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.

Fig. 1: Ensemble ACJW rehears­ing in Zankel Hall; me trying out Hipstamatic

Ensemble ACJW and I are spending the week up at Skidmore College in prepa­ra­tion for tomorrow night’s big gig. It’s been an eventful few days! Today I conducted a compo­si­tion class of under­grads. I gave them a few tips on string quartet writing, and then subjected them to some of my music. What fun! Every inter­ac­tion I’ve had with a student here has been lovely, they have none of the intel­lec­tual surli­ness of Yale unda-grads. A band of us even invaded one of their dorms last night, and put on a kind of “guer­rilla concert”; every­body was very polite and stopped to listen, and didn’t even ask us to leave when we played a very sloppy rendi­tion of Les Moutons de Panurge.

There is, confus­ingly, a brand-new Zankel Hall at Skidmore; I think I’ll start spelling the one in NYC differ­ently, for clarity (Txank’l? Czänchle?). Anyway. The one up here is glorious; the photo above is the Ensemble rehears­ing my piece. In back of the stage is a giant window, as tall as the entire audi­to­rium, Rose Hall at Lincoln Center-style, except here the view is of colorful trees and rolling hills rather than Columbus Circle (I find each view to be equally valid). It’s strange to find that sort of “world-class” type of facility at such a small and remote school, but I suppose it becomes a cultural magnet in a way that it wouldn’t at, say, Yale, where it might be too close to New York. Speaking of which: this type of new building (along with similar such halls at Bard and else­where) should be giving Yale a concert hall inad­e­quacy complex. Sprague sure is nice but it can’t fit a full orches­tra, much less seat the entire student body. 

Also, I don’t feel as if I’ve been out of college very long, but I already forgot how many people wear sweat­pants! In New York there’s kind of an unspoken dress code; I would feel out of place wearing flip flops on the subway, for example, or into a restau­rant. Maybe a lot of people here are majoring in lifeguarding?

It’s New Media Dot Com over here today. The follow­ing is a sneek peek of my new piece for ACJW, Trade Winds, filmed at yesterday’s rehearsal. The ack-jews are sounding right nice. To wit:

So this may be the most bour­geois complaint ever, but the New Yorker’s new iPad app is completely point­less. I’m already a subscriber, and I’d love to be able to read the thing on my iPad as well, but that would involve buying every issue again at $5 each. I guess there are a few non-subscribers who might impulse-purchase one or two issues, but isn’t the majority of the read­er­ship more like me? Do they really expect this to be a success? I hope some sort of deal for subscribers is in the works, other­wise it appears the magazine industry is in an even deeper ideo­log­i­cal rut than I’d previ­ously thought (and don’t forget, this is the industry that put out these ads). When will the old folks ‘get it’? I want to give you my money, New Yorker. Just please don’t make me give it to you twice.

Recently I’ve been trying to get around my afore­men­tioned diffi­cul­ties writing vocal music.

I find there are two main problems with opera singers: you can’t tell what note they’re singing (esp. male singers) and they don’t know what to do with their hands (no micro­phone to hang on to). I’ve observed my colleagues and profes­sors take a number of approaches to writing music for these singers. Many call for a “straight tone” (i.e. no vibrato), which can be quite beau­ti­ful, but is a little like asking a pianist to play with his feet— it’s just not what they’re trained to do. But many make do with this compro­mise, because opera singers are easy to come by (they go to the same schools as composers, after all, and most know how to read music). Certain composers still write operas and embrace the operatic sound— John Adams and Chris Cerrone come to mind. (Inter­est­ingly, both call for amplification.)

Many composers abandon the oper­a/art-song world in favor of various “pop” styles of singing— whether or not their music could be called Pop. This brings with it a differ­ent set of æsthetic conun­drums, along with a huge poten­tial Cringe Factor. Some­times it works bril­liantly, however; in Ted Hearne’s Katrina Ballads, a couple of opera singers and a couple of jazz/R & B singers sing side by side, along with Ted himself, who does some of each. All sing their hearts out, and the music is really good, so it works. The rather obvious secret is that quote-unquote Crossover works when the musi­cians involved have taste.

But I think the main reason for my discom­fort writing vocal music is my lack of feeling for the voice as an instru­ment. I’m most comfort­able using actual instru­ments, primar­ily the piano, as my “voice”. Putting words along with the notes just somehow feels extra­ne­ous to me. I haven’t been a singer since I was about 11, when I dropped out of our local children’s chorus, and since then, I’ve enjoyed the comfort of having an instru­ment, prefer­ably a large one, next to me on stage at all times. My adult voice is completely untrained, limited in range, and tires easily; to me it just sounds embar­rass­ing. I harbor the utmost admi­ra­tion— border­ing on jealousy, even— for people like Gabe Kahane, who can sing anything from Ives to Cee-lo with aplomb, and accom­pany himself admirably at the same time.

Right now I’m working on some very short songs for Gabe, based on texts from a website I found called Parent­ing With Family Play (basi­cally a very earnest and thorough users’ manual for rough­hous­ing/­role-playing with your young child). I’m setting them very straight-faced, with a minimum of “musical commen­tary”, because I feel as though word-cartoon­ing is an excuse for having no musical ideas (plus they did it better in the 17^th century?). The piano parts are spare because Gabe will be accom­pa­ny­ing himself (giving him some­thing to do with his hands). What will happen? You’ll just have to come out to Issue Project Room on November 17^th and find out.

Ted is mad. Rob is getting ready to build a dam.

Let it be known that the five composers of the “Sleeping Giant” collec­tive couldn’t pull it together to do an actual group photo, so I had to draw the cari­ca­tures you see above. Our next concert is fast approach­ing; Monday, October 11 (mark your iCals!) at Le Poisson Rouge. My own contri­bu­tion will be the New York première of Clamber Music, performed by stal­warts Owen Dalby and Tema Watstein.

I wrote my first lick of vocal music in five years today. Not sure exactly what’s taken me so long. More about this soon, along­side other things worth knowing.