MLK

Today is the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. Schools are closed, as are government offices. It is, and should be, a day to reflect on his remarkable life. I am thankful that my parents taught me not to see color...nor race....nor to judge people on this basis. I vividly remember coming home from school in 1971 and saying the "N" word in front of my mother....I had met a young man at school who was black. She looked at me and shook her head. "We don't use that word. That's a bad word." I asked "why?" Other kids at school called him that. She said again..."It's a bad word. Don't ever say that word again." Well, I said it again to see what happened. I was immediately grounded and sent to my room.
That is a small sample of the grace and love that my parents tried to instill in me. The color of a person's skin does not matter....period. They both came from and grew up in the segregated world of America with parents who did not believe in equality of the races. But somehow they emerged from that upbringing with a different view, and by the time I came along they were ready to teach me not to be a racist. I am thankful for many things in my life...and that moment I just told you about is one of the most important to me. This was three years after MLK Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. My parents shared the words of MLK with me...his message of equality and fairness. His dream. Those words still echo in my mind.
My son Jack went to Memphis with his girlfriend Kylie last summer....her grandmother lives there. When they came back, he could not stop talking about their visit to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel. He brought back a poster that he had framed and I could tell that what he experienced there had a profound affect on him. I must go there too.
I tried to teach my children the same thing my parents taught me about race. They don't see color when it comes to people. They just see people.
John Coltrane is one of my favorite jazz musicians of all time. He was deeply moved by Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, and later that year wrote a song called Alabama to eulogize the 4 children killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham by the KKK. This is a musical interpretation of Dr. King's eulogy...a very powerful and evocative response to hatred.

In 1966, Coltrane recorded a song called Reverend King that appeared on his 1968 album Cosmic Music. Here is a great interpretation of it with a photo montage of Dr. King.

Lastly, here is some additional background about both from Joseph Ross:
https://josephross.net/?p=2380

Hymnals, Something Great from Schumann, and Charlie Parker's Grave

Last week, I went to my church's "Traditional" worship service. The majority of our worshipers go to the "Contemporary" worship service which is held at a new facility. As the name implies, the Traditional service is more....well, traditional. Organ-piano and choir are the musical base for this service. Bells and orchestral accompaniment are also regularly used. The service is held in a sanctuary that looks and feels like most others I have worshiped in, including the church I was baptized in as a baby. Pews, candles, and stained glass too. Our "Contemporary" service is held in a brand new building in a large hall that has chairs on the floor facing a stage where the service takes place. The music consists primarily of bass, drums, keyboards, guitars, and vocals. Theatrical lighting and smoke machines are also part of the production.
Two distinctly different services, both serving the same God. One similarity between both types of service is the use of of projection screens for lyrics to the songs being sung. The congregations stand and look up to see the lyrics instead of having to use hymnals. Remember those?
I watched a brief interview with Paul McCartney this week. He talked about the fact that he does not know how to read music...none of the Beatles did. He's 76 years old, has made some of the best music in all of history, and to this day he can't read a note of music. I would have thought that somewhere along the line he would have taken some time to learn this skill that I learned as a young child. It is not that hard...I don't think so anyway. But I was lucky to have formal music theory and literature training along with violin and piano lessons starting at a young age. For many, maybe most, this is not the case. But going to church used to be a way anyone could at least see what music notation looks like...in the hymnal. Right above the words, the dots and lines are the road map for the song. If nothing else, it is beautiful to look at, this language of beautiful sounds.
Last week at church, in the Traditional sanctuary, the computer crashed and the projection system was not be able to put the words up on the screen. What would we do???? Our Worship Director (Jerry) came over to talk to me before the service and gave me the bad news...we would have to use the hymnals...those dusty books on the back of the pews. Old school. I reminded him that hymnals have worked for hundreds of years. We would be fine. And in fact, it was a breath of fresh air. Seeing the music again...not just words on a screen....was such a treat.

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There's a wonderful musical phrase in Robert Schumann's Piano Quartet in E-Flat Major (1842) that sounds like it came from the future. I asked my friend Dr. Reynold Simpson, Associate Professor of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, to explain what I was hearing. He replied: "It's the re-transition of the movement, the moment in the development that the composer has pushed the harmony as far as it will go and now it must find it's way back to the tonic via the dominant. It is the moment of some of the most inventive harmonies in tonal music and you've found one that is really fantastic."

The section I am talking about starts right at the 5:00 mark. The entire composition is wonderful.

