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“When the blazing sun is gone”

I just remembered… Another one of my favorites from the Kronos Quartet anniversary concert was Laurie Anderson’s piece “Nothing Left but Their Names”. I knew I would like it, but I didn’t expect to also learn another verse of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

I wish I’d written it down because the way she introduced it made me laugh, something about it being rather apocalyptic for a lullaby. But I thought I’d be able to look it up afterward, so I didn’t. It doesn’t seem to be part of her original lyrics, so take my word for it.

I do remember that she sang “where” instead of “what”, which I liked.

Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder where you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder where you are!

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder where you are!

Turns out there are five verses in total. B will be happy to hear that, it’s all he asks for at night.

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“an example of how wonder and humility can build up in the same way as toxins in nature and in ourselves”

I was delighted to accompany DB last-minute to Kronos Quartet’s 50th anniversary gig at Carnegie Hall on Friday night.

This was the set.

  • Severiano Briseño, “El Sinaloense (The Man from Sinaloa)” (2001; arr. Osvaldo Golijov)
  • Gabriella Smith, “Keep Going” (2023, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; New York Premiere)
  • Peni Gandra Rini, “Movement 1” from Segara Gunung (2023, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; arr. Jacob Garchik and Andy McGraw; New York Premiere)
  • Laurie Anderson, “Nothing Left But Their Names”, from Landfall (2012)
  • Tanya Tagaq, “Sivunittinni” (2015, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; arr. Jacob Garchik)
  • Tanya Tagaq, “Colonizer (Remix)” (2021; arr Tanya Tagaq, Kronos Quartet, and Joel Tarman)
  • Ariel Aberg-Riger / Hamza El Din, “Swimming with Rachel Carson” (2023; World Premiere) / Escalay (1989; real. Tour Ueda)
  • Traditional, “We’re Stole and Sold from Africa” (arr. Jake Blount and Jacob Garchik)
  • Michael Gordon, gfedcba (2023, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; New York Premiere)
  • Wu Man, “Silk” and “Bamboo”, from Two Chinese Paintings (2015, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall; real. Danny Clay)
  • Moondog, “Choo Choo Lullaby” (1977; arr. Brian Carpenter)
  • Rahul Dev Burman, “Mehbooba Mehbooba (Beloved, O Beloved)” (1975; arr. Stephen Prutsman and Kronos Quartet)
  • Terry Riley, “Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector” (1981)

The performance included collaborators from throughout their career, and the Terry Riley piece brought all of the performers from earlier pieces and many more together in one huge jam. This included the Aizuri Quartet, Attacca Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, PUBLIQuartet, Sō Percussion, Laurie Anderson, Gregg August, Jake Blount, Peni Sandra Rini, Brian Carpenter, Jacob Garchik, Iwo Jedynecki, Ayana Kozasa, Reshena Liao, Son Leon Lyuh, Tanya Tagaq, Wu Man, and more. Terry Riley gave a very endearing recorded introduction before his piece.

It’s super hard to decide… But I think I was most enchanted by Hamza El Din’s Escalay with Ariel Aberg-Riger’s spoken word and visual art. It was an incredible combination, and unexpected.

I knew very little about Rachel Carson, and about the forcible relocation of so many Nubians when the Aswan Dam was constructed. (To be honest, I know embarrassingly little about Nubia in general.) The program noted that the water wheel was the oldest mechanical device used for farmland irrigation in Nubia, and “Escalay is a representation of how to start the waterwheel and let it run.” El Din was introduced to Kronos by Terry Riley, and this is the piece he wrote for them.

Towards the end of Aberg-Riger’s “Swimming with Rachel Carson”, she said something about how Carson set “an example of how wonder and humility can build up in the same way as toxins in nature and in ourselves”. (That is not a perfect quote since I couldn’t write it down fast enough, forgive me.)

Something to strive for.

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Current listening: “Transatlanticism”

Currently listening to Transatlanticism 🐦
 by Death Cab for Cutie.

One of my best friends from college just invited me to the Death Cab + Postal Service 20th anniversary gig at Madison Square Garden on the 20th. I am SO pumped.

Listening to Transatlanticism is giving me major high school flashbacks. Driving home past curfew on cool East Bay summer nights and knowing that I couldn’t possibly want, need, feel, any more than I did.

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Leave a stone unturned

I think the best creative advice I ever got was from my tutor at CSM.

