good enough in fact to post it up here. 

Fig. 1: cooling on my balcony.

Roasted cauliflower

Take a head of cauli­flower and hack it into medium bits. Toss it up with a fair bit of chopped garlic, smoked paprika, salt, olive oil, and (this is key) Moroccan preserved lemon. Spread it out on a baking sheet and roast at 425º for half an hour or so. While that’s happen­ing, toast up some pecans in a skillet with a bit of chili powder. Once the cauli­flower has browned parts (see fig. 1) take it out of the oven and put the pecans on top. Let the whole mess cool— it seems to get better and sweeter at room temperature.

Fig. 1: It’s pronounced “pee”.

On Monday I’m making my Tennessee début! My friend Mingzhe Wang orga­nized a concert about the “misun­der­stood Schumann” or, in other words, the “really inter­est­ing stuff that nobody plays”. 

I’m usually against the whole clas­si­cal music industry birthday cele­bra­tion program­ming scheme; it’s lazy and random and we really don’t need another excuse to play more Mozart. What does it matter that some bril­liant guy died/was born/contracted syphilis/attempted suicide 100 years ago? That said, some­times these occa­sions can actually turn up some­thing inter­est­ing, either by bringing atten­tion to a neglected artist or illu­mi­nat­ing the dark crevasses of an over­ex­posed one. I can pretty much thank the 1974 Ives centen­nial in New Haven for my early intro­duc­tion to Charles Ives, via my dad, who was living in New Haven that year, and gave me a CD of the Concord sonata when I was 11. I think 1960 was simi­larly a very impor­tant year for Mahler (at least in the US). Schumann was born in 1810, so, hooray, happy 200^th birthday, Robert. 

We are cele­brat­ing on Monday night by playing some of our favorite neglected pieces: the strange and tran­scen­dent Gesänge der Frühe, Op. 133 (Morning Songs); the four Märch­en­erzäh­lun­gen, Op. 132 (Fairy Tales); and the G minor trio Op. 110. Setting them off are three Schumann-influ­enced works by living composers; Kutág’s Hommage à R. Sch. (which also has an amazing last-movement homage to Mahler); Rihm’s Fremde Szene III; and two of my own piano pieces from a larger work-in-progress set to première in December (Pierrot on 88^th St. and Please let me sleep [in your entrance hall]). I think this will without a doubt be the most inter­est­ing Schumann birthday concert of the year. Ming designed this poster.

I flew into Nashville yester­day after­noon, and went straight to rehearse Kurtág; this was a surreal juxta­po­si­tion, to say the least. Nashvil­lians are music-obsessed; the was a live blue­grass band playing in the airport lounge, and every other block presents an oppor­tu­nity to buy a piano, drum set, or eupho­nium. We stopped off at an enormous ethnic grocery on the way home, where I found this: 

Fig. 2: It’s pronounced “popk”

It’s a funny side effect of living in New York City that grocery stores in other places seem as though they are the size of the Grand Canyon. 

Within about 8 minutes, Ming had whipped up some Korean sundubu jjigæ with sautéed pea shoots, which I promptly devoured. Then we went to try the piano at APSU, which, believe it, is a Bösendor­fer Imperial! Here I am trying out my new favorite chord with the Bösendor­fer böotybäß (it’s from page 4 of Adès’s Dark­nesse Visible):

Fig. 3: It truly is all about spacing.

I should really learn some more of that piece.