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Archive for the ‘Classical’ Category

Day 13. Debussy and Ravel.

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Today’s picks were from the Debussy section, which meant there would be some Ravel as well. After actually learning both of these composers works, I am amazed at how easily they are grouped together when their music really is quite different. It is almost impossible to find one composer’s quartet without the other for instance, or discs of orchestral music.

All that was really picked by Celia today was a two-disc set by the Nash Ensemble of both composer’s chamber music (including one of my favorite pieces, the duo for violin and cello by Ravel), a disc containing each composer’s quartets (plus Fauré’s late piano trio) and a Herbert Von Karajan disc of orchestra music (leading the Orchestre de Paris). The recording of ‘La Valse’ on the Karajan disc is amazing. The Orchestre de Paris provides a sharper sound for Karajan then Berlin usually did during this time period, but Karajan brings a strong Austrian understanding of the waltz to the performance. Most people think of waltzes as oom-pah-pah background music, but for J. Strauss and the other composers of the Viennese  waltz tradition the dance was actually quite racy. A friend once described it as ‘a vertical expression of a horizontal intention’. And Karajan conducts it in this way – with slight moments of holding back here and there, until the self-destruction that Ravel composed finally explodes. Because of the program associated with Ravel’s waltz (a nostalgia for the Europe that WW I destroyed) the tension and release here is one of self-destruction.

After listening to the Karajan recording I decided to grab the 4 disc set of Jean Martinon’s recordings of Debussy’s orchestra music and his 2 disc set of Ravel’s, both re-released on EMI discs. All these recordings also use the Orchestre de Paris and were originally releases as quadraphonic recordings. I would love to find a DVD release that takes advantage of this original recording, but in the meantime these stereo versions are well worth having. In fact – I think the Ravel recordings are the best ones out there. Martinon’s recordings share a deeper understanding of the composers themselves. While the Karajan is about Karajan doing what he does to Ravel and Debussy, the Martinon recordings let the composers themselves come through much more clearly. I’m looking forward to listening to these again tomorrow.

Day 10. Stuart Dempster, Os Mutantes and Mozart.

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Today’s discs are Stuart Dempster’s ‘Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel’, The Best of Os Mutantes and period instrument recordings of Mozart’s last four string quartets and late piano quartets.

I consider myself EXTREMELY lucky to know Stuart. He is quite possibly the most amazing musician I have ever had the chance to talk, listen to and learn from (though I don’t know how much Stuart knows this… so, just in case he is reading – Thanks Stuart!).

The ‘Cistern Chapel’ disc features Stuart and a number of musicians (including my friend Chad Kirby) that he taught and worked with in the Pacific Northwest recorded inside a huge underground water tank in Fort Warden, Washington. Every sound that is made in the cistern will echo for 35-45 seconds. The music on this disc includes trombones, didgeridoo, conch shells and voice. As every new sound is created, it is sustained as new material begins. The performers play the space in addition to their instruments. I find it strange now to say something like ‘the performers play the space in addition to their instruments’ since after hearing this disc, one of my big realizations as a musician is that a performer is ALWAYS playing the space in addition to their instruments. I remember how I would always have to make adjustments during performances once an audience was present or to adjust to a new space, but until I heard this disc is was something I did subconsciously, and certainly not something that I would have realized that I could play with. And it is still one of the biggest concerns (and joys) I have when performing electronic music.

I also have a string of pieces that were heavily influenced by the music on this disc. ‘Palimpsest’ for electric guitar was my first attempt to think of reverb and space as a compositional parameter and not just an effect. ‘Cadence’ for computer has the decay of sound (over 14 minutes) as it’s main concept. ‘Theta’ for viola is largely about making the performer resonate with themselves. And finally ‘Risonanza’ for computer, which was composed for the High Voltage Hall in Warsaw, Poland last year. The High Voltage Hall was a large, metallic cube that had a 30 second reverb time, and the piece was conceived for performance in that space and its unique qualities. ‘Space’ as a compositional concept, something to be shaped and controlled like melody or harmony, has become one of the most important aspects to my music. And it was Stuart’s disc that revealed the possibilities of musical space to me. This became one of my main topics of research for my doctoral exams, and it is still one of the most important areas of my work.

