Mark Stryker

I'm a little late to the party here, but without going too deep down this particular rabbit hole and with apologies to others who might have made these points in the preceding five pages, I wanted to add 2 cents and then post a piece I wrote about four years ago after an incident here in Detroit. First, the moral mandate that Holland was speaking of in his original review -- an aesthetic stance that downplayed aural pleasure for other values -- is not really the same as what Peter perceives to be a you-must-eat-your-spinach approach to programming on the part of his local chamber music society. The first has to do with the nature of the art itself; the second is an issue of presentation and programming philosopohy. I think that Holland's point, and there is merit to it, is that the line of atonal and serial composers -- Schoenberg, Webern and the post-war avant-garde like Boulez, Babbitt, Stockhausen, Carter (not serial but similarly "difficult"), Wourinen, etc. -- wrote music that was not only baffling to a wide swath of the classical audience but also sprang from a destroy-the-past, who-cares-if-you listen ideology. Now, I happen to really like some of this music, though I'm more than willing to admit that there is nothing worse than bad serial music or squeak-fart music, with the exception of Yanni and George Winston. But having been in school in the early '80s (late in the game as this war goes), I can attest firsthand to the ivory tower academic composers still around who railed against anything that smacked of tonality, convinced they were saving music for the rest of us. I'm just glad that the this particular war is over and nobody has to take sides anymore. I love Carter and Adams (sorry EDC). I was just interviewing some great young classical musicians last night who have formed a new music ensmble and play the shit out of everything from Glass and Reich to Stockhausen, Rzewski, and Ligeti. They made the same point; they are just so relieved that the scene is so wide open today that they feel free to enjoy the best of it all. I think audiences are beginning to feel the same way. The piece I mentioned earlier relates to the other issue of programming. It ran under the headline: "Two String Quartet Concerts: One Reactionary, the Other Triumphal." ---------- By Mark Stryker Free Press Music Critic For the record, the Pacifica Quartet gave well-played, fervid performances of Dvorak, Hindemith and Mendelssohn on Saturday. But the news of the evening was the cowardly 11th-hour decision by the Chamber Music Society of Detroit to cancel what would have been the Detroit premiere of Elliott Carter's Fifth String Quartet. Here was the chance to hear a terrific young American quartet tackle the latest from Carter, still active at 95 and considered by many America's greatest living composer. Carter's corpus of five quartets ranks with Bartok's six and Shostakovich's 15 as perhaps the most substantial contributions to the genre in the 20th Century. But society president Lois Beznos asked the Pacifica to drop the Carter quartet for fear of alienating those subscribers who complained after a November concert by the Juilliard String Quartet that included 20th-Century atonal works by Viennese modernist Anton Webern. This is lunacy. Never mind that Carter's Fifth (1995) is a brilliant work in the composer's late style, muscular but communicative, full of spry dialogue and texture. Never mind that the Pacifica's reputation is based partly on its passionate advocacy of Carter. Never mind that removing Carter to placate a few reactionary patrons drives a stake through the heart of the society's artistic integrity and tightens the noose more securely around the future of classical music. If you do not play the music of today, to paraphrase composer Gunther Schuller, there will be no masterpieces for tomorrow. And if you cut off Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert from the oxygen of contemporary currents, you slowly suffocate their life force, turning the canon into a wax museum. It is also a remarkably shortsighted approach to audience building. Sitting next to me at the concert was a couple from Grosse Pointe who specifically came to hear Carter. They were livid. "We won't be coming back," said William Cox. "It's obscene." The irony is that the society is sold out through subscriptions and has a waiting list. If playing Carter means the defection of a few patrons who think music stopped developing around the time the Titanic sank, then we should say good riddance and welcome in some fresh air. The most recent piece to be performed during the society's 2003-04 season now becomes a woodwind quintet by Samuel Barber written during the Eisenhower administration. Carter's Fifth lasts 20 minutes. The nine concerts this season total about 15 hours of music. What's the purpose of a chamber music society unwilling to invest 20 minutes out of 15 hours in the future of its art? Thankfully, the University Musical Society believes in chamber music as a living art form. UMS presented a captivating program Sunday by the Kronos Quartet called "Visual Music." The concert folded 10 diverse pieces into a seamless 90-minute multimedia production. Collaborating with the Kronos were scenic and projection designer Alexander Nichols, lighting designer Larry Neff and sound designer Mark Grey. Not every piece worked, but the precise staging, the committed playing and true integration of aural and visual elements left a lasting impression. The set included four huge wire sound sculptures and a large screen. The quartet at times played in front of the screen and at times behind it. For Krzysztof Penderecki's "Quartetto per archi" (1960), the players -- violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Jennifer Culp -- turned their backs to the audience and read the huge graphic score as it rolled across the screen, producing tapping bows, harmonics and other sonic delights. In the opener, Steve Reich's "Pendulum Music," the musicians swung microphones through the sculptures creating cuckoo-like feedback. It proved a funny prelude to John Zorn's "Cat O' Nine Tails (Tex Avery Directs the Marquis de Sade)," a nutty score in which snippets -- "Tea for Two," cartoon music, a hoedown, Beethoven allusions -- are smashed into a collage. A glimpse of Bugs Bunny on the screen was a riot. More sobering was Scott Johnson's "How It Happens," in which post-minimalist pulsing music merged with sampled narration by the radical journalist I.F. Stone, who intones phrases like, "There's nothing more unholy in human history than a holy war." The indeterminate film imagery turned into a ghostly airplane at the close. Terry Riley's "One Earth, One People, One Love" also made a humanist statement, with the mournful cello melody adding unexpected poignancy to the NASA images. On a brighter note, Conlon Nancarrow's hyper "Boogie Woogie No. 3A," based on a work for player-piano, was a rush of smiling adrenaline. I was less taken with Grey's "Bertoia I" and "Bertoia II," which found the players waving their hands in front of the wire sculptures to trigger ambient electronic sounds. But overall, the concert bristled with adventure and relevance. There will always be a place for traditional string quartet concerts like the one the Pacifica Quartet gave on Saturday, but the juxtaposition of the Kronos Quartet explorations with the Chamber Music Society of Detroit's unwillingness to engage with the music of its own time left no doubt that if you're not part of the solution in classical music, you're part of the problem. --MS

