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Machover Weighs In On AI

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Sam Odgden via Chamber Music America.
Composer Tod Machover.

With all the furor about artificial intelligence, Rebecca Schmid decided to check in with MIT’s Tod Machover, “a pioneer of the connections between classical music and computers.” Their conversation about how AI applies to music appears on the Chamber Music America website.

“Sitting at his home in Waltham, Massachusetts, the composer Tod Machover speaks with the energy of someone half his 69 years as he reflects on the evolution of digital technology toward the current boom in artificial intelligence.

“ ‘I think the other time when things moved really quickly was 1984,’ he says — the year when the personal computer came out. Yet he sees this moment as distinct. ‘What’s going on in A.I. is like a major, major difference, conceptually, in how we think about music and who can make it.’

“Perhaps no other figure is better poised than Machover to analyze A.I.’s practical and ethical challenges. The son of a pianist and computer graphics pioneer, he has been probing the interface of classical music and computer programming since the 1970s.

“As the first Director of Musical Research at the then freshly opened Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (I.R.C.A.M.) in Paris, he was charged with exploring the possibilities of what became the first digital synthesizer while working closely alongside Pierre Boulez.

“In 1987, Machover introduced Hyperinstruments for the first time in his chamber opera VALIS, a commission from the Pompidou Center in Paris. This technology incorporates innovative sensors and A.I. software to analyze the expression of performers, allowing changes in articulation and phrasing to turn, in the case of VALIS, keyboard and percussion soloists into multiple layers of carefully controlled sound.

“Machover had helped to launch the M.I.T. Media Lab two years earlier in 1985, and now serves as both Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media and director of the Lab’s Opera of the Future group. …

“Machover emphasizes the need to blend the capabilities of [AI] technology with the human hand. For his new stage work, Overstory Overture, which premiered last March at Lincoln Center, he used A.I. as a multiplier of handmade recordings to recreate the sounds of forest trees ‘in underground communication with one another.’

“Machover’s ongoing series of ‘City Symphonies,’ for which he involves the citizens of a given location as he creates a sonic portrait of their hometown, also uses A.I. to organize sound samples. Another recent piece, Resolve Remote, for violin and electronics, deployed specially designed algorithms to create variations on acoustic violin. …

“Machover has long pursued his interest in using technology to involve amateurs in musical processes. His 2002 Toy Symphony allows children to shape a composition, among other things, by means of ‘beat bugs’ that generate rhythms. This work, in turn, spawned the Fisher-Price toy Symphony Painter and has been customized to help the disabled imagine their own compositions. …

“Rebecca Schmid: How is the use of A.I. a natural development from what you began back in the 1970s, and what is different?
“Tod Machover: There are lots of things that could only be done with physical instruments 30 years ago that are now done in software: you can create amazing things on a laptop. But what’s going on in A.I. is like a major, major difference, conceptually, in how we think about music and who can make it.

“One of my mentors and heroes is Marvin Minsky, who was one of the founders of A.I., and a kind of music prodigy. And his dream for A.I. was to really figure out how the mind works. He wrote a famous book called The Society of Mind in the mid-eighties based on an incredibly radical, really beautiful theory: that your mind is a group of committees that get together to solve simple problems, with a very precise description of how that works. He wanted a full explanation of how we feel, how we think, how we create — and to build computers modeled on that.

“Little by little, A.I. moved away from that dream, and instead of actually modeling what people do, started looking for techniques that create what people do without following the processes at all. A lot of systems in the 1980 and 1990s were based on pretty simple rules for a particular kind of problem, like medical diagnosis. You could do a pretty good job of finding out some similarities in pathology in order to diagnose something. But that system could never figure out how to walk across the street without getting hit by a car. It had no general knowledge of the world.

“We spent a lot of time in the seventies, eighties, and nineties trying to figure out how we listen — what goes on in the brain when you hear music, how you can have a machine listen to an instrument — to know how to respond. A lot of the systems which are coming out now don’t do that at all. They don’t pretend to be brains. Some of the most kind of powerful systems right now, especially ones generating really crazy and interesting stuff, look at pictures of the sound — a spectrogram, a kind of image processing. I think it’s going to reach a limit because it doesn’t have any real knowledge of what’s there. So, there’s a question of, what does it mean and how is it making these decisions?

“What systems have you used successfully in your work?
“One is R.A.V.E., which comes from I.R.C.A.M. and was originally developed to analyze audio, especially live audio, so that you can reconstruct and manipulate it. The voice is a really good example. Ever since the 1950s, people have been doing live processing of singing. The problem is that it’s really hard to analyze everything that’s in the voice: The pitch and spectrum are changing all the time.

“What you really want to do is be able to understand what’s in the voice, pull it apart and then have all the separate elements so that you can tune and tweak things differently on the other side. And that’s what R.A.V.E. was invented to do. It’s an A.I. analysis of an acoustic signal. It reconstructs it in some form, and then ideally it comes out the other side sounding exactly like it did originally, but now it’s got all these handles so that I can change the pitch without changing the timbre. And it works pretty well for that. You can have it as an accompanist, or your own voice can accompany you. It can change pitch and sing along. And it can sing things that you never sang because it understands your voice. …

“The great thing about A.I. models now is that you can use them not just to make a variation in the sound, but also a variation in what’s being played. So, if you think about early electronic music serving to kind of color a sound — or add a kind of texture around the sound, but being fairly static — with this, if you tweak it properly, it’s a kind of complex variation closely connected to what comes in but not exactly the same. And it changes all the time, because every second the A.I. is trying to figure out, How am I going to match this? How far am I going to go? Where in the space am I? You can think of it as a really rich way of transforming something or creating a kind of dialogue with the performer.” Lots more at Chamber Music America, here. No firewall.

I myself have posted about the composer a few times: for example, here (“Tod Machover,” 2012); here (“Stanford’s Laptop Orchestra,” 2018); and here (“Symphony of the Street,” 2017).

“AI Finished My Story. Does It Matter?” at Wired, here, offers additional insight.

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Saving Afghan Joy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 5, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Shah Meer Baloch.
Afghan refugee Mohammed Hasan Zamri in his shop in Pakistan, where he keeps his collection of rare music cassettes from his homeland.

For the Afghan diaspora, you have to celebrate joy where you find it. In October, for example, Afghan friends lit up social media because of an unexpected triumph in cricket.

“I had a quick shower and was heading towards the office when I learned about Afghanistan’s phenomenal cricket victory against Pakistan, with the news dominating my socials,” Shadi Khan Saif exclaimed in the Guardian. …

“The team’s phenomenal performance has lifted up not just the devastated nation but millions in the Afghan diaspora, including in Australia. At Dandenong Park in Melbourne’s south-east, hundreds joined in on the traditional Attan dance to mark the victory. The scenes in Kabul and other cities in Afghanistan were equally charged with joy and celebration.

“Amid international isolation, Afghanistan’s cricket team has once again proved itself as the only source for the Afghans to connect with the outer world. Afghanistan’s tri-color flag – now replaced with the white Taliban flag – and the Republic-era anthem are still kept alive by the cricketers on the world stage.”

As unusual as was that moment of delight, it is clearly not the only way Afghans seek out joy. Some turn to a collector in Pakistan who is saving Afghan music for posterity.

Shah Meer Baloch reports for the Guardian, “Afghan music fans from Kabul and Jalalabad have crossed the border to the city of Peshawar in Pakistan to offer thousands of rupees to Mohammed Hasan Zamri’s workshop for just one cassette.

“Zamri, an Afghan refugee, refuses them all as he continues his quest to copy and, one day he hopes, digitize his collection of more than 1,000 rare and old Afghan music cassettes of various genres.

