We got reviewed! Anthony Tommasini has nice things to say about the New York Youth Symphony, ACME Quartet, and Senior.

Kind of a big week for website redesigns… at least among sites I frequent. Pitch­fork’s was long-overdue&#8212 it hadn’t changed a bit since I started reading it as a freshman in college. The new website is clean, lovely and much richer (though admit­tedly the bar set by the old one was pretty low; it didn’t even have a working search function). However, the aesthetic clean­li­ness brings with it a much more corpo­rate feeling (I’ll leave the impli­ca­tions for others to debate). I also think the grid struc­ture feels overly complex; it’s hard to tell which infor­ma­tion is most impor­tant at first glance, even though it’s all presented quite clearly.

Also, Facebook— I feel as though for all the atten­tion it gets, nobody talks about why Facebook is such a fantas­tic platform, which is that they are totally obsessed with design. Like Apple, the Facebook design­ers aren’t afraid to make sweeping changes for the better, even if it means getting some bad press and vocal complaints (remember when they launched the news feeds?). The new page layout is an incre­men­tal change, but the grid feels more natural and orga­nized now. The font size for wall posts went up a notch, making commu­ni­ca­tions a bit easier to read and creating a nice hier­ar­chy of infor­ma­tion. And I like the new rounded corners on profile pictures (round rects are every­where).

OK, back to part-making (new piece for the Yale Symphony. Working title: Bathtub Shrine.)

Heads up, ev’rybody&#8212 there’s rather a large icicle about to melt on you, meaning my Carnegie Hall debut must be coming up (Sunday, March 22). You can get tickets for as little as $10, so nobody has an excuse not to come.

I spent last Sunday in Flushing listen­ing to the ACME quartet and NY Youth Symphony play Senior for the first time; with two weeks to go until Carnegie I think we’re in very good shape. The quartet already sounds fantastic&#8212 can’t say I’m surprised, what with such illus­tri­ous member­ship. The orches­tra members need perhaps a little more time for the music to “settle”. Ryan took my advice and merci­lessly cut back the string sections (which are other­wise HUGE) and the piece sounded appro­pri­ately buoyant and nimble, really like slightly beefed-up chamber music in some parts.

I’m really excited for what’s sure to be a memo­rable concert. The orches­tra is also playing Carlos Chavez’s Sinfonia India and Brahms 1, both of which I over­heard in rehearsal and already sound quite persuasive.

This morning I immersed myself in early period John Adams, listen­ing to the two versions of Shaker Loops back-to-back and watching an old docu­men­tary about Harmo­nium.

It’s funny to look back to the early 80’s and see what an insti­tu­tion Adams had already become. The film­mak­ers tried desper­ately to roman­ti­cize him and his music, and he seemed to handle it well, posing for the camera in picturesque situ­a­tions, compos­ing in his impec­ca­ble mountain cabin or gazing thought­fully over the San Fran­cisco bay. Pretty banal stuff, though Adams did have some inter­est­ing things to say, includ­ing his own handy defi­n­i­tion of Mini­mal­ism: “A vast reit­er­a­tion of smaller units to create a larger archi­tec­ture”. He plays some licks from Nixon in China on his wonder­ful old clavi­nova to demon­strate this. It was also fun to see the 1980’s choris­ters struggle with Harmo­nium’s hemiola rhythms, which sound so staid now, precisely because Adams and others have reit­er­ated those gestures to the point of cliché. 

The piece itself, though, is still resound­ingly success­ful. The epic crescendo/accelerando into “Wild Nights” must have sounded incred­i­bly daring in 1982, and it still never fails to move me. Though it strikes me as a subver­sion of the poem, not to mention a manip­u­la­tion of the audience, to empha­size the line “were I with thee” as much as Adams does by repeat­ing it dal niente in the final section. It makes the ending sadder and more poignant, but is it true to the meaning of the text? I suppose that’s why so many composers set Emily Dick­in­son, because she can’t very well complain.

Though the original septet version used a quasi-aleatoric system of looped phrases and cues, Shaker Loops is always heard today in its later through-composed scoring. (I love looking at weird, unknown versions of familiar pieces, seeing how composers thought differ­ently about their own music as it contin­ued to evolve.) That said, in the way it sounds, the original version resem­bles the written-out version closely. The entire middle of the piece, includ­ing the entire second and most of the third move­ments, has no inde­ter­mi­nate notation what­so­ever. It’s as if Adams started compos­ing using the idea of loops, then as he became more involved with the music he was writing, aban­doned the idea in favor of increased control. I suppose this was a learning expe­ri­ence for him, because he was progress­ing closer toward the type of music he has become known for. There are a few details that are lost with a massed string texture, however; for example, the trills in the second movement become more of a textural effect, whereas the solo strings artic­u­late them as florid orna­men­tal lines. Contrary to Adams’s own state­ments, I think the main advan­tage of the written-out version is not increased compo­si­tional control, but increased confi­dence on the players’ part, simply because the notation is more tradi­tional. This results in tighter and more controlled perfor­mances, even without a conduc­tor (but with plenty of head-banging).

Just a quick note to say that new audio is up from the New Haven perfor­mance of Some Connecti­cut Gospel a couple weeks ago. Also a new, cleaner, more exciting, all around better record­ing of my hit single, How can I live in your world of ideas? from Fire­house 12 a couple months ago.

