Roughly 3 Hours at Noon to Midnight

On Saturday, June 1st, I went down to Disney Hall to check out the final event of the FLUXUS Festival. The Noon to Midnight event was a day, 12 hours to be exact, of pop-up performances throughout Walt Disney Concert Hall including the garden, BP Hall, the two amphitheatres, on the steps of the hall, and of course on stage. There were also food trucks on Grand Ave, and a beer garden in the Blue Ribbon Garden. According to the schedule, poster, calendar, “The season-long Fluxus Festival, staged by the LA Phil in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute, culminates in a Noon to Midnight intervention – five performances curated by Christopher Rountree and directed by Annie Saunders.”

We showed up right around 3 and I was sad that we missed some of the remarkable early performances like David Lang's Crowd Out, National Composer's Intensive featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble, and The Crossing, but sadly work obligations ate up the morning and early afternoon.

red fish blue fish in the Blue Ribbon Garden

Our first experience was Timber by Michael Gordon, performed by red fish blue fish in the Blue Ribbon Garden. Looking back on the performances and performers we caught, I feel confident that this was a fantastic first event. We sipped our beers outside in the not too hot, not too cold weather and sat on the ground watching the five performers of red fish blue fish stand in a circle facing one another and play saw horses with mallets. When we first walked outside, it was hard to hear or distinguish what we were hearing, and it wasn't until we stepped within the range of the speakers, each placed several yards behind a performer, that we started to experience the music. I moved around a little bit before settling on the ground with a view of the hall behind the "stage." The audience had a subtle, but different experience based on which speaker was closest. Acoustically, I think the best seat in the house was probably right in the middle of the performers because at that point, you get the most balanced output from the surrounding speakers. 

The piece itself conjured a meditative effect, and on the one hand, you feel totally absorbed watching the calmness of each performer and on the other pulled in the subtle different directions of the changes of the beat and subdivisions within the piece. Granted, we did not catch the very beginning of the piece, but there is a timbre to the saw horses that almost sounds like voices, making soft articulations. The piece never reaches a deafening climax, but I don’t think that was really the point, it carries you around like waves on a beach, sometimes overlapping seamlessly, sometimes running into each other, sometimes totally in sync. I almost felt like I was floating through this experience.

We left a few minutes early because I am a fangirl of Eighth Blackbird and I wanted to make sure we had seats in the hall for that performance. I’ve seen them play once before, at the Eaux Claires Music Festival in the woods of Wisconsin. They played Murder Ballades by Bryce Dessner on a wooden stage like it was the talent show at summer camp, so I was pretty excited to see them on a "proper" stage.

Eighth Blackbird onstage at Disney Hall

They started the set with learn to fly by David Lang, and it was AWESOME. I love this piece! In the program notes, Lang says "With learn to fly I wanted to make a music that danced and pushed forward, in the hope that it would encourage the musicians to do so as well." Lisa Kaplan, the pianist of Eighth Blackbird, definitely danced from her bench. I made a note during this performance that how a performer or ensemble moves directly influences how I experience and understand the music. Without reading Lang’s words previous to making that note, I now reflect on it feeling validated in my desire to groove with Kaplan and feel the energy that permeated the music and performers.

Their set ended with a world premiere of Ways of Looking by Pamela Z. The composer, a “pioneering composer/performer and media artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video,” was onstage running electronics and contributing live vocals to this performance. This piece was so cool. It included live and previously recorded vocal tracks from each performer and in the program notes, Pamela writes:

"I have long been fascinated by the musicality of speech sounds, mining sampled fragments of spoken text for melodic, rhythmic, and textural content. For this work, I interviewed all six members of Eighth Blackbird and then meticulously selected sentences, phrases, words, syllables, and phonemes to create sonic building blocks. For "Looking," I chose to have the ensemble speak their own words live. "Name" is all about describing and identifying people. "Um" is a cloud of sound built around the sonorous, nonverbal, filler sounds we all make during speech. Finally, “Very” celebrates the ubiquitous intensifier.”

