Category Archives: On Demand Clips

CD REVIEW: ROBERT SIROTA’S “CELESTIAL WIND”

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by Seth Tompkins

Robert Sirota and Victoria Sirota_by Michael Falco for New York Times

Robert Sirota’s music seems ultimately conscious.  The variety of sounds he manages to draw from the organ is staggering.  On Celestial Wind, a new album from Albany Records, this crazily expansive palette is combined with clear musical polyglottism; the overall effect leaves the listener with a sense of limitless possibility.  The music on this release stretches from the playful, mischievous, and profane to the somber, introspective, and sacred.

One instance of the composer’s understanding of the organ is his clear awareness of the qualities of traditional organ music.  He resurrects and references harmonies of the past at several points on this disc.  However, these moments of time travel occur without any derision toward their traditional sounds in the service of a rigid modernism.  On the contrary, these moments are deftly woven into the arcs of their pieces, stitched together with the rest Sirota’s omniscient musical lexicon.  A standout example of this is the final two movements of Letters Abroad, which begins with a glorious homage to Fanny Mendelssohn.  This track alone includes a satisfyingly multifaceted set of sounds that wryly flows from the congenial, charming, and victorious to the anxious and haunting before finally moving to a delicate, peaceful intimacy.

Robert Sirota’s mastery of the possibilities allowed by the organ would not be possible without his 45-year “collaboration” with his wife, who is the performer on this release.  Organist Victoria Sirota, who is also an author and an Episcopal priest, among other things, deftly executes Robert’s music.  She plays with an evident mastery and flexibility that obviously both inspired this music’s composition and made its realization possible.  This is especially evident in the opening piece, Toccata, which Robert Sirota himself notes is his “most difficult organ piece.”

Easter Canticles, Two Lenten Chorale Preludes, and Celestial Wind are the three sacred pieces on this release.  Musically, however, these three pieces differ dramatically.  Two of the pieces have concrete sacred sources; the chorale preludes are based on pre-1800 sacred music, and Celestial Wind is inspired by a passage from the Book of Acts.  Despite this similarity in source material, these two pieces differ dramatically; Celestial Wind is the more progressive of the two.  The other sacred piece, Easter Canticles, which also includes a solo cello part (touchingly performed by Norman Fischer), is not based on a specific musical or textual source, but rather, inspired by the story of the Passion of Christ.  Interestingly, Victoria Sirota cites this as “the most religious piece” on the album.

Lest this release seem to be all gravity and reverence, do not overlook the Four Pieces for Organ.  They are just plain fun!  Written as a show piece, these short romps explore Klangfarbenmelodie in the tradition of Schoenberg and Webern, splitting lines across the vast array of voices available on the organ.  Although that idea may seem esoteric, any concerns will quickly dissipate in the face of the Sirotas’ playfulness.  These pieces show that Robert Sirota’s global understanding of the organ is certainly not limited to the serious.

FREE Summer Concerts in Seattle

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by Maggie Stapleton

Most Seattleites will agree that our mild, beautiful summers completely make up for the cool, grey, drizzle that we deal with for ¾ of the year. Downtown Seattle is completely in touch with this, offering “Out to Lunch,” FREE outdoor lunchtime (12-1:30pm) concerts July 9-September 5.  The concerts take place at parks all around town (e.g. Freeway Park, pictured below) and are a great excuse to brown bag it, soak up some vitamin D, and hear great tunes. Image Second Inversion recommends:

Wednesday, July 9: March Fourth Marching Band @ Westlake Park

Thursday, July 10: Industrial Revolution @ City Hall Plaza

Friday, July 18: Portland Cello Project @ Occidental Square 

Wednesday, July 23: Tubaluba  @ Wells Fargo Center 

Wednesday, August 13: Kris Orlowski @ Two Union Square 

Friday, August 29: Jovino Santos Neto @ Columbia Center

Friday, September 5: Hey Marseilles @ Freeway Park

Check out the complete lineup and use these as a great excuse to get away from your desk during the lunch hour!