“It is his contribution to help preserve a musical culture that existed for centuries before the Taliban existed.

“Since retaking control of the country in 2021, the Taliban have imposed their rigid interpretation of Islam, restricting and even criminalising music and arts. In July, they publicised a bonfire of seized ‘illegal’ musical instruments, reminding Afghans that the sale of instruments was a punishable offense.

“ ‘The Taliban just use religion as an excuse to ban music and say it is haram, prohibited, in Islam. This is not true and it is part of our culture for centuries, but the Taliban have senselessly put a ban on it, says Zamri.

“Zamri fled Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and went back for a few years after the war had ended and the Taliban had started to consolidate their power. He left again in 1996 and has been running a workshop fixing tape recorders and TVs ever since.

“Most of the space in his small workshop is taken up by stacks of cassettes, neatly arranged on a wall opposite the entrance. His collection includes tapes of renowned Afghan musicians including Munawar, Nashenas, Taj Mohammad and Haikal.

“ ‘I have done recordings of many singers myself who had fled Afghanistan in the 1990s or had come to Peshawar, which has been a thriving hub for Afghan refugees and musicians,’ he says.

“ ‘The love for music is there but the musicians, music and art is banned in the Taliban’s Afghanistan. Today, we have many singers but because of the ban, they cannot perform. They have fled Afghanistan.’

“Listening and copying his cassettes, Zamri reminisces of times when Afghan audiences could enjoy music and culture with freedom – the same freedom afforded to musicians and artists, men and women. … ‘The people who have heard these songs or lived through the era are the ones who come to buy cassettes. …

“ ‘Naseema, Kashan, Benazir and Zarghona were the best female singers who dominated Afghan music three to four decades ago. Now, if they do not allow men to sing or create music, how will they allow women?’

“Until [August], Zamri was unknown to many Pashto-speaking people until local media featured his attempts at saving Afghan music cassettes. He has since received both threats and messages of appreciation.

“ ‘I have been threatened on Facebook from people to stop my work and they would burn down my shop and that this is against Islam. But there were some positive and appreciative comments too. …

” ‘Some people are addicted to smoking, some people love pets and some are fond of many other things. I am addicted to Afghan music. It is my hobby and passion,’ he says.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Preserving Indigenous Music

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: The Nicholson Project.
The Uptown Singerz are a DC-based intertribal Native American Northern powwow drum group that performs powwow, ceremonial, and in some cases political songs.

We are all enriched when previously below-the-radar groups begin to share their culture more widely. The featured article for today is from the Washington Post and highlights a cultural collaboration by members of several indigenous tribes.

Dana Hedgpeth writes, “When Nick Courtney came to D.C. seven years ago to work on education issues, he missed his Native American tribe in Washington state.

“Longing to connect with other Native Americans in the region, the 31-year-old member of the Makah Tribe helped form the Uptown Singerz, a Native American drum group that shares and celebrates their heritage.

“ ‘D.C. is a transient city because folks come and go, so that can be hard,’ said Courtney, who lives in Baltimore. ‘I still long for my own culture, but this fills my cup. It’s a bond, and I’m a part of something that’s allowed me to build a community here. It’s like a family for me.’

“In the United States, roughly 9.7 million people — or about 3 percent — of the overall population — identified themselves as being American Indian or Alaska Native in the 2020 Census. Fewer than 1 percent of people in the District, Maryland and Virginia said they are American Indian or Alaska Native.

“There are more than 500 federally recognized tribes in the country, and more than 70 percent of American Indians live away from their tribal reservations or communities.

“Being a part of Uptown Singerz gives members who are far from their tribes’ home ‘a renewed sense of community and family every time we sing, every time we drum,’ said Mary Phillips, the group’s lady backup singer (as the role is officially called by Native Americans), who is from the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska and the Laguna Pueblo Tribe in New Mexico. …

“The Uptown Singerz … practice several times a month and perform up to 20 events a year in theaters, rallies, community events and Native American gatherings and powwows in the D.C. region to showcase their talents and educate the public. They, along with the Zotigh Singers — who are from the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma and live in Waldorf, Md. — are one of the few American Indian drum groups in the D.C. region.

“ ‘Having the Uptown Singerz is so important because they help keep our culture alive here in D.C.,’ said Angela Gladue, 38, who is a powwow and hoop dancer. A Cree and a member of the Frog Lake First Nation in Alberta, Canada, Gladue moved to Northeast Washington six years ago and got to know other American Indians in the area, along with the drum groups. …

“The Uptown Singerz typically play around one large drum made from wood and dried animal hide. Sometimes they play smaller hand drums. Considered sacred and often used at events and some ceremonies, the drum for many American Indians represents the heartbeat of Mother Earth.

“They follow the Native American tradition of having only men sit around the drum. Women stand behind them and join in the singing because ‘women carry the sacred water of life,’ empowering them to ‘absorb or change the energy of the people around them or the energy of the drum,’ Phillips said. …

“For Gladue, hearing the drum and seeing American Indians from different tribes gather and dance was a special moment. … ‘People will ask, “Indians are still here?” To be around other Natives and not have to explain myself makes me feel good.’ “

More at the Post, here.

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Making Art Lifts Spirits

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 20, 2023| 5 Comments »

Since ancient times, people have found all sorts of ways to get themselves on an even keel when they are feeling down. I’m the last person to say folk remedies can cure real depression, but I am interested in the many ways people lift their spirits.

At the New York Times, Christina Caron writes about people who use art.

“When Dr. Frank Clark was in medical school studying to be a psychiatrist, he decided to write his first poem.

“ ‘All that chatter that is in my head, everything that I’ve been feeling, I can now just put it on paper and my pen can do the talking,’ he said, recalling his thoughts at the time.

“Back then, he was struggling with depression and had been relying on a number of things to keep it at bay, including running, therapy, medication and his faith.

“ ‘I had to find something else to fill the void,’ he said. It turned out that poetry was the missing piece in his ‘wellness puzzle.’

“But there’s a ‘really robust body of evidence’ that suggests that creating art, as well as activities like attending a concert or visiting a museum, can benefit mental health, said Jill Sonke, research director of the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine. …

“Dr. James S. Gordon, a psychiatrist and the founder of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine, pioneered something called the ‘three drawing technique.’ It is featured in the new book Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. …

“If you are one of the many people who have turned to adult coloring books, it may not come as a surprise that research suggests this activity can help ease anxiety.

“Coloring within the lines — of an intricate pattern, for example — appears to be especially effective. One study that evaluated college students, and another that assessed older adults, found that spending 20 minutes coloring a mandala (a complex geometric design) was more helpful at reducing anxiety than free-form coloring for the same length of time.

“Susan Albers, a clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic and the author of 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food, described coloring as a ‘mini mental vacation.’ When we focus on the texture of the paper and choose the colors that please us, it becomes easier to tune out distractions and stay in the moment, she said.

“ ‘It’s a great form of meditation for people who hate meditation.’

“Listening to music, playing an instrument or singing can all be beneficial, research shows.

“A 2022 study, for example, surveyed more than 650 people in four age groups and asked them to rank the artistic activities that helped them ‘feel better’ during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. The youngest participants, ages 18 to 24, overwhelmingly rated musical activities as most effective. Across all age groups, ‘singing’ was ranked among the top activities. …

“[Susan Magsamen, an assistant professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a co-author of the book] noted that music can be effective at reducing stress because things like rhythm and repetitive lyrics and chords engage multiple regions of the brain.

“ ‘I sing in the shower,’ Ms. Magsamen said. ‘I sing at the top of my lungs to the radio.’

