Thursday, February 20, 2014

...John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble

The "John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble"

After I returned from the concert of the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble in the Wiener Konzerthaus I listened to a couple of songs with his Claudia Quintet. I was instantly struck by the huge difference of this music compared to that I had just listened to at the Konzerthaus. Apparently, John Hollenbeck, drummer of his band, has a variety of styles at his disposal.

At their Konzerthaus performance the band played six pieces, which were similar to the title song of their album "Eternal Interlude" quite long. The most prominent trait of the music presented that evening was its continuous smoothness: this music had almost no rough edges. After listening to his other compositions on CD this characteristic became even more prominent.

Neither Fish nor Fowl

The music of the Konzerthaus performance lacked spontaneity to be jazz, lacked ambition to be classical avantgarde music, and was way too long to be recognized as pop music. Nevertheless, it kept my attention for the whole concert, and I wondered why. It is certainly Hollenbeck's strength to maintain a certain atmosphere over a long period of time, which is a task not easily accomplished by any composer. The music, especially the aforementioned "Eternal Interlude", is in itself not particularly interesting but can serve as an outstanding model for a medium scale composition. It does not break apart into fragments, it rather maintains tension over the whole distance, though on a low level. 


Jazz-aficionados and Hollenbeck disciples might be disappointed by my conclusion as well as by the evening itself. More than a few cleared the hall (which was not sold out) between the last piece and the encore. The mere working off of compositional paradigms apparently was not enough for them.



No need for disappointment

"Der Standard", one of Austria's most important newspapers, cited Hollenbeck with the words, that "jazz only is a part of a whole." That is certainly true and a valid starting point for compositional ambitions. But Hollenbeck still owes me a musical explanation what he considers to be "whole".


In an article on WQXR's website Hollenbeck presents his mixtapes, containing music by the finest composers of the 20th century, ranging from Georg Friedrich Haas, György Ligeti, Steve Reich to Meredith Monk and others. Strange enough, almost nothing of this influences were perceptible in the Konzerthaus concert.


I am really looking forward to listen to Hollenbeck's other recordings with his "Claudia Quartet." The few pieces I've already heard are completely different to yesterday's concert. I guess these are the ones where he carries through everything he is famous for.

Friday, February 14, 2014

...Maurizio Kagel, "Mare nostrum"

I was always a big fan of the music by Maurizio Kagel. I certainly do not know all of his works, but the ones I have listened to so far, have convinced me that Kagel is a composer of the highest rank. Most important for me is his humor which distinguishes him from his peers.

Currently the Wiener Kammeroper is staging a new production of Kagel's chamber opera "Mare nostrum", which translates to "our sea." The opera tells us the story about the colonization of Amazonia, but with swapped roles. The intruders are not men from Europe but natives from the conquered countries, which are going to teach the Europeans their way of civilization.

Kagel limits himself to a very sparse orchestration. He merely uses oboe, flute, cello, and guitar, which are placed on the stage, and percussion and harp, which are offstage. Due to the limitations of the orchestration, the sound is often faint, monophonic and pointillstic, but also strange and exotic. There are also only two actors, one native and one European, which are changing between singing and speaking.

Ben Connor (Amazonian) & Rupert Enticknap (European)
Copyright Armin Bardel
"Mare nostrum" was written in 1975, and it seems to me heavily bound to this time. It breathes the air of post-colonialism and indulges deeply in the guilt of Europeans and what they considered to be "civilizing". Without any doubt, there is an irreparable guilt on part of the Europeans, but would it make an ethical difference if the roles were changed? In my opinion, civilizing other cultures is a crime, notwithstanding who is civilizing by whom. This might be the major flaw of Kagel's work, and he is not the only one falling into this trap.

Hans Werner Henze similarly fall for this idea in "Floß der Medusa", which is also dealing partly with civilizing other cultures, but with a different outcome.
But is an opera really the best way to deal with this part of colonization? Kagel himself, who was Argentine, but spent a lot of time in Europe, might have had an interest in setting the ordeals of his ancestors to music. But there is always the question if the attempt of making these ordeals fitting onto the stage of the opera is rather diminishing them than dignifying.