Larry: A lot of fresh insight and close listening here, thanks. It really is the difference between the great nights and the average nights that is worthy of study; God is in the details an all that. I don't have the CD so I'm just responding through your ears, but the out of phase issue you describe really might come down to whether the cats could hear each other. You suggest it might be due to the set-up required for stereo recording, but it may well be an issue of capricious acoustics. Concert halls are notorious in this regard, especially for jazz since they weren't built for drum sets. You're describing sensations I hear all the time in concert halls (and festival settings) -- even with monitors, the sound on stage can be weird enough to fuck up the time. Or the band can actually be together but the balance in the hall is so screwy -- do all of today's sound engineers have ears of stone or just those at concerts I happen to attend? -- that it sounds out of phase to those sitting out front. OP and company would not have had monitors of course, and excessive separation could certainly have exacerbated problematic acoustic issues on stage. The extra swift tempos would certainly play into this too. I don't know much about the technical issue of recording in those days -- lots of extra physical separation would have been needed for stereo? MS

Another fascinating but overlooked piece from the first half of the 20th century is Karol Szymanowski's Second Violin Concerto (1933) -- ripe with Polish folk melody folded into a late-romantic sound world redolent of Scriabin and Strauss. I heard Leonidas Kavakos play this recently with the Detroit Symphony and was quite taken by him and the piece. MS

God yes, the Ligeti! It's a masterpiece. I spaced out on that in my list. Good grab, David.