“Dr. Clark has continued to write poetry since graduating from medical school and offered some tips for those interested in trying.

“First, banish any thoughts that you aren’t creative enough. … Start with a simple haiku, Dr. Clark suggested. Haikus consist of just three lines — the first and last lines have five syllables and the middle has seven.”

That’s not all there is to a haiku, of course, but it can really get you going with poems. I used it with sixth grade students a lot when I was teaching, not for mental health, but it sure lifted spirits.

More at the Times, here.

Photo: Making art can make you happy. More here.

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The Pigeon at the Opera

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 4, 2023| 6 Comments »

Art: Mo Willems.

One day in spring, the school that two of my grandchildren attend had a dress-as-your-favorite-character day. The school principal wore a Mo Willems T-shirt that warned, “Don’t let the Pigeon drive the bus.”

Did you love that book series? Now that all four grandkids are reading advanced books, I feel a certain nostalgia for the Pigeon days. Fortunately, I can still see Pigeon at the opera.

David Allen writes at the New York Times, “Do you know the words to the Queen of the Night’s stratospheric showcase from ‘The Magic Flute’? Maybe the Duke’s famous tune from ‘Rigoletto’? Carmen’s Habanera?

“No, not those words. The other ones: the words, at least, as they are now known to my 6-year-old daughter and the hundreds of children who took grown-ups like me to the Kennedy Center here recently for the premiere of ‘The Ice Cream Truck Is Broken! & Other Emotional Arias,‘ an experiment, including a short new work by the composer Carlos Simon, in what it might mean to draw a very young and impossibly demanding audience into a life in opera.

“See, you might think that Carmen is relating her views on love, but no. Listen closely, and you’ll find that the singer should have shared her cotton candy with her friends, and absolutely will … tomorrow. ‘La donna è mobile’? That’s about how milk squirts out your nose if you happen to laugh at exactly the wrong time. The Queen’s aria? That’s still about anger, but it now invokes something far worse than the vengeance of hell.

“ ‘This bicycle,’ it begins, in a fit of preschool pique, ‘is such a poo-poo vehicle.’

“Opera’s great composers have a new librettist, and he is almost certainly the only person who could induce an institution like the Kennedy Center to do something like this, let alone get Renée Fleming to join him in hosting it; inspire a quintet of young singers to ham their way through it; and persuade Simon, one of the busiest composers around, to crown the show with a 20-minute piece that gives an attention-seeking, picture-book Pigeon the prima donna spotlight it has surely always craved.

“The writer for it all? Mo Willems, who, it turns out, really loves opera! …

“ ‘It’s big emotions. … It’s direct communication. It’s interior dialogue. It’s self-discovery.’ …

“Willems has always been a broader artist than just a writer of picture books, though that task alone is such that he calls it ‘as easy as describing the history of Byzantium in three words.’ Some of his most celebrated characters — who include a venturesome plushie called Knuffle Bunny, the on-and-off best friends Elephant and Piggie, and that insatiable, inimitable Pigeon — had already starred in musicals that he had written before he formalized his long association with the Kennedy Center in 2019, when he became its education artist in residence. That three-year position coincided with the pandemic, to which he responded with invaluable ‘Lunch Doodles‘ videos, but it still let him explore a range of genres, including symphonic music, which he said ‘has always been important to me.’

“ ‘Beethoven’s Fifth is the easiest example,’ he explained, ‘but it’s basically the arc of an episode of television, or a movie: “Ba-ba-ba-baaam,” oh, it’s exciting — and then you take the theme, you take the theme, and then you build with it. So when I was writing a show called “Codename: Kids Next Door,” which is a silly sort of action comedy, I would literally write to the symphony.’

“For the National Symphony Orchestra, Willems painted giant abstractions to accompany a cycle of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, and he worked with the musician Ben Folds to adapt one of his books, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs,‘ for the concert hall. Hearing plans for ‘Goldilocks’ led Tim O’Leary, the general director of the Washington National Opera and a Willems-reading father of three, to inquire about a commission. …

“The author quickly sent him a copy of an Elephant and Piggie book — ‘I Really Like Slop!‘ — with the inscription ‘Tim, this book really sings.’ By their second encounter, Willems had the libretto in his head, a sketch of the characters in concert dress and a title: ‘SLOPERA!‘

“ ‘Obviously, once it was called the “SLOPERA!” we had to do it,’ O’Leary said.

“ ‘SLOPERA!’ could only be performed live outdoors on account of the pandemic, but an indoor recording, with piano accompaniment, was shown virtually to more than 300,000 schoolchildren. Piggie gets Gerald the Elephant to try slop, a stinky green delicacy among porcine foodies. He does, after his initial refusals upset his companion, and he endures the consequences in something like a bel canto mad (or death) scene. He recovers, though, and tells Piggie that while he might not like her food, he still likes her. …

“Willems said, reflecting on what writing his first libretto taught him, aside from the importance of placing consonants carefully. ‘If you look at a picture book manuscript, and you can understand it, it has too many words. If you look at just the illustrations, and you can understand it, the drawings are too detailed. They both have to be incomprehensible. It’s very similar with writing an opera, that the words that you’re using have to be dependent on the music, but the music has to be dependent on the words, and either of them shouldn’t really be able to stand alone.’ …

“[Oznur] Tuluoglu, a young soprano whose most recent prior role was Barbarina at the Annapolis Opera, took on the title character. ‘When you train, you have to be able to sing Mozart, you gotta be able to be a pigeon.’ “

More at the Times, here.

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Porch Culture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 1, 2023| 3 Comments »

Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
Porchfest events in Massachusetts towns promote neighborliness.

When Sara and I traveled together at age 16, one of the many things I learned from her was that it was perfectly fine to be friendly to strangers under some circumstances. You know, for example, how women who don’t know each other may strike up a conversation in a restaurant ladies room? That’s the kind of thing that was a revelation to me.

Nowadays, some folks have gotten more wary. Too wary. It is one factor in an epidemic of loneliness.

Sophie Hills  writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Lida and Mark Simpson sit on the steps of their porch with friends while the blues rock band Red Medicine plays in a yard across the street. People crowd all four corners of the intersection, dancing and chatting. It’s PorchFest in Petworth, a neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Some 100 performers will play on porches and yards throughout the day. A new group of people walks up, searching for space with a view of the band. ‘Sit, sit,’ says Ms. Simpson with a big smile, gesturing toward the wall at the edge of the yard.

“The Simpsons, who have a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old, chose Petworth because it’s walkable, close to restaurants and playgrounds and public transit, and still has a neighborhood feeling. When they first moved in eight years ago, Ms. Simpson says she hoped for an active front porch culture. But it didn’t quite coalesce until people began socializing from their yards in 2020. Happily, says Ms. Simpson, ‘porch and stoop culture restarted during the pandemic, and it’s stayed around.’

“[This spring], the U.S. surgeon general declared an epidemic of loneliness and isolation, saying that 1 in 2 adults reported experiencing loneliness even before the pandemic. At a time when neighborliness is decreasing and Americans are growing further apart, some, like the Simpsons, are intentionally building relationships within their communities. And events like porch fests are growing in popularity. Central to a culture of neighborliness, many say, are front porches. …

“ ‘As it has built for decades, the epidemic of loneliness and isolation has fueled other problems that are killing us and threaten to rip our country apart,’ wrote Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in the New York Times on April 30, announcing a framework to rebuild community. …

“A front porch is a liminal space, says Michael Dolan, a writer and editor in Washington. ‘It’s the outside of the inside and the inside of the outside. … When people who have [porches and stoops] don’t use them, they’re missing out on the opportunity to interact with the environment. [And] the environment includes humans and includes passersby, includes somebody coming up to ask directions, includes somebody coming by to say hello.’

