New Music

Unless you majored in music at the university level, “New Music” is probably not what’s loaded on your ipod under “classical”. I’m not even sure what to call it, and I don’t think even its fans do—new music, twelve-tone, atonal, experimental, fashion-forward, whatever. However, World’s Foremost Authority on Everything (aka, my daughter) spent her pacifier days being entertained (read, shut up) by a video of the Three Tenors, so traditional classical music is so, well, BTDT that we trot off to “New Music” a lot.

WFA was delighted, early on, by hearing John Adams conduct his Grand Pianola Music, Shaker Loops, and other works during his guest artist gig at Northwestern. We progressed on to attending a performance of his opera A Flowering Tree, which oddly enough I loved and she detested. It made her so aggravated she wanted to argue with him in person, but Mr. Adams escaped her clutches, luckily for him. However, my toleration for pure orchestral new music only goes on for so long, but unfortunately most orchestral performances go on for about twice that long.

Therefore, it was with some shaking in my crocs sandals that I agreed to form part of the cheering squad at the final concert of Camposition, a showcase for music composition students in the summer program of the Chicago Academy for the Arts. Dal Niente was playing the music composed by these students, and I was delighted to see a harpist, and even more delighted to see that that harpist was Ben Melsky, from whom WFA took a few lessons before he graduated from Northwestern. Well, I’m certainly not qualified to say that Ben is the best harpist of his generation (although others have), but I can certainly report he hasn’t been slacking off since graduating, as the guy has forearm muscles like steel bands.

It was a most interesting chamber music ensemble overall, with Mabel Kwan on piano, Paul Mulligan playing clarinet and Ryan Muncy on saxophone—a different set of instruments than the omnipresent violin, cello, etc. The piece I most enjoyed was Monica George’s One Day a Rabbit of My Own. It was the longest work, and employed a lot of innovative techniques (striking harp strings, for example) which actually enhanced the music. Monica put a lot of thought into the piece and how to use the available instruments in the composition. I know so, especially since she came over to borrow WFA’s harp composition handbooks several weeks earlier.

Student composer Brendan Mohr gets the prize for the most works generated, with 4 works on the program. I found most of them a bit difficult for me to click on, but his endings were particularly striking and exciting. WFA and I had a fine time arguing about Lauren Williams’ work Illusions and WFA was thrilled to get the sheet music for Jahan Nolley’s piece Wane.

Maybe it was because the entire concert only lasted an hour and I knew relief was in sight if needed. Maybe it was because the room and the audience was small, with black walls, but it seemed like a velvety experience to me: intimate, engaging, and an exciting showcase of personal vision. My only gripe is that, in an educational setting with a production of music most of us still need to learn to appreciate, there was no information whatsoever provided. Come on folks! How about some liner notes for us dunderheads who would like to know about your inspirations, what you were thinking, even why you chose your titles?! And Dal Niente! PR, guys! I don’t want to have to go chasing you down on the internet just to find out who you are! What if I were super rich and wanted to hire you? (Okay, I’m not, but I wish…)

Anyway, I’m not quite a convert, and I do think listening to music with no clear theme and a lot of mathematics is a bit of a stretch. But that Sunday, in that setting, with so much earnest talent, it was a privilege, a delight, and why I am so happy to live near a big city.

The Modern Wing of the Art Institute

There’s been a lot of buzz lately gushing over Renzo Piano’s design of the new Modern Wing of Chicago’s Art Institute since it opened in May, but I’ve just now had the chance to hike down there and take it in. Now, be forewarned that I may be irrationally prejudiced in my comments—I was wearing what turned out to be the most uncomfortable shoes of my life, and it was a teensy bit hard to focus on the architecture when you are developing 5 blisters the size of lollipops. Oh well, they match the mosquito bites all over my ankles. So much sacrificed in the attempt to look arty and chic, vs. crocs and gone to seed!

Photographs of the outside of the building have produced some spectacular images of line and negative space, but from street level, gee, I dunno—looks like an industrial park building to me. Inside, I really really wanted to see the collection, much of which has been “in the basement” for years. We wandered in the door, asked for information, and were told to start at the third floor and work our way down. Getting to the third floor, that was the trick! Asked a security guard, took the elevator he pointed at, ended up on the third floor in the restaurant/drinks area. Can’t get there from here—back downstairs, long walk to another elevator, not the right one either. Another security guard, another elevator. I felt like Pac man in the maze, and needed to sit down even before, on the third try, we finally reached the galleries.

