Ten Questions for Nik Beeson

Posted on July 23, 2015 by barczablog
Composer Nik Beeson

Composer Nik Beeson

Nik Beeson is a digital communicator & electro-acoustic composer, and completely new to me. I’ve been listening to the CD for DIVE: Odes for Lighea at the encouragement of Alex Fallis, who will be directing the project in its premiere July 31st at The Array Space. I admire Beeson’s ambitions in a work that aims to be political, philosophical and yes, musical. The music on the CD has grown on me (I’ve heard it at least 5 times).

I was glad to get the chance to ask Beeson ten questions: five about him and five more about his work on DIVE.

1-Are you more like your father or your mother?

Some combination of the two.

My folks are wartime British boarding school raised immigrants, and so there is a sense of transience and a loose sense of place deep in my core. We have no other relatives in Canada, and it’s been at least a couple of decades since I last made it to Britain.

My mother is classically cultured (she studied architecture and design), and so I was exposed to a lot of art; at a very young age I could comfortably identify the styles of any major visual or classical music artist. She’s a very bright hardcore rationalist (her mother was the first female surgeon in Scotland and an atheist) and so there was a decidedly no bullshit empirical rigour about things.

My dad is a gentle and kind soul, who left wartime British boarding school into the army. He’s got a lot of ground to him, as well as a strong romantic streak. A man with a deep and powerful well of feeling which, as a British war brat, boarding school, army dude, didn’t have an obvious expressive outlet. Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’, Strauss’ ‘Four Last Songs’ and Bizet’s ‘The Pearl Fishers’ can all bring him to tears.

There were no instruments in the house until my folks gave me a guitar for my 16th birthday (I sucked for a very long time!). Our record collection was pretty straightforward: Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, with a Fats Waller if I remember, and a lot of British Military Marching Bands. So, my mother educated me in identifying the masters (and maybe even to aspire to be like them) and my dad could really really feel the music.

First music class in Grade 7 we were told to chose an instrument. I identified that the French Horn was undoubtedly the freaking loudest and also definitely the coolest looking instrument so I chose that. The parts were boring as heck but I would get ‘A’s all the time which was, given the fact that I was a pretty lousy student at everything else, a bit of a mystery to me.

I was given a guitar at 16 and taught myself basic chords. Mostly I ‘noodled’ – fretting – generating melodic patterns and memorising them. That was about it. But I definitely liked it, and it definitely served some kind of deep purpose for me. I wrote poems which I put to music: music was, for a long time just a kind of tool for making philosophical ideas accessible.

I used to busque quite a bit, and I remember a very striking man coming up to me one day and saying very directly, “Get musical…. get musical…”. I was haunted by that: he was dead right – I wasn’t really listening to what was going on, I was just pounding out a set of structures that I hung words off of. I’m super grateful for that old guy: maybe that was where it started.

2-What is the best thing or worst thing about being a composer of “new” music?

I came to ‘new music’ semi-accidentally; I was hired as the web director for the Canadian Music Centre. I had been marginally experimental in my listening before: Eno, Fripp, etc., but working at the CMC blew my ears open. Linda Smith, Eve Egoyan, Claude Vivier, R. Murray Schafer… and then I drifted over to, as my world music friend called it, ‘the dark side’: electroacoustic music. Jean Piche, Gilles Gobeil, Robert Normandeau… it felt a little as if there were almost no constraints at all on how one could try and express an idea or a feeling. This, through some kind chemical reaction, allowed my heart and mind to develop a much more direct and honest path to sound. Sound became a much more potent intellectual and emotionally expressive medium.

So this is what’s great about New Music; the uncluttered forging of direct, fresh and authentic connections from your heart and mind to an expressive medium.

I also love New Music because I feel like I am always in a process of discovery. I truly love this. I do not know what style I’m working in, and I don’t need to know. I have no formal musical education, no authorities, no compositional community, no precedence,. so what I end up creating is pretty raw and direct and naiive and unabashed.

That’s what’s great about ‘New Music’; the feeling of discovery, the feeling of chasing a very unique ‘something’ that is somehow yourself and also somehow very other, and that you are not bound by predetermined styles (and the implicit emotional boundaries of those styles).

What is painful about New Music is that there is almost no audience for it (although anonymity has its benefits!) and no capacity for sustainably making a living from it. So it becomes a project that you do out on the fringe of your daily life, trying to fit in frags of time hither and thither between everything else that keeps house & home & family together. This makes it supremely difficult to work a really deep vein of creativity through. I can only create fragments and flashes of something much larger which would require many many months to delve into and truly uncover.

3-Who do you like to listen to or watch?

I don’t listen to much, though I like a lot of different musics.

The most consistent staple in my music deck over the last year has been Mavis Staples singing Jeff Tweedy’s songs on ‘One True Vine’, and I pick up an acoustic guitar and sing ‘Holy Ghost’ a couple of times a week. Staples just has so much soul and such an incredible and honest access to her emotions…

Here’s what I’ve favourited on YouTube over the last while:

Patrick Watson, Autechre, Best of Gramatik, Karl Richter playing Bach’s Passacaglia & Fugue in C Minor (a touchstone), Unchained Melody – Righteous Brothers, Jesus Make up my Dying Bed – Blind Willie Johnson, Gavin Bryars (with Tom Waits) ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ (repeatedly), Hundred Waters, Cliff Edwards singing “When You Wish Upon A Star’ (I periodically sing this too), Bill Withers – Ain’t No Sunshine, Beatles – Blackbird, Danny Michel – Cold Road, Martin Sexton – There Go I, Johnny Cash – God’s Gonna Cut You Down, Benjamin Britten – ‘Four Sea Interludes’ from Peter Grimes, Jeff Buckley, Zed’s Dead…

‘Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus’, produced by Hal Wilner, may be my favourite album.