“The type of neighborliness embodied by Mister Rogers is no longer the norm. Over half of Americans say they only know some of their neighbors. … Over half of Americans who say they know some of their neighbors say they never get together socially, according to a Pew study from 2019.

“It takes curious and open people to build the kind of community that has block parties, borrows ingredients, and watches each other’s kids, but social spaces like front yards and porches are important too, says [Campbell McCool, founder of a Mississippi development that centers community life]. ‘A front porch is central to the whole personality of a neighborhood,’ he says. …

“Historically, Mr. McCool says, three things sped the decline of the front porch in suburbia in the 1950s: air conditioning, television, and the car. Air conditioning and TV coaxed people indoors. Cars meant more people lived further apart from each other.

“When sociologists began studying differences between residents in neighborhoods with and without porches, they found that in the latter there was little to no interaction. People drove straight into their garages, and private backyard decks grew in popularity. …

“Today, polls show that older Americans are more likely to have neighborly connections. Just 4% of Americans over 65 say they don’t know any of their neighbors, compared with 23% of adults under 30. …

“Karen Goddard, who prefers porches to private decks, calls herself a ‘professional porch sitter’ in her attempt to make neighborliness popular again. …

“The point, Ms. Goddard says, is to meet on front porches without agendas, minutes, or formality – ‘just meeting and conversation.’

“It resonated with Ms. Goddard as something she was already doing. ‘My friends in my neighborhood in New Hampshire knew that they could come to my house any Friday night and hang out on the porch,’ she says. …

“ ‘I like to smile and make eye contact and say “hello” if possible, because I just think that’s important for human connection and for neighbors.’

“The porch has always been a place of social interaction, says Mr. Dolan. That’s been his experience for the four decades he’s lived in the Palisades neighborhood of Washington, where he says neighborliness shines. …

” ‘I like to answer my door and say hello to the people who come to my house,’ he says. ‘[One gains] the feeling of trust in the neighborly compact, the ability to rely on one’s neighbors and call one’s neighbors. … Or even if your neighbors bother you, … you tolerate them because they’re neighbors. So it’s a sense of place that reinforces your feeling of being part of something.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here. No firewall. Subscriptions welcome.

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Britain’s Record Store Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 7, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: Getty Images.
Record Store Day celebrates independent music stores in the UK, says the BBC, “with many labels and artists releasing limited vinyl editions specifically on the day.”

Some of us still listen to our vinyl records. And others are starting to. In fact, vinyl records have become so popular in England that there is now an official Record Store Day to celebrate the bricks-and-mortar places you can buy them.

Gareth George reports at the BBC, “More young music fans are snapping up the latest releases on vinyl, triggering a boom in LP sales. In 2022, vinyl outsold CDs for the first time in 35 years. Ahead of Record Store Day in the UK, the BBC asked young record store regulars why ‘old school’ beats downloads. …

“Will, 16, is a GCSE [General Certificate Secondary Education] student and guitarist who hopes to study music full-time at the Colchester Institute. He believes buying vinyl is a better way of supporting artists than streaming or downloading music and reveals he has inherited his own collection of records from parents and grandparents. …

” ‘You can inherit not only the music, but also the memories, and tell the story though vinyl.’

“Will is running a second-hand vinyl stall with Sam, 18, from Chelmsford, a guitarist and singer who plays in a band called Alison. Sam says record fairs are essential because new vinyl LPs can be expensive for budding collectors.

” ‘It’s hard to become a vinyl collector now when you go to your local record shop and see that it’s 40 quid a record,’ he says. ‘That’s why these record fairs are important. Stuff’s just cheaper.’

“The pair work at Intense Records in Chelmsford, one of the hundreds of independent music shops across the UK taking part in Record Store Day on 22 April. The annual event, which was established in 2007, has become one of the biggest in the music calendar, with independent record shops often achieving their highest sales of the year. …

” ‘We’ve definitely seen a new generation of younger music fans embracing vinyl,’ says Record Store Day UK co-ordinator Megan Page. ‘For superstar artists like Taylor Swift and The 1975, vinyl has become a really important part of their marketing campaign. …

“Jon Smith, manager of Intense Records, says DJs will be playing to the crowds of collectors expected to go along. He said many customers hope to grab a bargain or snap up a limited release on the day. …

“Nineteen-year-old Kasabian fan, Geordie Breeze, is ‘crate-digging’ in Norwich – a vinyl hunter term for flicking through the rows and racks of records in music shops. The environmental science student at Lancaster University says he already has ‘a few hundred’ vinyl LPs. ‘I think the sound quality’s better, and I like a physical record to hold,’ he says.

“According to figures from the British Phonographic Industry, vinyl records outsold CDs in 2022 for the first time in 35 years. The revenue generated from vinyl was [about] £119.5m [$128 million] more than CDs. …

“Musician Imogen Bradley, 23, looks out for ‘old school hip-hop’ on vinyl. She is a fan of British rapper MF Doom and American hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan. ‘I just prefer having a physical copy,’ she says.”

What was before vinyl? My grandfather left behind a wind-up Victrola with a horn that would be valuable today. But my brother and I at a young age thought it was hilarious to smash the records. Golly, but kids are weird!

More at the BBC, here. No firewall.

Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.

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Ethiopian Nun and Composer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 7, 2023| 3 Comments »

Photo: Buda Musique via the BBC.
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, the composer and piano-playing nun who died March 26 at age 99. The BBC reports she led an “extraordinary life, which included being a trailblazer for women’s equality and walking barefoot for a decade in the isolated mountains of northern Ethiopia.”

Here’s a woman who had a long and fruitful life, dying at 99 after making her mark as a nun, a musician, and a proponent of women’s equality. You may be surprised to learn of the advantages a girl could have back in the day if her family was connected to Ethiopian royalty.

Brian Murphy reports at the Washington Post, “Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, a classically trained musician who once abandoned music for a hermit-like life as a nun in her native Ethiopia and later returned to the piano with a genre-defying blend of Western and Ethiopian influences, died March 26 at her convent in Jerusalem. She was 99. …

“The styles explored by Sister Guèbrou (the title Emahoy is equivalent to ‘Sister’ for a nun) were so singular in sound and structure that music scholars often puzzled over the main source of her inspiration — seamlessly mixing forms such as jazz, chamber music and rhythms from her homeland. …

“Her work was brought to a larger audience in recent years on the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated documentary Time (2020) about a two-decade saga for an inmate and his family; and as music on the Netflix race-and-prejudice drama Passing (2021).

“Sister Guèbrou, meanwhile, spent long stretches in solitude inside the Ethiopian Monastery of Debre Genet, or Sanctuary of Paradise, in Jerusalem, where she lived since 1984 in a single room adorned with her artwork of icons and angels. …

“In her few specific comments on her musical influences, she expressed admiration for the European classical canon including Frédéric Chopin and Johann Strauss. Yet she stayed rooted in the five-note melodic runs common in Ethiopian music, while also exploring the flowing richness of Eastern Orthodox chants or the distinctly American sounds such as jazz or the old-timey snap of ragtime. …

” ‘Just within the first five or 10 seconds of the song, we have invocations of European modernism, of Ethiopian traditional music and of the links between Ethiopian Orthodoxy and a broader Judeo-Christian tradition,’ said Ilana Webster-Kogen, an ethnomusicologist at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

“ ‘Getting all of that musical information within about five seconds of listening means that comparing her to anyone else wouldn’t make sense,’ she added.

“There was a decade, however, when Sister Guèbrou played nothing at all.

