The relative sparsity of recent posts herein is due in part to the process of re-imagining and enhancing both the format and the content of this blog, with the intention, as a first step, of adding pictorial and audio components, and subsequently, as time and resources permit, video clips. While a document in the written word alone has many advantages of a unified focus in its very singularity, a purely textual form also has its limitations and challenges, particularly in the multimedia dimensions of the new and evolving digital journalistic (and perhaps scholarly) universe.
In addition, the past two months have offered me the opportunity to experience a splendidly rich--in fact, too rich--sequence of concerts that I have attended with the intention of writing reviews. But I must in all honesty confess that I have not yet developed my chops as purely a reviewer who is always able to craft swiftly a review in the day or two following the event, after the decades I've spent in more timeless scholarly pursuits, with any given piece of writing evolving over a period of a number of days, if not weeks or months. Add to this the imperative of having some sort of "hook" (to use the trade term) to snare the reader's interest, which is particularly necessary given the current vast scope of writing on the Internet.
And finally, there is the issue of reader response--whether reinforcement (praise or appreciation always being welcome); enhancement (through additional contributions or observations from others, using what I have written as a point of departure to expand the scope of the original); or challenge (of a critical or disputative nature, so as to stimulate debate)--without which these writings do not move beyond their original premises.
In short, I have spent recent weeks in exploring ways of renovating and improving the content of my VOAWorldMusic efforts, and ask the blessings (in good South Asian fashion) of all who take the trouble of accessing this site, as well as your input as just outlined in the previous paragraph. At the same time, I'm also exploring avenues to make the format itself more dynamic and flexible, and welcome any thoughts you may have along these lines as well.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
El Sistema!
Last night was an absolutely astonishing concert by Gustav Dudarmel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra (Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar) in the Concert Hall of Washington's Kennedy Center. But tonight I have the opportunity to meet maestro José Antonio Abreu, the founder of El Sistema and the man ultimately reponsible for the concert, the orchestra and its conductor, and I should like to meet him before I complete my review of the event. In the meantime, here is an updated version of an earlier post:
* * * * *
The concept was developed by José Antonio Abreu, an economist and musician who had studied piano, harpsichord, and organ to supplement his academic work at institutions which included the University of Michigan. In his description of the effects of the program, "A child's physical poverty is overcome by the spiritual richness that comes from music."
El Sistema has attracted widespread media attention (listen to a BBC/WGBH program) and has been featured in a 2006 film documentary, Tocar y Luchar (To Play and To Fight), which has won a number of awards in international film festivals.
* * * * *
I have just learned that I will be able to attend a concert next year of the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra here in Washington, led by the dynamic young conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, and presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society.
This extraoridinary young man (and the equally extraordinary ensemble) had first come to my attention when, earlier in the year, CBS' 60 Minutes aired a feature on the Venezuelan musical phenomenon, called El Sistema (The System), in which over a hundred young people's ensembles have been developed in the Latin American country, not only to nurture young musicians, but also to give youngsters from economically depressed and crime-ridden neighborhoods a chance to find self-esteem and confidence, and a future through music.
This extraoridinary young man (and the equally extraordinary ensemble) had first come to my attention when, earlier in the year, CBS' 60 Minutes aired a feature on the Venezuelan musical phenomenon, called El Sistema (The System), in which over a hundred young people's ensembles have been developed in the Latin American country, not only to nurture young musicians, but also to give youngsters from economically depressed and crime-ridden neighborhoods a chance to find self-esteem and confidence, and a future through music.
The concept was developed by José Antonio Abreu, an economist and musician who had studied piano, harpsichord, and organ to supplement his academic work at institutions which included the University of Michigan. In his description of the effects of the program, "A child's physical poverty is overcome by the spiritual richness that comes from music."