The music on ‘Cistern Chapel’ is often described as ambient, and I certainly understand this description. But what strikes me most about the disc is how much attention it draws from me when I listen to it. One might expect that once a sound plays and begins a 40 second decay, that there isn’t much more to hear beyond the space. But what you hear is how complex sound is and how timbre changes as energy dissipates. The result is a very dynamic and active music, constantly changing in ways that ‘more active’ music doesn’t. In most classical / pop music, there may be 1-5 notes of melody per second and harmony may change at a slightly slower pace. And it is these changes that usually draws our attention. But in the Cistern, there may only be one or two notes every 6-10 seconds, but the change is constant.

For those of you that haven’t heard of Os Mutantes, they are a psychedelic group from 1960s Brazil. They grab influence from ‘Sgt. Pepper’,’Electric Ladyland’,  ‘Pet Sounds’, Bossa Nova and Latin Jazz. If you haven’t heard (or seen) them, do a quick search on YouTube and enjoy a couple songs. And I highly recommend their compilation ‘Anything Is Possible’ on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label. ‘Fuga No. 11’ is my particular favorite.

Day 8. J.S. Bach.

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010


Mira’s gravitation towards box sets continues, and today’s picks had to be pared down. She chose both the complete J.S. Bach organ works (17 discs) and the Miles Davis ‘Bitch’s Brew’ box set. Celia chose more Queen and Lou Reed… but due to the size of the Bach box I decided to put Miles, Queen and Lou Reed off until tomorrow.

The Bach set is one of two complete Bach organ works I have. The one from today is Peter Hurford’s London set. The different sets of compositions are also performed on organs throughout Europe. So in addition to hearing all of Bach’s organ works, you also get a great sense of how varied an instrument the organ can be. Organs are pretty unique instrument-wise. In some ways, they are like time-capsules. We know about how tuning has changed throughout history (since the pipes don’t easily go in and out of tune, unlike piano strings). It’s history goes back to the 3rd century B.C., and we can see in it’s key layout and construction how the concepts of scale and music theory evolved. It can be orchestrated, and a major part of the organist’s art is the control of registration. Yet, unlike a piano there is little control over dynamics. More stops will make things louder. More notes will make things louder. The swell box can make things louder. Hitting the keys harder – nothing. So when composing for the instrument the number of notes sounding can be an expressive as well as a textural consideration, and the organist can play with a touch that is most comfortable to them without worrying about how it will effect the dynamics of a performance.

During my time at UC Berkeley, I was lucky enough to have a class on Bach with Prof. John Butt, a wonderful teacher and organist. Watching him play was astonishing. His feet played as frantically as his hands did across multiple keyboards. As he came to new themes or sections in a piece, he would also change the stop configuration – the color and power of the instrument would change greatly just by pulling out a couple knobs. In Hertz Hall there were three organs (including a 17th century (?) Italian organ that sat right behind the double bass section on stage during orchestra rehearsals and concerts) and Prof. Butt’s favorite was situated above and behind the audience, which brings up another peculiarity of the instrument. While pianos rarely travel with a performer, concert organs NEVER do. An organist needs to learn the idiosyncrasies of each new instrument they come across for every performance. And you rarely get to SEE the performance. Organ lofts in churches weren’t designed so you could see the organ being played. They were often tucked away – and sometimes the organist might not even be able to hear the instrument well!

So to get a set like the Peter Hurford one is interesting on multiple levels. You get a tour of organs while also getting a tour of one of this instrument’s most amazing composers. I haven’t listened to this set for quite some time, and it is getting a little too late here to turn the volume to where it belongs. But I’m sure I’ll have more to say about these discs tomorrow after having some time to listen to it.

Day 7. Muddy Waters and Schubert.

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

I forgot to get the girls downstairs tonight before they went to bed, so I closed my eyes and picked today’s rips. Two from blues legend Muddy Waters and Wilhem Kempff’s Schubert Sonata box set.