“She was a rising young talent as a teen, studying for two years under Polish violinist Alexander Kontorowicz in Cairo and then was offered a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music. Sister Guèbrou never made clear what happened next. For some reason, she was blocked by Selassie’s government from traveling to London.

“She was devastated. For nearly two weeks, she refused to eat. She ended up in a hospital in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Her family feared she was near death. Weak and ailing, Sister Guèbrou said she slept for an entire day.

“ ‘When I wake up, I had a peaceful mind,’ she told the BBC in 2017. ‘I was changed. And I didn’t care for anything.’

“She left music behind. At 19, she joined the Gishen Mariam monastery in Ethiopia’s northern highlands. For the next decade, she barely left the monastery grounds, where she slept in a hut on a dried-mud bed. She noticed many of the nuns and monks were barefoot. She gave up shoes as well.

“She had already experienced huge swings in her life. She was raised in privilege in a family that had deep connections in the Ethiopian royal court, including her father’s work in diplomatic and liaison roles. She and her sister, Senedu, attended a Swiss boarding school and soaked in Western music and art.

“After Italian forces under Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Sister Guèbrou and her family were placed under house arrest and later sent to POW camps in Italy for two years. Three of her brothers were killed in the fighting. (She composed the 1963 piece, ‘The Ballad of the Spirit,’ in their memory.) …

“At nearly 30 years old, she decided to see how her fingers felt back on the piano keys. The music flowed. Now, however, it was more infused with the meditative sounds and chants from the monastery.

“ ‘I said to myself, “I have nothing. I have music,” ‘ she recalled. ‘I will try to do something with this music.’ …

“In 1974, a coup toppled Selassie and ended Ethiopia’s monarchy. Anyone favored by the ousted royal regime, including Sister Guèbrou and her family, was now under suspicion and closely monitored. When Sister Guèbrou’s mother died in 1984, she moved permanently to the monastery in Jerusalem, always seen in public in the flowing religious garb that covered her head. …

“ ‘We can’t always choose what life brings,’ she told the BBC. ‘But we can choose how to respond.’ ”

More at the Post, here.

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When Music Awakens Memory

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 18, 2023| 6 Comments »

Art: John Tenniel.
The Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland tells a story of sisters at the bottom of a well who were learning to draw “all manner of things — everything that begins with an M … such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory.”

When periodicals like the Washington Post block bloggers from linking to their images, we scavenge around for alternative illustrations. Today’s Post article on music and memory made me think of words that begin with an “m,” as the Dormouse did in Alice in Wonderland. The Dormouse even talks about “drawing” memory. Look it up.

Marlene Cimons has a report on music and dementia.

“When Laura Nye Falsone’s first child was born in 1996, the Wallflowers album ‘Bringing Down the Horse’ was a big hit. ‘All I have to hear are the first notes from “One Headlight,” and I am back to dancing … with my brand-new baby boy in my arms,’ she says. …

“When Carol Howard’s early-onset Alzheimer’s worsened, often she couldn’t recognize her husband. She once introduced him as her father. But if she heard a 1960s Simon & Garfunkel song playing, Howard, a marine biologist who died in 2019, could sing every word ‘effortlessly,’ her husband says.

“This ability of music to conjure up vivid memories is a phenomenon well known to brain researchers. It can trigger intense recollections from years past — for many, more strongly than other senses such as taste and smell — and provoke strong emotions from those earlier experiences.

“ ‘Music can open forgotten doors to your memory,’ says Andrew Budson, chief of cognitive and behavioral neurology, associate chief of staff for education and director of the Center for Translational Cognitive Neuroscience at Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System.

“ ‘Music can take you back in time, as well as act like a jolt of electricity that can fire up your brain and get it going,’ he says. ‘We all have the familiar experience of going back to our hometown, visiting our high school and feeling the memories come flooding back. Music can do same thing. It provides an auditory and emotional setting that allows us to retrieve all those memories.’

“Scientists who study music’s powerful effects on the brain say that growing knowledge could improve therapy for such conditions as dementia and other memory disorders, anxiety, stress and depression, learning disabilities and many physical illnesses, such as chronic pain, cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

“Evidence also exists that music prompts the secretion of brain neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a role in the brain’s reward/pleasure system. Other studies have shown that music reduces the stress-producing hormone cortisol and increases the secretion of oxytocin, which plays a role in labor and childbirth, as well as in infant-parental bonding, trust and romantic attachment.

“ ‘Music activates different parts of the brain,’ making it an especially versatile tool, says Amy Belfi, assistant professor of psychological science at Missouri University of Science and Technology and principal investigator in its Music Cognition and Aesthetics Lab. ‘We can use it to improve mood, to help us learn, to socially bond with other people. It becomes part of our identity.’ …

“Some experts also see a role for music — which can ease agitation in those with dementia — as an alternative to sedating medications, for example, or as a means of enabling patients to keep living at home.

“Frank Russo, professor of psychology at Toronto Metropolitan University, says he believes this ultimately will be possible. He is chief scientific officer of a company that is developing a music player that uses artificial intelligence to curate an individualized play list designed to guide a patient from a state of anxiety to one of calm.

“ ‘One of the really challenging things for caregivers is the anxiety and agitation,’ says Russo, whose research focuses on the intersection of neuroscience and music. … ‘Music has a real opportunity here.’

“Melissa Owens, a music therapist at Virginia Commonwealth University Health, already has seen this in her work. ‘I still find myself in awe of music’s ability to positively change behavior, emotion and even the relationship between a caregiver and their loved one, if even only for the duration of the specific song,’ she says. It provides ‘a moment of normalcy which so much of the time seems lost.’ ”

Read how experts look at the different types of memory involved at the Post, here.

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500-Year-Old Black Composer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 31, 2023| 4 Comments »

Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro at the New York Times. Photo: Getty Images.

A black musician who composed sacred and secular vocal music more than 400 years ago is getting attention at last, thanks to the internet. Garrett Schumann recently wrote for the New York Times about composer Vicente Lusitano.

“On a day in June 2020, Alice Jones was in her Brooklyn apartment getting ready to attend a Black Lives Matter rally. Dr. Jones, a flutist and composer who serves as an assistant dean and faculty member at the Juilliard School, was adamant about expressing herself as a Black classical musician. …

“Dr. Jones designed a sign that listed Black composers throughout history. After adding Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the 18th-century subject of the upcoming film ‘Chevalier, she faintly remembered another, older name: Vicente Lusitano.

“Lusitano was an African-Portuguese composer and music theorist who was most likely born between 1520 and 1522, and who died sometime after 1562. Probably the child of an enslaved African woman and a Portuguese noble, Lusitano traversed Europe in a career that saw him depart the Iberian Peninsula for Rome as a Catholic priest in 1550 and, around a decade later, relocate from Italy to Germany as a married Protestant.

“He wrote sacred and secular vocal music, taught extensively and produced scholarship that includes a unique manuscript treatise on improvised vocal counterpoint. …

“It took until the late 19th century for new scholarship to revisit Lusitano’s printed works, beginning a 150-year-old reclamation project. Important strides were made in the 1960s and ’70s as new sources emerged, most notably a 17th-century manuscript that describes Lusitano as ‘homem pardo,’ a historical Portuguese term for certain mixed-race people of African descent. And since 2000, the internet has become increasingly important to Lusitano scholarship; the summer of 2020 saw the onset of a new and ongoing flurry of interest whose roots are entirely digital.

“Dr. Jones’s demonstration sign played a part in the current wave of activity: A picture of her placard went viral on social media and broadcast Lusitano’s name to a new audience. Joseph McHardy, a Scottish-Congolese conductor and early music specialist based in London, was stunned when he saw Dr. Jones’s post. ..

