Some Glad Afternoon

'Bluegrass' is what we heard, 'free concert by the ocean.' So we studied our maps, finding Golden Gate Park, and we went.

“So many hippies,” my friend Jordan said, his voice shocked and low.  “So many hipsters.” So much plaid, so much pot, so much 'stach. We were standing between the two stages of the Warren Hellman Public Celebration, a free concert honoring a man who brought about Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. There were people crammed everywhere, people sitting down and chatting, people on the beach, people with children and cameras.

The music blasted over us through an impressive set of speakers, but the maker (Steve Earle) was only a tiny, blobby figure on a far-away stage, discernible only because I could see the flashing of his guitar as he swayed back and forth with his music.  Even with the proximity of being at this location, it was difficult to believe the music I could hear was the same music that was coming from Steve Earle's living, breathing, guitar-strumming self.

When he finished his set, we all drifted and shifted to the stage on the other side for a similar performance from Buddy Miller; I didn't feel that deep and abiding attraction to any musician until I shoved and sneaked my way up the side just so I could see the stage. 

I was just in time to see Gillian Welch, with her partner David Rawlings, wondering to her listeners what tunes would go well with their matching sequined outfits.  She looked tiny on that stage, but not so lost from my sight that I couldn't connect her to the tunes she played: "Elvis Presley Blues," "Look at Miss Ohio," "The Way It Goes."  I marveled at how the notes and chords fitted together so well; how they were both familiar and strange to my ears.  To finish it off, EmmyLou Harris joined them. They offered up that old gospel tune “I'll Fly Away,” and even over the added voices of the audience, the sound had a beautiful sense of intimacy.

 To see as well Old Crow Medicine Show from that distant but workable vantage point was another pleasure of the day.  To be drawn into their onstage energy, their high-fuel performance, as if life and music were a freight train destined to crash—known to be destined to crash, and pushed to a greater speed despite that knowledge, was incomparable in experience to any of their recordings I have heard.  They played some fast, fast tunes, and of course they played “Wagon Wheel,” (you've probably heard it: “Rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama any way you feel,”)...they played, too, a tribute to Whitney Housten and another to Warren Hellman.  What makes OCMS remarkable (besides front-man Ketch Secor's Virginian accent) is their rough-edged force, which draws in people like some of the friends I've come with, for whom OCMS is the only recognizable name on the bill.

I'm sorry to say that public transportation schedules made me leave then, to the sound of Robert Earl Keen.  My feet ached from standing for hours, but I would have stayed if I could; there was still more music to be heard.

Problems

I came to San Francisco to see the San Francisco Symphony play a heart-filling piece written by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1886: his Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Opus 78, the Organ Symphony. They played, too, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Opus 40, and Prelude to Act I of Die Gezeichneten by Franz Schreker. These were bonus pieces for me; I had never heard of them before sitting down in the Davies Symphony Hall for the pre-performance music talk.

The problem with talking about orchestral music is that if I talk about the theory or the history of the music, it doesn't mean much in terms of the sheer emotional qualities that are present in performance. So while I can tell you that, interestingly, Rachmaninoff had hands about a thumb longer than the average hand, and so his music can be physically challenging for pianists of today, it tells you very little about the way you would hear the sound—the way it would impact your body, your soul...whatever it is that makes up the collection of you when you experience a glorious piece of music.

Conversely, if I can only tell you that the music I heard was beautiful (it was) or deeply moving (it was that too), you will no notion of the magnificence of the full orchestra: the sound of thirty violinists playing a figure, and the low brass adding emphasis with the string basses, all while the rest of the orchestra offers multiple other voices and rhythms so that you, listening, have no notion of exactly how many different parts are coming together to create this linear movement from one moment to the next. And that movement is where what we hear is no longer just noise, but music, and everything we think of music as being.

So I will distill my evening down to a single moment for you. I am looking down a long distance to the stage, watching the full orchestra: the bows of the violins moving as if they are all drawn by the same hand; the the bells of the trumpets and trombones flashing as they are raised, and a moment later, lowered; the conductor's arms and baton creating continuious, inclusive motion that brings each musician together so we, listening, are only aware of the culminated effect even as we can see so many musicians playing. Then—the organ sounds, the strings play that line, the woodwinds have gone all tinkly, the brass rises above the rest and I can feel my skin as though it is disolving cell by cell into the sound. It is induplicatable—this feeling is the reason why I come and sit in a hall full of other people, just to hear the crashing of music against me, to feel again a little like I felt the first time I thought I knew what love meant.

Lovely, Magnificent, Wonderful

I've been serving my country with AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.  It's a wonderful experience, but sometimes music—and internet—is difficult to come by.  So even though this performance happened way back in November, I'm putting this memory out there.  It was one of those nuggets of civilian life that reminds me of where I was before I joined NCCC, and what I'm looking forward to returning to this fall.

November 11, 2011

The venue is Raw Space, a coffee shop with a beer and wine license and a nice little stage behind the storefront that looks like it should be next door, but isn't. The town is Ellensburg, Washington, home of Central Washington University and its cello studio.

