It seems appropriate to post this, since today has been the hottest day since the last day on which temperatures were at the same level as today. It’s the opening titles of one of my favourite films, In the Heat of the Night, with music provided by the late great Ray Charles. If you haven’t seen the film then you should. It’s part murder mystery part social commentary and it won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Rod Steiger’s brilliant portrayal of Police Chief Bill Gillespie.
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In the Heat of the Night
Posted in Film, Music with tags film, In the Heat of the Night, Ray Charles, Rod Steiger, Sidney Poitier on July 1, 2015 by telescoperR.I.P. Ornette Coleman
Posted in Jazz with tags european echoes, Faces and Places, Jazz, Ornette Coleman on June 11, 2015 by telescoperI’m now officially in mourning.
I just heard the news that Ornette Coleman has passed away at the age of 85. He was one of the true innovators of Jazz and his influence on the development of this music over the last 50 years has been absolutely immense. I don’t have the words to pay adequate tribute to the either the man or his music, so I’ll just highlight two tracks from my favourite album of his, which was recorded Live at the Golden Circle club in Stockholm in 1965, and was proclaimed “Record of the Year” the following summer in Downbeat magazine. This features a trio of Coleman on alto sax, David Izenzon on bass, and Charles Moffit on bass. By the mid-60s Ornette Coleman had already established his reputation as leading light of avant-garde saxophonists and, in his own way, was as great an influence on jazz as Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane had been just a few years earlier, but this album is, for me, when Ornette Coleman underwent the transition to greatness.
The track European Echoes starts in a deceptively simple manner, with Ornette’s little two-note statements over a fast waltzy 3/4 foundation provided by Izenzon and Moffitt. It then eases into a passage marked by freer improvisations by Ornette, the meter changing at the same time to 4/4. Ornette plays for more than half the track, after which Izenzon and Moffitt take over for all but the final minute, at which point Izenzon drops out and Moffitt plays an intricate percussion solo.
Although most people I know recognize the virtuosity of modern jazz musicians they don’t really like the music very much. On the other hand fell in love with this track as soon as I heard it, partly because it begins simply enough for a beginning saxophonist to play along with, but also because it’s highly original without being at all self-indulgent. In fact, at one level, everything Ornette Coleman does on this track is quite simple; he plays the saxophone here like he’d just discovered the instrument and was in the process of finding out what it could do; at least in his early years, he didn’t have much of a technique at all in the conventional sense but nevertheless managed to produce amazing music. This a view echoed by the great Charles Mingus in quote I got from another blog about Ornette Coleman:
Now aside from the fact that I doubt he can even play a C scale in whole notes—tied whole notes, a couple of bars apiece—in tune, the fact remains that his notes and lines are so fresh. So when [the jazz dj] Symphony Sid played his record, it made everything else he was playing, even my own record that he played, sound terrible.
I did learn to enjoy and admire Ornette Coleman’s more “difficult” music later on, but European Echoes was the track that convinced me that Ornette Coleman was a genius.
Though from the same album, Faces and Places is quite a different kettle of fish. It goes like the clappers right from the start, with some terrific work on the drums by Moffit, skittering along on the cymbals with interludes of powerful rapid-fire accents on the skins. Fantastic stuff.
I’ve decided that I’m going to spend this evening listening to Ornette Coleman records and drinking to his memory.
Rest in Peace, Ornette Coleman (1930-2015).
Follow @telescoperPelléas et Mélisande at WNO
Posted in Opera with tags Claude Debussy, Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande, Rebecca Bottone on June 8, 2015 by telescoperHaving had a very busy working birthday it was nice to take off to Cardiff for the weekend for a delayed treat. For me the cultural event of the weekend in the Welsh capital was neither One Direction nor the Manic Street Preachers, both which bands were playing there that weekend. It wasn’t even the Ladyboys of Bangkok, which I would definitely have preferred to either of the former acts. No, it was an evening at the Wales Millennium Centre for a new production of Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy.
This was an opera that was quite new to me, though I did know that the previous production of this work by Welsh National Opera was back in 1992 and the conductor was none other than Pierre Boulez. There is a famous recording of the piece on Deutsche Grammaphon, so the bar was set rather high for the new production. I don’t often agree with opera reviews so don’t usually read them before I go in case they put me off, but I did read the review in the Guardian of the opening night (May 31st) performance of this one as I was sent it by a friend. As it turns out there’s little I can add to George Hall’s review. It was absolutely magnificent.