‘Learning about Lusitano reminded me of the feeling I got when I learned there were Black people in the Roman Empire.’

“After seeing the sign, McHardy quickly searched for scores of Lusitano’s music to perform with his church choir, but could only find scans of the 16th-century originals. So, he spent that summer making his own updated versions. He’s one of many experts and enthusiasts who produced the first modern editions of Lusitano’s compositions and shared them on free online databases. The result was a burst of new performances in the months that followed. Nearly five centuries after Lusitano’s death, dozens of choirs in the United States, Canada and Europe performed his music for the first time, largely because his scores were finally accessible.

“Britain has been the epicenter of Lusitano’s current musical resurgence. In June, McHardy partnered with the Chineke! Foundation to produce a tour highlighting Lusitano’s sacred works with an ensemble composed entirely of vocalists of color. The motets’ beauty astonished McHardy, who said, ‘We had no idea Lusitano’s pieces would be so enjoyable to sing.’

“His collaborators, too, were impressed. ‘I have fallen in love with Lusitano’s music,’ said Malcolm J. Merriweather, an American baritone and conductor who performed on the tour.

“The Marian Consort, another British choir, led by the conductor Rory McCleery, preceded McHardy’s tour with a 2021 concert series featuring one of Lusitano’s works, which they also performed at that year’s BBC Proms. …

“Today, Lusitano is not easy to study, even if you can find performances of his music on YouTube. Little correspondence and few records of his life are known to have survived, both because earlier scholars had no interest and because his sociopolitical disenfranchisement constrained the production of such documents. Contextual evidence is critical, especially with respect to his identity.

“We know other pardo people existed in 16th-century Portugal. At the time, thousands of African and African-descended people, most of whom were enslaved, lived in the country. … Lusitano’s experience as a historical figure illustrates the kind of collective activity that has traditionally excluded composers of African descent from classical music’s conventional performance and academic institutions. Melanie Zeck, a reference librarian at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center and former reference librarian at the Center for Black Music Research, emphasized that the first historians of Black classical music responded to these exclusionary tendencies by developing what she called a ‘totally separate practice from mainstream academic scholarship.’ …

“Now, the internet and social media can empower these principles of Black music scholarship, though, as Dr. Zeck said, ‘misinformation abounds.’ But for Lusitano, these technologies nevertheless have helped the truths of his life and music become more accessible than ever, 500 years after his birth.”

More at the Times, here.

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At the Boston Pops

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

In spite of living in the Greater Boston area for 40 years, I had never been to the Boston Pops. I decided to check out this year’s holiday concert and go by public transportation.

The Red Line subway track was being repaired and was not in use that Saturday, so the transportation ended up being a problem, but I was glad I went. It was lovely.

One of the pieces featured was the premier of composer Arturo Rodríguez’s Noche de Posadas (The Night of Las Posadas), which was based on a Mexican tradition and tied to a children’s book by the late author/illustrator Tomie dePaola.

Rodríguez, a native of Mexico, wrote in the program about the custom that inspired dePaola’s storybook and about working on the commission from the Boston Pops Orchestra.

“The enduring tradition of Las Posadas in México,” he wrote, “is a representation of Joseph and Mary and their pilgrimage from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The community organizes into two groups, those who accompany the couple while they go from door to door in search of shelter and those inside the houses that reject them. These are done by singing the traditional litany. Finally the couple are welcomed, and a big celebration with food and the emblematic piñata takes place. The piñata, symbolizing the triumph of faith over sin, must have 7 spikes, each of them representing a capital sin. The candy and fruit inside the piñata represent the grace of God. The high point of the celebration is when the piñata breaks and the guests are showered by all the blessings that fall from it.

“When I was asked to compose a work about the Mexican Christmas tradition of Las Posadas, to be premiered by the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by maestro Keith Lockhart during the Holiday season of 2022, I was delighted and honored, and immediately I had a flashback to my childhood.

“I clearly remember this particular day, growing up in my hometown of Monterrey, México (I must have been around 7 years old), when I had to stay home and skip school because it had snowed, a rare occurrence in that city. Luckily for me, the local TV cultural channel was showing a Christmas concert with the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by maestro John Williams. The cold weather, the warm blankets, and the beautiful music that came out of the TV set have stayed in my mind and soul all these years.

“Cut to the present: having the opportunity to compose a work through which I can share my Mexican culture with the Boston audience as well as the amazing musicians of the Boston Pops Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus at Symphony Hall, that same venue I saw on the TV set as a child, is truly the best Christmas gift I could ever receive.

“The resulting work for orchestra with narrator and choir is also inspired and built around the touching children’s book written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola, The Night of Las Posadas. I hope this music lifts you from your seats and takes you right into the heart of some magical Mexican town and that you are embraced by the flavors, rhythms, and colors of this beautiful tradition of my home country.”

Also in the concert program, I learned about Karina Beleno Carney, who narrated the storybook in between sections of the music. “A Massachusetts-based actor, Karina has appeared this year in Central Square Theater’s Young Nerds of Color, Apollinaire Theater’s Don’t Eat the Mangos, and Huntington Theatre’s Breaking Ground Festival of New Work in Rough Magic. A first-generation Colombian American and mother of three, Karina is thrilled to bring the Latine children’s book The Night of Las Posadas to life with the Boston Pops.”

In the book, the couple playing Mary and Joseph for Las Posadas get stalled by a snowstorm, but the village doesn’t know it because everything goes on as it’s supposed to. How is that possible?

Enjoy this night, wherever you are. Try to find the hidden magic in it.

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Up for a Latin Grammy at 95

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 4, 2022| 8 Comments »

Photo: Kimberly Yatsko via EuroNews.
Latin Grammy Awards 2022: 95-year-old Alvarez was nominated for Best New Artist. “Sometimes, I pinch myself,” she says.

File this one under Never Too Old. A sparkling new career awaits a 95-year-old. That’s because of her genuine talent, of course, but it didn’t hurt to have a grandson with a promotional streak.

Sydney Page wrote at the Washington Post, “Growing up in Cuba, Angela Alvarez wanted to be a singer. But after coming to the United States as a young woman, she found herself cleaning a bank in Colorado to make a living.

“It now almost seems impossible that her long-held dream has become a reality: Alvarez was nominated for a Latin Grammy for best new artist. She is 95. …

“Alvarez composed her first song at age 14, then already proficient on piano and guitar. She also loved to sing. When she graduated from high school, Alvarez told her father she wanted nothing more than to become a professional musician. He rejected the idea. …

“ ‘I loved him so much,’ Alvarez said. ‘I liked to be obedient.’

“She put her professional pursuits aside and moved through life, getting married at age 19 and having four children — three boys and a girl.

“Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, upending life as they knew it in their home country. Alvarez and her husband, Orlando — who was a sugar engineer — decided they would flee to the United States. Given his profession, Orlando was initially forced to stay in Cuba. Alvarez took her children — the youngest was 4 and the eldest 15 — to the airport in May 1962, but officials also forbade her from leaving the country, saying she had missing paperwork. Alvarez made the impossible decision to let her children go alone to the United States.

“ ‘It was very hard for me,’ she recalled.

“It took several months before she was granted permission to leave Cuba, and once she arrived in Miami, she wasn’t financially eligible to reclaim her children — who were living at an orphanage in Pueblo, Colo. — through the welfare program they were assigned to.

“Finally, after not seeing her children for nearly two years, she secured a job cleaning a bank in Pueblo and was able to spend time with her kids on weekends. She lived in a small basement apartment.