There's four of them, opening for Ashia Grzesik.  I can tell they are unseasoned, still students by their general inability to hear how their individual parts fit with the other individual parts, how the chords are structured and balanced—but after all this time, it's so lovely, magnificent, wonderful to hear music that isn't pop, music that is live and tangible—the different voices of each cello so distinct, each player's fingers moving over the fingerboard—music that isn't overplayed or disagreed upon or disliked, dismissed by one or another team member when the eleven of us are crammed in the van.

And then the stage clears, and an accordion player begins a tango-esque duet with a violinist—they are the only bodies on stage: this long, skinnylegged girl and this happy accordion-playing man, alone, until Ashia comes on, stepping carefully—artfully—from the back of the stage, black-gloved hands moving so the walk becomes a dance, a flourish, a visual invitation.  She sits down, pulls off her gloved fingers one by one—the first hand her left, the bow hand—helped by the right hand, the right hand fingers, one by one, with her teeth because her bow is already in her left hand—she imagines her glove as a violin, stretched from her hand to her mouth, bow moving back and forth over it—she flings it down—the music—the music!

I can hear the gaps in her voice, the river-like flow of her (in)articulation—the steadiness of her cello in her hands as she plays, head tipped back in song.  Cello, accordion, and violin, rushing onwards through love songs and Poland songs and blame songs. In between Ashia is gesturing, telling stories with her hands. She speaks of farmers and bison and a square window in a square house holding a grandmama with World War II cars, stories, and the the best pirogies, the best pirogies...

The songs run together, beautiful and sure—but the stories—she tells them with her hands and face, ribcage and toes, everything expanding from that tiny, lipsticked mouth to us, her audience.  We are giving and she is giving. In this polite venue, I can smile in gleeful silence, wrapped up in the music, the concept of performance and vibrations and time over space.  The things I have missed so much since coming to AmeriCorps NCCC, the things that kind people like the biologist on this project, Scott, bring to our lives because making the world better happens in so many, many ways.

Impressions

Here we are again at The Ark, Xanthe and I in the dark while the stage is brightly lit. We came for Orpheum Bell, but first onstage are the Red Sea Pedestrians. I've heard their CD, and it was ok, it was nothing better or worse than most of the CDs that come through my hands, but I can't match what I heard before I came and what I am seeing onstage. It's hard to know what to expect-maybe plain, upstanding music; you could call them plain, upstanding people by the way their jeans fit, the way banjo player Ira Cohen wears a full-beard like a miner from long ago, the way the two woman are a little careworn and haven't 'done' their hair.

But then they begin to play, and any comparisons I thought I was going to make seem unfair--the music is fast, complicated, modal--maybe eastern European in influence. I want to call their sound steampunk, though Xanthe says steampunk would probably require more organ, or possibly accordian. They have a fiddler, Cori Somers, although I'm tempted to say she's using more classical technique, fancy fingerwork and no folky double-stops. And the clarinet player, Rachel Flanigan-I've heard worse clarinetist who studied for years in college. They mix together a moment of rock drumming with something more folky. Tarantella. Mazurka. A song about Julius Caesar, and Rome. Another about the seances Houdini's wife would hold on Halloween every year after his death. Still another about The Harrison Act, which banned laudenum, this in Ira Cohen's quavery voice. The tunes had humor, balance, talent. It carried you through the mediocre voices--untrained, maybe unused to singing--and the mildly unfocused and unprofessional--disjointed, even--banter between tunes, through to the hand-clapping, foot-stomping end.

So You've Probably Heard of Him...

One of the first enthusiastic mentions of Trombone Shorty came from a friend who once told me that jazz was music for intellectuals. While Trombone Shorty isn’t strictly jazz—he’s more closely aligned with funk, and the production of his album Backatown is, in my opinion, very much pop-influenced—he is rooted in the traditions of New Orleans*, and jazz.

I’m thinking about this, sitting in my seat at the Power Center after the Macpodz have left the stage—a high-energy performance that just didn’t draw me in; I took more note of trumpet player Ross Huff’s badly fitted pants than I did the music—and then the lights are coming down and Trombone Shorty’s band, Orleans Avenue, is trouping onstage. Two sax players: Tim McFatter on tenor, and Dan Oestreicher on bari. Two percussionists: Joey Peebles and Dwayne “Big D” Williams. Bass player Michael Ballard. Guitarist Murano. And then finally, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews himself, with a trumpet in one and hand and a trombone in the other, both stretched high over his head in a triumphant greeting.

The crowd adores him, and when he starts to play I am surprised at his tone, his technique. He’s moving so much air through his horn, but the tone is still clear. I could go on—about how his tonguing is so crisp, it’s like having a door shut in your face, about the force of his sound—but despite his chops, he’s almost more of a showman than a brass player. He’s captured the audience with sheer stage presence. They’re standing up in their seats, crowding towards the front, dancing, clapping, shouting.

The band does “Let’s Get It On,” and “On The Sunny Side of the Street,” plus tunes from the album, including “Suburbia.” They take turns soloing, throw in a moment or two of free jazz stylings and Dixieland, and wind things up with that well-recognized tune “Shout.” Trombone Shorty gives each member time to shine, but a bari sax doesn’t always cut through the drumkit, and no matter how great the solo, we’ve all heard more guitar in our lives than probably any other instrument. It’s Trombone Shorty everyone is watching.