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The great jazz musician Charlie Parker was born and raised right here in Kansas City (born in KC, KS in 1920 and raised in KC, MO). He is also buried here, in Lincoln Cemetery which is not easy to find. Good luck trying to find it using your GPS because I tried GPS twice this week and failed both times. I used what little memory I have of visiting his grave in 1996 to eventually find it again. Given his stature, it is sad that his resting place is so hard to find. But I found it and paid my respects again to this giant of the music world. If you want to go yourself, give me a shout and I will tell you how to get there.

Music is Life, Estas Tonne, Paganini bails out Berlioz and The Getaway

I am starting out of order. The above video from YouTube is from a guitarist named Estas Tonne. I discovered his music in 2016, by chance...it popped up on my suggestion list on YouTube. It has a transcendental quality to it. At the time, I was going through some physical challenges with my back that made my other passion, running, very difficult. This music became part of my therapy...everyday I would listen to it while I did my physical therapy. It was holistic.
I don't know where I would be...what I would do...who I would be...if I didn't have music in my life. I feel it, use it, breathe it. There is music for every occasion. It comes from everywhere.
I may take it to extremes. But one person who knows how I feel is the great Yo-Yo Ma. My friend Webb Chiles, the greatest sailor on the planet, shared this article with me...I thank him. Webb knows what I mean about music...it means as much to him too. For Ma, when asked "What is music for" he has the perfect answer; "It is to help me through life." Ditto.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/17/yo-yo-mas-days-of-action


I was reading some letters by Hector Berlioz. He was good friends with the great violinist-guitarist Nicolo Paganini. Turns out that Paganini loaned Berlioz a lot of money in 1838.

December 18, 1838

"My dear friend, Beethoven dead, none but Berlioz could restore him to life; and I, who have tasted your divine compositions, worthy of a genius such as yours, consider it my duty to beg you to accept, in token of my homage, 20,000 francs which will be paid to you by Baron de Rothschild on presentation of the enclosed. Believe me always, your affectionate Nicolo Paganini."

Berlioz wrote back: "Noble and great artist. How can I express my gratitude to you? I am not rich, but, believe me, the good opinion of a man of genius, such as you are, touches me a thousand times more nearly than the regal generosity of your gift. Words fail me, but I shall hasten to embrace you as soon as I can leave my bed, to which I am still confined." -H. Berlioz.

I will share another piece of music that is deeply ingrained in me....this is from the 1972 film The Getaway with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. Quincy Jones wrote the score for the film. This tune is called Free. The great Toots Thielemans plays the harmonica. I lived in Austin, TX when this film was released. This scene was filmed on the San Marcos river not far from Austin, and I spent some fun times there floating on tubes in the hot Texas sun. This music, for reasons I can't explain, means a lot to me. I come back to it often.

Queen-Bohemian Rhapsody

Cheryl and I went to see Bohemian Rhapsody last night. It's the story of Freddie Mercury and the band Queen. Overall, I thought it was a great movie. Rami Malek gives an wonderful performance as Freddie Mercury. So what's the point? Several.
I was alive and well aware of Queen at their peak in the late 1970's and early 1980's. I watched their performance at Live Aid on TV in 1985 as it happened. This Live Aid performance is the peak moment of the movie....the band giving a performance for the ages. And as presented in the movie, it is breathtaking. But in 1985....meh......
I was not a fan. I was like the critics who excoriated Queen albums for being pompous...overbearing...pretentious. To me, Freddie Mercury seemed more like a Liberace-type front man than other great front men like Robert Plant or Mick Jagger. I just didn't get it.
Man, was I wrong..
Freddie Mercury was a truly awesome performer. And so were the rest of the musicians in the band (Roger Taylor, John Deacon and Brian May). This movie touched me a great deal. My relationship to the music and story of Freddie Mercury and Queen is not unlike so many other stories of creative people whose work is not appreciated when it is first presented, at least critically. But after the passage of time, the true genius emerges.
More than any other aspect of their career and this movie, I was touched most by Freddie Mercury's ability to connect with a stadium of 100,000 people. He had a gift for making every individual feel like they were important...part of the show. That is a very special gift. You can see it here in the Live Aid performance from 1985:

There are a number of creative liberties the filmmakers took with the true history of the band. One big one for me was the idea that Queen had been idle for several years prior to Live Aid, and they were terrified of facing such a huge audience not having played together for years. This was not actually the case. Queen released an album in 1984 called The Works, which features the songs Radio Ga Ga and Hammer to Fall, both of which they performed at Live Aid. The band had been on tour throughout 1984 and 1985 in support of this album. They were not rusty, and their laser-like performance shows just how locked in they were.
The other topic that the movie addressed in a tasteful way was Freddie Mercury's reckless lifestyle. He dove headfirst into a hedonistic pursuit of sex-drugs-rock n roll that ultimately led to his contraction of AIDS. I read a pretty graphic tell-all a few years ago about his lifestyle in the early 1980's. It left me feeling very cold and empty. The people he surrounded himself with were not concerned about his best interests. It is sad to see someone with so much talent and amazing gifts fall into the abyss.
Another thing the movie changed from real life was the timing of his sickness. In the movie, he tells the band he has AIDS shortly before they perform at Live Aid in 1985. In reality, he was not diagnosed with AIDS until late 1987. He passed away in 1991.
Brian May is a terrific guitarist. What I admire most about his playing is his sound and his control of it. Sure, he is a great player technically speaking, but his use of high octave chords with max distortion created a sound unlike any other guitarist. He also switches between lead playing and chord playing effortlessly...seamlessly. And, Brian May also loves classical music! Here is a segment from an interview he gave on June 3, 2017 with Charlotte Green from ClassicFM:

BRIAN:  Ah, I love Holst, “Planets”. I think he was divinely inspired. He was a schoolteacher.  How amazing, you know, and suddenly he’s written this incredible cosmic music.  I’ve always loved it from when I was a kid and I was only about 10 years old I think when I wrote a little soliloquy, which I read into a microphone with the accompaniment of ‘Saturn’, and nobody’s ever heard that.  Maybe they will one day.  But it was designed to be a soundtrack for a Planetarium show – that was the idea – so maybe one day I’ll do that but I’ve always loved it.  To me it’s absolutely evocative and as I say it is something completely out of this world.  I can’t imagine how, I can’t imagine how it was imagined to be honest.  You know it’s, it’s not constructed intellectually as far as I can see.  It’s one of these things which some somehow he instinctively plucked out of the air.  There’s so much unusual stuff in Holst’s pieces, you know.  There’s a lot of dissonance, which wasn’t very prevalent at that time but it wasn’t dissonance for its own sake as it perhaps became later- well this is my theory anyway.  Everything that’s in there seems to kind of jolt you into, into being out there in the cosmos.  I can’t say enough about it really.  It’s the most wonderful piece of music all of it you know the whole suite is brilliant.  Interesting that he didn’t do Pluto and, of course, Pluto is now not regarded as a planet anyway so there’s no need to put Pluto in there.  I got bit upset when somebody did that.  I went to the Albert Hall and saw it all and at the end of it they played this Pluto piece, which I thought was completely inappropriate.  Sorry guys, but I just thought it doesn’t work. Get it out of here.  So I don’t think anyone’s going to do that anymore,.

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Saying Good-bye to Shadow, Classics in Commercials, and Erard survives the Terror.

It's the day before Thanksgiving as I write this. We just said good-bye to our dog Shadow. She was just a puppy when we got her twelve-plus years ago. It went too fast. She was a faithful, loving creature....always following me around...or laying at my feet. You may be aware that I listen to a lot of music...most of it classical. She heard quite a bit of it over the years. She seemed to like it too... at least she never complained about it.

Her kidneys were failing. She stopped eating and walking. She waited until Jack and Ethan came home from school this week. She hung on as long as she could and gave us a chance to face this as a family....to say good-bye to her. We all went to the clinic with her this morning. They ushered us into a room right away and had a soft blanket on the floor for her. It was very hard, but it was the right thing. She is in heaven now.

Afterward, the four of us had a family hug outside of the clinic. A long hug. 

When we got home, Cheryl and I took a walk. Shadow loved her daily walks, and since she was a puppy, she carried her leash in her mouth. When we actually had her on the leash, she would constantly turn around and try to take it out of our hands and carry it herself. I finally bundled the leash up so it was manageable and that's how its been ever since. She never wanted to run away or stray from the path (I always had another leash in my pocket just in case though...but I never needed it.) So this morning, we carried her yellow leash with us on a walk in her honor.

She brought us so much joy and gave us so much love. She will be missed.

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Christmas commercials are running non-stop now....here's one that uses the music of Beethoven to great effect. This is from his Symphony no. 6 (1808).

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Three things came together for me the other day, just by chance I'm sure. I have been reading A Tale of Two Cities for quite awhile now. I'm almost done with it, and once the French Revolution really got going, I found that the reading got easier too. After storming the Bastille and unleashing the revolution, the movement itself became known as The Terror. I read a few pages one morning before work and then went about my day. After work, my wife and I met with her financial advisor as part of her annual review of her retirement fund. This nice young man works for a local investment firm that is a subsidiary of a much larger company called AXA. I had not heard of AXA before. So later that evening, I was doing some reading and research. I stumbled on a detailed history of the Erard piano company. Sebastian Erard started making pianos in 1777 and then harps as well shortly after that. His pianos were played by the likes of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner and Mendelssohn. But all of this almost didn't happen; The Terror came calling:

"September 9, 1793. 