After the opera, I could not help but notice people complaining about the music. However, I do not share their complaints. Of course, there were no melodies you could sing on your way back home, there were no harmonies you can easily find on the piano. But the music nevertheless had a feeling of wholeness, which I really admire. Kagel seems not to be interested in beautiful sounds. He often employs only one instruments, sometimes only the surface of an object on the stage. The music is tied strongly to the acting, and this inseparability makes it interesting for me.

Ben Connor (Amazonian), Rupert Enticknap (European) &
Members of the Wiener KammerOrchesters. Copyright Armin Bardel

The performance of counter tenor Rupert Enticknap (the European), Ben Connor (the Amazonian) and the instrumentalists was superb. Sometimes I wished they had more opportunity to show their immense and various talents. Especially Connor's delivery of the distorted and meaning-enriched text was impressing. The Wiener Kammeroper is certainly the place for a work like this. But if a work like this is still worth to be performed is another question. The moral implications and the highly visible political ambition is something that does not transport itself easily into our time.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

...WANDA

Austro pop taken to a new level

On February 11th the Austrian band "Wanda" gave their first official concert under their new label "Problembär Records" at rhiz, a small but nevertheless prestigious venue for new pop music.

I'd never heard of "Wanda" before, which is a shame, and if not after this concert than after their performance as support for "Der Nino aus Wien" on May 13th at WUK everybody interested in fresh Austrian pop music should (and will) know about them.

From the first chord of the first song "Tu' mir weh, Luzia" ("Hurt me, Luzia") it was clear that the evening would be a success. This is easy to say, since most of the audience was already familiar with the music - thus fans - but even fans might be disappointed if the performance does not match their expectations. But the presence of lead singer (and name donor) Marco Michael Wanda was inescapable as well as the joy the band apparently had throughout the concert, visible even for Wanda first timers like me.

From left to right: Lukas Hasitschka, Christian Hummer,
Ray Weber, Marco Michael Wanda, Manuel Poppe
Photo Credit: Benjamin Meyer-Plutowski

Marco Michael Wanda, who writes most of the songs and lyrics, is already a master of ear-catching melodies. He proves that in almost every song (like "Bologna"), but especially in those which were accompanied by the audience. They gave two frenetically acclaimed encores ("1 2 3 4 - Es ist schön bei dir zu sein" "1 2 3 4 - It is good to be with you" and "Schick mir die Post schon ins Spital" "Send me the mail to the hospital"), the latter almost completely sung by the audience.

The rhiz is admittedly only a small venue, there were a approximately hundred guests or so. But nevertheless, to muster such a dedicated fan base is not a small achievement for a band that young.

Learning from the best

All songs were skillfully produced by Paul Gallister, who, according to their Facebook page, met Wanda and his companions at a cab drive, where they arranged their future collaboration. This is a fortune for us, since Paul Gallister himself possesses plenty of experience as lead singer on the stage. He is not only a scholar of classical rock music like "The Beatles" but also a professional educated composer. Therefor the collaboration of "Wanda" together with Paul Gallister is a perfect match.

It is always difficult to write about the actual sound of the music. There are a couple of videos on Youtube, which deliver a better impression than words can do. About the song "Easy Baby" a commentator wrote that this music reminds him of "Falco", which is an impression I share. There is definitively something 80-ish to this music. The music of Marius Müller-Westernhagen came to my mind, but the lyrics of "Wanda" are much better, either funny or intelligent (often both), than those sometimes asinine or even insulting ("Dicke" "Fat guys") by Westernhagen. Maybe the resemblance is merely physical, since Wanda, as well as Westernhagen, knows how to appear on the stage.

It is about time for "Wanda" to play at greater venues and hopefully on the radio. Paul Gallister told me, that they played half of there oeuvre on this evening. So maybe the best is yet to come.