I don’t have tv so can’t comment on any of the tv series other than that they seem one hell of a lot better than the stuff we watched when I was a kid. My spouse (Fides) took considerable interest in ‘Downton Abbey’ for a time, but I was traumatised by it, so we had to stop.

Fides Krucker and Earl Pastko

Fides Krucker and Earl Pastko

I like to watch how my bean vines climb…

4-What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

I’d love to be able to play piano. I can, with enough repetition, play compositional ideas kind of almost adequately so that I can hand them off. But it would be marvellous to be really able to freely improvise.

I don’t read scores anymore. When I was a teenager I could but no more. So, being able to express compositional ideas straight out of my head onto paper, being able to scrawl notes… that would be great.

I’d love to be able to just see a score and play some of the music that blows my mind… being able to play music that really blows me away opens up new pathways in my sonic imagination…

5-When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?

Playing music.
Playing structured improvs with friends.
Hanging with my sons.
Dancing: ballroom dance, contact dance, jumpin’ aboot, etc….
Trail running
Getting into the wilderness

*******

Five more about DIVE: Odes for Lighea

1- I read the following on your website: “DIVE’ is based on Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s short story ‘The Professor & the Siren’.” Please expand upon the sources & inspirations for DIVE: Odes for Lighea.

I was completely drawn into ‘The Professor & the Siren’ the first time I read it.

“As I told you Corbera, she was a beast but at the same instant also an Immortal, and it is a pity that no speech can express this synthesis continually, with such utter simplicity, as she expressed it in her own body… Not for nothing is she the daughter of Calliope: ignorant of all culture, unaware of all wisdom, contemptuous of any moral inhibitions, she belonged, even so, to the fountainhead of all culture, of all wisdom, of all ethics…”

Richard Sanger's adaptation of Giuseppe Di Lampedusa’s “The Professor and the Siren” sits among an admiring group of artists.

Richard Sanger’s adaptation of Giuseppe Di Lampedusa’s “The Professor and the Siren” sits among an admiring group of artists.

With that I was hooked.

When I was 23 I spent eight months solo caretaking a whale observatory on an island off the NE coast of Vancouver Island. I understood, very intensely, Rosario’s need for solitude, and also the effect that intense solitude can have on a young man. I was transfixed and completely in love with the wilderness and I undoubtedly associated it at a very deep level as being both divine and feminine.

Following my stint on the island I rowed a 16’ fishing dory down the west coast for 6 weeks. I once had a massive male Orca pass directly under my little boat, clearly scoping me out, turning on his side to look up into my face. On another occasion a Humpback whale dove deep right next to me, its immense tail as long as the boat. In both cases I was completely alone, many miles from other people, and I would describe both experiences as truly magnificent, ecstatic and terrifying.

In my youth I had a kind of dangerous wrestling war with my own creativity and I depicted this creative force as a subterranean or submarine divine feminine force which could arise from the deep without warning. I was entranced and thrilled by the ride, but I also intuited that this force could be exceedingly dangerous. In ‘DIVE’ Lighea at one point recites the names of Ancient Mariners who have been her lovers and I suppose I would have counted the likes of Rimbaud, Van Gogh, Hendrix, and Cobain as amongst them; the divine feminine lit them up and consumed them. This was a poetic explanation I had for creative outbursts whose source I couldn’t really understand; the contents of my own writing seemed alien to me. It was all very archetypal and Joseph Campbellian stuff; I was a self-professed Jungky.

So, yes, writing music about a deadly oceanic wild & divine feminine being made a whole lot of sense to me.

2-The story of this opera would seem to set up fascism and the wild as opposites or perhaps as antagonists. Could you explain?

I cover this topic in some detail in an essay ‘Fascism & the Wild in DIVE: Odes for Lighea’.
Lampedusa’s setting the story when Mussolini was at the height of his power was by no means accidental. The interaction of the dominant fascist dictator with a wild, feminine, divine being is really very very compelling.

I did some research on Mussolini and came across his classic speech declaring war on the Allies (aka his ‘Vincere’ speech), and this speech became a very significant throughline in the music, and also in the theatrical performance. Let’s face it, Mussolini is incredibly charismatic, and his rhetorical bravado, his musicality, eloquence and timing are spellbinding.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the wild and I was certainly very interested in depicting a struggle between fascism and wild, Mussolini and Mermaid. We associate fascism with repression, oppression, militance, authoritarianism and dehumanisation. We associate the wild with many of the opposite traits: it is uncontrollable, wilful, uncivilized, irregular, and openly sexual.

The Prelude – the very opening vignette – really sets the stage for the kind of interaction to follow. We hear a clock, which turns into jackboots, and then Mussolini’s speech rising up, with the great crowd swells. The final roar of the ecstatically excited crowd is suddenly interrupted and completely obliterated by a most ferocious roar from the mermaid, after which the roaring crowd is dispelled into the roar of surf and the calls of seagulls. I liked this very much. I very much wanted the Mermaid to obliterate the Fascists.