A few thoughts: *I didn't see the Berg Violin Concerto on your list and it's among the most ravishing works in the repertoire -- it's a 12-tone work but the row is set up to exploit tonal relationships and Berg's sublime romanticism is a constant miracle. *Among brand new concertos, I'm in the John Adams camp. He's written two -- the first has a more traditional cast (though in his language, of course) and the second, "The Dharma at Big Sur" is for electric violin and is very jazz oriented. *I heartily endorse Larry's recommendation of the Dutilleux, and would add that he recently completed a second concerto, "Sur le meme accord," for Anne-Sophie Mutter, who recorded it a couple years ago for DG. It's only 9 minutes long but it's a real sweatheart of a piece. It's coupled on CD with Mutter's earlier recordings of the Bartok Second and Stravinsky. (Related note: Don't miss Dutilleux's Cello Concerto either, "Tout un monde Lointain.") *I like Takemitsu's "Far Calls, Coming, far!" (1980). It's in the stream-of-conciousness, impressionistic tradition coming out of Debussy, similar in many ways to the Dutilleux in that it's not really goal-oriented. You can sort of split 20th century Violin Concertos into two big camps -- the virtuoso, heroic works growing from the 19th century tradition (Barber, Bartok, Nielsen, Adams, etc.) and those that are more chamber music writ large (Dutilleux, Takemitsu, Berg). *Some others I can suggest in widely varying styles; Kaija Saariaho, "Graal Theatre" (fantastic colors, textures, impressionistic, darting -- akin to the Dutilleux ) Bernstein's "Serenade" (Americana) Elliott Carter's Violin Concerto (super high modernist density) Oliver Knussen, Violin Concerto (neo-Stravinskian) William Bolcom, Violin Concerto (gutsy, post-modern eclectic).

Speaking for myself, I've never found the early Dvorak quartets especially compelling. Pleasant but not essential and in no way as significant as the early and middle Beethoven quartets. That said, I can't imagine living without the late quartets and have always had a special fondess for Op. 51 (No. 10). You might try sampling the great Piano Quintet in A, the two Piano Quartets and the mature Piano Trios after the late quartets for more music representing higher-plane Dvorak. Of course, if the quartets are truly speaking to you then get them all. On a related note, the two Janacek string quartets are extraordinary -- I mean, extraordinary, works. Unique, idiosyncratically modern, with a comprehensive aesthetic both nationalist and cosmopolitan that's similar to Bartok. The Smetana Qt versions on Testament are terrific though they come on two CDs, each coupled with a Dvorak (Piano Quintet/14th Quartet). I cannot vouch for the Vlach on Naxos having not heard them but if it's good enough for EDC it's good enough for me. And speaking of "Jenufa," seeing Karita Mattila in the MET production a few years ago was one of the highlights of my life. And speaking of naked, I didn't see Mattila in "Salome" but heard great things about her in the role. Czechily yours, MS

I don't have time for annotations or to check what's in print or not (or even if all of these ever made it to CD), but Brecker is killin' on these dates from the '70s. These are some great post-bop records. Hal Galper's "Reach Out" and "Speak With a Single Voice" (with M. Brecker, Wayne Dockery and Billy Hart/Bob Moses). David Liebman's "Pendulum" (with Beirech, Tusa, Foster). A previously unreleased set by that Galper Quintet came out a few years ago on Concord too. Oh, there's a more recent Jack Wilkins CD called "Reunion" on which Brecker sounds inspired. It literally is a reunion of a band that make a record in the '70s. DeJohnette, M.B., Gomez I think. Brecker comes mostly out of Hubbard, but there's Lee, KD and '60s Miles in there too. Related question. Anybody know if he went through a spell of chop problems? I recall hearing some sides maybe 10-12 years ago where a definite rasp had crept into his trumpet tone and he just didn't sound as supple. That's completely cleared up the last few times I've seen him and he sounded as clear and fluid as ever.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6Ff6098PAhc

I'm hoping somebody can clear something up for me. Yesterday I bought a used LP of the Roy Haynes' trio record "We Three" with Phineas Newborn and Paul Chambers. Great side, of course. I've had it forever as an OJC LP and on CD, but this appeared to be an original copy and it was at a killer price -- $3 -- and even though it physically looked a bit scuffed and the cover spine was maybe 60 percent split, it was still impossible to pass up. As it turns out, it sounds great, with just a bit of surface noise. It's a mono recording, by the way. OK, here's the question. On the front of the jacket, the label is listed as New Jazz. However, on the back, the label is listed as Status. The inner label on the record is the orange Status liner with that familiar logo (the s-that's-also-an-arrow.) I always thought this record first came out on New Jazz (purple label), which is the indication of my OJC. I know that New Jazz and Status were both Prestige subsidiaries. So what gives with this LP? Why does it say different things in different spots? Frankly, it looks like a fuck-up, which I suppose is entirely possible -- like a misprinted stamp or something that gets recalled right away. Perhaps it's worth more on the collector's market because of the mistake. So, if anybody out there wants to offer me an obscene amount of money for this, I'm all ears. Explanations anyone?

