Roger Shapiro Fund

10/19/2024

I'm am thrilled to share this piece with you.
Thanks and bravi to Mark Shapiro and Cantori NY.

Del Tredici skeptics:

It is his modernists chops that come out and grab us (his A-roll material) even if we've been lulled into a pleasant, unsuspecting trance by his B-roll material.

I took many many notes about the two performances. This is the second.

--He bathes luxuriantly in the antiquated language, its quaintness.

--He has grave doubts. He was raised Catholic and "I do believe" is turned upside-down thru repetition.

--He was into quodlibets. Here, not a quodlibet, but the coincidental scansions of Herrick's children's graces and Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.

--He was ever the trickster. A trickster like no other composer I can think of, although Strauss donned that cap in Til Eulenspiegel.

Of his works, I am enthralled by this one and his second string quartet. His Cygnus piece -- proud to have it' it's a big shaggy dog story, very amusing; it does not have the entrancing modernisms that Herrick's Oratorio has. Its quodlibet is The Last Rose with the Star Spangled Banner -- caprophagous grin.

Performed on May 21, 2023, as part of Cantori New York's spring concert series at Church of St. Francis Xavier, 46 West 16th Street, NYC. This was its world...

07/04/2024

This is one of my favorite works by Agustín Castilla-Ávila. The title --

"As if the ways of nature could ever be reactionary."

https://www.tauriska.at/download/kohr/Zitate_Kohr_gesamt.pdf

05/24/2024

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/composersconcordance/1240888?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR32nHCjvGzfxPhlHpyAQO-MBcgfQ45nogV3BmCyGeuGx3jgNrwrjpLj4s8_aem_AUlvpepYlRYaZzugExbcn-kK0oDFO9vUs0LEVuX6xImKnfbrCe83Q0oC3fA0slw7BpxFc9bhrMTV6uRJ3LR44zjz

"We still have to overcome the notion that a clarinet squeaks. People need to remember what a beautiful instrument it is, inclu...

05/18/2024

Choose your infinities wisely.

05/18/2024

And Bees of Paradise - Hart Crane

I had come all the way here from the sea,
Yet met the wave again between your arms
Where cliff and citadel – all verily
Dissolved within a sky of beacon forms –

Sea gardens lifted rainbow-wise through eyes
I found.
Yes, tall, inseparably our days
Pass sunward. We have walked the kindled skies
Inexorable and girded with your praise,

By the dove filled, and bees of Paradise

I. And Bees of Paradise (Hart Crane)
II. Cushion me soft (Whitman)
III. Dirge (Shakespeare)
IV. Voyages - 5 (Hart Crane)

Marsyas Productions, with The Village TripMarsyas and TVT gave a Boykan memorial concert for TVT '23. Later in the same year, there was another TVT performan...

04/27/2024

Tanguito, with part of the Waltz

There's another bit coming that includes the Siciliana.

On this one Joel Suben speaks.

1988 or soLikely a Cygnus show at Christ & St. Stephen's ChurchJoel Suben is talking about his Suite of DancesOren Fader and William Anderson, guitarswhere i...

04/26/2024

https://vimeo.com/934624971?share=copy

This is "Denk Es, O Seele! by Frank Brickle" by Canadian Music Centre BC on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

04/25/2024

The chamber Society crumb documentary teaser

This is "Ancient Voices - TEASER" by Tristan Cook on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

04/05/2024

This author went to Sarah Lawrence. Died tragically at a young age.

My students recommend him.

https://www.amazon.com/Cruising-Utopia-Futurity-Sexual-Cultures/dp/0814757286/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2725OC0IZB9SS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.CSsbZy8XyPFj7zfd4ddnAR9xM_PyRY1tT-hBc07FPUy3LBCoqGq9eyBt0iQKl68_mLI_8FFp78OGdkBEjMqjHfNomIc8eO1pzT09k5FhunW4Y4a9fxbfhE9YKaHZ_iQy8x1xfjSDO8leeyMH_-ENjw88ml0Tdt7zMFxkI-PfRMGhRtR_3Vx5Zjm3EPUNqeuCFZSX0dLqJch040s7cZEpzh1xO54Qvf-3zEEEJ-jEs5E.dy1pXzEQUQWmG5wCDzTqvy-phkM7bJ2oUENXQuIYl2I&dib_tag=se&keywords=esteban+muñoz&qid=1712353314&sprefix=esteban+muñoz%2Caps%2C64&sr=8-2

03/29/2024

https://youtu.be/dNalI2FT5TA?si=H5NDL42qnj-bKEH1

Instrumental classicals of ethiopian orthodox mezmures with Kirar, Washint,Kebero and Mesenko***

03/17/2024

"For the moment I am happily telling myself that Alex Ross testified to a gradual, unwitting Ruskification of David Lang’s work."

Squandered some precious moments editing this. Thanks to those who nudged me about certain points.

03/16/2024

I met Louis Andriessen when I played De Staadt with NY Phil under Gunther Schuller. David Starobin was the other guitarist and Scott Kuney played bass. He sent me a signed copy of his wonderful guitar solo ("Triplum"), which I gave to a student and never got back. That was the Horizons Festival and my friend Rolv Ytrehus was in the audience to boo.

What did Andreiessen mean by the title? He may have explained it somewhere, but not knowing, I now free associate.

Never finding myself short of words, and unmindful of my sister's sage sisterly advice "you don't have to issue forth every thought that goes through your Brian" -- here we go.

Some of us became attuned to the problematics of grandiosity and its manifestations. We came to understand Bauhaus, Stifter, Dewey, Karl Krauss, Peirce, James, Loos, Mies, etc. We came to feel the same exultation in work that triumphs over the pathological grandiosity that is a key chapter in the authoritarian playbook.

We all have our faces shoved in kakistocracy now.

Was Andriessen thinking about this issue? If we can't know, it's then free association.

Some of us developed a severe allergy to imperial architecture. Everything pompous in Paris. Everything Kaiserlich und Königlich in Karlsruhe and Vienna. There is perhaps nothing I despise more than Buckingham Palace. I find it revolting.

And this is why I love Ruskin & Burkhardt, and in that regard, an anecdote about David Lang's Ruskin take-down, his opera, "Modern Painters" -- somewhere else.

**the punchline today**

I feel some misguided young composers inhale the once vanquished grandiosity of their grand cities and allow it to feed into the hubris that comes from the accidents of their birth.

Once vanquished -- yes, by Bauhaus, form follows function; vanquished by a century of sensitive artists responding in a useful way to pathologies.

And this explains to me what first struck me as completely bizarre and inexplicable -- the American percussionist (now living in Austria) who explained to me that Davidovsky is not cool enough for Klangforum Wien.

And I am looking for the sincere lower nobles who consider themselves middle class and feel it's up to them to prove themselves and work hard to do that.

Leon Fleisher: never listen to the critics -- when they praise you.

Let's add: do not introject grandiosity of any sort.

US imperialism, shock doctrine, neoliberal madness of every stripe is bringing the US to the abyss. The middle class is getting destroyed in the process.