But art and political preference are poor companions; when you allow political preference to dictate your art it becomes propaganda. Politics is about agenda, power and control whereas artistic creativity is much less predictable and can’t be herded in that way. There are attributes that fascism and the wild have in common. Neither are democratic and both can be violent. But the violence of the wild isn’t ideological or judgemental, it has no attitude towards morality at all: it’s amoral and exceedingly fecund.

Rosario, when asked by Lighea to join him, refuses. So he refuses the wild divine, running back to his books and his Platonic ideals. But the life of ideal forms only have two paths: Utopian escapism because the world can never be so symmetrical; or the ideological terrorism of trying to force a perfect form onto a very imperfect and irrational world. Rosario chose the former, Mussolini chose the latter: neither survives.

The parallels between de Lampedusa’s tale, and the attitude of Canada’s current government towards ecological sustainability and democracy were not lost on me. During the time I wrote the music for DIVE my day job was at a human rights and ecological justice org. I witnessed very clearly the antipathy of this government towards environmental sustainability, common democratic procedures, not to mention the arts. While I wouldn’t characterise our current government as ‘fascist’, I do see tendencies – repression of dissent, intimidation, a total pre-occupation with maintaining power at the expense of democratic processes, the consistent defunding of arts, ecological and women’s orgs – which fall in line with Mussolini’s antagonism to the feminine and the wild.

3-How are you approaching the creation of the score?

My main techniques for creating the score were sourcing, improvising, writing, recording and mixing mixing mixing mixing. I found inspiration from recordings of whales and wolves, the ocean, the dark dissonant tonality of Harry Partch’s ‘Cloud Bowls’, Mussolini’s speeches, Rebetika and Tarantella folk music, Persian improvisational masters, Benjamin Britten’s ‘Four Sea Interludes’, R. Murray Schafer’s String Quartet #2 ‘Waves’, Weird Nightmare’s ‘Meditations on Mingus’, Sonic Couture’s Glassworks Library, and, always, Fides Krucker’s voice, vocal philosophy and technique.

I composed some pieces by assembling and collaging found sounds. Others by remixing fragments of found music and slowing it down, running it through processors, and layering it. Others by recording myself singing the melodies I would hear in my head, then learning to play them. I did a lot of sequencing and multi-tracking: experimenting with various software instruments and layering them.

I had a number of recording sessions, most of all with Fides, but also with Rick Sacks, Rob Clutton and Neil Gardiner. In these I would ensure that the basic piece was well recorded, but would then diverge into more experimental passes of the same work, or fragments of the work, generating a body of material that I could then build up in the editing suite. Sometimes these experimental fragments would have a huge influence on the final product as they could be more spontaneous, evocative and intense.

I experiment a lot, and I work a lot with, and trust, accidents. Maybe one of the benefits of being so poorly educated is that there are a lot of accidents…!

Fides and I worked very closely. I have huge respect and admiration for Fides’ musicality, musical intelligence, and improvisational instincts. We had many many long discussions about the nature of the mermaid and how that would translate into music. I actually directly scored only a few pieces (The Pearls, Pastry Shop, Lighea’s Ocean) and left the interpretation of emotion and technique very much up to Fides. Frequently the most useful and intelligent thing for me to do was to get out of the way. I would ‘set the stage’ with bed tracks and notions and ask Fides to improvise, recording many takes, feeding back, experimenting with different strategies. This could result in many hours re-assembling/crafting/sculpting what we had recorded (Lighea’s Idyll, The Mermaid Spangles Mussolini). It could also result in Fides absolutely nailing a phrasing and, when I found it when listening back, I was done. The melody in Lament was improvised by Fides off-the-cuff very very early in our first actors workshop. I happened to be running tape and when I played it back later it was perfect.

4-Please talk about working with Fides Krucker and her unusual approaches to vocalism.

Fides Krucker (Photo by Jeremy Minmagh)

Fides was approached by Richard Sanger, who wrote the libretto, to do some kind of musical version of ‘The Professor & the Mermaid’. Fides remembered a CD that I had released called Howlings and she felt that that type of composer could work, so they approached me to do it. Obviously, I was in.

I wanted to create musical structures that would be liberating. The mermaid is an atypical operatic role: let’s face it, most female characters in operas are completely traumatised, if not just killed off. The mermaid, on the other hand, is an enormously powerful character and Fides and I wanted to ensure that that was not lost. We did a lot of collaborating, and a lot of discussing: I remember in our first session I brought recordings of whales and wolves and asked Fides to improvise which she did most astonishingly. I think it was sometime in that session that she made the blood curdling roar that became the ‘fascist killer’ in opening ‘Prelude’. Standing just a few feet from her I think I got a few extra grey hairs in that moment, but that kind of experience influences your compositional intentions. Suddenly I’m thinking to myself, ”a sound like that can wipe out a lot of fascism…”, and the next day I’ve rolled it into a track over Mussolini’s ‘Vincere’. That kind of thing could happen a lot.

As I said before, while there were pieces I directly scored, my role was often to set up a situation and then let Fides do what she does. There’s no way that can be scored, and no way I would conceive of what she might end up doing. It would be stupid, and a waste of time and talent. Fides has a long and storied career of being boxed in by composition, and neither of us had any interest in that: it’s not creatively enjoyable for either of us, and it would blatantly contradict the theme of the tale we were making music for.

Fides has spent decades developing a technical mastery of her voice such that she can express an outrageous range of emotions and types of intensity. She has very deliberately studied how to ‘undomesticate’, and ‘take off the doors’, of her own voice, and this is what she teaches day in and day out. So, the mermaid is a perfect role, and I tried to create conditions in which Fides could really be as expressively powerful and evocative as she is capable of being. I hope I sometimes succeeded.

5- Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?

Mavis Staples, Glenn Gould…

I’m not trained, and so I suppose there is a naivete in how I approach music.
I really like honesty, and also technical mastery, but mastery never for the show, only so that it can be put at the service of genuine emotion and experience in the moment.
I think I can tell when artists are chasing something – maybe it’s ecstasy – and that’s what I want to hear. I heard it in a ten year old playing a piano a couple of weeks ago: I could tell every time he was trying the phrase out he wasn’t just trying to find the right notes, he was exploring, trying to find the specific cadence, intensity, tonality, that taps him right in the soul.

I admire that quality, and hearing this little boy stick at it with that specific intention influences me to keep finding that intention in myself, and to never stop searching…

********

DIVE: Odes for Lighea – July 31st – August 9th – The Array Space
Preview – July 30th

Featuring Fides Krucker, Matthew Gouveia, and Earl Pastko
Directed by Alex Fallis
Sound Score by Nik Beeson
Set Design by Scott Penner
Lighting Design by Simon Rossiter
Costume Design by Nina Okens
Sound Design by Andy Trithardt
Freely Adapted by Richard Sanger
from Giuseppe Di Lampedusa’s “The Professor and the Siren”
Click image (below) for tickets

postcard

Posted in Interviews, Music and musicology, Opera | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Whose Opera Is It Anyway?” : Improv Fund-raiser from Loose TEA

Posted on July 18, 2015 by barczablog

IMMEDIATE release Information contact:
Alaina Viau: 647-539-4020, alaina@looseteamusictheatre.com

Loose Tea’s Artistic Director Alaina Viau today announced that Loose Tea will host “Whose Opera Is It Anyway?” on July 22, 2015 from 7pm-9pm at the Office Pub at 117 John Street. Cost is $25 per person includes a free glass of BareFoot wine, nibbles and sore cheeks from laughing too hard . Proceeds will be used to fund the summer opera Dissociative Me an English re-work of the classic “Faust” set in modern times.

A night of opera shenanigans where Loose TEA is doing IMPROV opera! The company singers will be taking the games from “Whose line is it Anyway” and daring to do them while singing opera! Hear a Verdi aria sung in the style of Madonna, or Don Giovanni serenading about flying cats in space.

Hosted by Toronto comedian Andrew Johnston, with DJ’d music this is the party to be at! Bid on the improve element in selected games and have your suggestion played out by out incredibly talented singers!

The event will feature Michael York, Gregory Finney, Whitney Mather, Kijong Wi, Fabian Arciniegas and Charlotte Knight. Loose Tea is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to make opera accessible to the modern public and bring in a new audience.

For ticket information go to https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/whose-opera-is-it-anyway-tickets-17698313131

Loose Tea is Not Your Grandfather’s Opera – run by a group of arts innovators, Loose TEA offers Torontonians a bold new live music experience. We mash up Classical music and turn opera on its head.

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment

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Minions Is Good

Posted on July 18, 2015 by barczablog

Never read a review before seeing something about which you have no choice.  Adults & children seeing a film aimed squarely at a child? Best to be a child or to be like a child.

In Matthew 18:3 Jesus says  “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

No i wasn’t thinking deep spiritual thoughts, but this is what I channeled today seeing Minions, the prequel to the Despicable Me films, and is the only way to approach such a film.

Minions is good.

The little guys are funny.

I did not expect to laugh.

It is the same joke

Over and over.

That is not a problem

Not if you are six years old.

I miss being six. I miss living in the now.

What’s so good about being able to say “that’s not funny?”  For Wagner I need the big words.  For Hitchcock I need the fancy ideas.

Not for this.

This is a giggle.

Tickle the dog.

Get your face licked.

Wet and messy.

When I engage the part of my brain with the bigger words I start to think, hmm, what exactly are minions and why might this be a troubling series of lessons?  Minions are slaves, workers, and have no individuality or even gender. That is probably fine when you are six, but if you were a minion?  I cherish my individuality, and am more than just my function in the huge impersonal machine of production.

That the minions all speak a kind of gibberish is on the verge of being disturbing.  The cute sounds they make have precedents. The little dudes in Star Wars films are often cute-sounding. In the first film we meet the Jawas, in a later film it’s the Ewoks.  

What exactly are we laughing at, if we are laughing at them, I wonder.  This is no time to be over-thinking the codes for cute and cuddly, the reasons for fun.

At least not yet.

Is Minions a project designed to make lots of money? Yes.  I am wary, as if I were consuming a genetically modified apple, wondering what I am tasting and why I am liking it.  What is this doing to my brain, and even more scary to contemplate: what is this doing to the brains of six-year-olds?

I fear the attraction because I do not like being manipulated. When Wagner or Hitchcock do it—manipulation –I am fine with it. Great artists screw with our heads all the time.  Commercial products with no apparent redeeming value, however, are a different story.

If it were a better piece of art I might surrender fully, the way I do in the presence of a really luscious brownie or sticky toffee pudding. Calories be damned give me sweetness laden with fat!  But there are two things that stopped my surrender as surely as a badly executed harmonization. One was my resistance to Sandra Bullock as the lead villainess.  I experienced this as an actor trying to work against type which is usually fine onscreen if you can make me believe.  Why did I resist? I hate to think I am sticking Bullock into a mental category, stubbornly refusing to see her as a possible villain; but in my defense, I have to say animation is different.  We are not in the realm where we can see the performance, and if the voice is too subtle –and that is the nicest thing I can say for her—then it simply won’t fly (and for me it didn’t).