"Wanda" is Christian Hummer, keyboard; Manuel Poppe, git; Ray Weber, bass; Lukas Hasitschka, dr; Marco Michael Wanda, voc.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

...Mohammed Fairouz, Symphony No. 4 "In The Shadow Of No Towers"


Yet Another Commemoration Piece?


To be honest, I hadn't very high hopes when I read the first time about Mohammed Fairouz' Symphony No. 4 "In The Shadow Of No Towers" in the review of Grego Applegate Edwards in his Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review and also in The Classical Reviewer. That was before I heard a single note of Fairouz' music, and even after a couple of minutes into the first movement I wasn't fully convinced if this Symphony wasn't yet another attempt to catch the latest wave of 9/11 commemoration - since this is a piece which is linked to this very disaster by virtue of its title.

My concerns with this piece where twofold: First, as a composer educated in Europe, I have a certain mistrust against tonal streams in otherwise atonal music, or rather against the intermingling of both. This might be the outcome of a Euro-centric attitude nurtured by overambitious Adorno-reading, that music is only modern if it uses the most advanced material available, which "In The Shadow Of No Towers" does apparently not.

My second concern was, since Fairouz is not the first composer writing a 9/11 commemoration piece, that he also gets trapped in a pitfall John Adams and Steve Reich couldn't avoid. Adams in his "On The Transmigration Of Souls" as well as Reich in "WTC 9/11" both availed themselves with the human voice to transport their message. In both cases this seems to me like the hapless attempt to ensure the "commemoration aptitude" of their music, but it is not more than their average output combined with 9/11-related citations.

This was my inital position for Fairouz' Symphony No. 4.

Something is terribly wrong

Fairouz scored his work for winds, supported by percussions. The movements are (the links point to his Soundcloud channel):

1. The New Normal
2. Notes Of A Heartbroken Narcissist
3. One Nation Under Two Flags
4. Anniversaries

The liner notes as well as the blog mentioned above provide ample information on the titles, and I will not repeat them here. Also the connection to the works of Art Spiegelman, from whom Fairouz borrowed the title, is discussed there at length. Nevertheless, and that be again due to my euro-centric point of view, in my opinion the music must be accessible in one way or another without further explanations. Actually, I don't now the vignettes by Spiegelman very well, and the titles of the movements mean nothing to me, but I expect the music to work for me anyway. And it does.

From the very beginning, there is a disturbing atmosphere in the music, which is refreshingly different to the usual mourning sound à la Adams. Fairouz intention is not to remember the victims of 9/11 but rather to trace the wounds and bruises in the American heart. In fact, it is questionable whether this is a commemoration piece after all. Fairouz often uses grand tonal sounds, for example at the end of the Symphony, but also on various occasions within the piece, but something is always wrong, or rather on the verge of something. Especially the end repeats a certain motive so often that it shifts to its own parody (maybe a reference to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4). This passage is accompanied by the clicking of two claves, which resembles a ticking clock.




At this point, the question for me was no longer if I can accept tonality, which Fairouz uses plenty of times, but rather for which purpose he employs it. Fairouz is without doubt beyond the quite ideological distinction between tonality or atonality. His music is the result of a multi-stylistic world of music, since he has mastered the comparatively difficult task of combining them. Maybe Fairouz points in the direction music is heading to in the 21st century.
Other composers, like the aforementioned John Adams, miss this point. Adams is merely composing the soundtrack for a commemoration celebration. Fairouz is achieving much more: His music does not illustrate by means of words, it is having a dialogue with its subject through its very own musical symbols.


Mohammed Fairouz' 4th Symphony "In The Shadow Of No Towers" was issued on NAXOS together with Philip Glas' "Concert Fantasy for two Timpani and Orchestra."

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Recently Read

Here are a couple of links I bookmarked during the last weeks. I recommended some of them already via Facebook, Twitter and so on. Check out the overview.