I agree completely with Larry's previous posts on Bennett's relationship to jazz. This is an interesting topic, and I've talked to Bennett about it on a couple of occasions and thought the board might be interested in his view. Here's what he said in 1992: "I'm not a jazz singer; I'm a singer that a jazz audience likes." (author's note: this thread suggests not all of the jazz audience would agree, but Bennett's point still stands.) ''My job is to always sound vital. I have to produce energy and a vitalness, and the jazz artists supply that to me. I improvise with them. Every night, I'll sing the same songs, but by the way they're playing, I'll listen to them and sing their phrases. Wherever they're at, that's how I'm singing.'' In 2006 he said this: "I know how to improvise, and for me jazz is the greatest contribution culturally that the United States has given to the world." Also: "It's the interpretation of going behind the beat or in front of the beat, and it changes every night. You might be singing the same song but there's a vitalness that the musicians feed me and I feed them. I'll make a turn of phrase and all of sudden they'll change the chords, embellish it and make it better." I will add that I heard Bennett about seven weeks ago and I thought he was in great form, especially on ballads, which he often sang in a strikingly loose rubato over just guitar or piano accompaniment. Even at 80 he could maintain a legato line. (He turned 81 earlier this month.) On both the swingers and the ballads, he was always telling a story, and I heard all kinds of little nuances of phrasing that personalized the lyrics and deepened the emotional quality of the work. Complaints? Well, the over-reliance on "big finish" climaxes is still an issue and there are other mannerisms too. There has always been something stiff about his stage patter too (though not in his singing in my view). The line between soul and false sentiment is awfully thin in the idiom in which Bennett works, but I've always felt Bennett communicates the former not the latter. Others may disagree. I did find it interesting the degree to which Bennett both aesthetically and physically placed himself inside the center of his quartet as opposed to singing outfront of the band, if you know what I mean. The group, incidentally, included pianist Bruce Barth, guitarist Gary Sargent, bassist Paul Langosch and the former Basie drummer Harold Jones. MS

Jim: Thanks for such thoughtful and illuminating responses. I find myself agreeing on several counts. Still, while I'm intrigued by the notion that the past featured more of a masculine projection of feminine values than the real thing, I'm not sure I'm convinced -- I would need some time to ponder this. Also, for the record, I'm always the one willing to stop and ask for directions; it's my wife who will stubbornly stick to her guns, even if it means getting more lost. MS

Ted Striker: Because of my mistake, six men didn't return from that raid. Elaine Dickinson: Seven. Lieutenant Zip died this morning.

Clem: Re: Jamal. I'm glad we could find common ground on something. Re: Cabinetmaker. No need for a home visit. I'm cool with the website. Re: Jones. My point is that there is a lot more happening in Hank's music than mere craft, and while the level of craft is certainly remarkable, perhaps its very polish makes it too easy to dismiss/overlook the unique depth of expression, substance and originality in his improvising. Hank is no radical, but the voice is unimistakable and deep. Is radicalism the only standard for greatness? It is true that Hank spent a lot of time in the studios and he came of age in an era in which performing as a "professional musician" was not always the same thing as as a "professional jazz musician." But peak achievement is not nothing, and if by flatline environment you mean bebop and standards, well, that's a big chunk of modern jazz you appear to be damning as aesthetically irrelevant. When Hank assimilated bebop in the '40s, that style was on the cutting edge. MS

Here's a link to the full obituary as it ran in the Detroit Free Press on Thursday morning. http://159.54.239.117/apps/pbcs.dll/articl...70574/1010/NEWS