Children as young as two years are initiated into the program, learning the basics of music. Thousands of trained musicians participate in teaching their young students, who, as stated on El Sistema's Website, number 350,000 in 180 ensembles throughout the country. During the past 32 years, according to Dr. Abreu, some 800,000 children have participated in El Sistema. In the words of one instructor interviewed for the CBS program, "when they sit in one of these churches in the orchestra, they think they are in another country, on another planet, and they start changing."
El Sistema has attracted widespread media attention (listen to a BBC/WGBH program) and has been featured in a 2006 film documentary, Tocar y Luchar (To Play and To Fight), which has won a number of awards in international film festivals.
Performances of the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra, the program's flagship ensemble, have astonished audiences all over the world, under the leadership of conductor Dudamel, himself a product of El Sistema, and a prodigy who was recently appointed Musical Director of the prestigious Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, as illustrated in yet another episode of 60 minutes; see also a video portrait of the conductor by the prestigious label Deutsche Grammophon, which has released three CDs by the SBNYO.
I look forward to blogging on the concert, which will include a performance of Igor Stravinsky's revolutionary The Rite of Spring--which was probably the most influential piece of classical music to which I was exposed in my childhood. But more on that personal note later. . . .
I look forward to blogging on the concert, which will include a performance of Igor Stravinsky's revolutionary The Rite of Spring--which was probably the most influential piece of classical music to which I was exposed in my childhood. But more on that personal note later. . . .
Thursday, April 2, 2009
In memoriam Stuart Cary Welch, 1928 - 2008
This afternon will be a memorial ceremony at Memorial Church at Harvard University for Stuart Cary Welch, who was Curator of Islamic and Later Indian art at the Harvard Art Museum from 1979 to 1987, among other positions. For me, this will be a bitterwseet occasion, mourning Cary's passing, while celebrating the richness of his life and remembering his generous spirit, as well as his intense interest in the related arts of poetry and music.
I first met Cary in 1968 through Jim Rubin and Hyman Bloom (see my previous entry, and continuing here an exploration of connections between music and painting), when he kindly sponsored a house concert at his home from my sitar teacher, the late Ustad Ghulamhusain Khan, during a U.S. tour that I organized as a guru-dakshina (offering) following my becoming his ganda-bandh shagird (or lifelong disciple--see my earlier post.)
It is generally felt among seasoned lovers of Hindustani (north Indian) classical music that the best performances occur in a small gathering, or mehfil, where there is the greatest possibility of intimate contact, even interaction, between the performer(s) and the audience. And on that occasion at Cary's home, along with the performance itself, there was a continuing discussion among those present of some of the principles of the arts of India, with Cary sharing some of his expertise on Indian art. Of course, one looked around the walls of his home and saw various exquisite samples of Indian miniature painting, of which he was one of America's most accomplished collectors.
When I came to teach at Harvard in 1973, at every possible opportunity I sat in, along with my senior colleague the late Annemarie Schimmel, in Cary's superb annual lecture courses, which each year focussed on some period of either Mughal or Rajput painting. A person of considerable financial means, and a collector of exquisite taste and eye, Cary had gathered over the years a range of masterpieces in these genres, which were on rotating display at the Fogg Museum, where as noted above he was Curator of these genres.
In 1980 I was approached by H. Peter Stern, then and currently President of the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York, to organize an annual concert of Hindustani music in the Indian room at the Fogg in collaboration with Cary, with the intent of having a musical mehfil among some of the greatest works of Indian miniature painting, with traditional floor seating and no amplification (something that has come to mar the majority of small concerts these days). Thus, in a room that could accommodate, in addition to the artists, 40 people at most, we were able to experience in natural sound wonderful musical evenings, in what was indeed a recreation of the divaan-e-khaas, or the private audience of the Mughal emperors.
On a previous recording trip to Indian with Jim Rubin in 1968, I had met the late vocalist, Pandit Amar Nath, and I had hoped in the ensuing years to arrange a U.S. performance for him.