This performance was dynamic, funny, clever, beautiful, and in the words of Marie Kondo, “sparked joy.” In my notes, I wrote that Pamela Z brings out the beauty of ummm and the nonsense between thoughts. But she also begged the mind to ponder the pitch and timbre of your thoughts, which is a really enjoyable and amusing thing to think about. Some of the vocal tracks were mimicked on instruments, and passed around, re-tuned, and uttered elsewhere in the ensemble, placing the voice within the ensemble, above it, and sometimes subtly below the other instruments onstage. When blended together, what pitch does a choir of speakers create? I loved the combination of live and recorded vocals with Eighth Blackbird's instrumentation. All four movements of this piece were a pure delight!

Sō Percussion in BP Hall performing Forbidden Love

Next, we moved on to Sō Percussion in BP Hall. Due to the overlap with Eighth Blackbird, we missed the first piece, a diamond in the square by Suzanne Farrin but caught the entire performance, and world premiere, of perhaps my new favorite string quartet of all time, Forbidden Love, by Julia Wolfe. This last statement may seem confusing to many of you who know Sō percussion to be a PERCUSSION ensemble, but Forbidden Love calls for the use of the four instruments of a traditional string quartet to be played but using, as Wolfe says, “all the things you aren't supposed to do to string instruments." According to the program, Sō Percussion asked Wolfe to use the four instruments of a string quartet, and together they discovered and created some fantastic sounds. Some of them sounded like a low bass a la doom metal, some of it like wind passing through chimes, and when the performers through away their sticks and started rubbing the back of the instruments, it felt strangely intimate and loving, like a bedroom scene? Or a forbidden love? Sometimes they created rhythmic grooves that were really fun and "cool" and other times they made sound effects with yarn or string (I don't know what it was) pulled through the instruments like dental floss. I was so into it, and no instrument appeared to lose its life during this performance. 

I think at this point in the day I should have taken a sonic time out and grabbed another beer from the beer garden, and maybe a snack, but the problem with a really awesome festival like this is that you want to absorb so much, that perhaps you overdo it and then it backfires a little bit. I really wanted to catch HOCKET in the ampitheatre, but missed it in favor of Sō Percussion so moved right along to Wild Up on the concert stage.

Wild Up and Julianna Barwick performing Star Luz Black

I should have skipped the first two pieces. Rot Blau by Jessie Marino was silly and fun but the dark time between movements felt a little awkward and too long, and this felt more like a performance suited for a different stage or experience. The second piece, A Thing Made Whole by Andrew Greenwald, was overall very quiet and probably beautiful had this not been performed at a festival where there was extraneous noise from audience members coming in and out. I was not in the right space to appreciate this piece, and that feels particularly shameful because the performers were clearly working hard to create the correct effects and play their parts. The saving grace of this set was Star Luz Black, another world premiere featuring the composer, Julianna Barwick, on piano and voice and a string ensemble of 5 violins, 3 violas, 2 cellos, upright bass, and conductor. It was captivating. The string parts were simple in that Arvo Pärt repetitive way that makes you feel things in a deep and mournful way, coupled with the soaring beauty of the vocals and the twinkling quality of the piano. It was so compelling and wiped the slate of what had happened before. I think my frustration with this Wild Up set comes more from the lack of continuity between the pieces. It felt like such a jumble and the pieces were too disparate to leave the audience impressed. If the whole set had been more in accordance with Barwick’ s piece and presence, Wild Up would have gotten my vote for Los Angeles contemporary ensemble of the year. 

After this one, I needed a break. We grabbed another beer and meandered outside for a little while. Being semi-new to Los Angeles, I had no idea that there are two amphitheatres at Disney Hall, so we wandered up to the Carson Amphitheatre to check out the venue for FLUXUS: Composition 201960 #5. By this point we were a little worn out and distracted and not in the right place to observe and appreciate another performance, so we made our way to the food trucks and sampled some of the food from 8E8 Thai Street Food whose delicious smells were permeating the outdoor performance areas. It was delicious, and we needed a snack.