The plot of Pelléas et Mélisande is, on one level, fairly simple. Prince Golaud finds a mysterious young woman, Mélisande, lost in a forest. She becomes his wife and goes to live with him in the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel of Allemonde. After a while, though, Mélisande gets the hots for Golaud’s younger half-brother Pelléas and he reciprocates her feelings. Eventually Golaud starts to suspect that there’s something going and goes out of his way to find out how far the relationship has developed. He even gets his own child, Yniold, to spy on the couple. Since it’s all getting a bit weird, Pelléas decides to leave the castle but arranges to meet Mélisande one last time before he departs. Golaud gatecrashes the meeting and kills Pelléas in a jealous rage. Mélisande eventually dies too, but not until it is revealed that she has given birth to a daughter. Golaud never really finds out “the truth”, i.e. whether Pelléas and Mélisande ever consummated their love for each other.
But of course the plot tells only part of the story. This opera is based on the symbolist play of the same title by Maurice Maeterlinck. It’s an essential component of the symbolist manifesto that art should try to represent absolute truths that can only be expressed indirectly. Consequently very little in Pelléas et Mélisande is quite what it seems on the surface. The characters are enigmatic, especially Mélisande, and the boundary between reality and imagination is often blurred to such an extent that it takes on the quality of a dream.
That may all seem very confusing, but what binds it all together is Debussy’s music which was a revelation to me: all the sensuality I associate with his music was there, but it’s far darker and more mysterious than I’d imagined in my mind’s ear before the show. I have to say that the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera under the direction of Lothar Koenigs was absolutely magnificent. This was probably the best I’ve ever heard them play – and they’ve been excellent many times I’ve heard them. They obviously rose magnificently to the challenge set by Pierre Boulez. As for the singers, I don’t think there were any weak links at all but for me the pick of them was Rebecca Bottone in the “trouser role” of the young boy, Yniold. She sang and acted quite beautifully.
I didn’t realise straightaway, but the set was based on the same metallic structure used for the WNO production of Lulu, although in this case it wasn’t festooned with body parts, although there was a pool of water around it. Come to think of it, there is quite a lot in common between the characters of Lulu and Mélisande, which may be why they did it that way. Or it might just have been to save money. Anyway, cylindrical structure in the centre of the stage was used very cleverly indeed. At one time it represented a tower, at another a well, and even when it wasn’t being used it added a touch of steampunk to the look.
I also have to mention the staging of the final scene. Mélisande’s death was depicted most movingly, wrapped in black scarves by maidservants. At the end of the performance, the rest of the cast are escorted offstage by a representation of death there’s a beautiful image of rebirth as a hand rises defiantly from a white shroud.
Congratulations to Welsh National Opera on this production. I don’t think I’m often given to exaggeration but I’d call this one a triumph!
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Posted in Jazz, The Universe and Stuff with tags Entanglement, Jazz, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong, Lil Hardin, Quantum Mechanics on May 28, 2015 by telescoperAs regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Bonkers) will know, among the various things I write about apart from The Universe and Stuff is my love of Jazz. I don’t often get the chance to combine music with physics in a post so I’m indebted to George Ellis for drawing my attention to this fascinating little video showing a visualisation of the effects of quantum entanglement:
The experiment shown involves pairs of entangled photons. Here is an excerpt from the blurb on Youtube:
The video shows images of single photon patterns, recorded with a triggered intensified CCD camera, where the influence of a measurement of one photon on its entangled partner photon is imaged in real time. In our experiment the immediate change of the monitored mode pattern is a result of the polarization measurement on the distant partner photon.
You can find out more by clicking through to the Youtube page.
While most of my colleagues were completely absorbed by the pictures, I was fascinated by the choice of musical accompaniment. It is in fact Blue Piano Stomp, a wonderful example of classic Jazz from the 1920s featuring the great Johnny Dodds on clarinet (who also wrote the tune) and the great Lil Armstrong (née Hardin) on piano, who just happened to be the first wife of a trumpet player by the name of Louis Armstrong.
So at last I’ve found an example of Jazz entangled with Physics!
P.S. We often bemoan the shortage of female physicists, but Jazz is another field in which women are under-represented and insufficiently celebrated. Lil Hardin was a great piano player and deserves to be much more widely appreciated for her contribution to Jazz history.
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Laurie Anderson – All the Animals
Posted in Art, Music with tags All the Animals, Brighton Festival, Laurie Anderson on May 25, 2015 by telescoperTaking a short break from the combination of marking examinations and listening to cricket which has been my Bank Holiday Monday so far, so I thought I’d post a brief report on the show I went to last night, which happened to be the last night of this year’s Brighton Festival.