The first of the Muddy Waters discs is a set of field recordings that were captured in Mississippi in the 1940s. They sound quite a bit like most of the most of the other excellent Alan Lomax recordings that were done as part of a large Library of Congress recordings put into motion by Roosevelt’s public works projects that were contained in the New Deal. When the recordings were made, Muddy Waters (in his mid-20s) was living in a cabin on a plantation. There are interviews between him and Lomax on the disc as well, and I am stunned by how well these recordings capture a sense of what it must have meant to be a country blues musician in Mississippi during the great depression. When Lomax asks: “How did you learn to play with a bottle” Muddy Waters says “I found it on the ground and I picked it up”. They talk some more then Lomax asks him to play another song and they record it. Most of these are solo recordings, though a couple feature a second person. A couple of years later Muddy Waters would move to Chicago, and within a few more years he would become a very successful blues musician. By the time the recordings for “Folk Singer” were done in Chicago in the early 60s, Muddy Waters has a full band and much more then a portable recorder at his disposal. He has a full band and a full studio. You can also tell how much better Muddy Waters had been able to eat from comparing the pictures contained in both discs.

But between both, Muddy Waters still plays and sings like a traditional blues singer. His music was influencing rock singers in the US and UK by this time, and in return he was able to make a living in Chicago and record his music in a studio (so – in a way the music industry that he was influencing was also effecting how he worked!). And while the recordings in Chicago are made by a much more established and comfortable musician, the feeling is still all there. He is the older version of that amazing musician that Alan Lomax caught in the fields of Mississippi. There is change that has occurred, but the ‘Folk Singer’ recordings feel like as much of a document as the field recordings do. The first ‘Ooooh!’ in ‘My Captain’ has the echo of the music in the Lomax recordings. But it is an echo, and you get the sense that what has changed is that the 1960s Muddy Waters remembers his roots as well as the hard work that found him success making a living as a musician in Chicago.

The Schubert box is one that I purchased mostly because of how much I love Kempff’s Beethoven playing. I wasn’t familiar with Schubert’s sonatas when I bought it and had no idea what I was in for the first time I listened to 21 minute first movement to the B-flat sonata. This is huge, expansive and lyrical music. At first it seems to hold such a direct relation to Beethoven, but as the music expands Schubert’s gifts for lyricism become more and more apparent. When I played piano more, I always had a great amount of difficulty in handling the dense textures that Schubert often uses in his accompaniments. Large block chords that are repeated under the melody. To me they always seemed to be a mistake, as though they were actually supposed to be scored for strings (partly because it is a texture that Schubert uses so much in his string quartets as well!). But hearing Kempff play them, there is almost no attack – no repetition. Just swells and decrescendos of pulse and texture. He is able to pull them back like curtains to reveal a counter-melody, then let them fall and obscure again. His touch is amazingly nuanced with these gestures, and after I heard him play these pieces, I felt like I knew what I had to work towards.

I have never been happy with how I play Schubert as a result. And I remember thinking that it must just be something about the recording. How could anyone actually play these block chords so smoothly? But I’ve heard other pianists play this music since (both live and on other recordings), and I am constantly amazed at the effect. How can someone can strike the strings so softly, even when playing loudly? While I feel comfortable playing Bach and even some Beethoven and Chopin, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to figure out the touch that is needed to really play Schubert well.

Day 6. U2, Ravel and Mozart.

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Tonight’s picks come from the middle of the U2 stack, a not-so-complete Ravel complete piano music and a VERY complete set of Mozart piano music (Ingrid Haebler’s on Philips).

So first of all, has anyone seen disc 2 of my Angela Hewitt complete Ravel piano set? How many more discs will I open up to find missing? I’ve always felt like I am very careful with my discs, but what does this mean if on Day 6 I am already down a disc???

I have been quite the Ravel enthusiast since I started composing. His later work has such a clarity and elegance to it. So even though I already had a couple of complete sets of his piano work, when Angela Hewitt released her recordings I was quite excited. I love her Bach recordings, and I expected the same kind of care would be apparent with her Ravel recordings. And for the most part it is there. Her “Le Tombeau de Couperin” is beautifully done and ‘Jeux d’eau’ is shimmery. The recordings themselves though seem a little flat compared to the Pascal Roge discs. As with most recent rock recordings, I think there is a bit of compression in the recordings, and as a result they aren’t as dynamic and nuanced as the Roge discs.

‘War’, ‘Under a Blood Red Sky’ and ‘The Joshua Tree’ were the three U2 discs, and I have to say that one of my bigger disappointments in U2 is that in my mind they are one of the bands most responsible for the loss of dynamics in rock recordings. As digital recording became more and more common, U2 was one of the bands that led the way in exploring how best to take advantage of the format. The change in production quality between ‘The Joshua Tree’ and ‘Achtung Baby’ is pretty amazing, but by the time you get to ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’ I feel like you aren’t hearing much of the band anymore. It doesn’t matter if they play soft for a couple notes, it will all get cancelled out in the production. And the sound of the instruments is drowned in effects.