Last week’s Shy and Mighty-fest went swim­mingly. The record­ing session was a marathon, but Dave and I got some really good takes. Right now I’m in the process of audi­tion­ing them and deciding where to make the splices. Above, Dave imper­son­at­ing Alfred Brendel in my entrance hall.

(I have a theory— flying in airplanes is now more trouble than it’s worth. Really, everyone should just stay on the ground, it’s much easier).

Back in New Haven after a fantas­tic few days in Miami, where New World Symphony did right by Some Connecti­cut Gospel. I’ll post a record­ing soon; I can’t say enough good things. NWS is a “training orches­tra” founded by MTT (is that his MC name?) for players around my age to go and gain some profes­sional expe­ri­ence while they plan their futures— a nice stage in-between school and career. They are in the process of getting their own Frank Gehry hall (every­one’s doing it. I’ve commis­sioned a garden shed for the backyard, just need to get the zoning cleared up). I got to meet some cool older-kid composers, includ­ing David T. Little (looking very clean-cut here) and Jeff Myers. Romanian-born Miami-based composer Daniel Manoiu rounded out a wildly diverse but very satis­fy­ing concert of Ives-inspired music.

Here are some NWS musi­cians doing their thing:

Some Royal Terns (Thanks to my tern-expert brother Guthrie for the identification):

Just returned from a weekend in Boston, where I witnessed a spirited evening of new-ish music courtesy of Dinosaur Annex, and had a reve­la­tory Chinese meal courtesy of the Peach Farm. I also took lots of photographs for a class I’m starting, and was eagerly import­ing them when my Aperture library decided to collapse in a heap of corrup­tion. And of course I’d already erased my camera, but hadn’t backed up, so I lost them all. I was espe­cially sorry because there was one of a tub of eels.

In the excite­ment over the actual content of New York Phil’s season announce­ment, I missed that they also unveiled a totally new identity! This makes me inde­scrib­ably happy. Their old logo and graphics were so generic I actually had to remind myself what they looked like— oh, right:

A swoosh. A musical staff, sure, but still trite, corpo­rate, and completely bland, not to mention poorly executed.

The new logo is the polar opposite. The roles of the graphic and the type are reversed; now, the letter­forms them­selves create a sense of motion and excite­ment, and the red line is the anchor (like a baton! I get it). The typog­ra­phy is certainly uncon­ven­tional (it reminds me of a circular saw blade) but I think that’s kind of what the Phil needs right now— an antidote to years of staid, unin­spired admin­is­tra­tion. (Take a look at some beau­ti­ful logo treat­ments at Penta­gram’s blog.)

Anyone checked www.whitehouse.gov lately? Change in the air, for sure. There’s even a blog of sorts! The first thing I noticed, I’ll admit, was the font choice: the more elegant and tradi­tional Hoefler Text has replaced Gotham as the Obama campaign becomes the Obama admin­is­tra­tion. Gosh, it seems like H&FJ are the official unof­fi­cial first typog­ra­phers! (Also, unre­lated, but a funny coin­ci­dence: the main headings on this site are set in Gotham and Hoefler Text.)

I remarked to Martin this morning that, of all the histor­i­cal-ness (histri­on­ics?) of the occasion, the most remark­able thing to me is: this is the first time in my life that the pres­i­dent of my country is someone who I can look up to, in a very real way. In addition to the intel­li­gence and charisma so evident when he first entered my conscious­ness, Obama seems like an almost impos­si­ble good person, in that every­thing he says and does is derived from a solid, fibrous moral core. And not the pander­ing, one-sided “morals” the right-wing is so fond of, either, but the real meaning of “morals”: the ability to weigh all the elements of an issue, to see differ­ent perspec­tives all at once, and distin­guish not just between “right and wrong” but see the grada­tions between those poles.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I could really imagine being friends with him.

Also (and I’m really grateful for this level of trans­parency): the inau­gural lunch menu. Mmm, a brace!

Fig. 1: Dave contem­plates my choice of Stone Serif.

Happy new year, rabbit rabbit, everyone. I just tore apart the most deli­cious döner sandwich here in Berlin, where the inim­itable David Kaplan and I are re-tackling Shy and Mighty. We’ve been holing up at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule (whose logo actually did fool me into thinking it was a bad steak­house) where I derive pleasure from playing long stretches of repeated minor chords while our neigh­bors practice Bach and Chopin.

The closest I’ve found to contem­po­rary music here was watching the Phil­har­monic (with Mehta) rehearse Carter’s Three Illu­sions. Who knew that even the Berlin Phil­har­monic strug­gles to keep Carter’s unpre­dictable hockets from spinning off into oblivion? They had less trouble with Strauss and Beethoven (backing up Murray Perahia, who played with impec­ca­ble limpid­ness. No, really, that’s actually how he played!). I just wanted a behind-the-scenes tour of their record­ing setup; there were some­thing like 40 micro­phones hanging over the stage, which were controlled by a tech wielding a boom-box-sized remote.

I love the Berlin subway system. Somehow the lack of turn­stiles makes it seem that much easier to hop on and off (passen­gers are instead subjected to random ticket inspec­tions on board). There are LED displays at many stations that tell you how many minutes until the next two trains (though the older, flip-card ones are more beau­ti­ful, if not as useful). I (often) wonder if anyone at MTA reads this blog.

New audio is up for Home Stretch, this time the complete piece from the other night’s concert. Also: a page for my newest piece, Nightjar, which will be performed by LA Phil in May.