This is the blog archive for February 2008 arranged in ascending date order.
Richard Friedman, Oakland, CA, works at
Sun
Microsystems, is a Director of
Other
Minds, wrote his first computer program
in 1962 for the IBM
650. It played dice.
He also takes a lot of photographs, composes music, and does a weekly
radio program on KALW called Music
From Other Minds.
The real-time view
from the left edge of the continent.
Last night, in an abandoned storefront on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley (previously a Gateway Computer store and pictured above via Google, the second floor was also home to radio station KPFA for three decades), pianist Sarah Cahill initiated the latest installment of the peripatetic Berkeley Arts Festival with a concert that featured the music of Peter Garland, Stephen Blumberg, Mamoru Fujieda, Colin McPhee, Kyle Gann, and Terry Riley.
Starting around 1990 as part of the Berkeley Store Gallery, the Berkeley Arts Festival has been turning empty store fronts on Shattuck Avenue into performance spaces and exhibition halls for a month or two each year, largely due to the support of local commercial property owners, the City of Berkeley, and many art patrons, volunteers, and artists, and all under the direction of the indefatigable Bonnie Hughes.
The nice thing about these concerts is the informality of it all. Like being in someone's home, the performers and audience feel comfortable enough to talk about the music and sit close. The wonderful Grotrian grand piano looked beautiful in the center of the room, and the audience of about 50 of us sat in three rows in a semicircle around it, facing the windows onto the street. It was wonderful to hear, for example, Colin McPhee's Balinese transcriptions while watching the lights from the Shattuck Avenue Cinema across the street and people with umbrellas walking along the sidewalk.
And since Sarah knows all the composers on the program, she was able to speak about the music first-hand. Which added even more to the intimacy in the room.
By the way, I highly recommend Sarah's new CD on New Albion of Kyle Gann's Private Dances, which includes On Reading Emerson, performed last night.
It was a big shock to open the paper this morning and read that Berkeley composer Jorge Liderman apparently jumped in front of a BART train Sunday.
I was hoping to see him tonight at the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players concert with the world premier of his Furthermore... for violinist Carla Kihlstedt.
I'd met Jorge a number of times, and had him on my KPFA radio program many years ago when he first arrived at the UC Berkeley music department. And I've featured his music on Music From Other Minds on KALW.
This is a terrible shock. He was 50 years old.
Today's lunchtime concert by Jerry Kuderna, part of this month's Berkeley Arts Festival being held at an abandoned storefront in downtown Berkeley, was deeply saddened by the news of the death of local composer Jorge Liderman (see item below).
Jerry Kuderna had been planning a program of American music, but scrapped it all and played Schubert, Schoenberg, and Debussy instead.
Some in the audience knew Jorge and had even spoken to him very recently about the world premiere happening tonight in San Francisco.
Schubert seemed just the right choice.
And here's another photo.
Tonight's San Francisco Contemporary Music Players concert at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco was a complete success, even tho it seemed everything was working against it.
First, the scheduled baritone in David Sheinfeld's Dear Theo came down with the flu, as did his replacement. So at the last minute two solo pieces were substituted.
And then the composer of the world premiere on the program commits suicide (apparently) on his way to a rehearsal the day before. (See previous postings.)
Still, the concert went on, and we were glad.
It sold out.
The SFCMP music director, David Milnes, began by talking from the stage about the difficulties they faced with a rampant flu, and the last minute decision to substitute two solo works from their performer's repertory .
But then he also expressed the shock they all felt when they got the word Sunday, while waiting for Jorge Liderman to arrive at the final rehearsal, that he wouldn't be coming. They had all be working very closely with him for weeks, with no indication that this would end so tragically. Milnes added that even his piece, Furthermore..., is lively and optimistic, with no hint of melancholy. It all left everyone wondering how this could have happened.
But, the concert would go on:
And it was one of the most engaging and exciting SFCMP concerts I've been to in years!
Mackey's piece was lively and fun. He intended it as "vernacular music from a culture that doesn't actually exist", a thought-experiment gone wild.