He sang in the style of the much revered vocalist, the late Ustad Amir Khan, who had developed his own own distinctive style of singing khayal, the dominant style of Hindustani vocal music, and who is considered one of the greatest vocalists of the last half of the Twentieth Century. We were fortunate to arrange for him to come to Cambridge exclusively to inaugurate this series.
The second year, we arranged for a performance by Ustad Nasir Zahiruddin Dagar and Ustad Nasir Faiyazuddin Dagar, known as the Younger Dagar Brothers, who were at that time the leading practitioners in the dhrupad style of vocal music, the most ancient of the north Indian classical vocal genres. The Dagar family played the central role in the propagation of dhrupad during the second half of the Twentieth Century, and is generally credited for saving this august tradition from extinction.
In the third year the performer was Ustad Imrat Khan, the world's acknowledged master of the comparatively rare surbahar, which he is credited has having brought as a solo instrument to the concert stage. Followign an opening solo on the that instrument, he took up his sitar, and was accompanied (also on sitar) by his eldest son, Nishaat Khan, and his youngest son, Shafaatullah Khan, on the tabla.
(Because it seemed to me a missed opportunity to have only the one exclusive concert by these outstanding artists, in the second and third year's I organized a Saturday night public concert, following the previous night's event in the Fogg, which we termed divaan-e-'aam, referring to the hall of public audience of the Mughal emperors. This was held in a large room in Hilles Library which could accommodate perhaps two hundred people, most sitting in traditional style on the floor, with chairs arround the walls to accommodate those for whom floor seating was difficult.)
But the defining experience of the Fogg concerts was precisely the experience of divaan-e-khaas, with Cary presiding over the occasion with his inimitable combination of erudition, wit, and warm hospitality, and the extraordinary visual treasures he had collected over the years adorning the walls in truly regal glory.
(More to come following today's memorial.)
I first met Cary in 1968 through Jim Rubin and Hyman Bloom (see my previous entry, and continuing here an exploration of connections between music and painting), when he kindly sponsored a house concert at his home from my sitar teacher, the late Ustad Ghulamhusain Khan, during a U.S. tour that I organized as a guru-dakshina (offering) following my becoming his ganda-bandh shagird (or lifelong disciple--see my earlier post.)
It is generally felt among seasoned lovers of Hindustani (north Indian) classical music that the best performances occur in a small gathering, or mehfil, where there is the greatest possibility of intimate contact, even interaction, between the performer(s) and the audience. And on that occasion at Cary's home, along with the performance itself, there was a continuing discussion among those present of some of the principles of the arts of India, with Cary sharing some of his expertise on Indian art. Of course, one looked around the walls of his home and saw various exquisite samples of Indian miniature painting, of which he was one of America's most accomplished collectors.
When I came to teach at Harvard in 1973, at every possible opportunity I sat in, along with my senior colleague the late Annemarie Schimmel, in Cary's superb annual lecture courses, which each year focussed on some period of either Mughal or Rajput painting. A person of considerable financial means, and a collector of exquisite taste and eye, Cary had gathered over the years a range of masterpieces in these genres, which were on rotating display at the Fogg Museum, where as noted above he was Curator of these genres.
In 1980 I was approached by H. Peter Stern, then and currently President of the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York, to organize an annual concert of Hindustani music in the Indian room at the Fogg in collaboration with Cary, with the intent of having a musical mehfil among some of the greatest works of Indian miniature painting, with traditional floor seating and no amplification (something that has come to mar the majority of small concerts these days). Thus, in a room that could accommodate, in addition to the artists, 40 people at most, we were able to experience in natural sound wonderful musical evenings, in what was indeed a recreation of the divaan-e-khaas, or the private audience of the Mughal emperors.
On a previous recording trip to Indian with Jim Rubin in 1968, I had met the late vocalist, Pandit Amar Nath, and I had hoped in the ensuing years to arrange a U.S. performance for him.
He sang in the style of the much revered vocalist, the late Ustad Amir Khan, who had developed his own own distinctive style of singing khayal, the dominant style of Hindustani vocal music, and who is considered one of the greatest vocalists of the last half of the Twentieth Century. We were fortunate to arrange for him to come to Cambridge exclusively to inaugurate this series.