Not so with these three albums though. I had a great conversation with my friend Izzy at Origin 23 here in Tacoma a couple weeks ago after I heard ‘Seconds’ follow up ‘Sunday, Bloody Sunday’ on the sound system. I love it when someone plays an entire album and ‘War’ is a great entire album to play. I mentioned how much I loved hearing ‘Seconds’ (which I think is the best song on the album) and Izzy and I immediately started talking about how great a drummer Larry Mullen is. And ‘War’ just may be his peak in my opinion. While I think the song writing on ‘Joshua Tree’ and ‘Achtung Baby’ is better, the feel of ‘War’ has a cool drive to it. Edge’s playing is great, Bono doesn’t feel like he has started to pull ahead of the rest of the band yet (well, he always seemed to put himself ahead of everyone, but this gets to be much worse later) and Adam Clayton’s playing drives just as strongly as Larry Mullen Jr’s drums.

Tamiko and I saw U2 during the Zoo TV tour (supporting ‘Achtung Baby’ but before ‘Zooropa’ came out). Even with a very sick Bono taking the stage, HUGE screens of TVs and cars hung overhead to use as stage lights, they put on an amazing show. And I remember that hearing them live without the benefit of studio production made the songs from ‘Achtung Baby’ sound so much better. While the tour was promoted as an ‘out with the old in with the new’ kind of deal, the second half of the show had a few older songs as well as a cover of ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’.

Or maybe it was being at a concert with Tamiko (one of our first concerts together). I especially remember holding her close while they played ‘All I Want Is You’. ‘With or Without You’ was an encore. The concert did sound good, but the date was even better.

Day 5. Rubinstein playing Chopin, Queen and Beethoven.

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

I first heard most of Chopin’s music with the performances of Arthur Rubinstein (released by BMG). These recordings are quite possibly the standard for Chopin’s music, 90% of which is for solo piano. This box set (11 CDs total) also includes both of Chopin’s concertos but a number of works are missing. This set doesn’t pretend in any way to be a ‘complete’ Chopin (some notable solo pieces are missing – especially the etudes), but if you are going to grab a strong representation of Chopin’s work it would be hard to find a better choice then this one.

Idil Birit also did an excellent set of recordings of Chopin’s work on Naxos. She is a wonderful pianist and the recordings are very well done. But one drawback to that box is the feeling that there was a time table set to get the complete Chopin piano works compiled, and as a result there is an unevenness in the performances. None are bad… and her sense of tempo and the all important ‘Chopin rubato; is certainly there, but there are a number of pieces that feel like she isn’t as familiar with them. And while there are many advantages to grabbing all of something in a single box, with only a few exceptions do I really think it is a good idea – especially if that box is part of a ‘project’. One of the things that I think makes the Rubinstein box stand out so well is that it is compiled from recordings that span over two decades. So what you get are recordings that capture not only a huge amount of Chopin’s music, but a significant chunk of Rubinstein’s career. You don’t get a sense with these performances that anything is filler, or being performed to satisfy a completist goal. They all sound quite personal. And though it could be argued that there are probably better recordings of the Nocturnes (for example – I once had a great argument about the Rubinstein vs. the Ashkenazy recordings) I think it would be hard to say that there are any other recordings that feel like you have a performer and composer so close to each other. And you as the listener is brought in close as well. I could probably go into the Romantic notions about why so much of Chopin’s music is written for solo piano, but I would rather just say that this music really is made for a small audience. On a concert stage they seem out of place. But in the studio space where these were mostly recorded, a sense of intimacy is captured that many recital or modern recordings seem to miss. I wouldn’t say they feel like Rubinstein is here in the room with me, but I feel like these are recordings that capture a sense of small space. And that is how I like to hear Chopin played.