The other issue is writing.  At times I felt I was watching filler, a cartoon that could have been over in less than half an hour. I won’t deny that a couple of times I almost fell asleep. That might also be an issue for Bullock, who can’t be faulted for failing to transcend the material.

But I did laugh, especially when i remembered to pay attention to the children.  It is funny once you surrender to the spirit of the little child in you, because at that moment you may be surprised that you are screaming with  laughter.  This is decidedly unlike Inside Out, which was full of big laughs that the adults got and the kids did not.

If you see this film, the only thing to remember is what Jesus said via Matthew.  Forget everything else.

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Attila Keszei: the eco-warrior rides on

Posted on July 18, 2015 by barczablog

My friend Attila Keszei is back.  Attila, an engineer who offered heroic leadership in the quest for sustainability and reducing the university’s carbon footprint retired from the University of Toronto a few years ago.  But his creativity continues unabated,  retirement allowing him to focus his energies completely on his art.  His new show at the U of T Faculty Club displays recent works.

Is age finally mellowing Attila’s work?  You be the judge.

He has several distinct styles.

1-some of his works are simple representations of nature or humanity often telling stories, possibly even religious in nature.

2-some of his works are political in nature.  Attila speaks of this as “concerned art”, which is a very gentle name for it.  As a Hungarian expat in Canada this manifested itself in several ways. But I didn’t see anything of that sort in this show.

“White Venus” (Raku fired ceramic – 2015 Attila Keszei)

3-some of his works are sensual or even sexual in nature.  Sometimes that means explicit images, sometimes it may be more ambiguous.  I’d say that several of these works at the very least hint at sensuality, while a few are so blatant that they will make some people blush, at least once it’s pointed out to them what is depicted in the art.

“Homage to Georgia O’Keeffe Flower #1”
(Raku fired ceramic – 2015 Attila Keszei)

Georgia O’Keeffe is Attila’s favorite artist, and a natural departure point for his own explorations.

“Homage to Georgia O’Keeffe Flower #3” (Raku fired ceramic – 2015 Attila Keszei )

4- From time to time, the engineer peers out of his art.  “The 41st Day” might be a whimsical response to something in the book of Genesis, but it is essentially an attempt to capture the magic of terrestrial physics.  We see sunlight meeting water but in person one feels the stunning drama of this medium of super-hot ceramic melting and being shaped into something touchable and cool, the sun tamed as though by a sustainability engineer’s cleverness.

“The 41st Day” (Oxidation fired ceramic – 2014 Attila Keszei)

As with so many works of art, the only way to really appreciate the work is in person.  In this show Attila displays works in raku fired ceramic and hammered copper.  The effect transcends the means, a cool sensual finish that seems effortless.  But masterful control is required to get the illusion of such tranquility.

“Canadian Willpower” is a kind of battle between the Canadian Shield and a maple, one that we see all too often up north.

“Canadian Willpower”
(Raku fired ceramic – 2015 Attila Keszei)

While you can also see Attila’s work on his website, that is a mere shadow of what you get in person.  And as far as i can tell this has been a productive year.  His so-called retirement seems to agree with Attila.

Posted in Art, Architecture & Design, University life | Tagged | 3 Comments

Remembering Jon Vickers, Canadian Heldentenor

Posted on July 12, 2015 by barczablog

There have been two singers above all the others who mattered to me as I grew up. Both were tenors.  I’ve talked about Jussi Björling, my touchstone of vocal perfection and the subject of a recent pilgrimage in Sweden. The other was Jon Vickers who has died after what his family announced as a “prolonged struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.” In contrasting my relationship with these two heroes of my childhood I’d like to illuminate these two very different stars, who in large measure can be understood as two polar opposites.

Björling was a singer of great vocal beauty, possessed of ringing high Cs and a lovely cantabile. Vickers was somewhat unorthodox, arguably one of the great singing actors of the 20th Century.  As I grew up i drifted away from love of pure vocal beauty and fell in love with music-drama, good acting and everything Vickers stood for. While I love listening to both Björling and Vickers, it’s on video that you really get a sense of the Canadian’s unique style.

For the longest time it was a pattern of frustration! Vickers stopped singing in Toronto allegedly because of a bad review. In 1970 I was fortunate to be taken to hear him in NY, singing with Louis Quilico & James Levine in the Zeffirelli Otello that had been introduced the season before by James McCracken & Karl Bohm. A few years later I hitched a ride to Montreal to hear his Tristan. Eventually I heard a song recital at the Edward Johnson Building at the University of Toronto (his first words were a fervent “it’s good to be back!”) and the first act of Siegmund in the “Concert of the Decade” with Birgit Nilsson at Massey Hall. While it was only the first act, it was surely a release of all that pent-up frustration for his fans, especially for those who hadn’t traveled to see Vickers in other cities. Not only did it bring us Vickers but Nilsson had never sung in Toronto either, and it was led by Zubin Mehta. For me it lived up to the hype, especially in Vickers’s seemingly effortless high A to end the act. And a short while later he sang it again for another audience (that would have included me if I had been able to afford to see it both times. Oh well, no such luck).