“Amid her family’s difficult situation, Alvarez strived to fill her children’s lives with happiness, which she did through music. She invited other Cuban children living in the orphanage to join her family, and sang songs to remind them of home. …

“Throughout the many challenges Alvarez faced, she said, she leaned on music to cope with the pain. Over the course of her life, she composed a collection of about 50 songs, reflecting both the deep sadness and joy in her life. … But her music was only enjoyed by her family and friends, as her father had instructed her.

“That changed about eight years ago, when her grandson Carlos José Alvarez decided to record her songs. Carlos, who is a composer, grew up listening to his grandmother sing at family functions. …

“Every time he would visit his grandmother as a child, ‘she would grab a guitar and she would sing,’ said Carlos, 42, who calls Alvarez ‘Nana.’

“As his grandmother was getting older, Carlos wanted to preserve her songs so her future great-grandchildren could marvel at her voice, which he described as ‘angelic and soulful.’ He brought a microphone to her house and asked her to go through her personal trove of tunes. …

“In the process, though, he unexpectedly learned a lot of information about his grandmother’s history — including her undying hope of becoming a singer. …

“ ‘I got so inspired in that moment,’ Carlos said, adding that he decided he would one day bring his grandmother to a recording studio, and produce a proper album of her work. …

“In the years that followed, Carlos was focused on growing his own career. He put his grandmother’s prospective album on the back burner until 2016, when … he arranged to fly his grandmother to Los Angeles, where he lives, to record her songs in a professional studio. …

“In the past year, Alvarez’s career has taken off more than she thought possible. … The ultimate achievement so far has been Alvarez’s Latin Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, which was announced in September.

“ ‘I thought it wasn’t true,’ she said.

“Alvarez is attending the 2022 Latin Grammy Awards on Nov. 17 in Las Vegas with her grandson, and she is scheduled to perform.”

Want to know the rest of the story? She tied for best new artist! See the report. More at the Post, here.

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Mastering the Toy Piano

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 5, 2022| 5 Comments »

Photo: Crispian Chan.
Margaret Leng Tan performing Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep on a toy piano. 

There is just no end to the variety of jobs people work at — or create for themselves — and no end to the variety of tools they use. Today’s story is about a toy-piano virtuoso called Margaret Leng Tan and the unusual career she built.

Sian Cain writes at the Guardian, “At her last count, Margaret Leng Tan owned 18 toy pianos – but these days she just settles for ‘lots and lots.’ The 76-year-old musician, once labelled ‘the world’s first toy piano virtuoso’ by the New York Times and ‘the formidable doyenne of the avant-garde’ by the Washington Post, finds her pianos everywhere from garage sales to garbage cans. ‘I picked up a beautiful one from the garbage – the legs were missing but it was vintage and had a beautiful sound,’ she says. Last year, a complete stranger even left a red one for her on her Brooklyn doorstep:

‘I have become a foundling hospital for orphan pianos.’

“Her personal favorite in her collection is a vintage Schoenhut, which she deems ‘the Steinway of the toy piano world.’

” ‘That one has been everywhere from Carnegie Hall to Beethoven’s house in Bonn. I played Beethoven in Beethoven’s house! Can you imagine? Eat that, Schroeder!’ she laughs. …

“Tan exudes a light playfulness that complements her chosen instrument: ‘I’ve always had aspirations to be a sit-down comic – not a stand-up one!’ she says. ‘The toy piano gives me that golden opportunity.’ She is not limited to the piano either: in one arrangement titled Old MacDonald’s Yellow Submarine, written for her by the composer Erik Griswold, she simultaneously plays toy piano, bicycle horn, bicycle bell and train whistle. ‘It was incredibly difficult,’ she says.

“In her latest show, Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep, she plays a simpler version involving a toy piano, a Fisher Price plastic phone and a toy mobile. …

“Have her audiences always understood what she’s doing? ‘They’ve come along for the ride. They’ve often been very enthusiastic and willing to go with me down that rabbit hole. I mean, the toy piano. [But] because I take it seriously, they take it seriously. And the toy piano is so seductive. How can you resist a toy piano? It is a marvelous way to introduce avant-garde music to audiences, who would never go to such a concert – they’ll go to a toy piano concert out of curiosity.’

“Dragon Ladies is a step away from her usual concerts: it is a one-woman biographical theatre show in which Tan tells the story of her life through significant moments. ‘It started because I intended to sit down and write my memoir but I never could find the uninterrupted time to do that,’ she says. ‘I thought it’d be easier to make a sonic memoir than a written one. And I had the title – I read somewhere that if you have a good title, you must deliver.’

“A significant part of the show explores Tan’s lifelong struggle to manage her obsessive compulsive disorder. … Music and rhythm became outlets for her impulse to count everything. ‘Music is all about counting. OCD is all about counting. It is a marriage made in heaven,’ she says. “But I wouldn’t wish OCD on my worst enemy. It’s not fun.’ …

“Tan began playing piano when she was six. Her father was a famed lawyer and politician in Singapore, and her mother was a piano teacher – ‘though she had the good sense never to try to teach me,’ Tan says. When she was 16, Tan left Singapore to study at Juilliard; she became the first woman to graduate with a doctorate from the prestigious New York school. …

“At first, she was strictly a classical pianist. … ‘It was only after I met John Cage that I knew what I wanted to do,’ she says.

“Cage was arguably the world’s most influential avant-garde composer; his 1952 piece 4’33 is famously performed by musicians doing nothing, embodying his belief that any auditory experience, including silence, could be music. …

“Cage was her close friend and mentor until his death in 1992. ‘He believed, and I agree with him, that you can make music with essentially anything. Whether it is a tin can or a bucket, that is music,’ Tan says. ‘He was a genius. There won’t be anyone else like him for a very long time, if ever.’ “

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall.

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When Music Fooled the KGB

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 4, 2022| 2 Comments »

Photo: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.
Merryl Goldberg, Professor of Music, California State University San Marcos, and part-time spy.

Do you like true spy stories? Here’s one about a mild-mannered saxophonist, now a music professor, who felt a call to help Jewish musicians in 1980s Russia.

Lily May Newman has the story at Wired.

“In 1985, saxophonist Merryl Goldberg found herself on a plane to Moscow with three fellow musicians from the Boston Klezmer Conservatory Band. She had carefully packed sheet music, reeds, and other woodwind supplies, along with a soprano saxophone, to bring into the USSR. But one of her spiral-bound notebooks, lined with staves for hand-notating music, contained hidden information.

“Using a code she had developed herself, Goldberg had obscured names, addresses, and other details the group would need for their trip in handwritten compositions that looked, to an untrained eye, like the real melodies she’d written on other pages of the book. Goldberg and her colleagues didn’t want to give Soviet officials details of who they planned to see and what they planned to do on their trip. They were going to meet the Phantom Orchestra.

“The group was a dissident ensemble that Goldberg describes as an amalgamation of Jewish refuseniks (Jews who were barred from emigrating out of the USSR), Christian activists, and Helsinki monitors—watchdogs who tracked Soviet compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Accords. The Americans’ trip was funded and coordinated by the nonprofit Action for Soviet Jewry (now Action for Post-Soviet Jewry), which works on humanitarian relief in the former Soviet Union and was focused on helping Soviet Jews emigrate to Israel and the United States. 

“The trip was a rare and special opportunity for American and Soviet players to meet in the USSR and make music together. It was also an opportunity for the American musicians to smuggle information about aid efforts and plans to the Phantom Orchestra, and for the ensemble to send updates out, including details about individuals looking to escape the Soviet Union.

“Goldberg and her colleagues, all of whom are Jewish, traveled to Moscow separately in two pairs to make it less likely that they would arouse suspicion as a group. They had received training on how to react to questioning and been told to expect surveillance, even run-ins with Soviet officials, throughout their trip. But first Goldberg needed to get her notebook past border control. 