So from the small space to the stadium – ‘The Queen’s Jewels’ is a blue velvet box set containing Queen’s first 8 albums (basically all the albums from the 70s). This of course includes Wayne and Garth’s favorite and the theme song to the Met’s 1986 World Series victory. Of the later – whenever I hear ‘We Will Rock You’ start, I generally can’t wait to get through the first 1:15 or so of the song. I can understand how the drums, hand claps and group of voices yelling ‘We Will, We Will Rock YOU!’ can get a stadium full of people pumped up, but it is the slow swell of Brain May’s guitar that makes this song for me. What an amazing guitarist, with an amazing guitar sound. And it is when he finally cuts off the singing with that amazing solo that the song FINALLY does start to rock.

Queen has been one of those bands that has never been at the forefront of my musical tastes. I think they are great, and there is even a nod to ‘Killer Queen’ in one of my pieces. But I rarely think ‘I’m in the mood for listening to Queen’. But then they come on and I have a great time, only to repeat the cycle. But I have seen the fanaticism they can inspire. When I was 16 and first working at Tower Records, one of my fellow employees (Thad) was one of the first people I had to ever really spend time with and I didn’t get along with. The guy was an ass… abrasive, rude and … well, mostly filled with hate. I heard Ministry for the first time because Thad was playing it and I think this was generally on the timid side for him. Anyways, the day Freddie Mercury dies I come into work, and Queen is playing VERY loudly in the store. And there is Thad behind the counter, tears streaming down from behind his black sunglasses onto his black leather vest. On the dry-erase board behind the counter is a red and black dry-erase homage to Freddie. And the second I walk in, he just storms into the back room, leaving me to run the record store solo for the next few hours. This guy has never shown an emotion in the three months I had worked there except contempt, and now here he was bawling his eyes out and needing cover. ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ had been on repeat.

This was my first time ever having the record store to myself.

While Thad had opened ‘A Kind of Magic’ just for that song, I remember continuing the tribute by digging out three British import discs we had (that mostly became the Classic Queen CD here in the US). While ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ is a beautiful song, I had a feeling that Freddie would probably rather have everyone in the store listening to ‘Bicycle Race’. Whether Freddie did or not, it was certainly what I preferred hearing that day.

The next day, Thad thanked me for covering. It was one of the only times he would ever actually say something directly to me.afterwards he went on being his regular ass self. But quite often when I hear Queen, I think about that scene.

The last set of discs I ripped tonight are David Zinman’s Beethoven Symphonies. For those who keep track of these types of things, these were the first modern instrument recordings of the New Barenreiter Edition. John Eliot Gardiner had recorded these editions on period instruments about five years earlier, and in general both of those sets are lots of fun to listen to. Though when it comes to Beethoven’s symphonies, I still go back to the 1963 Karajan recordings more then any others.

Day 4. Beethoven, Lee Morgan, Billy Bragg & Wilco and Monteverdi

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

Tonight’s selections were:

Billy Bragg & Wilco: Mermaid Ave. 2

Lee Morgan: Leeway (the RVG edition)

Monteverdi: L’Orfeo (John Eliot Gardiner conducting on Archiv)

Beethoven: complete piano trios from the DG Complete Beethoven Edition

I can’t possibly talk about all of these at the moment, and I have only listened so far to some of the Beethoven and the Lee Morgan. So I’ll stick to those.

‘Leeway’, and the series from Blue Note that it is released under the ‘Rudy Van Gelder edition’ sounds like what Blue Note jazz in the late 50s and 60s sounded like, mostly because so much was recorded in Rudy Van Gelder’s living room (and later his custom studio). The number of GREAT jazz albums recorded by RVG is astounding, and when Blue Note started re-releasing these recordings in the 2000s (remastered by RVG himself) I grabbed as many as I could every time Blue Note discs were on sale. They sound great. And even better is the exposure you get to some great artists that may seem peripheral to the jazz greats. But you really do get a sense of how all of these guys worked and played together on each other’s albums. Hearing a ‘Lee Morgan’ album isn’t just a Lee Morgan album. Art Blakey, Paul Chambers, Jackie McLean and Bobby Timmons are in on the session as well. All of these guys had albums under their own names, most notably Art Blakey. And I love Lee Morgan – but how were the decisions made about who would get the album credit? Why isn’t this an Art Blakey album? When it comes down to it, this one really does feature Lee Morgan… hands down. But then you listen to “Lazy Bird” on John Coltrane’s album “Blue Train”, and how is THAT not something that belongs on a Lee Morgan album???