I was fortunate to see him as much as i did in the roles for which he was famed. Everything he sang was unique and unlike what anyone else would do with that role. I can say that because I was a junkie for descriptions and stories about the other roles I never saw. He changed our understanding of Peter Grimes single-handedly, broadening the possibilities of the role far beyond what the composer and what Peter Pears, the first great exponent of the role, understood of the opera. While I don’t believe he is really known for Parsifal there’s a moment on youtube that’s shattering precisely because of the way it goes against what we would expect, a production directed by Rolf Liebermann (whom I mention because the brilliant touch might be from Vickers, might be from Liebermann; either way its execution is stunning). He brings back the sacred spear and then he breaks it in two(!?!), complete with a howl of confused rage from the grail knights in his presence .  

I will add another link that gives a better view of his acting ability, as Florestan in Fidelio.  Even so i believe this portrayal would be more powerful from afar, the movement vocabulary eloquent at any distance but especially convincing when you could only see a tiny figure, posture, dignity, and the huge voice enveloping you no matter whether you were close or sitting at the back of the opera house.  

The ambiguities of this final clip are a perfect epitome of Vickers.  As Otello he kills himself with a concealed weapon. As he heroically strains for a final kiss –the most heroic looking singer I have seen in the part to this day—I could never tell in recordings or this performance, if the “ah” in the last lines was an attempt at a kiss (as this note gives us the recurrance of the moment in the love duet where he and Desdemona kiss)  or impending death. The ambiguity slays me every time, but I found it particularly shattering watching him die in this clip earlier tonight, realizing that he is finally gone.  

Posted in Opera, Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

Independence Day Doodle Dandy

Posted on July 5, 2015 by barczablog

I am a Canadian.  I have a conspicuous “cz” in my surname, but then again, what is a Canadian, if not an immigrant or child of immigrants…?

If you turn on the television any day of the year you’re deluged in the culture of our neighbours to the south.  “Canadian culture” does exist, in fact it’s quite strong in some quarters, but on July 4th, one can’t help being a bit envious, feeling that ours is still so new, so young, given the proud displays of American heritage on so many channels.

I’m going back and forth between Turner Classic Movies & AMC.  TCM are showing Yankee Doodle Dandy, a film I’ve seen a million times while AMC have Independence Day.  I’m an admirer of Cagney.  I’m just at the moment when George (still a boy, so not yet played by Cagney) gets his big spanking.  A moment ago we came to the moment when Will Smith shoots down his alien, then smokes his cigar.  Independence Day is a nationalistic sci-fi flick that works well anytime, but especially today.  Will Smith’s pride –who can forget his “who de man” bluster right up to his punch in the “face” of the alien— is the best of the American spirit, not so different from the ego display that got George his spanking (after having lost his family a big gig by mouthing off to a possible impresario).

I know there are egomaniacs in Canada, but will anyone ever put that into a movie?

This afternoon TCM showed 1776, a filmed version of the musical produced in the decade before their bicentennial.  Wow what a serious piece of work.  I admire its ambitions, its willingness to make serious matters the subject for a musical.

We have Louis Riel, which is an opera rather than a musical.  The other day a friend mentioned Billy Bishop Goes to War.  But I wonder what a Canadian take on any of those American examples might look and sound like.

A Canadian Yankee Doodle Dandy?  Absurd as that may sound, I can imagine a musical celebrating a Canadian musical icon.  Glenn Gould?  Joni Mitchell?  David Foster? Or if you have a better candidate, go ahead: dramatize their life, studded with a few well-known musical moments and you have something with possibilities.

A Canadian Independence Day?  That’s as odd as the previous suggestion, but why not after all.  It wouldn’t be a tale of saucers demolishing iconic buildings, annihilating cities, or humbling our air power.   Our confederation was a matter of conversation—something more like 1776 actually—and without any war of independence.

Recalling how new it all feels here, north of the 49th parallel, and smaller to boot, I happily devour whatever comes along.  It’s Fringe time in Toronto, when for writers, composers, producers, actors and of course also the audience, hope springs not just eternal but immanent.  Perhaps now is the time for the creation that not only captures the national imagination but becomes a representative for our  country.

If nothing else it’s a great time to go see a show.

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Personal ruminations & essays | Leave a comment

Opera by Request presents “A chair in love”

Posted on July 3, 2015 by barczablog

click for tickets

Opera by Request will be presenting a semi-staged version of a comic opera called “A chair in love” by Welsh-Canadian composer John Metcalf with libretto by Governor General award nominee Larry Tremblay. The plot revolves around an “urban angst” filmmaker who falls in love with a chair, and his faithful, if slightly jealous, dog who tries to save him from heartbreak.

The show will take place on Friday July 17th @ 7:30pm at the Array Space, and features William Shookhoff (music director and pianist), Abigail Freeman (Chair), Michael Robert-Broder (Truman), Gregory Finney (Dog), and Kim Sartor (Dogtor/Doctor).

Tickets for OBR’s production are available online at Eventbrite tickets.

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment

Posted in Press Releases and Announcements | Leave a comment

Filmscore 101 with Michael Kamen

Posted on June 30, 2015 by barczablog

I was already thinking about the art of the film score composer, having recently given James Horner’s work a look in the wake of his untimely death. A question I sometimes ponder: what is the hardest sort of music to create? Or to turn this around, what is the hardest sort of film to score?

Some people seem drawn to certain genres, perhaps because their music seems well-suited to a particular genre. Now on the other hand, what about making something that is cliché or sentimental or hackneyed sound fresh? I would call that the greatest challenge for a composer: to inject life into something that has become stale.