Ask a low-brass fanatic to name a famous trombone player, and they’ll probably say Christian Lindberg or Joseph Alessi. Ask a jazz junkie, and the answer is likely to be Tommy Dorsey, J.J. Johnson, or Jack Teagarden. The trombone player is generally not a huge phenomenon, but Trombone Shorty is nothing less than a superstar. And that, as a trombone player myself, is something I just cannot get my head wrapped around. Trombone Shorty, superstar.


*Jazz isn’t the only kind of music to be found in New Orleans. There’s blues, zydeco, Cajun, and more. But think Jazz Fest, second lines, and its reputation as the ‘birthplace of jazz’ (which takes, to say the least, a simplistic view of jazz history).

It's Called Innovation

My friend Xanthe is at the root of this, really. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't have gone to the Ark's Folk Festival and seen The Paper Raincoat the first time. If I hadn't seen them at the Folk Fest, I wouldn't have ended up sitting at one of the Ark's front-row-and-to-the-side tables while Xanthe tells us that, according to facebook, Vienna Teng might be making an appearance.

Vienna Teng, if you're unfamiliar, is a musician currently residing in Ann Arbor. Alex Wong, the male half of The Paper Raincoat equation, refers to her as, “our famous friend, Vienna Teng.” But that's later. We're still waiting for the stage to light up and The Paper Raincoat to come out. There's a keyboard and a drumset, a guitar and several microphones set up, along with several other instruments.

And then here they are: Alex Wong and Amber Rubarth. The Paper Raincoat, joined by drummer Kevin Rice. On this stage, we are intimately familiar with them, although to see us, they have to ask for the house lights to come up—a bad idea if you're going to get nervous, but Alex and Amber handle this polite Ann Arbor audience with aplomb.

In their tunes, The Paper Raincoat often repeat instrumental lines as a first layer. I'm watching Alex Wong doing this with a set of bells balanced on arm, hitting the same notes again and again, but the exchange between a mix of instruments and the two vocal lines, aided by excellent and conscious drumming on the part of Kevin Rice, keeps us from yawning. There are the changes in sound, when one hand reaches out from guitar or piano or bells and adds something new. There’s the overtones of their voices, the striated complexity of Amber's voice against Alex's stable simplicity. We are listening because we want to know—what next? It’s the same set of voices and instruments, but we want to know how the sounds can be taken apart and put together again.

For the last tune, they leave any external instruments behind. All three stand together at the front of the stage and turn their bodies into music, with a cappella vocals and the percussion of their hands. It’s a novelty tune, capturing the wide-eyed darlingness of the group in one go. We clap when they’re done, drawing Alex and Amber back to the stage, and we clap more when Vienna Teng is invited to join them for the encore, a sweet and communicative tune from before they were The Paper Raincoat. From my perspective, the show begins and ends with their famous friend. Although she brings deeper virtuosity with her piano skills, The Paper Raincoat gives us a complete experience on their own.

You Fall In

The band Photographers was, for me, a period of impatient waiting before Breathe Owl Breathe walked on stage. For all that, it's impossible to say something about this show without saying anything about the Photographers as the opener.

With four bodies on stage, we only saw the faces of two, Maren Celeste and John Hanson. She's the only one facing the audience head-on, but her microphone covered her face and her nervous hands told more of a story than the phrases falling from her mouth. Her vowels sat high-tongued in her mouth; her wobbly vibrato blended each word into the next. We saw Hanson too, a sideways profile facing Maren Celeste; a sapling voice lost in the electronic sounds of the band. Hidden behind them, a girl tapped out continuous vibraphone patterns, and a man worked his way around what looked like it was some kind of electric piano. Everything was electronically driven, including the vocals, creating a sound-scape of effects and instruments. Very frustratingly, this made any natural sounds indistinguishable from their machines. I don't go to the Ark to hear machines. I go to hear music, and the stories behind them.

Which isn't to say that machines are useless. Breathe Owl Breathe combined electronics and traditional instruments to great effect. Andrea Moreno-Beals played her cello or the drums, Micah Middaugh switched from guitar to his “keyboard calculator,” and Trevor Hobbs sat behind his drumset with a stick in one hand and the other fiddling around with some kind of equipment. The sound was constantly changing in intriguing ways. All valid reasons why Breathe Owl Breathe is great to listen to on CD.

What's missing from a CD, though, is the infinite humor that comes with a live show. More than the moments when the audience was invited to join in by clapping or singing, more than Andrea's gorgeous cello lines that the tunes were so often built on, what drew me to this performance was the promise the stories so evident in their music. Add to that the quirky little dances—like the one for Saber Tooth Tiger—and the hats and other props the group likes to use...well, I just want to squee about it, loudly, all over the internets. I'm told that it would entirely un-objective, but I have to say that objectivity here isn't exactly the point. The point is—they danced! they had props! the music was inventive and well-played!

And the stories were like bottomless pits: you fall in, and you fall in, and you fall in.