The galleries themselves strike me as being exceptionally well lighted, and glare and shadow free. Although there was quite a crowd, it was easy to move around the rooms, and there’s plenty of space between paintings to take a good look without having to listen to someone else’s ipod. However, I wish my companion’s name had been Ariadne, because I needed a large ball of string to find my way in and out of each gallery, and make any sort of efficient progression from room to room, out of one level and down to the next. Maybe we’re supposed to feel the delight of discovery and surprise, but I like some sort of sensible path, myself. I don’t want to be aware of the route, or need to pay close attention, when I am trying to focus on a display. So, as an interior space, while Piano’s design may work well for the art, it doesn’t work all that well for the humans who want to use it, and thus fails my own personal architecture test.

As to the art—it was great to see the Matisse Apples again, as my daughter and I had spent several delightful hours copying it several years ago. (Hint: nonchalantly swipe one of the folding stools and just sit down as if you belonged there. Confine your art materials to colored pencils and paper and no one will bother you.) Also, I really enjoyed seeing the Giorgio de Chirico Eventuality of Destiny. I asked about this painting over 17 years ago, was told it was in storage, and it’s been moldering there ever since, to the best of my knowledge. It’s a very interesting work with figures who look like Greek statues, dancing like the Graces, but far out of proportion to the room they’re in, with the ceiling closing in on them. I’m still thinking about that image. I’m not sure it’s entirely serious, although with that ponderous title De Chirico might not have actually been joking, either.

I particularly enjoyed seeing the collection of Joseph Cornell’s boxes. These works resemble the little personal shrines you see in Japan, and I think they do a very good job of focusing your attention down on the artist’s personal iconography and drawing you into an intimate visual experience. There are quite a few of them, and seeing them all together helps somewhat to explain each one. I’m anxious to go back and spend some time just focused on that selection. There’s also some nice Legers, albeit mostly smaller works. The place to see Leger is definitely the Pompidou Center in Paris, where it’s a breathtaking experience to see the Legers in the context of a building that looks so much like them.

After about two hours of wandering (45 minutes of it futilely), we ended up with dinner at the eponymous Renzo Piano restaurant. Delicious, but definitely in the cute food category. It does seem to be a trend that the more you pay for the meal, the less food you get. My companion’s face really fell when the “red plum upside down cake” arrived and it was the size of a spool of thread. All very delicious, but I wasn’t worried about the scale the next morning.

Anyway, it’s a fine collection and well worth a look see. But clutch your map, and, oh yeah, wear comfortable shoes.

Live music’s dirty secret

It’s been unintentional, but it struck me recently that I’ve stopped going to the movies. I used to enjoy the dimming of the lights, the giant screen, the hushed concentration that the theater offered. When the hush disappeared, slowly so did I.

There are certain types of features where you’re prepared for having the back of your seat kicked constantly: mostly pictures made by Disney, Pixar or the Harry Potter series. After all, it’s a time honored tradition to dump your kids off at the Saturday matinee. When it’s an adult movie, at the ten o’clock show on Saturday night, I can’t bear the sound of wailing infants. In fact, some of us went on Saturday night to ESCAPE the sound of our wailing infant. My take on it is, if you can’t afford the $15 for a babysitter, you can’t afford the $20 for the tickets, either. And running a baby around at 10 o’clock at night, with a ton of other people, and the oh-so-clean state of most movie theaters—ugh!

Babies are only half the problem, though. The other half is people old enough to know better—senior citizens. Some seem to think they are still sitting in their living rooms, where they apparently talk throughout the programming, and ahem! some of us have become a trifle hard of hearing. Or maybe it’s just that they have to ENTIRELY DROWN OUT the sound of the movie. And when we run out of commentary, some of us just seem to have to find that little piece of wrapped candy (or four or five) that’s wwaaaaayyyy down at the bottom of our purses.

Thanks to a giant screen tv and Netflix, I can now watch a movie with someone who knows how to behave, and the snacks are cheaper chez nous, also. Surely, though, a classical music concert attracts a different audience, no?

Well, maybe an evil fairy waved her wand over the Yo Yo Ma/Chicago Symphony Concert at Ravinia on Saturday night, but the same brigade showed up. The lawn seats there were $20 (special and dare I say cynical increase over the usual $10 for less pop star performances?), so I know the couple on the next blanket had enough dough to cover the babysitter. They had a stroller the size of a Hummer, and decided to keep their infant quiet by rattling a large set of toy keys throughout the performance. Then there was the three year old who began her aria just at Yo Yo Ma’s longest cello solo cranked up. But the most enjoyable performance was the mother-daughter team, now dubbed the cackle hens. Want to know all about daughter’s roommates, shopping expeditions, friends’ love affairs, problems with finding good shoes? I can tell you. In fact, so can anyone sitting within 100 feet of them. MY daughter was reduced to tears of frustration trying to hear.