After Thai, we were filled with a mild yet persistent guilt for leaving our dog home alone (past her dinner time) and called it a night with every intention of making a comeback. I really wanted to catch the Dal Niente performance later in the evening but fell asleep immediately upon returning home. I will say that this festival blew my mind, I was so impressed with the international acts that came to perform, the local talent, the different sounds and environments, the enthusiasm for new music from the people of Los Angeles (the concert hall was completely full for the Eighth Blackbird performance), and the tangible enjoyment and curiosity from other attendees. I ran into several friends from different musical walks of life who were all excited about different acts or performing in different ensembles, or who knew people playing. I was so happy to catch Sō Percussion and Eighth Blackbird again and experience Red Fish Blue Fish and Julianna Barwick for the first time. Bravo to everyone who had a hand in this incredible day. I would do it again every month.

EOM20

Hallo! I am back from a beautiful musical celebration/reunion/adventure in Germany and want to share my thoughts and feelings about what took me across the pond.

For those of you who met me during my time in Oklahoma (or later), you might not know that many moons ago I used to play in bands, and toured all over the United States and Europe performing non-classical music. It really feels like a different lifetime, and sometimes I find myself thinking “Did I really do that? Did I really play there?” Those were the days before graduate school and orchestra auditions, and dissertation writing, when I was wild, young, and free without a care in the world or a smartphone anchoring me to virtual reality. How I miss those days sometimes.

The first band I ever worked with was called A Whisper in the Noise. It was not your typical “band” set up. The group went through many instrumental mutations, but by the time I joined, it was me (violin), Matt (drums), and West (vocals, keyboard, guitar), and electronic sounds that came from somewhere - maybe Matt? Maybe West? Who knows? We also performed occasionally with a bass player, although that was mostly programmed into backing tracks, and we also had a video that was synced to the music. Looking back, it was an exceptional time in my musical development, and working with Matt and West when I was just a little undergraduate music baby shaped me in ways I am just now starting to unravel.

A Whisper in the Noise had the good fortune of being uncovered or discovered or liked, or some odd combination of those things plus a little extra sorcery I’m sure, by a record label based in the town of Borkheide (just outside of Berlin) Germany called Exile on Mainstream Records. Exile put out 2 records for AWITN, “Dryland” in 2007 and “To Forget” in 2012. “Dryland” as far as I can remember was an unexpected success in Europe and fostered a fan base for us to do an 8-week tour in 2008 that took us far and wide across the EU and included some of the most hilarious and bizarre stories of my life.

Exile on Mainstream, it is important to remember, upholds a beautiful and specific artistic vision that celebrates uniqueness, small pressings, boutique packaging, and sounds that are not mainstream but come from fantastically talented and creative individuals and ensembles.  In fact, the landing page of the website reads

“Beware the lollipop of mediocrity; lick it once, and you’ll suck forever.” ~Brian Wilson

And that pretty much sums up the label. Every person I have ever met who is associated with Exile has a specific tangible energy. Not all the same type of energy, but something you can feel or hear humming at different speeds and frequencies.

Back to the performance...

We decided not to play the hits at this show. Nobody really felt like dusting off old songs and doing what we did 10 years ago. So much has changed in all of our lives and it didn’t seem like a fair representation to do that to ourselves. Instead, we put together a live performance of new sounds interwoven haunted by the ghosts of old songs. We (I should say West and Matt because I really didn’t play a significant role in all of this until the actual performance) created sound beds that were manipulated in real time. We referenced songs from the past, as well music from West’s most recent film score for the movie “Glass” while leaving space for me to improvise over the top and create new sounds only for that moment at that performance. Matt also created some incredible video art for this performance to enhance the show. We rehearsed once, 6 weeks before the concert. This is not my typical performance preparation process these days, and I was pretty nervous leading up to showtime (and I mean for about 2 weeks before the show). We talked and texted about everything regularly. West sent me sheet music from the Glass score to look at, I practiced with my cool new loop pedal at home, but this felt like a giant leap of faith for me, and mostly I didn’t want to let Andreas down.

EOM20 took place over four days in Leipzig, at UT Connewitz and Paul Gerhardt Church (where we played). The festival was a celebration of 20 years of Exile which means bands and performers from every era of the label showed up to perform. April 4-7 were filled with music and reunions both musically and social, with old musical family members and new friendships.  There were some very familiar faces to me, like Ostinato, Bulbul, the Antikaroshi, and the Winchester Club who I’ve had the pleasure of touring and performing with in the past, as well as totally new sounds to my ears like Darsombra, Dalek, Bell Rope, Kristian Harting and many more. Several bands reunited specifically for this occasion, like A Whisper in the Noise, Ostinato, and the legendary VOLT who I am so happy I finally witnessed live.