The second year, we arranged for a performance by Ustad Nasir Zahiruddin Dagar and Ustad Nasir Faiyazuddin Dagar, known as the Younger Dagar Brothers, who were at that time the leading practitioners in the dhrupad style of vocal music, the most ancient of the north Indian classical vocal genres. The Dagar family played the central role in the propagation of dhrupad during the second half of the Twentieth Century, and is generally credited for saving this august tradition from extinction.
In the third year the performer was Ustad Imrat Khan, the world's acknowledged master of the comparatively rare surbahar, which he is credited has having brought as a solo instrument to the concert stage. Followign an opening solo on the that instrument, he took up his sitar, and was accompanied (also on sitar) by his eldest son, Nishaat Khan, and his youngest son, Shafaatullah Khan, on the tabla.
(Because it seemed to me a missed opportunity to have only the one exclusive concert by these outstanding artists, in the second and third year's I organized a Saturday night public concert, following the previous night's event in the Fogg, which we termed divaan-e-'aam, referring to the hall of public audience of the Mughal emperors. This was held in a large room in Hilles Library which could accommodate perhaps two hundred people, most sitting in traditional style on the floor, with chairs arround the walls to accommodate those for whom floor seating was difficult.)
But the defining experience of the Fogg concerts was precisely the experience of divaan-e-khaas, with Cary presiding over the occasion with his inimitable combination of erudition, wit, and warm hospitality, and the extraordinary visual treasures he had collected over the years adorning the walls in truly regal glory.
(More to come following today's memorial.)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The mystical musical world of Hyman Bloom, 96
It is my great good fortune to be staying in Nashua, New Hampshire, at the home of my first mentor in Indian music, the great American painter Hyman Bloom, who is today celebrating his 96th (!) birthday with friends and family. Hyman lives with his wife Stella, whom he married in 1978, in a spacious home, converted 25 years ago from a large hundred-year-old New England barn, with high ceilings, a loft entrance, and dark broad-timber floors, and now white plaster walls, many adorned with Hyman's work, from small pencil sketches to enormous canvases pulsing with turbulent colors and spiritual energy--some of the greatest achievements of Twentieth-Century American drawing and painting.
And on this rainy Sunday morning, the home is fragrant with the rich aromas of Stella's superb Greek cooking (with able assistance since yesterday from her sister-in-law Irene Caralis, and today, sister Anna Burland) for the guests who will be arriving shortly. Not that Hyman will be the seniormost among those celebrating the occasion; we are awaiting the arrival of Hyman's long-time physician and friend (and mine while I was teaching in Cambridge), the astonishingly alert Dr. Abraham Stone Freedberg, an eminent Harvard Medical School Professor Emeritus who is looking forward to his 101st birthday in May.
I first met Hyman in Boston when I was in college in the early 1960s. One of my roommates, knowing of my interest in Indian music (which I had discovered on recordings in the 1950s), introduced me to the daughter of Hyman's dealer, who arranged for me to meet the man who was eventually to continue, following my late mother's early nurture, the spiritual support for my music that I never received from my own father. I remember very clearly going to Hyman's studio on Newbury Street in Boston on numerous occasions, when we would sit, often with little or no conversation--and listen to some of the many 78 rpm recordings he had collected from India of the great masters--material which was totally unavailable at that time in the U.S.
It was with Hyman that I first heard the legendary Indian vocalist Kesarbai Kerkar--with her jewel-like improvisations in Indian ragas--and the equally legendary Ustad Bundu Khan, who had brought the magical sarangi from its role as a box-fiddle for accompaniment to vocalists to its current status as a virtuoso solo instrument par excellence. To my ears (then, and still) the voice of the sarangi was the closest instrumental equivalent to a musical cry from the human soul that I had ever heard, and Kesarbai's singing conveyed a haunting sense of the great timelessness and vast cultural expanses of India.