Don’t dot every I and cross every T, don’t tie up every loose end. Leave some questions unanswered. A piece of art, a movie, a song, a performance, they all tend to be more compelling when they leave you wondering.

I tended to be very goal-oriented in my visual art practice, with an idea of exactly what I wanted the final product to be. This usually left me with frustration when I couldn’t quite get it there, and a piece that was overworked and somehow boring, despite my efforts. When I spent a little more time just focusing on the process and letting go of the result, it was both more fun and far more interesting to look at in the end.

I don’t have much of an art practice at the moment, though sometimes I look at this website as one big, long-haul creative endeavor.

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Lullabies

A bunch of the songs I’ve been singing or would like to sing to B. From friends, family, Musarc, etc. Some are lullabies, many are not, but they all have a lullaby feel to me.

Links are to YouTube.

  • “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz, here sung by Judy Garland
  • “Baby Mine” from Dumbo, here sung by Betty Noyes
  • “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, here sung by Audrey Hepburn
  • “Candle on the Water” from Pete’s Dragon, here sung by Helen Reddy
  • “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins, here sung by Julie Andrews
  • “Stay Awake” from Mary Poppins, here sung by Julie Andrews
  • “Smile” by Charlie Chaplin, John Turner, and Geoffrey Parsons, here sung by Nat King Cole
  • “Yesterday” by The Beatles, here
  • “Danny Boy” or “The Derry Air”, here sung by Sinéad O’Connor
  • “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music, here sung by Bill Lee
  • Wiegenlied, Op. 49, No. 4 by Johannes Brahms, much better known as Brahms’ Lullaby or “Guten Abend, gute Nacht”, here sung in Hebrew, English, and German by Esther Ofarim
  • “Es wird scho glei dumpa”, here sung by the Tölzer Boys Choir
  • “Schlaf, Kindlein, Schlaf”, here sung by the Wernigerode Youth Choir
  • “Vent Frais, Vent Du Matin”, here sung by Veronique Chalot
  • “Ik ga slapen ik ben moe”, here sung by Jelske Ottema (I think?)
  • “Turn Around”, here sung by Harry Belafonte

Would love to collect more.

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To listen: Pamela Z

Need to listen to A Secret Code by Pamela Z from Neuma Records.

Came across her via the article “Social Codebreaker” by Emily Pothast in the July issue of The Wire, shown to me by Sam. See also her 1988 self-issued cassette Echolocation, due to be reissued later this year on Freedom to Spend.

From the article:

I ask her about the obvious current of humour running through many of her works. “A lot of people ask me about that. I think it’s because they expect experimental and contemporary music to be this very serious thing.” […an extended description of John Cage’s 1960 performance of Water Walk on CBS comedy game show I’ve Got A Secret and the audience’s laughter…]

“When people ask me that question, they often phrase it like, ‘Why do you inject humour into your work?’ and I don’t think of it as injecting humour,” she continues. “I think of it as allowing humour. Because I think that life is weird, and my work is very much influenced by and inspired by the world around me.

What happened to the formerly flourishing experimental music scene in San Francisco? I’ve looked for it. Some of the musicians may still be present, but the gigs aren’t, unless I’m missing something.

Might be worth keeping an eye out for Volti performances, Pamela Z has collaborated with them in the past.

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Music notation software

Just came across StaffPad via SB, music notation software for tablets. Looks very cool.

I used Sibelius pretty heavily in college, dabbled with Finale a bit as well. Looks like Sibelius is now a subscription app à la Adobe CS 😕 so I probably wouldn’t reach for it now. There is a free tier, but it’s pretty limiting. Finale’s not a subscription app, but it’s an eye-watering $600 for the most recent version. I’m all for paying for software when it’s worth it, but that seems steep.

StaffPad is $89.99 in the Mac App store as of right now, which seems very reasonable considering the features it offers. The handwriting recognition in particular looks pretty nifty, though I wonder how accurate it would be in practice…

My music notation needs are generally very intermittent (nonexistent at the moment…), so I’ll probably stick to LilyPond for now. It’s free, open source software that’s a lot like LaTeX but for music, does the job and can achieve some pretty complex notation. I do wish it was easier to control the text and notation fonts, but you can’t have everything. A huge upside of using LilyPond is keeping scores in version control via Git, which I think I’d miss if I moved to something with a more traditional UI.