Death has always be an important part of opera. In their article "Four centuries of suicide in opera" for the "Medical Journal of Australia", Saxby A. Pridmore and his co-authors are researching this topic from a medical point of view. In the already in 2013 published results they came to the conclusion, that
 "over several centuries in opera, suicide has been frequently represented as an option when characters have been faced with a distressing event or situation. Historical fluctuations in the frequency of suicidal behaviour in opera may be explained by changes in attitudes towards suicide and its conceptualisation."

Four Centuries Of Suicide In Opera


During the preparation of my upcoming interview with Canadian composer Caitlin Smith, who is working on an opera about the war in Afghanistan,  I found an article (January 13th) on an opera about the US military operation in Somalia. Marsha Lederman, who writes for the The Globe and Mail tells us the story about photographer Paul Watson, who is haunted by the memory of a photo he shot in Somalia of an mutilated US soldier.
The collaboration with US writer Dan O'Brien was supposed to alleviate his fears and yielded an opera, a play, and a book on the Somalia topic. Together with composer Jonathan Berger they wrote the opera "Visitations", comprising the chamber operas "Theotokia" and "The War Reporter", based on Watsons experiences in Somalia and the writings by O'Brien.

Striking Somali war photo inspires new works in curious creative partnership


Astrid Baumgardner wrote on Januar 30th for I CARE IF YOU LISTEN a not necessarily music related but non the less important article for music entrepreneurs. She proposes her SMART-goals, with is short for five steps of achieving a personal goal.

SMART Goals for SMART Music Entrepreneurs



On January 31st Grant Damron wrote for Bachtrack about technologies that change the way the creative process works.

Ten technologies that have reshaped how composers create


Some Tweets


Monday, February 3, 2014

...Warpaint - Warpaint

Warpaint's Second Attempt. Lectures on Variety

Beginning at the end 

Almost no review of the album "Warpaint" by the LA-based band with the same name misses to compare the album with its extolled predecessor "The Fool", from 2010. As I am unfamiliar with Warpaint's first attempt this might be a good opportunity for engaging with the music of "Warpaint" without prejudices.



Mixed reviews

I first read about "Warpaint" in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), where Alexander Müller called the music "grieving but not depressing." That is not an understatement, since the music is far to clever then to bath in a certain type of "Weltschmerz"  some bands use. Nevertheless, it seems to me that this conclusion, though true, does not get to the point of the music.



Ian Cohen from Pitchfork gave the album a rather lousy review and rated it only a 5.7 on a scale of 1-10 (Metacritic's rates the album as a 75 out of 100). Why Cohens bad decree? First of all, he finds "Warpaint" guilty of setting a "star-making roll-out" in motion, due to the massive forces involved in creating the album. But is this a reason for a bad review? However, his point is that in trying hard - maybe too hard - in creating an album as successful or even more as its predecessor, they were frittering themselves in their ample possibilities. In Cohens view, "Warpaint" does not manage to develop a coherent stream in their music, which leads to a "[...] lack[s] of hooks, grooves, or even a pulse [...]"


Lectures on Variety

In contrast to Cohen's review, I don't miss grooves or pulses in their music. They might or might not be there, this is not what I am looking for in this music.


The first song I heard of the album was "Love Is To Die", which I also recommended on Facebook. This was my first encounter with "Warpaint", and my expectation for the rest of the album where pretty high.







I was hooked in an instance by this music, especially by the strange harmonic situation when the chorus appears for the first time. It is the charm of irritation what I enjoy most in music, and this song remained for me the summit of the album. This charm should especially apply for the song "Disco//very", which is the most different to the others, but for some reason, it does not.

"Warpaint" gives us an insight into the immense variety of styles they have at their disposal, and the talent that might have unfolded at "The Fool." The problem is that almost no song on "Warpaint" manages to be exceedingly interesting, maybe due to the suffocation in possibilities. And a compilation of comparatively dull songs does not make a great album by default. Even if "Warpaint" is giving us a lecture on variety, it neither assembles to a coherent whole nor to a collection of decent songs. It is not boring or even bad crafted - it just does not live up to the high expectations.