CD REVIEW: MARGARET BROUWER’S “SHATTERED”

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by Seth Tompkins

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Photo by Christian Steiner

The May 27 Naxos release, Shattered (Physical CD and iTunes download), features music by American composer Margaret Brouwer that traces her individual response to the global events of the first decade of the 21st century.  Reflecting the tone of the world in the 2000s as seen through the eyes of a globally-conscious American, this disc is complete with the sounds of shock, disillusionment, sadness, uncertainty, introspection, realignment, and self-healing that were experienced by so many in recent years.  In addition to the adroit performances found here, the liner notes lend additional emotional traction to this intense music.

Musically, the contemporary instrumental works on this release tend toward an effective fusion of traditional and extended techniques.  Unlike many such attempts, the music heard here blends the two without the extended materials becoming gimmicky or distracting.  In fact, the nuanced and appropriate inclusion of these elements enhances the music, achieving in an arena where musical success is often elusive.

Shattered Glass (for flute, cello, percussion, and piano) is a distinctly painful piece, a fact which becomes quite clear after a reading of this release’s liner notes.  The ensemble playing here is tight and thoughtful, with each player coming to the fore and fading into the background at just the right moments.  This is 13-minutes of engaging introspection, which, in some ways, is a crystallized expression of the ideas contained in the piece that follows, the quintet for clarinet and strings.

Brouwer’s clarinet quintet is quite complex, using 12-tone techniques and incorporating holy music from both the Christian and Islamic faiths.  Also written as a response to recent world events involving the United States and the Middle East, the quintet musically breaks out and explores many of the individual issues that make up the chaotic and seemingly grim world in which it was written.

The song Whom do you call angel now? is a more personal reflection on the world events that inspired the prior pieces, specifically the events of September 11, 2001.  The text by David Adams is set simply, but with a healthy measure of Romantic-era touches that place this piece squarely in the art-song tradition.

Lonely Lake, for the Blue Streak Ensemble, is a depiction of a single day at the remote cabin where the composer sensed hope for the future in the face of the troubling events that dominate the tone of much of this release.  The imitation loon calls that conclude this piece are particularly engrossing, inviting meditation with the aloof realness of the woods.

Certainly, there is music from the past that bears repeating and reinterpreting.  The two arrangements at the end of this collection are examples of such music.  Written for the Blue Streak Ensemble while at the cabin on Lonely Lake, Brouwer’s arrangements of Debussy’s Claire de Lune and Bach’s Two-Part Invention in F are fresh reworkings of these two lovely classics.  In addition to giving listeners new things for which to listen in the context of familiar favorites, they provide the simple pleasure that is sometimes critical in times that strain individuals’ understanding of the world around them.

AARON GRAD RETHINKS THEORBO

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by Maggie Stapleton

Here at Second Inversion, our catchphrase is “Rethink Classical.”  The multi-talented Aaron Grad (Composer, Guitarist, Artistic Consultant, Program Note Author, Lecturer, the list goes on) has done some serious rethinking of his own.  Let’s go a step or two back in time and call it “Rethink Renaissance.”

In 2012, Aaron built a one-of-a-kind electric theorbo.  You read that correctly.  Here’s a sample of the instrument’s sound in an excerpt from Aaron’s composition, Old-Fashioned Love Songs.theorbo_body

 

I had the pleasure of chatting with Aaron about the concept and design of the instrument as well as his upcoming performance featuring Aaron on electric theorbo and Gus Mercante, countertenor on Saturday, June 21, 8pm at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center.  Aaron recently returned to Seattle after an East Coast tour with performances in NYC, Delaware, and Maryland (which got a great review in the Washington Post).

Listen if you’d like, or keep reading if that’s your preference!