To the Citizen Minister of Justice.

Citizen Laurent has the honour of denouncing to you an emigrant who left fifteen months ago to go and find the other emigrants in London. Had he not taken his paintings with him you would find in his home at least three hundred thousand livres worth of paintings. He has two houses, one where he lives and another one. In the one where he lives, he has had at least two hundred thousand Francs of repairs done in the past two years. This individual lives on the rue de Mail, he is a native of Germany, his name is on the sign Herard [sic] musical maker.(Herard means Erard of course)"

Erard was able to prove that he was not an enemy of the State but he was very fortunate that the search of his office happened when it did. Nine days later, on September 17, 1793, the Law of Suspects was passed. This law unleashed the full Terror on the nation and Erard may not have been spared. As it was, Erard and his company were spared. But the company was not spared of economic demise. By the mid 1900's the company folded. 

"But after the company closed its doors in the middle of the twentieth century, they were all but forgotten...a heap of old archives and objects in a storeroom in the basement Salle Gaveau in Paris. After the sales of the brand names of Gavaeu, Erard , and Pleyel, as well as the Salle Gaveau itself, these archives became property of the AXA insurance. Thanks to the perseverance of a handful of Erard devotees-both musicologists and AXA managers, the archives were finally saved from destruction."

AXA, Erard and A Tale of Two Cities all came together for me in one interesting day. Life can be amazing like that.

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I don't listen to music when I run anymore. I used to. But the hassle of earphones, my declining eyesight, and maintaining playlists etc made it a chore. So I just stopped. I much prefer the quiet of the moment...the sound of my breathing...the sound of my shoes hitting the road. AND, the music that seems to play in my head. It can be anything, and yes, most of the time it's a classical piece that I seem to having playing in my brain, and sometimes I end up humming or singing along with it. So in this respect, I do still run with music.

My playlist is pretty wide and varied, but yesterday, the music that I ended up hearing for my run was a very odd selection....it was the Unanswered Question by Charles Ives. It is a great piece, but not one that I would probably put on a running playlist! But it was there...in my head...and it felt good.

I have not been sleeping much the past couple of days. Shadow was not able to get up in time to go to the bathroom, and she had given up trying. So we had her resting on her doggie-bed in the living room by the fireplace. We were spending a lot of time trying to keep her clean and comfortable, and of course we knew what was coming....and it was very hard emotionally. Maybe this experience brought the Unanswered Question into my mind? I don't know....but it may express the conflicting feelings I had while sorting through questions about life and death...and coming to grips with having to good-bye to her. 

Classics in Commercials and A Coat Story

I saw a very funny Doritos commercial this week. It also used classical music!

The music is the Flower Duet by French composer Leo Delibes (1883). 

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The Coat Story

True story. A couple of years ago now, my son Ethan needed a new outfit to wear to prom...he didn't have any nice dress clothes. This was in March. Ethan hates shopping, especially for clothes! So Cheryl and I knew this was not going to be a fun outing. And sure enough, it was not. After trying several stores, we ended up at J C Penny. Ethan is very frustrating to shop for. "Ethan, do you like this shirt?..."I don't care." "Ethan, what color pants do you want?....I don't care." That is the pattern. So after a couple of frustrating hours, facing his indifference and the noise and crowds, we were all at the ends of our rope. I noticed a rack of winter coats in the Men's section, so I took a break from Ethan and went to look at it. I found a coat that I really liked and I tried it on. It fit great, but it was too expensive. Plus it was already warm by now...Spring was in bloom. So I hung the coat up and went back to Ethan. We did battle awhile longer until we finally found what he needed. By now, we were all exhausted and mad at each other and the world in general. As we were paying for his clothes, I was ready to get the hell out of there and go home. But at least Ethan was going to look good for prom! When we got home, we all relaxed and peace was restored. And we did get a great deal on the clothes. The only negatives were our heightened tempers and the loss of a pair of glasses that I had somehow misplaced in one of the stores we visited. 

Fast forward about five months. It was now the end of August. I went back to J C Penny to look for some dress shirts. While I was there, I noticed in the back of the Men's section there was a small rack of winter coats...the same coats I had tried on in March. And this time, they were marked down to $50...they had been close to $300 when I had tried them on in the Spring. But there were only a few coats left on the rack. I looked through them and there was only one coat that was my size. I tried it on and it fit great. This coat was going to be mine. Before I took it off, I put my hands in the pocket and felt something...hmmm....what is this? It was my glasses...the pair I had lost in March. The one and only coat that remained in my size was the same coat I had tried on while we were shopping for Ethan in March. Small world.

