Robert Bettmann – Page 57 – Robert Bettmann

More on ‘All Good Men’

05_noltenaz_1 I usually get the clicker. I want to be clear about that. But sometimes I don’t. This evening F tuned us into a movie called ‘Mother Night’, right as it was starting. I’m really glad that she did.

The movie Mother Night by Robert Weide- starring Nick Nolte, and with a supporting cast that includes Alan Arkin, John Goodman, and a wee Kirsten Dunst – is based on Kurt Vonnegut’s book of the same name. To see a piece that Weide wrote about the film for Paul Krassner’s The Realist (Autumn, 1997), click here.

The film is about a writer who hides out from his conscious, serving in communications for the Nazi’s. He was a playwright before the war, and really doesn’t care one way or another for politics. What Vonnegut and Weide show very dramatically is that one does not have the option not to participate in the moral/social life of one’s times. That is an issue I deal with/am dealing with for my current project: All Good Men.

Mother Night makes very good use of some film music by Gavin Bryars. While his famous ‘songs’, well utilized in the dance world, develop lovely melodies, this music had the sheen and tension, but just…. kept… going. Somehow the in-monotonous almost beautiful tension filled the spaces just that little bit to help carry the images along without the one relying overly on the other.

My first rehearsal for All Good Men is Thursday evening, and I’ve been thinking about where to start the choreography. I had decided on the most thematically central ‘track’ to start with, thinking it would help us find some meaningful core. But I was unhappy with the choice cause it’s very fast paced, and to develop cast coherence I think something more moderate might serve better. Now I’m thinking of using an Adams track….

We notice interpretation easily with innovation

I spent a very enjoyable early evening last night listening to a classical music house concert. It reminded me of being in college. I went to a college with a conservatory of music, and enjoyed the frequent informal concerts. This was of higher caliber, to be sure. Thanks to BC and TG for the welcome.

One of the players last night was violinist Nurit Bar-Josef.

Nurit Bar-Josef was appointed Concertmaster of the National Symphony orchestra in 2001. She was previously Assistant Concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, and Assistant Principal Second Violin of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Her solo appearances include performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Boston Classical Orchestra, Alexandria Symphony, Virginia Chamber Orchestra, International Symphony Orchestra (Israel), and Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra. Bar-Josef received her bachelor’s degree from The Curtis Institute, where she studied with Aaron Rosand and was the recipient of the Fritz Kreisler Award for Violin upon graduation. She continued her studies at the Julliard School with Robert Mann. Bar-Josef is a founding member of the Dryden Quartet, a group she formed with NSO Principal Violist Dan Foster and his cousins Nicolas and Yumi Kendall, and the Kennedy Center Chamber Players, which features leading members of the National Symphony Orchestra.

I thought Bar-Josefs playing of an Ysaye Sonata was very strong. Not only technically, but in artistic interpretation. Something about her playing reminded me of a video a friend shared on Facebook yesterday. I think we notice interpretation more when it is innovation. The video documents some really amazing inventive new virtuosity. Worth watching/listening to.

The innovations in the video, by Nathan Flutebox Lee and Beardyman, reminded me of Bobby McFerrin. Bobby McFerrins work goes beyond entertainment, though. I think the video above is just amazing. I do remember being similarly charmed by Bobby McFerrin when I first heard his music.

While at Oberlin one of my friends told me that, having been rejected from conservatory, Bobby developed his technique by sitting in closet singing into a tape recorder for two years.

I found the following on an interview:

He described his technique in simple terms. “There really is nothing to teach. I just tell them that it’s yodeling, that’s what it is. There really is no great secret behind it,” he said.

Inspired by pianist Keith Jarrett’s improvised solo concerts, McFerrin, 56, says he begins his solo shows with a spontaneous work, then adds composed songs.

“The secret behind improvisation is just motion. You sing one note after another and just keep going,” he said. “The moment I walk out I am hearing what you are hearing for the first time.”

In another article I found the following:

Academy: What made you decide to go into this world that is so different than singing regular vocals?