I hadn’t seen some of these people in nearly 10 years and returning to Germany and sharing the stage with these beautiful people was an honor and a privilege. It was also a great reminder that following an artistic urge or direction that is deeper than commercial success brings great satisfaction. That what you excel at, and how you express yourself may not be something that everyone can relate to, and that is incredible and beautiful. Resonating at a unique artistic frequency is something to cherish more than a paycheck.

Maybe it is the move to Los Angeles, or perhaps it is just the season of life that I currently find myself in, but preparing for and taking part in this festival jolted my system awake in a way that I have been in desperate need of for a long time. I forgot about the musical strengths I have that rarely get flexed. I forgot how important working with people I respect and admire is, and how much I need these relationships. I forgot what it means to close your eyes and trust that you can create something extraordinary onstage for yourself and the audience. I forgot how satisfying it is to just play, create, and perform and not constantly analyze. I forgot that the creative process cannot be summed up on social media (or a blog). I forgot that being marketable really doesn’t matter when you offer something genuine. I forgot, I forgot, I forgot.

...and now I remember.  

Upon returning home, all I can really say is “thank you” - to everyone who was there. To those who witnessed the AWITN reunion, to those I met and re-met, who helped me order a vegan burger or a beer (or both), to my fellow musicians, and most importantly, to Andreas who had the idea to call us out of the blue and invite us to reunite for this one-off special event. He knew. He always knows.

Love. Noise. Freedom. 

The Graceful Ghost

I haven’t done a post like this in a long time! Truthfully, I meant for this to be a “Music Monday” Post, but I got a little preoccupied practicing my instrument and watching the Lorena docuseries (and eating dinner with a friend) to finish it in time so now it is just an anyday-of-the-week music appreciation post about a new piece I am working on.

Recently, I started putting together a few recital programs worth of music that I’ve always wanted to play. Delving into new solo repertoire has been a really enjoyable endeavor and enhances my love of this instrument. Rather than just practicing repertoire for orchestra concerts and excerpts for auditions, I have added several sonatas and various other solo selections to my regular practice regiment. I spent quite a bit of time researching music and eventually selected several pieces that were either entirely new to me, or that I was fairly unfamiliar with. I realized after some investigation that there are some vastly underrated pieces in the violin world that deserve a little more attention and spotlight. I am dedicating several of my Music Monday posts (even if they don’t get published until Wednesday) to the discoveries I have made, and the selections that I have decided to learn and one day, hopefully quite soon, perform.

The first piece from my chosen Recital Repertoire is “The Graceful Ghost” by William Bolcom.  

I first came across this charming piece for violin and piano several years ago when sight-reading through music with my dear friend James Barnett, the creator of the LOFT recital series in Minneapolis.

The piece is titled “Graceful Ghost Rag, Concert Variation for Violin and Piano.” It was written in 1979 and was originally a solo piano piece that the composer arranged for violin and piano. According to allmusic.com 

William Bolcom had a strong interest in classic American popular music, especially ragtime. Graceful Ghost, his most popular composition, sprang from that interest. Bolcom’s earlier career was centered on New York City and Yale University. While in New York, he investigated the great compositions of the ragtime era (roughly 1890 to 1925), exemplified by composers such as Joplin, Turpin, Hayden, and others. His investigation into their proper interpretation (especially Joplin's recurring but widely overlooked admonition never to play ragtime fast) led him to becoming a leading pianist in the ragtime revival of the 1960s, along with Paul Jacobs and Joshua Rifkin, among others. Among the items Bolcom recorded was his own set of Three Ghost Rags, a commemoration of his late father. Graceful Ghost, with a stately, benign melody and a wistful sense of loss, was the breakout hit of the album on which it appeared and has remained Bolcom's most widely known composition. (The other two "ghost rags" are Poltergeist and Dream Shadows.) 