I knew little at the time of Hyman's enormous reputation as a painter. He was at one point considered by Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning to be the greatest American painter, and the de facto father of American Abstract Expressionism, with paintings hanging in many major American museums. As for his work itself: his studio in those days was filled with numerous canvases of various sizes stacked mysteriously against the walls, face-in; nor was there any work-in-progress on an easel with a palette of paints nearby that this Denver-born boy would have expected from having seen in his childhood Lust for Life, with Kirk Douglas' impassioned portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh. (Only much later was I able to see in his home, or in exhibitions, many of Hyman's great paintings, whose use of ecstatic and vibrant color challenges, in a very different style, that of the great Dutch master himself.) But there were exotic Indian instruments on the shelves, and when I was there the studio was filled with the voices of Indian music--that extraordinary musical universe of which I had had glimpses, also in Denver, while hearing my own early LPs of Indian classical music.
One of Hyman's early teachers, Denman Ross, had used musical scales as a model for a systematic treatment of of the painter's color palette. In the 1930s Hyman began to collect recordings of Greek, Turkish, Jewish, and Indian music, probably as a source for alternate aesthetic inspiration. I've often thought these musical explorations must have touched upon the coloristic aspects (iridescence in visual terms) of the microtonal intervals, scales, and ornaments of the oriental traditions. In the 1940s Hyman became close friends with the prolific Alan Hovhaness, one of the most widely recorded American composers (he styled himself "Scottish-Armenian", and is generally grouped among the modern musical orientalists), whose oeuvre is as controversial among the cognoscenti as it is beloved by many--including myself--in the contemporary audience for classical music. By Hyman's account they talked often, and deeply, about the meaning and mysticism of music, and the creative forces behind it.
Then in the mid-50s, Hyman met the late James A. Rubin--another Bostonian whose persona, as a businessman and extraverted bon vivant--was vastly different from that of Hyman. In ensuing years their common interest in oriental music enabled this very odd couple (the scholarly and comparatively diminutive Hyman with his deep eyes, quizzically arched eyebrows, and long charcoal beard, vs. the towering Rubin with his booming voice and PR-man bonhomie and swagger) to collaborate in the formation of the PanOrient Arts Foundation (which I'll cover in a subsequent writing).
As noted, Hyman was an active collector of oriental recordings. After a few shared meals in Boston delicatessens and Greek restaurants, the two agreed to meet to see each other's collections. Jim later would tell the story of turning up at Hyman's studio with his two LPs of Indian music (checked out from the Public Library) proudly in hand, to be confronted with Hyman's very comprehensive collection of hundreds of 78 rpm discs of usic--as well as Turkish and Indian instruments.
It was through the peripatetic Rubin, that Hyman (who hated travel as much as Rubin thrived on it) was able to expand the collection of recordings and instruments which nourished his profound love of music, and which led him into auditory realms which at once comforted and inspired him. And it was that same love that enabled Hyman to accept me--with no expressed interest whatsoever in his painting--as a frequent fellow traveller on musical paths, generously lending me his own sitar during my senior year in college.
We continued to meet, often in the company of the irrepressible Rubin, after my two years of sitar study in India (1964-66), most particularly when I returned to Harvard to teach (1974-1983). During those nine years I would lunch with Hyman almost every week, initially at the original Legal Seafoods in Inman Square in Cambridge, which with its sawdust-covered floors and boisterous atmosphere providing a welcome change from the august and often arrogant institution back along Cambridge Street.
* * * * * * *
Now, after dinner, the birthday candles heroically blown out--if not all at once (Hyman sleeps with an oxygen tube at night), and certainly not 96 in number, the last of some twenty guests have departed. The gray, cloudy New Hampshire Sunday afternoon outdoors encloses with warm comfort the now quiet, richly hued luminosity in Hyman and Stella's home, with its amazing combination of Hyman's original thin-lined sketches and large-scale colorburst oil canvases on the walls, and on adjacent shelves, in a somehow natural visual counterpoint, a seemingly endless procession of glass vases and plates and bowls of the Carnival Glass style, which Hyman has collected over the decades for their infinite range of darkling iridescent shades and shadows, to be subjects for some of his own works of still life with their mystical, motionless dances of color.