Q. Could you tell us a little bit about this instrument you’ve created, the electric theorbo?

A. It’s based on an old instrument, the theorbo, which is a 16th century Italian lute with long bass strings plus a fretted fret board like a lute would have.  I fell in love with this instrument – it’s audacious, bold, has a deep bass sound, is beautiful for accompanying vocal music.  I had the idea to create a version that would work for me, because I’m not a period practiced lute player, like there are so many wonderful people who do that, especially here in Seattle, so I had to find my version.   I had this idea to hybridize the theorbo, with its many strings and deep bass notes and combine that with an electric guitar, with is my instrument.   So I came up with a design that brought those two worlds together and it uses some old ideas and old stringing and tuning but also very modern techniques of carbon fibers and other new materials.

Q. Did you actually build the instrument yourself?

I did.  It took me many months to design it and probably 8 months in a wood shop putting it together.  I had to try a bunch of things, engineer new techniques and bits and pieces that just don’t exist.  There aren’t a lot of precedents for this so I had to come up with a way to make a new bridge and find the right kind of tuners and even the pickups – every single component I had to rethink, source from somewhere, and ultimately assemble and put it all together.

Q.  What did you have in mind as far as the music to be performed on this instrument ?  Old?  New?

A. The overall message I had in mind was “the timelessness of love songs,” so it ended up being a new-old hybrid, but in a way my goal was not to show not how different those worlds are, but how similar they are.  Any time I’m involved in that new-old territory (which I find I’m doing a lot of), it’s usually to find common threads and connections back to something that I think is immortal in a musical statement or even a human, personal statement.  I ended up using love songs as far back as the 16th century and up to the 21st century and then I wrote a bunch of my own new songs.   The idea was just to show a common thread, that music has always been used to express love.  The simplest version is one person singing and the sound of something being strummed or plucked (and that goes back even farther than the theorbo) and as long as people have been singing or plucking strings, they’ve been expressing love.

Q. Is that the impetus for the concert you have coming up on June 21st?

A.  The two sides of it came together – one was building the instrument and just having the idea for that as a sound that I was drawn to.  The other was this idea about love and its timelessness and universality.  And so those came together in Old-Fashioned Love Songs – an evening length song cycle and the whole thing is one big love letter to my wife.  It’s my way of putting out in a very public, exposed, and somewhat vulnerable way- very true and personal feelings.  That’s what I’m interested in doing as a composer – I’m trying to push myself to be as “out there” as I can be with what I feel deeply.  I used to allow musical activities to just be on the surface… write a piece that sounded nice.  I’m sure I’ll do that again, but right now I’m interested in going really deep into what is most true and personal for me at that point in my life and figuring a way to put it to music.

Q.  Can you give us a sense of the range of songs we can expect to hear?

A.  The first thing on the program is a Toccata by an Italian theorbo composer written in a 1604.  The earliest song on the program is by John Dowland, great master of English love songs – beautiful, heartsick love songs (the agony of love!).  I also touch some Henry Purcell, which is also from that era when the theorbo was an active instrument.  Then I move somewhat chronologically… some Stephen Foster, George Gershwin, Kurt Weill.  Then we get into some later 20th century pop music by Cyndi Lauper and Norah Jones.  Interspersed between all of those are some of my own songs which were written in the last year or two.

Q. Tell us a little bit about the collaboration with the vocalist.

A. The singer is a countertenor, a wonderful singer from Delaware named Gus Mercante who I worked with for the first time over a decade ago.  It’s been so nice to work with that voice type which also has these old resonances.  It’s a voice associated with centuries past.  There’s something so pure and angelic about a countertenor voice that helps to deliver that message that floats just beyond one moment.  He’s just been a wonderful musician and partner to work with.  We’ve been working very closely together and touring together and it really helps that I think our friendship shows up on stage and from the last performances we just did on the east coast, I saw how important that was as a part of what we’re doing because it is such personal music and especially because I’m not the one singing it, he’s really a mouthpiece for my ideas and I just felt like we were really close and connected and able to move together and phrase together in ways that spoke to our friendship and connection just as two people.

Old-Fashioned Love Songs will be a great way to cozy up with a loved one and take a journey through time, all the while experiencing the electric theorbo in the intimate setting of the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center.

Visit our Streaming Albums On-Demand page to hear more of Aaron Grad’s compositions and recordings!