I had that unexpected pleasure today with the remake of Disney’s 101 Dalmations. Perhaps you too missed this film when it appeared in 1996. I didn’t realize it was written by John Hughes nor that its score was by Michael Kamen (speaking of untimely death!), one of my favourite composers. Had I know the talent working on this film (Glenn Close, Hugh Laurie, Jeff Daniels, Joely Richardson and Joan Plowright) I would have seen it long ago. There are live animals alongside animatronic special effects, yet the biggest special effect in this film is the one you hear rather than see: from the orchestra. Kamen takes this live action film and rescues it from being a mere cartoon.

I’ve watched this film four times in the past 48 hours, and only on the last viewing did I figure out the secret of the simple mastery Kamen displayed. The old saying was attributed to Edmund Kean on his deathbed. He supposedly said “dying’s easy. Comedy’s hard.” While he was talking about acting it goes double for film music. What Kamen does in this film is the complete opposite of what you’d expect, and is the reason composers should listen to this score as a touchstone of how to compose. That’s what I am getting at with the headline, that one can learn a lot from watching 101 Dalmations.

In terms of genre we’re in a strange place, that isn’t at all what one might expect from Disney & the dogs. I kept staring at the film, not quite able to figure it out until I realized Kamen was largely doing what he usually did, as the latest incarnation of Erich Korngold, writing swashbuckler music for such films as Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, and The Three Musketeers. His mastery of the large orchestra gave him a kind of versatility you see in composers such as Richard Strauss, who once boasted that he could depict anything through music. I believe the same is true for Kamen.
One shouldn’t denigrate the film or its score merely because it’d a remake of a feature-length cartoon. Indeed, what Kamen does in this score is nothing short of miraculous, in elevating sentimental moments & animal scenes to the realm of epic. The key is that the genre isn’t allowed to be a stumbling block to the composer.

Don’t be fooled.  This may be a movie about dogs and fashion, but the score could fit into a film with sword-play and heroics.  He writes about dogs and romance as though it were vitally important: perhaps because it is.  If we make that kind of leap of faith, we are into a different realm, and indeed, a different kind of genre. The conviction he brings to chase scenes involving cute little doggies elevates the action, bringing a degree of seriousness to the proceedings that changes the way we see and hear the film. The first and most important lesson is to always treat the film as serious.

For example, when Cruella DeVil appears we’re in a parody of a horror film with some very genuine sounding nastiness. There’s an echo of the dies irae or ”day of wrath” when she walks into her office. The high strings scurry like terrified birds scattered by her nasty arrival. At this point we don’t yet realize what nastiness she might perpetrate.  Two minutes into this clip you get the most delicious exchange between Cruella and one of her many terrified minions:

Cruella: Do you like spots Frederick?
Frederick: I don’t believe so madam, I thought we liked stripes this year.
Cruella: What kind of sycophant are you?
Frederick: (pause) What kind of sycophant would you like me to be?

If Kamen were a parent I would be giving him credit for never talking down to his children, but in this case I am thinking of the audience of the film. He never infantilizes or condescends to us. At all times we are in the presence of great seriousness. The glory of the humour is precisely that it is done with a straight face, as gloomy as Bob Newhart.

Kamen gives us several large set-pieces. One of the chases takes the song “Daisy”, that you may recall had slowed gradually in 2001: a Space Odyssey and instead, increases it to a breakneck pace. Cruella has a leit-motiv based on the song in the old film, this time insinuated at odd moments like the pong of cheap perfume in the air. This is a score that does not comment upon the morality of anything we see, but simply sets us up. At times Kamen creates something grotesque, even invoking something that reminds me of Mahler. We encounter many different emotional snapshots via Kamen’s orchestra, all the while implying that this story is important and worthy of his art.

We are in a realm of parody, at times making a reductio ad absurdum that is always deadly serious even as we are in the presence of great silliness. But this muscular orchestra gallops full out for minutes at a time.

This is like a textbook study in comedy, never obvious but always subtly deadpan, dark and at times very scary for a movie children might see, always very British with more than a hint of European colour. Kamen takes the gig seriously, even when offering us a wee bit of a recognizable tune such as Beethoven’s fifth symphony or “How much is that doggy in the window”. We experience horror, suspense, and also, ecstatic joy. Kamen treats his puppies and horses and raccoons and skunks and birds and dogs and people with no signs of chauvinism.

And this is how it should be done, because we get the laughs while simultaneously experiencing art.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Remembering the films and the music of James Horner

Posted on June 24, 2015 by barczablog

Some say that if done right you shouldn’t notice the music in a movie. Of course that’s one ideal and it’s a much more self-effacing idea of how a composer should approach the task of composing a score for the cinema. You definitely notice when the movie doesn’t work.

Music can be the difference, the crucial element that makes a film intelligible. Sometimes the music is a Greek chorus to tell us what the characters can’t say. Or it might be a matter of subtle atmosphere, even something ironic and distancing.

James Horner died in a plane crash yesterday, a relatively young man as composers go. Ennio Morricone is 86. John Williams is 83. Even Danny Elfman—who I still think of as a relative newcomer—is a few months older, just having passed his 62nd birthday. But Horner is –or I should really say “was”—prolific. Go to the IMDB entry and see just how many films he worked on, including the many for which he didn’t get the full credit.

  • 125 entries under “music department”
  • 156 more as “composer”

At times, classical composers of the last century have seemed paralyzed like deer caught in the headlights. Beauty for its own sake? Rare. But thank goodness that in the cinema melodic composition wasn’t frowned upon. The requirement to be popular vetoes conservatory prejudices against tunefulness. Horner is a classically trained composer who found a natural voice in cinema, where he could freely use his melodic gift, his knack for capturing a mood, and his fluency with the many possibilities available in a large orchestra.