And in quiet and thankful contemplation, I celebrate the 96 years of this gentle and visionary man, and his priceless gift to me of a paternal musical blessing.
And on this rainy Sunday morning, the home is fragrant with the rich aromas of Stella's superb Greek cooking (with able assistance since yesterday from her sister-in-law Irene Caralis, and today, sister Anna Burland) for the guests who will be arriving shortly. Not that Hyman will be the seniormost among those celebrating the occasion; we are awaiting the arrival of Hyman's long-time physician and friend (and mine while I was teaching in Cambridge), the astonishingly alert Dr. Abraham Stone Freedberg, an eminent Harvard Medical School Professor Emeritus who is looking forward to his 101st birthday in May.
I first met Hyman in Boston when I was in college in the early 1960s. One of my roommates, knowing of my interest in Indian music (which I had discovered on recordings in the 1950s), introduced me to the daughter of Hyman's dealer, who arranged for me to meet the man who was eventually to continue, following my late mother's early nurture, the spiritual support for my music that I never received from my own father. I remember very clearly going to Hyman's studio on Newbury Street in Boston on numerous occasions, when we would sit, often with little or no conversation--and listen to some of the many 78 rpm recordings he had collected from India of the great masters--material which was totally unavailable at that time in the U.S.
It was with Hyman that I first heard the legendary Indian vocalist Kesarbai Kerkar--with her jewel-like improvisations in Indian ragas--and the equally legendary Ustad Bundu Khan, who had brought the magical sarangi from its role as a box-fiddle for accompaniment to vocalists to its current status as a virtuoso solo instrument par excellence. To my ears (then, and still) the voice of the sarangi was the closest instrumental equivalent to a musical cry from the human soul that I had ever heard, and Kesarbai's singing conveyed a haunting sense of the great timelessness and vast cultural expanses of India.
I knew little at the time of Hyman's enormous reputation as a painter. He was at one point considered by Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning to be the greatest American painter, and the de facto father of American Abstract Expressionism, with paintings hanging in many major American museums. As for his work itself: his studio in those days was filled with numerous canvases of various sizes stacked mysteriously against the walls, face-in; nor was there any work-in-progress on an easel with a palette of paints nearby that this Denver-born boy would have expected from having seen in his childhood Lust for Life, with Kirk Douglas' impassioned portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh. (Only much later was I able to see in his home, or in exhibitions, many of Hyman's great paintings, whose use of ecstatic and vibrant color challenges, in a very different style, that of the great Dutch master himself.) But there were exotic Indian instruments on the shelves, and when I was there the studio was filled with the voices of Indian music--that extraordinary musical universe of which I had had glimpses, also in Denver, while hearing my own early LPs of Indian classical music.
One of Hyman's early teachers, Denman Ross, had used musical scales as a model for a systematic treatment of of the painter's color palette. In the 1930s Hyman began to collect recordings of Greek, Turkish, Jewish, and Indian music, probably as a source for alternate aesthetic inspiration. I've often thought these musical explorations must have touched upon the coloristic aspects (iridescence in visual terms) of the microtonal intervals, scales, and ornaments of the oriental traditions. In the 1940s Hyman became close friends with the prolific Alan Hovhaness, one of the most widely recorded American composers (he styled himself "Scottish-Armenian", and is generally grouped among the modern musical orientalists), whose oeuvre is as controversial among the cognoscenti as it is beloved by many--including myself--in the contemporary audience for classical music. By Hyman's account they talked often, and deeply, about the meaning and mysticism of music, and the creative forces behind it.