Pablo Casals and Robert Johnson make history...on the same day.

I had the Bach Cello Suites on my "must listen" list this week. I got around to it this past weekend, and the cellist I listened to was Pablo Casals (1876-1973). Casals is regarded as the first true pioneer of this beautiful instrument. He had a long and distinguished career...he even played at the White House for JFK. And he was the first cellist to record the Bach Cello Suites.
And this is where the story gets truly fascinating. On November 1, 2018, I was listening to Pablo Casals' recording of the Bach Cello Suites. The sound is surprisingly good for such an old recording. As I read the liner notes, I learned that he recorded two of these at Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded most of their music in the 1960's. (I walked across this same crosswalk when I was in London in 1987).

Anyway, as I am listening to Casals' recording and reading about him, (and loving the music) I discovered that he played a concert in my hometown of Kansas City, MO in 1916. I also learned that on November 23, 1936, the same day he recorded two of the Cello Suites, another legendary musician was also making a recording that would change the world...the SAME day. On that day, Robert Johnson was in a small hotel room in San Antonio recording songs that would later inspire just about everyone...the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, etc etc....
Here is a great article I found that tells the story about two very different men and music who none-the-less changed history.

https://www.npr.org/2011/11/23/142700464/robert-johnson-and-pablo-casals-game-changers-turn-75

Pablo Casala played a recital in Kansas City on February 8, 1916. He shared the program with a famous tenor named Paul Reimers. Here is the review I found in the Kansas City Times from the next day. Seems like Mr. Reimers stole the show!

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THE CASALS-REIMERS RECITAL

A Great Cellist and a Charming Tenor for the Fifth Fritschy Event

     It was not the expected beauty of Pablo Casals' playing yesterday afternoon at the Schubert Theater that gave the audience its most obvious pleasure, but the unexpected qualities in the singing of Paul Reimers, the German Tenor, who was associated with the famed cellist in joint recital. Reimers is that rare type of artist-a singer who places interpretation first.

     The concert, fifth in the Fritschy series, offered a succession of surprises. First was the attractive stage setting for which the packed stage of Mme. Homer's concert and the bleak and battered drop that Paderewski made his audience forget, failed to prepare those present. A gasp of surprise and pleasure greeted the pretty scene with its cleverly arranged lights and then the audience settled back to luxuriate in the Casals tone.

     With that excellent artist, Maurice Eisner, at the piano, the Handel sonata was profoundly beautiful. The clear song of the slow movement disclosed limpid depth of tone, resonance, warmth, and carrying power. Mr. Casals enjoys the reputation of being the greatest cellist of his day, and his work throughout the program bore out this rating.

     But the apt and elegant Saint-Saens does not compare with the fine, high beauty of Handel. The concerto seemed superficial, full of bright passage work for the violincello, but lacking in character. If it proved anything yesterday, it was that the old music is Handel is still more vital than the new music of Frenchmen, whose artifice and dexterity cannot compete with inspiration. Still, the skill demanded was something to excite admiration. At times, the voice of the cello, warm and human, matching its timbre with that of the piano, drew fanciful figures against a rich tonal background. Again, the voices mingled in bewildering fantasy.But in nothing was there the transparency of tone disclosed by the Handel music until the last group of numbers, introduced by an aria of Bach and including three lighter pieces. These awakened almost as much applause as that accorded the tenor, and the cellist had to return many times to bow his thanks. But he gave only one encore.

     Mr. Reimers is the sort of lieder singer who, in times of peace, remain in Germany. It is understood they find a full and complete appreciation only in their own land. But Americans are learning appreciation, too-as witness the success of Wuellner a few years ago, and of Julia Culp and others. Reimers is not like any other. He has a good tenor voice, which he can make, upon occasion, sounds just about as he pleases, express much or little, humor or sadness. He commands tones sweet as honey, but never sweet except for purposes of musical wooing or hoodwinking, or some other chicanery in which he takes delight.

     It was most thoughtful of him to recognize the audience's non-German limitations, and tell in his captivating English the little stories in the songs. Some of these were French, some American and one was a fine old Russian hymn. There were many encores-four or five and even then the audience was not satisfied perhaps because Mr. Reimers had been rather a surprise and his singing has a piquancy and flavor rarely encountered.

     Every seat was filled and there were a few standees.

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