I am simply aiming to offer a few reminders of what Horner has meant in my life and likely in many other lives too.

“Somewhere out there” is a song you may have heard on the radio, sung by Linda Ronstadt & James Ingram.

Nominated for both a Golden Globe (it lost) and an Academy Award (it lost), it did win two Grammies, which is probably a bigger honour when you consider who is voting in each case.

If you were raising children in the 1980s chances are you recognize this song. Here’s what it sounded like in its original incarnation in the middle of An American Tail 

Horner is a composer who impresses me with his pragmatic approach to film-making. You might not connect these films from the sound of their music.  He scored a number of films of war. Glory, Enemy at the Gates  Braveheart, and more recently Troy  

I wonder if he felt any pressure to produce when he scored expensive pictures with enormous budgets and millions invested, such as Jumanji,  Avatar and Titanic (the latter two for James Cameron).  They were hugely successful of course.

Yet he could score films on an intimate scale. A long time ago I encountered The Dresser. More recently Horner helped make A Beautiful Mind a big hit.  And I suppose intimate is a good word to describe Honey I Shrunk the Kids, but not for the usual reasons.  Some of Horner’s films have cult followings, such as Willow and I Love You to Death. Others are totally mainstream, thinking of science fiction films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan or Apollo 13.

I’ll finish by citing my two favourites. In both cases the music is a necessary part of the film-makers’ magic toolkit.

I was mightily impressed by Horner’s work on a film that never quite caught on, perhaps a bit ahead of its time.  If you watch the trailer it’s immediately clear why it didn’t do well: because the trailer for *batteries not included makes no sense.   I passed it up on the big screen but then by good fortune watched it on home video: where i was hooked.   There are a pair of wonderful performances from Jessica Tandy & Hume Cronyn. This was before I knew about Alzheimers or dementia. Horner’s score creates powerful juxtapositions between present time and recollections from long ago. The poignancy of that confusion is stunningly beautiful, even if you’ve never encountered a person living through those ambiguities. Music can create an instantaneous sense of a reality, the present even when it is from another time. This clip gives you an idea of what complexity is at work.   As in Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Horner playfully quotes from popular cultural elements, including contemporary music and cartoons.  And come to think of it, here’s that magical opening sequence:

 

In Field of Dreams we are watching a story unfold that can’t rely simply on visuals and good acting. The clincher for many of the key moments are music cues. At times it’s very new-agey, meditative, via a melodic Americana, folksy with a few jarring moments to suggest different spheres of the world brought into collision.  The music is a necessary part of the dramaturgy that makes us embrace the reality of this movie.    

I have no idea how many times I have seen this film, but it continues to cast its spell on me.  I will give Horner the last word.

Posted in Music and musicology | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Deep Inside Out

Posted on June 21, 2015 by barczablog

There I was in a theatre full of children for Father’s Day. As we got deeper into Inside Out the small ones were often silent.

The small unrepresentative audience survey I conducted suggests that the kids enjoyed themselves but couldn’t follow the nuances.  As so often happens, the children enjoy the film one way while the parents have another sort of experience, laughing at double entendres and subtle asides that go over the kids’ heads.

Inside Out is the latest summertime animated treat from Pixar studios, the people who brought you Up, Wall E, Monsters Inc and Toy Story. Sometimes adult voices roared with laughter, myself among them. While there were tears as well, these too seemed to be confined to the adult population.

Inside Out is a very sophisticated piece of work, reminding me of a modern morality play where a series of abstractions are personified. But instead of this being an allegory (a battle between “good” and “evil”, perhaps with “greed” and “sloth” personified) we look inside the heads of a series of characters, discovering that our emotional lives could be understood as a kind of conversation, sometimes a very intense conversation, between different emotions. I think this film will have extraordinary resonance for most people, in the way it suggests our lives are a series of choices even when we are not aware of the moment when we chose to surrender to one impulse or other:

  • Amy Poehler is “Joy”.
  • Phyllis Smith is “Sadness”
  • Lewis Black is “Anger”
  • Bill Hader is “Fear”
  • Mindy Kaling is “Disgust”

Seligman’s book was arguably the beginning of the groundswell of interest in Positive Psychology

The emotions are situated in a kind of control room that’s inside the head.  There is a set of emotions monitoring and influencing Riley (the 11 year old who is at the centre of this film), just as there’s another inside her Mom and inside her Dad, as well as her teacher and others in the film. I don’t believe in spoilers so I have to stop soon, but this is a very scientific stimulus-response approach, that probably won’t go over quite so well in the Bible belt.  If there is anything allegorical at work in the story, it would be in its concerns with Positive Psychology and resilience, illustrating a pathway to emotional balance.

The film employs such a simple yet powerful way of understanding our behaviour –including incorporating memories and clusters of behaviour that become key parts of our personality (for Riley this includes her love of playing hockey and her sense of family) —that we may see people growing up using this film and its mythology as a reference point.

I am reminded of Maurice Sendak, Roald Dahl and L Frank Baum, authors whose stories are so deceptively simple that we tell them to children, even though they function at such a deep level that we spend the rest of our lives figuring out what they really mean.

This doesn’t mean that children will have any problem with Inside Out. They will have fun and like it, even if they may wonder why the adults are laughing so hard, and sometimes shedding a tear.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Psychology and perception, Reviews | 3 Comments