For many outdoor classical performances you can get away from these boors by moving your blanket. But Ravinia seems to have no limit to the amount of tickets they will sell. (We once were forced to sit on the sidewalk during a performance of the Gypsy Kings. I wonder what would have happened if someone had shouted “fire!”) In an attempt to squeeze the juice out of anyone dumb enough to attend, there is obviously no concern that there be any type of quality to the experience.

I had resolved never to attend again unless I bought seats in the Pavilion. That is, until I remembered the Lyric Opera’s matinee of Der Rosenkavalier that daughter and I attended a couple of years ago. We had good seats on the main floor, and my memory is that they cost around 70 bucks a pop. However, I have no idea of how the opera ended, as the entire last scene of the opera was utterly drowned out, and the sight lines totally obscured, by the amount of elderly patrons who decided to get up, leave early, clank their walkers up the aisles, discuss the exact time their trains left, and slap-slap-slap the exit doors, not necessarily in time to the music. Haven't these people learned any manners in their seventy or eighty years? Where do they have to be that is so much more important than where they are? Has attention span become so short that a stellar production requiring hundreds of hours of work and thousands and thousands of dollars, and for which they paid a tidy ticket price, cannot hold their interest?

I did complain several times to Lyric management. They don’t let people in once the music has started, and they make an announcement to turn off cell phones. I asked them to add a request that people who must leave early, do so at intermission. Although they said they would consider it, nothing has been done. They lost my yearly subscription. Although I’ve been a subscriber off and on for nearly 30 years, never again until something is done. We buy individual tickets only, far fewer, and only for evening performances.

Maybe nobody cares. Maybe the bean counters are satisfied with their gate. Maybe I’ll switch to music dvds.

Skyline from a different angle

It’s generally a good event if you’re thinking of it two days later. Sunday I had the opportunity to go on a Chicago lakefront architectural cruise guided by Geoffrey Baer, who has hosted a number of PBS programs on Chicago architecture and history. As is always the case with this oh-so-architectural city, there was a lot to take in.

For many years (years ago) I sold real estate on Chicago’s near-downtown Gold Coast and Lincoln Park, and during my college years worked for temp agencies so there is hardly a pre-1977 office building or pre-1992 apartment or condo that I haven’t been in. In short, I thought I had seen ‘em all. But, in a metropolitan area we tend to see things either from street level or from the windows of another building. Seeing the downtown area from river level, while details were pointed out by a knowledgeable guide, really knocks your perceptions out of whack.

It’s hard for me to see architecture as pure art. To me, a building is mostly about usability and function, and harmony with its surroundings (with nods to Mies and Wright). I’ve been particularly impressed with the kind of analysis Christopher Alexander et al make in the book A Pattern Language, which ably documents how space can influence and shape behavior, use and comfort. Building as fine craft, yes, but as art, not so much.

Seeing downtown skyscrapers, infrastructure and transportation from river level somehow abstracted the beauty of the structures for me, and I was much more able to appreciate line, surface and inter-relationships. That was awesome enough. But then the magic happened. As we headed back in from the lake portion of the trip, a fog began rolling in, obscuring the lower half of most of the buildings hugging the beach. Suddenly, Chicago seemed some hi-rise Brigadoon or Fata Morgana. Truly, we were in the fairy realm.

Clear Glass

I’m very fond of music DVDs. No, not the MTV kind, but the kind where a usually classical artist talks about his work, plays, and we get to follow him around. Sometimes the talent is so overwhelming, it’s hard to picture a Leif Ove Andsnes or Boris Berezovsky inhabiting the same recognizable universe as the rest of us.

While these videos somewhat cut them down to human size, in other ways they elevate these artists—even though they live in the same cities we do, the excellence of their art transforms them and shapes their world. Recently, we had the opportunity to see Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. I wouldn’t say I was the biggest fan of Philip Glass’s music—I’ve found it hard to listen to, sometimes harsh, and repetitive. But after watching this, and hearing the snippets of pieces in the background throughout the DVD, I feel a serious need to get my hands on some of his works. It’s absolute torture not to hear any complete works while watching the program.