In 1979, Bolcom prepared the violin version, which he and Sergiu Luca played in 1981. It eschews bravura effects, instead concentrating on the violin's lyrical qualities in sonorities, mainly at mezzo piano and quieter. There appears to be a slight expansion of the piece in this version, including a little more material in the accompaniment to compensate for the lines that are lifted from the original piano piece to the violin. However, the violin does not simply take all the melodic material. Instead, the melodies pass weightlessly from the keyboard to the violin, requiring close interpretive sympathy and each instrumentalist's ability to pick up the other's phrasing and dynamics. Lacking that quality, the music becomes earthbound, preventing the ghost from serenely floating in the violin part. 

The Graceful Ghost is performed and recorded quite regularly BUT what I find really interesting is that this piece is a Rag. A Rag is a style of music originally credited to Scott Joplin that became popular around the beginning of the twentieth century. It is classified as a type of jazz ‘that emphasizes a syncopated melody with a heavily accented accompaniment part. Ragtime music is in 2/4.” (from the free dictionary) 

The interesting question is “to swing, or not to swing” – in many forms of Jazz the melodic line is “swung” meaning that the rhythm is relaxed so that two eight notes (or sixteenth notes) form a long-short relationship with the first of every pair receiving more impetus/inflection/accent. Ragtime is not typically a style of music that receives this treatment, and if you listen to early recordings of Scott Joplin play his own compositions they are quite strict and in time, especially when compared to more contemporary performers.

Here is a comparison (sometimes the internet is so cool):

Maple leaft Rag, recorded on Pianola Roll actually played by Scott Joplin, this piano roll was found in the wrong box on Ebay apparently, and turned out to be a long lost Joplin recording

Dario Ronchi plays the Maple Leaf Rag to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Scott Joplin's death.

When researching this piece and listening to different versions, I heard several different approaches – some swing and some don’t. Some take great liberties with the timing, some play it fast, and others play it slow. So what is correct? Well, I watched a ton of videos, and listened to countless recordings. Below are a few for you to compare. I can’t play all of the videos here, but here are a few of my favorite performances – of the original piano version, as well as the violin and piano version.

I am still coming to my own conclusions about how to interpret this piece, but I think I will reflect on Joplin’s upright rhythmic nature, and refrain from swinging throughout this piece. I love the melodic line of this piece, I also love the sonorities and how this piece is both somber and playful. I think that is the charm of this piece, and most likely why it has remained one of Bolcom’s most popular compositions. I hope you enjoy both versions of this piece. Which is your favorite from this selection? Leave a comment below.

Piano Solo

This piece is now available on Barron's album 'Classical with Attitude'. Purchase at http://BarronRyan.com/#shop. Barron performs 'Graceful Ghost Rag' by William Bolcom. For more information on Barron, visit http://BarronRyan.com You can also like him on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/barronryanmusic ... or follow him on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/barroncp.

William Bolcom's Graceful Ghost Rag played by Aaron Robinson.

Performed by Richard Dowling, Piano.

Provided to YouTube by Sony Music Entertainment Graceful Ghost Rag · Leon Fleisher · William Bolcom · Katherine Jacobson Four Hands ℗ 2015 Leon Fleisher, under exclusive license to Sony Music Entertainment Editor, Mastering Engineer, Mixing Engineer, Producer: Adam Abeshouse Auto-generated by YouTube.

Violin and Piano

A live performance of William Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost Rag" from PORTALS, a multimedia concert about the ways in which we connect in the digital age www.portalsproject.com Special thanks to KANEKO www.thekaneko.org music composed by William Bolcom produced and performed by Tim Fain with pianist Nicholas Britell films co-produced and directed by Kate Hackett director of photography Cat Deakins lighting designed by Roderick Murray set designed by Francois-Pierre Couture recorded by M.

American Short Pieces for violin and piano

Sarena Hsu 2nd Graduate Violin Recital @ SFCM April 25, 2014

This next one is in the original key of B-flat (the violin version was transcribed to A minor).

William Bolcom- Graceful Ghost Rag :YeonKyung Joo's violin recital encore piece. Assisted by pianist Hea Jung Cho.

Buy Sheet music:

look inside

Graceful Ghost Rag - Concert Variation Violin and Piano. Composed by William Bolcom. Piano. American, Jazz, Ragtime, Classical, Contemporary. 12 pages. Published by Edward B. Marks Music (HL.9430).