I’ve been so busy composing but also performing daily, and organizing past and upcoming San Francisco Concerto Orchestra Concerts, this website (part work-in-progress sequel to my first book) has become rather scattered. Before you read on some thoughts and information around recent and upcoming events are crammed into the following three links:
This is a site of a musical organization and performers who all have a strong solid formal history with Standard Classical European works. And if you just don't have much sense of adventure beyond the Old World know that I play and produce more, not less, concerts of standard European repertoire than practically any musician around. So what has jungle and alien imagery on this card and further into this site to do with “serious” classical music? Many saw the stone speak in Mozart’s Don Giovanni in the movie, Amadeus. “That was God speaking” Salieri said about Mozart’s musical ideas. This statue gives many “serious” people similar shivers. Yes the inner life of Classical music was once focused mostly within European values but that was over a century ago. Besides, different stones, same mystery beyond. Wake up! Magic is magic.
1. Notes from the Audience on The Crystal Skull: In Search of Lost Time
I actually heard landing gear coming down musically when this work was nearing completion!
Is it OK to be a new person every day? The Classical repertoire is built around works that take time to compose, time to learn and perform AND time to listen to. Sorry, got to go. Time is the one thing we no longer have. But even way back when, most of the big works that are now standard were not given time at first as so many of them were first dismissed as rambling visions of mad men. Classical music relies on our time because without that there can be no enduring value. Practically every day something new arrived towards landing this giant work. When composing it often feels as if "The Crystal Skull" itself is projecting musical images and ideas into my dreams, at first this happened most while asleep but now more often while semi awake (if incoherent to my friends). Image wise, it starts in space with comets and time warps sent to land in the jungle on a pyramid with insect trills, bird calls and sacrificial dances telling the story of the end of the Aztec and Mayan Civilizations honoring the Hummingbird God before taking off back into space and through a portal to other worlds. Some of the best changes were VERY recent. Some ideas seem great but fade out. Others feel like they are permanent and lasting. It now appears that after months of performances the basic structure stands AND most of the details have now firmly found their place and only tiny details (perhaps even creating shockingly new sounds or auras) may change to YET AGAIN make yet another newly "so over the top it couldn't possibly bore anyone" version, difference. Performing it every day forced me (if not you) to make time for it and rework it each day in front of a new audience. Music is better than our time ONLY if we make time for it. But nowadays music must grab the audience even quicker because people theoretically have no patience with exciting metamorphoses or any transcendent mystery at all. I thank those who did and do show up for this now less “work-in-progress,” work and am grateful some have even sent better than I hoped for comments!
2. More details on San Francisco Concerto Orchestra concerts in Guerneville, Fall 2010
Why the title “The Composers’ House?” - Separation of Business and Art?
Trained star performers cannot exist without composers. The only thing more important than the composer is the music itself. In fact as well known as this website is among hundreds of musicians and artists worldwide, “music itself” is likely more inspired than any text I come up with. To find “music itself” no musician need be good at business. But even if music itself lives beyond time itself, is there not a time and place for truly not for profit, not run as a business, artist run organizations? Are you not curious what Beethoven might think (you actually kind of already know what he might think) business does to the power of musical inspiration?
3. Our Debut in Napa's Brand New 31.5 Million Dollar Hall (the hall's first orchestra concert)!
Why more at “The Composers' House” than the bigger halls we once performed in all the time?
This nearly sold out concert was a big success and we will probably perform a couple concerts per semester in the future at this Hall because it is a truly extraordinary venue with amazing acoustics. But there is still nothing quite like hearing a full orchestra in your lap at The Composers’ House. And Why else do we perform more at “The Composers' House” than the bigger halls we once performed in all the time?
Composers often live in a different world than performers. They do not dream about big halls. They dream about the music itself. In fact the music itself may be at its very most inspired at the very moment of its birth. Where does that happen? Often at the composer's house. That spirit can be captured anywhere, but where better than at just one composer's house that was once a mortuary? Besides, staring at this screen you won't begin to discover why so many highly paid, celebrated and experienced professional musicians are willing to travel hours to days to Guerneville all at their own expense just to play for free in concerts that are still not even on the radar of Sonoma County.
But I lied. The composer is nothing without the performer. Because there would be no music without the performer and especially if the performer is more than a mere trained (if even celebrated) monkey this performer can give the composer and all listeners the opportunity to hear the potential of music itself to live perhaps even beyond what any composer ever imagined. So what does any of this have to do with the big prestigious hall? And what if the performer IS the composer and IS performing in his own house? Does a composer/performer need anyone at all? A person who doesn't need anyone is probably pretty unpopular. Maybe that is why God created the landlord. Besides, why listeners help composers AND performers rediscover the beyond may also be beyond us all. So anyone COULD forgive a person who thinks they don't need anyone because we all need the beyond. IT is beyond us all. Does IT care? I certainly don't know. Some people see this very prank as a symptom of specific personality disorder. Others diagnose readers who have made it this far down. Clinical diagnosis may only stop for those who show up to actually listen.
October
27 - November 1, 2009 Concerts