All the Animals was a show put together especially for this year’s Brighton Festival by renowned performance artist Laurie Anderson. She is most famous (at least in the UK) for the amazing record O Superman which was a smash hit in 1981; I posted about that on this blog here. A large number of last night’s audience members were clearly devout Laurie Anderson fans but I’ve never seen one of her live shows so wasn’t sure what to expect.
It turned out to be very much a one-woman show, with Laurie Anderson alone on stage. The show consisted of her telling stories about various animals, including her own pet terrier, Lula Belle, who is now sadly deceased. In between the stories there were musical interludes, with herself performing on an electric violin with various digital effects thrown in, and sometimes she accompanied herself as she performed the stories. The show was shot through with a wry humour and Laurie Anderson herself came across as a very engaging personality.
I had been told that her performances were often dazzling multimedia events, but this turned out not to be like that at all. The big screen at the back of the stage was only used a couple of times, once to show excerpts from a list of extinct animal species and once to show a couple of Youtube clips of Lula Belle. There were no dramatic lighting or other effects either. It was all very low key really. Far from the multimedia extravaganza I had anticipated.
There was enthusiastic applause at the end of the show, but to be honest I felt a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed the show, and still think Laurie Anderson is a really interesting artist but I suppose I just built up in myself an expectation of something with a more exciting visual element.
So that’s the end of this year’s Brighton Festival. Still, yesterday I posted the following tweet:
Predictions for today: (1) England will lose at Lord’s; (2) Newcastle will get relegated; (3) Laurie Anderson @brightfest will be fabulous
— Peter Coles (@telescoper) May 24, 2015
I guess all three predictions proved false. England didn’t lose on Sunday and indeed are very much favourites to win the Test match as I write this. Newcastle United won their game against West Ham and avoided relegation to the Championship. And Laurie Anderson, though definitely interesting, didn’t quite qualify as “fabulous”…
Follow @telescoperThe Diary of One who Disappeared
Posted in Music with tags Anna Huntley, Benjamin Britten, Brighton Festival, James Baillieu, Leos Janacek, Robert Murray, Seven Sonnets for Michelangelo, The Diary of One who Disappeared on May 22, 2015 by telescoperAt the end of a very busy day before I go home and vegetate, I only just have time for a quick post about the concert I attended last night in St George’s Church, Kemptown. It was a convenient venue for me as it is just at the end of my street; my polling station for the recent elections was there too.
Anyway, the title of the concert is taken from the song cycle of the same name composed by Leoš Janáček. It’s a sequence of 21 poems about a young man who falls for seductive gypsy girl and ends up running away from home to be with her, and care for the baby son she turns out at the end of the cycle to have born. There’s also a very tempestuous piano interlude, labelled Intermezzo Erotico in the programme, which (presumably) depicts the circumstances in which the baby was conceived. This work was performed by mezzo-soprano Anna Huntley and tenor Robert Murray accompanied by James Baillieu at the piano (who also played the piano at the recital I attended last week). Three female voices also took part in a few of these songs; they were hidden away in the gallery so it was quite a surprise when they joined in.
Despite being a big fan of Janáček I’ve never heard this music before, and I found it absolutely wonderful. It involves many abrupt and unexpected changes of mood, with soome simple folk-like melodies juxtaposed with much more disturbed and fragmented musical language. At the end, when the young man reveals that he has a son, the tenor reaches up for two stunning top Cs which took me completely by surprise and sent cold shivers down my spine. I must get a recording of this work. As soon as it had finished I wanted to listen to it all over again.
The Diary of One who Disappeared formed the second half of the concert. The first was also very varied and interesting. We began with he two principal singers taking turns at performing a selection of six from a well-known set of 49 Deutsche Volkslieder by Johannes Brahms. Then Robert Murray – who looks somewhat disconcertingly like Shane Warne – performed the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo by Benjamin Britten (his Opus 22). These were the first pieces Britten composed specifically for the voice of his partner Peter Pears and were written way back in 1940. They’re all poems about love in its various forms and I think they’re wonderful, especially Sonnet XXX:
Veggio co’ bei vostri occhi un dolce lume,
Che co’ miei ciechi già veder non posso;
Porto co’ vostri piedi un pondo addosso,
Che de’ mie zoppi non è già costume.