BM: In the beginning I was really fascinated with the “solo art” and solo musicians, like Keith Jared playing solo piano and improvising, and I thought as a singer that I would like to try something like that. So I developed this technique that would enable me to put across melody, harmony and the bass lines. The basis of everything I do is solo concerts, being on stage by myself, improvising, singing tunes or what ever comes up. I didnt have any coaches. I knew what I wanted to do and could see myself doing it first, but I couldnt hear what it sounded like. I was really fascinated by the challenge of being on stage by myself, because singers more often than not, especially young singers as they are studying music, have a tendency to fall back on, or rely on an accompanist of some sort. And so theyre not self reliant in the beginning. I wanted to make sure that I was very strong in my voice and my technique so that any situation that I went into, regardless of what that was, whatever the ensemble was or whatever, I knew where I was at all times, because I could rely on myself to be wherever I was on stage musically with whoever I was with, instead of pacing my dressing room floor because my accompanist is caught in a snow storm, or the bands plane is delayed and Im the only one out there.

In the beginning, for the first two years, I practiced a lot every single day. Always tape recording and listening to myself. For the first two years I didnt listen to a single singer, no matter what the discipline was, jazz, classical, whatever; I didnt want to listen to anyone because I am very impressionable. I was afraid if I kept looking towards a singer I would find someone I liked and would try and copy them and I would lose myself. So I thought the only to find myself is to shut myself off from all vocal influences and just sing and see what comes up. I knew what I wanted to do; I just didnt know what it sounded like yet. So I would sing for hours and hours everyday for years. Then I discovered this technique and developed some exercises. The challenge of it was staying in tune. Once I had a good idea of who I was, then I started branching out and listening to other singers. By then I was confident enough in myself that I was not afraid at that point that I was going to start mimicking someone elses sound.

And in another:

“I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind,” says McFerrin. “I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical.”

“I like to think that our task as musicians is transcendence,” he says. “When you’re performing in front of people, you don’t want them to leave the same way they came in. You know, sometimes when you go to a concert, your heart is closed for one reason or another, you had a fight with your spouse, you just got fired from your job, one of your kids is sick, they cancelled your favorite TV show, who knows. So you’re dragged to this concert kicking and screaming, and then all of a sudden something happens, and you’re completely changed.”

Ave maria

Blackbird

You don’t know enough to question me

Watching this video made my blood boil all over again from 8 years of the Bush administration. It reminded me that this kind of thinking isn’t gone at all. It just exited stage left, and will reappear…. The video is from a few days ago, of Condoleeza Rice being questioned about torture – unexpectedly – by students after a speaking gig.

One of the things that I see is her willingness to wield information to deny questions. She uses her intelligence, experience, and access to information to try and make the questioner feel stupid. She doesn’t have to answer questions, because somehow the questioner doesn’t know enough to ask the question. That’s what Bush did a lot of, cause we let him. Dr. Rice gets angry and begins asking questions herself. As if, because he doesn’t know something, why should she explain anything to him?

What we saw with the last administration was the arrogant sense of “you don’t know enough to know anything…. You can’t question me cause you don’t know all the information, and I can’t share any of the information with you.” 8 years of people in power telling us we don’t know enough to ask questions, and that for our own best interest: just back off. If we don’t get the lesson learned, it will return.

Information is used by those in power to make people feel stupid. Of course, they have access to the best information, they see it in a constant stream. That does not mean that questions are invalid.

At whatever level of public office, in a democracy, there is a need for a reasonable (not complete) level of transparency and communication. Not on every issue, or every decision, or every conversation. But on the issues and conversations that most impact constituents. And the constituents get to decide what issues they care about. Not the government.

To wit: I don’t care if Fenty is too busy governing to explain what’s happened with baseball tickets. He doesn’t get to decide everything that he is too busy to deal with. I’m not saying Fenty is anything like Bush. We all have our personal buttons, and this is one of Fenty’s… but he’s better than that. So they oppose(d) the stadium. Let history judge.

In a democracy, all leadership is temporary. There is an inefficiency there. You’re never gonna get it all done. But as part of a process, government leaders do well more than make laws. They are models for behavior.

Government leaders play a role in the evolution of our civilization. If leaders can only lead behind closed doors, in secret, then they never really were leaders. Just people holding power. You can distinguish between the two this way: the people who are just holding power have a particular reticence to truly share the information and power that their position gives them necessarily exclusive access to.

To take it one step too far: our leaders encourage us to play ball with them, even when they don’t want to play with us.

{image stolen from DCist… image of the day April 30, 2009.}