The people surrounding Glass also captured my heart, especially his latest wife. She clearly loves him, and early on is clearly so thrilled that this genius loves her. As time goes on, though, and they have children, she appears to become lonely and filled with longing for a deeper relationship with a man whose deepest relationship is with his music. I wanted to send her a copy of Middlemarch, but I didn’t think it would help her be any happier.

I once heard a Spanish proverb, “Take what you want. Take what you want and pay for it.” Everybody in this film has gone after what they want, and they have all paid, heavily. The music is stunning and complicated, but you will want to hear more of it after watching portrait. I got it from Netflix, but it’s also available on Amazon.

Fair’s fair—throw the bums out

The recent University of Illinois admissions scandal has the Chicago Tribune in a tizzy, but most of the reports I’ve seen are missing the critical ethical point. The press seems to be riled by, gasp, the fact that patronage and privilege has entered into college admissions. Next we’ll see headlines about rich kids doing better in school than poor kids. Or that the sun rose in the east this morning.

Influence, money, and where daddy or mommy went to school have always had a profound influence on where junior gets in. But not at STATE universities. Those are the ones that are supposed to be fair—that striving, hard working kids who are smart, get good grades, and test scores above a certain level can rely on admission (barring getting arrested, having a known drug habit, or plagiarizing someone else’s novel—which, by the way, don’t seem to bar you from some Ivies.)

If you were smart enough to get into Harvard, but your family had 8 kids and you spent your summers working on the loading dock, the University of Illinois was always a place you could depend on for a solid education, one that you might be able to pay for. Sure, maybe the dorms have the hardest mattresses on earth, and many of your classes will be taken with 200 of your favorite freshmen, but the instruction’s fine, the libraries extensive, and sooner or later you’ll cut the herd experience down to size via all the campus groups available. When we toured the U of I, it bothered me more to see the extensive tutoring facilities for athletes and the attention paid to them than the quality of the student digs. Sports bring in money and alumni loyalty, I guess. Never been a big factor for me at the University of Chicago, and maybe I’m wrong, but studying at the Sorbonne probably doesn’t have a big athletic component, either.

The University of Illinois has always been the place for smart strivers, a place where you could be certain you could get in on your own merits, not because you knew someone. It was pretty easy to figure out the rules—right GPA, right test scores, you’re in. No sucking up to daddy’s law partner, no beating yourself into meaningless volunteer activities just to look good. No wondering what you said wrong in an admissions essay read by a snooty admissions officer five years older than you. You got in based on what you had achieved, not whom your family knew.

The trustees and politicians who put the fix in have destroyed something good and true, fair and dependable, something truly democratic. If I were a University of Illinois graduate, I’d be organizing lanterns and pitchforks rallies in front of their homes.

No rapture

Okay, I know they’re two of the hippest authors around; Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, that is. I know so because my in-house authority on everything cool (aka teenage daughter) has assured me so. I even heard Neil Gaiman speak at the Printers Row Lit Festival in June, and liked him a lot. He was self effacing, dressed in black (the color of the entire contents of my closet, also), and reassuringly middle aged. He had some good jokes, too, although I’ve since seen the same ones at venues all over the internet. So, the guy recognizes a good thing (in fact, several good things) when he sees it. In the weeks after the Lit Fest, I saw him here, there and everywhere. Was I just being hyper-aware? No, he gets his name and face around as much as Obama on campaign—okay, maybe I’m just a tad jealous of his promotion machine.

With great trembling and anticipation, therefore, I picked up Good Omens, which my authority cites as a cult classic. No, actually, my daughter insisted I would be hopelessly déclassé (yes she uses words like that) if I did not instantly consume it. Read it I did, all 367 pages, and the month and a half it took me to force myself to finish it seemed longer than waiting for the Second Coming. It’s a so-clever novel about the Apocalypse (wink) which you’re not supposed to figure out right away unless you’re a teen (wink, wink) or a 50 something writer who’s seen this kind of “clever” for about 45 years now. Oh, and the good angel has some faults (wink, wink, wink) and the bad angel isn’t so bad (wink). I got all that by, maybe, page 20. Then, for 347 more pages I have to trail these guys around England while they do absolutely nothing, have no character arc, and nobody in the book has the slightest human appeal. Pratchett and Gaiman must have developed serious ticks by now from all that winking. I do get to figure out who are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and other stuff that’s so obvious my Giant Schnauzer could spot it.

My opinions on this book naturally elicited a huge sigh and significant eye rolling from world’s foremost authority. However, there is one thing I’m very grateful for—I’m going straight to heaven. I already did my time in purgatory.