” ‘When we arrived, we were immediately pulled aside, and they went through everything in our luggage, to the point of unwrapping Tampax. It was crazy,’ says Goldberg, who [presented] about the experience and her musical code at the RSA security conference in San Francisco [in June]. ‘With my music, they opened it up and there were some real tunes in there. If you’re not a musician, you wouldn’t know what’s what. They went page by page through everything—and then they handed it back.’ …

“Musical note names span the letters A to G, so they don’t provide a full alphabet of options on their own. To create the code, Goldberg assigned letters of the alphabet to notes in the chromatic scale, a 12-tone scale that includes semi-tones (sharps and flats) to expand the possibilities. In some examples, Goldberg wrote only in one musical range, known as treble clef. In others, she expanded the register to be able to encode more letters and added a bass clef to extend the range of the musical scale. These details and variations also added verisimilitude to her encoded music.  For numbers, Goldberg would simply write them between the staves, where sometimes you might see chord symbols. …

“While someone could technically have played the code as music, it would have sounded less like a tune and more like a cat walking across piano keys.

“ ‘I picked a note to start, and then I created the alphabet from there. Once you know it, it ends up being pretty easy to write things. I taught my friends on the trip the code, too,’ Goldberg says. ‘We used it in order to take in people’s addresses and other information we would need to find them. And we coded things while we were there so we would be able to take out some information about people and their efforts to emigrate, as well as details we hoped could help other people ask to leave.’

“The US musicians got their bearings in Moscow before heading to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. There and on their next stop in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, they successfully met members of the Phantom Orchestra, many of whom spoke some English. …

“During eight days of travel, the musicians were tailed constantly by Soviet agents and were repeatedly stopped for questioning. Goldberg says that members of the Phantom Orchestra, all of whom faced similar treatment in their daily lives, gave her and her colleagues advice and encouragement. When the Americans would express concerns that their presence was endangering the activists, Goldberg says the Phantom Orchestra members were resolute about the importance of spending time together. She adds, though, that some of the activists were later arrested and even beaten, because of the interactions.

“ ‘On the second night, we were playing together and the KGB came in and everything got shut down. The electricity was turned off; it was a scary situation,’ Goldberg says. ‘And yet, when we’re playing music no one can take away that sense of freedom and empowerment. Playing together and communicating with people through music is like nothing else. I was amazed by the strength it brought the people there. Music can be very comforting, but it also conveys a sense of feeling powerful.’ “

More at Wired, here. No firewall.

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Nature’s Music

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 16, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Masha Karpoukhina for Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
Soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause. Bernie Krause, 2021.

Spring is a time of year when birds are so vocal, I really do feel accompanied by music on my walk. Today’s story is about turning the sounds of nature into a kind of music that can be heard at any time of year.

Christine Ajudua at Artnet interviewed the artist behind “The Great Animal Orchestra” in November. His show will be at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, until May 22.

“In the late 1960s, Bernie Krause was at the top of his game as a musician, sound designer, and master of the Moog synthesizer, recording with the likes of Van Morrison, George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Brian Eno, and The Doors, while working on films such as Apocalypse Now. Then, he gave it all up and went wild — literally.

“Krause has been exploring the natural world as a pioneering soundscape ecologist ever since. And his masterpiece —’The Great Animal Orchestra‘ (November 20–May 22, 2022), originally commissioned by Paris’s Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in 2016 — is about to have its North American premiere at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. …

“The exhibition is based on 5,000 hours of Krause’s field recordings from the past 50 years, featuring 15,000 terrestrial and marine species from around the globe — many of them since lost or currently at risk. With the soundscapes reinterpreted as large-scale, animated spectrograms by the London-based collective United Visual Artists, it is an immersive and highly moving experience of the ever-vulnerable sound universe.

“Krause is meanwhile the subject of a new Cartier Foundation–produced documentary directed by the French filmmaker Vincent Tricon. …

ARTNET: What inspired you to move on from your life as a musician to explore the natural world as a soundscape ecologist? What are the biggest differences — and perhaps similarities — between your lives then versus now?

BERNIE KRAUSE: Paul Beaver, my late music partner, and I got invited to record with some awesome artists and groups [in the late 1960s]. But when it got to the point where we were being asked to replicate the sounds produced on previous sessions, something inside snapped — I found myself staring at the padded, windowless walls of studios in L.A., London, and New York, with mixed feelings of terror, boredom, and immobility. It was at that point that I began looking for an escape. …

“As it happened, Paul and I had just been signed by Warner Brothers to do three albums. For our own mental health, we sought to produce something thematic that hadn’t been tried before and where we could explore some of the Moog’s performance options we hadn’t shared with other artists. Our initial album, titled In a Wild Sanctuary, centered on the theme of ecology, and natural soundscapes [were] a main constituent of the orchestration. We needed a quiet rural area or wild forest in which to record.

“I didn’t go terribly far to secure those early recordings — just across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to a small park in Marin. But when I cranked up my new stereo recorder and heard the numinous impression of a nearby stream, the illusion of larger-than-life sonic space, the edge-tones of a pair of ravens’ wingbeats as they cut an arc across the sky overhead, and a gentle sea breeze in the redwood canopy wafting in from the Pacific to my west …

… something inside me instantly changed. I felt relaxed and present in the living world and amazingly free of anxiety.

“I had discovered for myself a new sense of being and felt obliged to go wherever that reaction took me. I was 30 years old then. …

“I begin by finding habitats that are relatively untouched by human endeavor. Then I identify a local naturalist or biologist that knows intimate details of the area [and its] unique wildlife [to] help facilitate my time on site. But for the most part, I prefer to work alone.

Over the course of a 24-hour day, I’ll likely record four two-hour sessions: a dawn chorus, a midday chorus, dusk and nighttime choruses, times when biophonies are likely at their peak. [These are] the collective sounds coming from all organisms in a given habitat at one moment in time.

“When I return to the studio, the first thing I do is transfer all of the field data related to that recording into my archive. Then I have two basic avenues of expression. The first, through science, is to write and publish a paper related to what I’ve observed given what the data show. The problem with that avenue is that very few people read this literature.

“If I want to reach a much larger audience, I turn to the arts, transforming the data into programs that are widely accessible and emotionally evocative while at the same time keeping the integrity of the message firmly intact. …

“I had written and released a book, The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places — basically the story of how we learned to sing, dance, and speak from mimicking the voices of the natural world. [It] was translated into seven languages, one of which was French. Somehow, a French anthropologist, Bruce Albert, who has been working with the Yanomami tribe in northern Brazil for decades, found a copy and gave one to his good friend, Hervé Chandès, director of the [Cartier] foundation. After reading it, Hervé contacted me in 2014 proposing that I take some of the raw field data and transform them into large-scale sonic art pieces. …

“Over the course of a few intense days, we auditioned the soundscapes of many habitats, whittling them down to a couple of dozen. From those, I proposed a selection of 15 or 16 habitat recordings to choose from. With the field recordings from those selections, I began the transformation process, taking raw material representing each location, assembling and mixing the various segments and generating a seamless acoustic narrative that I felt would capture and evoke the essence of each unique biome.

“And because most of what we observe of the living world has been through what we see, we decided to include a visual component — one that illuminated the soundscapes. …

“If the habitats they represented were healthy, that condition [would] show in the structured detail of the spectrograms. Conversely, if the habitats are under stress, then the spectrogram images will appear to be chaotic and incoherent.

“With the expertise and insight of Matt Clark and his team at UVA [United Visual Artists], the problem of converting those sounds into instantaneous streaming spectrograms was solved.”

More at Artnet, here. No firewall.

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