Then in the mid-50s, Hyman met the late James A. Rubin--another Bostonian whose persona, as a businessman and extraverted bon vivant--was vastly different from that of Hyman. In ensuing years their common interest in oriental music enabled this very odd couple (the scholarly and comparatively diminutive Hyman with his deep eyes, quizzically arched eyebrows, and long charcoal beard, vs. the towering Rubin with his booming voice and PR-man bonhomie and swagger) to collaborate in the formation of the PanOrient Arts Foundation (which I'll cover in a subsequent writing).
As noted, Hyman was an active collector of oriental recordings. After a few shared meals in Boston delicatessens and Greek restaurants, the two agreed to meet to see each other's collections. Jim later would tell the story of turning up at Hyman's studio with his two LPs of Indian music (checked out from the Public Library) proudly in hand, to be confronted with Hyman's very comprehensive collection of hundreds of 78 rpm discs of usic--as well as Turkish and Indian instruments.
It was through the peripatetic Rubin, that Hyman (who hated travel as much as Rubin thrived on it) was able to expand the collection of recordings and instruments which nourished his profound love of music, and which led him into auditory realms which at once comforted and inspired him. And it was that same love that enabled Hyman to accept me--with no expressed interest whatsoever in his painting--as a frequent fellow traveller on musical paths, generously lending me his own sitar during my senior year in college.
We continued to meet, often in the company of the irrepressible Rubin, after my two years of sitar study in India (1964-66), most particularly when I returned to Harvard to teach (1974-1983). During those nine years I would lunch with Hyman almost every week, initially at the original Legal Seafoods in Inman Square in Cambridge, which with its sawdust-covered floors and boisterous atmosphere providing a welcome change from the august and often arrogant institution back along Cambridge Street.
* * * * * * *
Now, after dinner, the birthday candles heroically blown out--if not all at once (Hyman sleeps with an oxygen tube at night), and certainly not 96 in number, the last of some twenty guests have departed. The gray, cloudy New Hampshire Sunday afternoon outdoors encloses with warm comfort the now quiet, richly hued luminosity in Hyman and Stella's home, with its amazing combination of Hyman's original thin-lined sketches and large-scale colorburst oil canvases on the walls, and on adjacent shelves, in a somehow natural visual counterpoint, a seemingly endless procession of glass vases and plates and bowls of the Carnival Glass style, which Hyman has collected over the decades for their infinite range of darkling iridescent shades and shadows, to be subjects for some of his own works of still life with their mystical, motionless dances of color.
And in quiet and thankful contemplation, I celebrate the 96 years of this gentle and visionary man, and his priceless gift to me of a paternal musical blessing.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Saxophone East and West
Two recent musical discoveries prompt me today toward a brief exploration of how the saxophone has lent itself to differing interpretations by Rudresh Mahanthappa, a saxophonist raised by Indian-born parents in Boulder, Colorado and now thriving in New York jazz circles, and Andrew Morris, a British practitioner on the same instrument currently living in Bangladesh and performing there and abroad with a local group, "Arnob and Friends".
I first heard Mahanthappa in a dual concert with the South Indian saxophone master Kadri Gopalnath two or three years ago at Washington's Freer and Sackler Galleries, the oriental branches of the Smithsonian Institutution, America's national museum. I was particularly eager to hear Gopalnath, who has miraculously transformed a western instrument which customarily uses fixed pitches, primarily in jazz idioms, into a perfect vehicle for South Indian (Carnatic) classical music, which depends heavily upon microtonal glides and ornaments between notes in a musical line that is exceptionally fluid in its articulation. Examples of his distinctive performance style can be found on the "Shopping" section on his own Website, as well as on YouTube.
(As a momentary aside, a similar transformation of the essentially fixed-pitch western mandolin has been achieved by the prodigy Mandolin U. Shrinivas, whose own fluidly melodic miracles--albeit in a world music fusion style--can be heard on samples from his album "Samjanitha", as well as on various YouTube sites).