Volo con le vostr’ale senza piume;
Col vostr’ingegno al ciel sempre son mosso;
Dal vostr’arbitrio son pallido e rosso,
Freddo al sol, caldo alle più fredde brume.
Nel voler vostro è sol la voglia mia,
I mie’ pensier nel vostro cor si fanno,
Nel vostro fiato son le mie parole.
Come luna da sè sol par ch’io sia;
Chè gli occhi nostri in ciel veder non sanno
Se non quel tanto che n’accende il sole.
It’s a fine poem in itself but Britten’s setting of it is both beautiful and imaginative. I’m guessing that it’s extremely difficult to sing because the vocal line is very complex and has some very challenging intervals. You can almost imagine it being part of a bel canto opera…
The first half of the concert closed with the Seven Gypsy Songs (Opus 55) by
Antonín Dvořák, by far the most famous of which is Songs My Mother Taught Me.
It was a very fine recital with some lovely music, beautifully sung. In fact the singing was so nice a blackbird outside the church decided to join in during the first half. It was a nicely balanced programme tied together by two recurrent themes: Gypsies and love (and sometimes both at the same time). TheI particularly enjoyed the blend of familiar and unfamiliar. For example, although I know the Sonnets by Britten I’ve only ever heard the classic Britten-Pears version so it was interesting to hear it performed by a very different singer.
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Posted in Jazz with tags bebop, Birdland, Charlier Parker, Groovin' High, Milt Buckner on May 18, 2015 by telescoperI stumbled across this on Youtube and just had to share it. I’ve got this track on an old vinyl LP of Charlie Parker performances recorded live at Birdland, the famous New York jazz club named in his (Bird’s) honour. I don’t think any of the tracks on that album have ever been reissued on CD or for download so I was both surprised and delighted to find this. It was recorded live in 1953, so it’s a bit lo-fi, but what’s particularly interesting is the unusual collection of instruments. Bird is alto sax as usual, but the rest of the band consists of Cornelius Thomas on drums, Bernie McKay on guitar and Milt Buckner on the Hammand Organ. That’s very far from a typical bebop band. Milt Buckner’s organ accompaniment is perhaps an acquired taste but Charlie Parker clearly enjoyed this setting. He plays beautifully throughout, especially during the exciting chase sequence with the drummer near the end. The tune was written by Parker’s old sparring partner Dizzy Gillespie and is based on the chords of Whispering, an old ballad written in 1920. I’m not sure why Dizzy Gillespie decided to hang his tune on that particular harmonic progression, but it’s a thrill to hear Bird racing through the changes in such exhilarating style.
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Posted in History, Music, Poetry with tags Anton Rubinstein, Antonin Dvorak, Benjamin Appl, Brighton Festival, Franz Liszt, Heinrich Heine, Ilse Weber, James Baillieu, Lieder, Terezin on May 16, 2015 by telescoperYesterday evening I crossed the border from Brighton into the Labour stronghold of Hove (actually), All Saints Church to be precise. The purpose of my mission was to attend a recital of songs by German baritone Benjamin Appl accompanied at the piano by James Baillieu. This was my fourth Brighton Festival event in as many days, but the shows I have attended have been very different so I have no regrets about booking this particular sequence.
This recital was performed in the nave of All Saints Church in a sideways configuration so the musicians were on one side rather than at the end towards the altar. I have never been to this venue before but it’s quite a regular one for musical events. I suppose they use this arrangement for the more intimate kind of music-making, such as the singing of Lieder, so the performers can be as close as possible to the audience.
The programme consisted of songs either from or inspired by Eastern Europe. The concert began with three fairly well known songs by Franz Liszt based on poems by Heinrich Heine but then continued with six Heine settings by Anton Rubinstein (his Op. 32) which I’d never heard before. These songs are direct and uncluttered and I found them rather charming. The first half closed with The Biblical Songs by Antonín Dvořák, his Opus 99. Based on extracts from the Book of Psalms these very touching works were written when the composer heard his father was gravely ill.
After a short interval and a quick glass of overpriced Pinot Grigio, we continued with Six Songs Op. 90 by Robert Schumann, who also provided the finale with his intensely moving Requiem which was written later but subsequently added to the Opus 90 collection. In between these works by Schumann we heard a selection of songs from Terezin (German name Theresienstadt) the site of a concentration camp. These pieces are much lighter than the art songs surrounding them in the programme, but are invested with a deep sense of tragedy by the circumstances in which they were composed and also performed. The song Wiegala, for example, is a lullabye written by Ilse Weber, a Jewish lady who worked for some time as a nurse in Terezin. She sang it for countless children destined for the gas chambers, and when the time came for her and her son to be murdered she sang it for him too as they walked together to their deaths.