Nice stretched out performances (the shortest track is still over 8 minutes) that are just cool. And what the RVG recordings show you is how important a recording engineer can be. The sound on RVG recordings really have a signature. There is a story I remember hearing about the first time Herbie Hancock recorded at the studio. Apparently he came in and started to move the piano a bit away from a wall, then started to move a microphone boom stand, and Rudy freaks out. The piano and microphones HAD to be in those spots for it to sound right. The way the sound bounced off the wall and the distance of the mic from the piano had been tuned over years of trial and error…

The recording engineer (and producers) are often the most overlooked musicians. Without them, sound wouldn’t be captured and made available for us to listen to. And they need to learn how to play their instruments in the same way a saxophonist does. It takes years of practice to get your sound, and after a little practice on a listeners part you can recognize RVG recordings (on many labels) just like you would recognize Lee Morgan’s trumpet sound.

The Beethoven discs are the piano trio recordings by Wilhelm Kempff, Pierre Fournier and Henryk Szeryng made in the late 60s. Kempff and Fournier are two of my favorite classical musicians of all time. I also have live recordings that the two of them did of the Beethoven Cello Sonatas. What is so fun about both the piano trio recordings and the sonatas is the sense of enjoyment these performers bring to pieces that they had probably known for 3 to 4 decades at this point in their lives. This is music that is in their muscles. A part of their physicality. But with the wisdom comes age. The performances are not ‘perfect’… there are missed notes here and there, and sometimes you can feel the group pull back a little to regroup. But everything is so musical. There actually isn’t a single note in these recordings. There is such a continuity that it is hard to believe that what we hear these three men playing is somehow represented by something as finite as dots and lines on a page. Beethoven is so lucky to have had people in this world that know and play his music with such connection. Well – Beethoven is lucky, but we are just as lucky! I could go on further, but I need to save something for the many returns to these artists I will be making in the future.

Day 3. Ella Fitzgerald and Luciano Berio.

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Today’s picks come from Mira, and I am starting to notice that she is drawn to wider, more colorful packaging. I guess this means box sets will be ripped first.

The Berio recording I ripped tonight is the ‘complete’ Berio Sequenzas released on DG in 1998 (and I put the quote around complete because Berio composed a couple more after this). I had very little contact with Berio before coming to the University of Washington for grad school, and I was sent to Berio’s scores and recordings of performances of his music early on in my masters degree. I was beginning work on a piece for solo viola, and Richard Karpen scolded me for even thinking about composing works for a solo instrument without knowing these pieces. I wouldn’t be surprised even if he told me that I shouldn’t think about being a composer without knowing these pieces. But it is sufficient to say that I learned quickly that there were some serious holes in my knowledge of repertoire. Berio has become one of my favorite composers. I remember finding the Sequenzas quite uneven on my first listening to these performances (and still find some of these recordings flat). Studying the scores however was like looking at an encyclopedia of extended techniques for each instrument that he composed for. One of my most important lessons about music in general came from further listenings of these pieces. I was amazed how different performances could be, and I came to see the performance of new music not necessarily as a striving for a note perfect representation of dots on a page (where it was the responsibility of the composer to hyper-notate every nuance that is wanted) but as a relationship between composer, performer, performance history and performance practice. These pieces greatly changed how I viewed my role in the world as a composer, and this outlook still changes with every performance I have and piece I write. These pieces also taught me about how important the theatrical performance of a work is. While I have found recordings of these pieces that I enjoy listening to (there will be more writings about the Sequenzas here while the project goes on), seeing them performed (even rehearsed) adds so much to the listening of them. Seeing how a performer grapples with the technical and musical demands of this music is exhilarating.

Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘songbook’ collections came out on Verve first in the 50s and 60s on LP and were reissued on CD in the late 90s. A quick search on Wikipedia (to grab the above dates) also revealed that in 2000 this ALBUM was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 2003 the Library of Congress chose it as one of 50 recordings added to the National Recording Registry. To call this album a treasure is an understatement. It is one of the most beautifully compiled set of performances I think I own. I have played this music while closing the record store for the night, I have played tracks from it for my music theory students, and I have played it just about anytime I need something to lighten me up a bit. Personally, I believe these recordings were captured near the peak of Ella Fitzgerald’s career (along with the ‘Cote d’Azur’ recordings that were done with Duke Ellington). Her musicality is startling, and she may be one of the most perfect interpreters of Cole Porter’s music that I can think of. Her voice on ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ embodies the complexity of the story told in the lyrics, full of sorrow and relief at the same time. ‘You Do Something To Me’ and ‘Too Darn Hot’ embody what I imagine Manhattan sexy in the 50s must have been. But it is her version of ‘I Love Paris’ that is probably one of the top 10 songs that I get stuck in my head. Buddy Bergman’s orchestral arrangement does more the compliment Ella’s voice. This song achieves a stunning relationship between the singer and her accompaniment, rising well above a sum of the two parts. Having such a clear image of this song in my head is one of my most treasured musical memories.

Day 1. ABBA, Air, Elliott Smith, The Smiths, Mozart and R.E.M.

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

I want to avoid going through my whole collection and ripping the CDs in the order they are stored on my bookshelves. This does make packing the discs away a little tricky after I rip them, but it also gives me a wonderful randomness to this whole process. To make things a little more random, I went into the extra bedroom this morning at asked Celia and Mira to pull a few discs off the shelves. Celia went for some red spines (ABBA and Air), and Mira just went to the shelves and started to pull discs down. Whether or not Mira did this in response to my request isn’t known – this is what Mira does when she is around the CD shelves. Today, Mira grabbed off the The Smiths and Elliott Smith. R.E.M.’s ‘Automatic For The People’ was just above those and fell down with the ‘Smiths’, and I also grabbed ‘Marriage Of Figaro’.

I got ABBA for Tamiko some time ago (a download that I burned to disc), and I admit they are quite a guilty pleasure. It’s hard not to have fun when ABBA is playing. I remember listening to ABBA in spanish class in high school (ABBA Oro), and I love to hear Tamiko sing along with them. Celia loves to dance to them (and she loves to dance to Kylie Minogue, who I am sure would not be who she is without ABBA). And as Mira gets her feet under her, I imagine she’ll enjoy them too. What a stark contrast their music is to Elliott Smith’s. The two discs I ripped today were his first album (fairly dark, just Elliott and his guitar) and ‘From A Basement On A Hill’ (released after his suicide). His first album is a wonderful, moody record, and in hindsight probably hints at what will happen in his future. ‘From A Basement On A Hill’ is simply to sad for me to listen to. I have never even listened to the whole thing. When I first bought it, I got about halfway through it before I turned it off. It was just too sad for me at the time, and I have never brought myself to listen to the whole thing. The unfinished quality of what I remember hearing was quite fitting.

The Smith’s ‘The Queen Is Dead’ and R.E.M.’s ‘Automatic for the People’ both bring along lots of high school memories. Heavier on the R.E.M. side though. Not that I don’t appreciate The Smiths, but I was always more of an R.E.M. fan. And while I really got into R.E.M. with ‘Document’ and ‘Green’, ‘Automatic For The People’ was one of my favorite albums of theirs at the time it came out. I understand why it didn’t catch the ears of a lot of other R.E.M. fans, but the more acoustic, orchestrated feel of this album spoke to me at the time. A couple of weeks ago ‘Monty Got A Raw Deal’ was featured in an NPR interview about songs and game shows. And hearing only 30 seconds of the song left me wanting to hear the whole album again. ‘Man On The Moon’ doesn’t stand up as well for me now (a casualty of radio overplay) but ‘Try Not To Breathe’ and ‘Everybody Hurts’ strike me as even more amazing the I remember. And the strings in ‘Drive’ still sound unexpected to me… fresh and dark at the same time.

‘Marriage Of Figaro’ is one of my favorite operas. But over the past couple of years, I have started to feel it is just wrong to only listen to opera. It is such a visual and dramatic medium that so much is lost when you only hear it. A couple years ago I thought I would eventually want to replace all my opera recordings with DVDs, but when I finished transferring the disc today I played a few tracks (as part of my streaming test). And it is so amazing to hear this music. Sure, the visuals and staging are missing, but a Mozart aria has no problem standing on its own. The recording is a live one (with John Eliot Gardiner conducting, Bryn Terfel and Alison Hagley). I watched the video a couple of times during shifts in the video store at Tower, and it is an amazing performance. Gardiner shapes an amazing performance, and the sound quality is stunning. I look forward to listening to the whole thing again very soon.