But to return to Mahanthappa: the artist was recently profiled in a superb New Yorker article by the senior jazz critic Gary Giddins, who focuses on two of the artist's albums, "Kinsmen" and "Apti", both of which he describes as being nothing short of "astonishing" (click on the links to hear samples). Giddins notes, among other things, Mahanthappa's collaboration with pianist Vijay Iyer (of whom more in a later blog), in the process of trying to define his own musical identity in a journey between elements both western and eastern, including a period of study and collaboration with the aforementioned Gopalnath.
I've not yet had the opportunity to listen to the two albums that are so perceptively reviewed by Giddins, but will have my own comments on them once I can obtain copies. In the meantime, I am happy to refer readers to two fine radio pieces: an extended and illuminating interview of Mahanthappa--including performance samples--from the marvelous NPR (National Public Radio) program "Fresh Air", hosted by Terry Gross, as well as another feature on the artist from All Things Considered, NPR's flagship evening news program. (I also hope to have shortly a link to a VOA Hindi Service interview of the artist by Rohit Kulkarni.)
And as for the television interview of Welsh saxophonist Andrew Morris by Ahsanul Haq of VOA's Bangla Service, you can see and hear it--in English--here. Morris speaks of his work with the band Arnob and Friends for the last two years. A concert video of the group at New York's Symphony Space, with Morris on saxophone, can be seen on the BrooklynVoice Website, along with a review and some of the group's lyrics. A lesser-quality video interview with Arnob, along with concert footage, is available on the WashingtonBanglaRadio Website.
I first heard Mahanthappa in a dual concert with the South Indian saxophone master Kadri Gopalnath two or three years ago at Washington's Freer and Sackler Galleries, the oriental branches of the Smithsonian Institutution, America's national museum. I was particularly eager to hear Gopalnath, who has miraculously transformed a western instrument which customarily uses fixed pitches, primarily in jazz idioms, into a perfect vehicle for South Indian (Carnatic) classical music, which depends heavily upon microtonal glides and ornaments between notes in a musical line that is exceptionally fluid in its articulation. Examples of his distinctive performance style can be found on the "Shopping" section on his own Website, as well as on YouTube.
(As a momentary aside, a similar transformation of the essentially fixed-pitch western mandolin has been achieved by the prodigy Mandolin U. Shrinivas, whose own fluidly melodic miracles--albeit in a world music fusion style--can be heard on samples from his album "Samjanitha", as well as on various YouTube sites).
But to return to Mahanthappa: the artist was recently profiled in a superb New Yorker article by the senior jazz critic Gary Giddins, who focuses on two of the artist's albums, "Kinsmen" and "Apti", both of which he describes as being nothing short of "astonishing" (click on the links to hear samples). Giddins notes, among other things, Mahanthappa's collaboration with pianist Vijay Iyer (of whom more in a later blog), in the process of trying to define his own musical identity in a journey between elements both western and eastern, including a period of study and collaboration with the aforementioned Gopalnath.
I've not yet had the opportunity to listen to the two albums that are so perceptively reviewed by Giddins, but will have my own comments on them once I can obtain copies. In the meantime, I am happy to refer readers to two fine radio pieces: an extended and illuminating interview of Mahanthappa--including performance samples--from the marvelous NPR (National Public Radio) program "Fresh Air", hosted by Terry Gross, as well as another feature on the artist from All Things Considered, NPR's flagship evening news program. (I also hope to have shortly a link to a VOA Hindi Service interview of the artist by Rohit Kulkarni.)
And as for the television interview of Welsh saxophonist Andrew Morris by Ahsanul Haq of VOA's Bangla Service, you can see and hear it--in English--here. Morris speaks of his work with the band Arnob and Friends for the last two years. A concert video of the group at New York's Symphony Space, with Morris on saxophone, can be seen on the BrooklynVoice Website, along with a review and some of the group's lyrics. A lesser-quality video interview with Arnob, along with concert footage, is available on the WashingtonBanglaRadio Website.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)