As an aside here I thought I would plug a CD of music from Terezin I bought a while ago that features Anne Sofie von Otter singing some of the heartbreaking songs written by the inhabitants of Terezin. It’s highly recommended, though I have to admit I find it hard to listen to it without bursting into tears.
What struck me most about this recital is that the greatest Lieder are often very simple and often very brief. Some of the greatest songs by, for example, Schubert areas simple that only a genius could have written them
I think it’s the focus that gives each its power and the variety within each collection means there’s always something to hold the listener even in a long programme. Yesterday I complained about the limitations of a programme featuring only one voice, yet this one also featured only one voice but was an unqualified success. The difference, I think, is that these songs were meant to be performed the way we heard them last night…
I really enjoyed this concert. Benjamin Appl has a wonderful baritone voice, and very few vocal mannerisms or affectations. He just lets the music do its stuff. It was an amazingly mature performance for such a young man.I shouldn’t forget the flawless accompaniment provided by James Baillieu either.
Apparently Benjamin Appl was the last private pupil of the late Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. That provides me with an excuse to include this version of the song Morgen! (Tomorrow!) Opus 27(4) by Richard Strauss, which was performed last night as an upbeat encore to an evening of intensely emotional music.
Und morgen wird die Sonne wieder scheinen
und auf dem Wege, den ich gehen werde,
wird uns, die Glücklichen sie wieder einen
inmitten dieser sonnenatmenden Erde…
und zu dem Strand, dem weiten, wogenblauen,
werden wir still und langsam niedersteigen,
stumm werden wir uns in die Augen schauen,
und auf uns sinkt des Glückes stumme Schweigen..
The first line translates as “And tomorrow the Sun will shine again…” Here is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing it:
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Being Both
Posted in Music, Opera with tags Alice Coote, Being Both, Brighton Dome, Brighton Festival, English Concert on May 15, 2015 by telescoperMy third consecutive Brighton Festival event of the week was Being Both, which featured mezzo soprano Alice Coote along with the English Concert under the direction of Harry Bicket (at the dreaded harpsichord). The music for the evening was all provided by George Frideric Handel in the form of a wide selection of arias from his operas and oratorios. It wasn’t just a concert, though. Alice Coote acted as well as sang, and various props and visual references supplemented her performance. There were also few extras who spent most of the show painting a slogan on a screen behind the orchestra: “You who are more than one thing, You who exceed expectations”. I added the comma myself.
When Handel was writing operas it was pretty typical for the heroic male lead to be played by a castrato, so these parts were scored for rather high voices. It was only much later in the history of opera that these roles became associated with tenor voices. The register in which a castrato would naturally sing is somewhere around that of a female contralto or mezzo soprano or a male counter-tenor. Modern stagings of Handel’s operas therefore tend to cast the leading make character either as a counter-tenor (male), as a “trouser role” for a female singer, or simply as a female character with no attempt to disguise the singer’s gender. The latter option can be extremely interesting as it allows the production to cast an interesting light on the way gender influences our preconceptions about character. In Being Both we saw Alice Coote singing some roles that were intended to be sung by male artists and others by female artists; since it was the person singing and “being” both it successfully blurred the distinction between these roles as well as poking a bit of fun at the dated attitudes represented in the texts.
The best part of the performance was Alice Coote. She has a gorgeous voice and commanded the stage in superb style. As for the English Concert, I was alarmed by some truly awful horn playing in the opening number, but the brass section wasn’t used at all after that and the remainder of the orchestra (mainly strings) played pretty well. It’s the “semi-staging” that troubled me most. The use of props was unsubtle and gimmicky and the overall feel of the production rather pretentious. I found the slow painting of the slogan behind the orchestra a distraction both from Alice Coote’s performance and for the music. It seemed to me to be saying “if you’re not enjoying the show why not watch some paint dry as an alternative?”
Wonderful artist though Alice Coote is, I did find myself wishing for a bit more variety in the vocal parts. Handel’s operas involve an enormous range of contrasts in different combinations of different voices. Hearing a series of excerpts all performed in the same register by the same artist robs the works of the dramatic interplay that makes Handel’s operas and oratiorios so special. I suppose that just tells you that I find an proper Opera a much more interesting experience than a string of arias performed out of context.
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In the Dark 