And altho I don't really like a lot of Ferneyhough's music, this Ciaconna, played impressively by Graeme Jennings (ex Arditti Quartet, now living in San Francisco), was a real tour de force. Quite spectacular.
As was Manoury's vibraphone solo. (What is it about French composers and vibraphones and xylophones?) The prominent technique here was to sound many notes in a chord or run across the bars and then dampen them one by one. Vibrant it was.
I hadn't heard the Feldman piece before, altho it has been recorded a few times, most recently on Mode 119. It was beautifully played, even tho the stillness was betrayed by coughs from the audience and the occasional ambulance siren outside.
But it was the Liderman piece that I think everyone was waiting for. And it was spectacular. Sort of a chamber violin concerto, it reminded me alot of Milhaud's jazzy Pan-American chamber pieces. Sunny, lyrical, and full of surprises. Carla Kihlstedt nailed it with a full and sensuous tone. And it even had a cadenza! It was great and I hope they record it! The ensemble began with a moment of silence.
But of course the tragedy was that now Liderman's work is closed, done. There won't be any new pieces. How can this be?
Still, congratulations to the SFCMP!
Here's Kosman's review in the SF Chron.
Other Minds Festival 13
Kanbar Hall, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California St., at Presidio
March 6-7-8, 2008
Full Schedule of Concerts • Order tickets here.
The composers:
 | |||||||||
and performers
Anthony Brown (percussion), Del Sol String Quartet, Lisa Moore (piano), David Shively (percussion), Kathy Supové (piano), and the Adorno Ensemble.
Presented in association with the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the Eugene and Elinor Friend Center for the Arts at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.
Thursday, March 6, 2008 Dieter Schnebel: Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith: | |
 | |
Friday, March 7, 2008 Åke Parmerud: John Cage & Michael Bach Bachtischa: Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith: Dan Becker: | |
| |
Saturday, March 8, 2008 Keeril Makan: Morton Subotnick: |
I have to say that last night's appearance at the Yerba Buena Theater in San Francisco of the Bang on a Can All-Stars from New York City was a bit of a disappointment.
That's not to say that it wasn't a joy to see such really accomplished musicians, led by clarinetist and composer Evan Ziporyn, playing at their best. But the choice of what to play was the real disappointment of the evening..
Why is it that groups coming to the Bay Area from points East or Europe think they need to dumb-down their programs for the local audience?
In New York and other places the All-Stars champion really challenging works and music they commission themselves. And while last night they did play at least one piece by each of their founding members, David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, they weren't anything we hadn't heard before (Cheating, Lying, Stealing; I Buried Paul; Big Beautiful Dark & Scary, resp.), the rest of the program, with Don Byron and Iva Bittova, would have been more fitting at a jazz nightclub like Yoshi's.
Why not play selections from Michael Gordon's new Van Gogh, or The Carbon-Copy Building by the composers collective? Or some of the many works that they've commissioned from other composers over the years.
Instead, I think they tried to play it safe. Which is disappointing.
I've heard better from Don Byron, and the Bittova pieces all appear on her album Elida (Cantaloupe Music, 2005).
Ok. It's expensive to go on tour. All that equipment, hotels, transportation. So better make sure to fill the hall.
In fact, the hall was not full .. maybe 3/4. At $45/ticket, that's not surprising. (I thought the Yerba Buena Center was supposed to be affordable.)
I couldn't attend the Marathon event held earlier that day in the Forum. It was free. But one friend, whose opinions I tend to align with mostly, was equally disappointed.
Bottom line: "So Mr Grumpy Pants, how was the concert?" -- It COULD have been better.
PS: I saw both Joshua Kosman of the Chronicle and Jason Serinus of the SF Classical Voice in the audience. It will be interesting to read their reviews.
PPS: Here is Jason's review. And here is Kosman's. Compare and contrast.
Robert Reich's OpEd piece in today's NY Times is perhaps the clearest explanation of where the economy here is headed. There's no obfuscation of what's really happening, and much of what he says aligns well with the experiences of most of us who aren't among the rich.
WE’RE sliding into recession, or worse, and Washington is turning to the normal remedies for economic downturns. But the normal remedies are not likely to work this time, because this isn’t a normal downturn.