MORLOT, MIX-A-LOT AND MUSIC’S FUTURE

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by Jill Kimball

A Seattle-born musician and composer caused quite a stir last week when he visited Benaroya Hall for a performance with the Seattle Symphony.

Sir Mix-A-Lot with the Seattle Symphohny

Photo: Ben VanHouten for The New York Times

The musician in question has a keen ear for rhythmic detail and often finds inspiration in electronic music. He in turn inspired a series of pieces by Gabriel Prokofiev, the talented and musically adventurous grandson of Sergei. The Seattle Symphony’s Artistic Director, Ludovic Morlot, took to the podium over the weekend to premiere Prokofiev’s latest work with the orchestra as part of its Sonic Evolution series.

The Seattle Symphony premieres new works by avant-garde composers at least a handful of times every year, so why the commotion? It’s because that as-yet-unnamed musician is actually hip-hop artist Sir Mix-A-Lot, whose 1992 breakout hit “Baby Got Back” is included in Prokofiev’s latest suite dedicated to Mix-A-Lot’s complex beats. In the weekend performance, the rapper invited several dozen female audience members onstage to dance along as he and the Symphony performed Prokofiev’s remix of the famous ode to derrières.

After watching the video, all of us at Second Inversion launched into a discussion about the Sonic Evolution series, about genres, about the future of music. We weren’t the only ones. I noticed conversations popping up all over my Facebook feed, on Twitter, even on the Metro bus during my commute. I heard a lot of the same questions posed: Does the Symphony need a video of women getting down to a popular song in Benaroya Hall to stay relevant? Does the association with Gabriel Prokofiev really turn this dyed in the wool hip-hop song into something classical? Is a group of world-class, classically-trained musicians “selling out” when it performs Top 40 music? The most scathing comment I saw: “This … is not music and does not belong in Benaroya.”

Take a look at the last three seasons under Ludovic Morlot’s baton and you’ll see that the Seattle Symphony has offered an increasingly wide variety of concert experiences to attract new audiences while still embracing traditional classical music. The day before Sir Mix-A-Lot’s performance, the Symphony played Ravel and Dutilleux before a silent, reverent, seated audience. A few weeks ago, the Symphony performed new and old music featuring a handful of SSO instrumentalists, a pair of turntables and a few other instrument oddities in the Benaroya lobby, where audience members took in the concert sitting on carpet squares, piling into small booths or milling around the walkways above. (That full concert, by the way, is available on demand below.)

When concerts of Mozart, Debussy and Rachmaninoff are still abundant–just flip through the Symphony’s 2014-15 brochure to find out how abundant–I have to wonder why those who enjoy the traditional Symphony experience are intent on keeping the music that doesn’t appeal to them out of the concert hall.

From where I sit, music does not, cannot exist in one dimension at a time. Many of the decades-trained musicians we see performing the classical canon onstage enjoy listening to non-classical music and often enjoy playing it, too. John Williams is a composer, but his well-rounded musical résumé includes more than just classical credits. Most of the composers we’ve met in our studios draw from a handful of musical genres to write their music. Sir Mix-A-Lot, then, is more than a rapper: he, like Wiliams and Prokofiev and so many others, is simply a musician who appreciates the work of other musicians.

I won’t attempt to answer the question we’ve all asked at some point–what is a musician?–except to say that musicians can still be musicians even if we don’t like them. A few here at Second Inversion admitted Sir Mix-A-Lot’s performance didn’t really “work” for them. But judging from the feedback on that YouTube video, it worked for more than a million others.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that this concert was purposefully scheduled to cap off the annual American League of Orchestras conference, hosted this year by the Seattle Symphony. That means Ludovic Morlot made a conscious decision to conduct his orchestra alongside a rapper and dozens of booty-shaking women for a room full of America’s most influential leaders in classical music. In doing so, he wasn’t just attracting young people in order to sell tickets: he was telling the guardians of classical music to rethink tradition. He demanded that they listen to something completely radical and asked them to do nothing more than consider it.