The problem lies deeper. It is the culmination of three decades during which American consumers have spent beyond their means. That era is now coming to an end. Consumers have run out of ways to keep the spending binge going.
The only lasting remedy, other than for Americans to accept a lower standard of living and for businesses to adjust to a smaller economy, is to give middle- and lower-income Americans more buying power — and not just temporarily.
Much of the current debate is irrelevant. Even with more tax breaks for business like accelerated depreciation, companies won’t invest in more factories or equipment when demand is dropping for products and services across the board, as it is now. And temporary fixes like a stimulus package that would give households a one-time cash infusion won’t get consumers back to the malls, because consumers know the assistance is temporary. The problems most consumers face are permanent, so they are likely to pocket the extra money instead of spending it.
...
Read the whole article at the NY Times website.
Those with the power to elect our presidents and congressmen -- and many who themselves get elected -- believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the earth, and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God.
Among developed nations, America stands alone in these convictions. Our country now appears, as at no other time in her history, like a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant. Anyone who cares about the fate of civilization would do well to recognize that the combination of great power and great stupidity is simply terrifying, even to one's friends.
-- Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
These are electric times. Everything I read seems like something worth quoting, or shouting out loud to whomever will listen.
Here's is an excerpt from Maureen Dowd's column in the NY Times a few days ago:
Voters try to figure out who they trust to have life-and-death power over them, but there’s so much theatricality and artifice in campaigns you can get a false impression of who someone is.
And you never know who they will become once they move into the insular, heady womb of the White House — or how they will be buffeted by the caprice of history, and the randomness of crises.
At the very moment when politicians should be on top of the world, embraced by the voters, enhanced by the toys and levers of power, their gremlins surface. They inevitably get hit with trouble that they never could have imagined or prepared for, and that can trigger self-doubt and self-destruction and self-pity.
Why didn’t J. F. K. simply toss out the C.I.A. plan developed under Eisenhower to send 1,200 exiles to overthrow a popular Cuban leader with a force of 200,000? He felt the need to prove himself.
Why did L. B. J. ignore his own solid political instincts to listen to Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk about Vietnam — falling under their stupid sway because they had been J. F. K.’s advisers?
Nixon, driven by the same pathology of envy about Kennedy and other golden boys, conspired in a political crime while coasting to re-election.
Why did W. let Cheney and Rummy lead him into hubristic disaster? He, too, needed to prove himself — and outdo Daddy. How could the “compassionate conservative” bike through Katrina?
The self-destructive impulses that consumed Bill Clinton detracted from his policy achievements and distracted him from achieving all he could have.
The press tends to swallow campaign narratives of sin and redemption, hard lessons learned.
After giving up drinking and becoming Texas governor, W. had supposedly changed from an arrogant, obdurate, Daddy-competing loser to a genial, bipartisan, mature winner. As it turned out, a total makeover is not possible after 40.
Hillary’s narrative echoes W.’s: After the scalding partisanship of the ’90s, she became a senator and turned the other cheek, working on legislation with Republicans who had pursued the impeachment case against her husband. She has supposedly learned from her White House mistakes on health care, Travelgate and legal issues, from her battles with the right and the press. She knows now that being obstructionist and secretive don’t work.
An appealing arc, but is it true? Her campaign shake-up showed that she continues to rank loyalty and secrecy above competence and ingenuity. She is still so guarded that she began answering questions from the press and voters only after she lost Iowa.
All of us have known big shots who keep a check on their real feelings and dark tendencies until they get the top job. Then they throw off the restraints and revert to their worst instincts, bullying others and insulating themselves with sycophants.
Hillary could be ready on Day 1 — to make up her Enemies List and banish Overkill Bill to a cubbyhole in the Old Executive Office Building. But it’s Day 2 that I’m really worried about.
I can't agree with her more. I too am worried about Day 2. And Day 3.... Time may be running out.
The entire article is here.
Today I discovered that I am now a topic label on a widely-read music blog, On An Overgrown Path.
That really made my day!
It pays to comment on blogs, which I routinely do, perhaps to the annoyance of some bloggers.
But, as I descend into curmudgeonhood, it seems to be a necessity.
