I’ll be livestreaming again on Friday, April 3 at 8:00 pm ET / 5:00 pm PT.
Once I get things up and running, I’ll embed the stream so you can watch it right here on this site, or you can head over to my YouTube channel (which, by the way, if you haven’t subscribed to yet, now would be a great time!)
Songs by the usual suspects, such as Sondheim, Bernstein, Weill, Gershwin, but also by unusual suspects Carol Sams, Colin DeJong, Erik Satie, Nina Simone, and maybe even Mahler, Barber and Schubert if I have time.
You’re highly encouraged to make yourself known in the chat, ask questions, make requests, and share in the fun. See you then!
I was supposed to conduct Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion this coming Friday, but by now, in the throes of the Coronavirus outbreak, it should be obvious that that’s not happening.
So instead, I’ll go deep into the catalog of cabaret songs that I’ve amassed over the past 20 years. It’s a livestreamed YouTube event, Friday, March 20, 2020 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT / other times in other places.
Now, likely if you’re reading this, you know me mainly as a composer or a conductor, so what’s all this about cabaret songs? Well it all started when I was in high school, hanging out with these wannabe jazzbos. They didn’t really like me that much or think I was great at the piano (I wasn’t) but I was the best they had if they wanted to practice their soloing skills.
So I learned to be a one-man rhythm section, walking the bass lines and comping in my right hand. And since I always loved singing, it was a natural next step to add my own voice to the mix. By the time I went away to college, I had a big chunk of The Fake Book and The Real Book under my fingers.
It turned out that that was a valuable asset in Hyde Park. Through various machinations, I ended up falling in with a hard-drinking, highfalutin garden party crowd mainly centered around the old Quadrangle Club (not to be confused with its current incarnation. For more, see this and this.) For the next several years I played piano in a variety of lounges, living rooms, cocktail bars, and cast parties.
I learned a lot of songs over those years. A lot of the attendees were born in the 20’s and 30’s, but even the ones who were born in the 60’s and 70’s expected me to have complete familiarity with the Noël Coward songbook. I was also doing lots of theatrical work, conducting musicals and operettas, which nursed my lifelong love of showtunes.
The big thing that’s kept me in the lounge lizard game though, has been my participation in the famous Sara Salon series in Hyde Park, which has been going on for at least 10 years now. From what I can tell, it’s the only 19th century Parisian salon in 21st century Chicago.
The idea is this: my friends Sara Stern and Ted Fishman invite all of their artistic friends over for an evening of food and performing. Everyone brings a number or an act. It can be anything from an aria to a poetry reading to a karate demonstration. One time, members of eighth blackbird played Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase” on toy pianos.
I’ve tended to accompany myself at the piano, preferring to do songs with multiple characters. So for example, “Erlkönig” has become a cabaret song for me, as has “Someone in a tree” from Pacific Overtures. Whether or not I’m in drag, you can assume that I’m singing my songs in the style of an aging chanteuse, such as Marianne Faithfull, Lotte Lenya, or Bea Arthur.
So anyway, that’s the idea. Have requests ready and I’ll take them if I can. See you Friday.
Now look, I know this quarantine thing probably isn’t impacting me as much as it is some of you. I’ve spent several years of my life as a self-employed freelance composer, plus I don’t drink, and I’m a vegan. So social distance is par for the course for me.
But some of you might be going stir crazy, so I’m posting a bunch of pieces that I’ve worked on and tinkered with over the years, or that I’ve written for friends and special occasions, and you’re welcome to download them and try them out. Send me feedback (willcwhite@aol.com) or tag me (insta / twitter @willcwhite) and let me see what you do with them. It’ll be fun.
Solo cello suite (also with viola and bass)
For many years I played around with writing a solo cello suite. Some of the movements I’m happy with, others not so much. Some of it is probably unplayable. But give it a try.
I wrote this for my friend Kyle Ritenauer and his brothers, all amazing percussionists. They were trying to get a percussion trio off the ground way back in 2013 but they ended up pursuing different avenues (all very successfully!) so they never tackled this. It’s very hard, but conveniently for a quarantine situation, it only requires materials commonly found in a suburban garage.
I wrote this one for my friends Peter and Lisa, who have been chewing on it for a bit but haven’t yet been able to perform it. They’ve sent me some rehearsal clips though, and I think it works!
This was an auxiliary piece to the Oboe Quintet I recently wrote. It was written for a scientist who works at the north and south poles, and who happens to play the oboe.
Various songs that I’ve written over the years for cabarets and revûes, few of which will make sense outside of their given contexts, but do with them what you will. I’ll be singing them at my livestream cabaret on Friday, March 20, 2020.
Tone poem for large orchestra ~11 min 3.2.2.2 – 4.3.3.1 – timp+4 – str Perusal score on Issuu
This piece was composed in early 2019 and is based on reminiscences of a trip to Puglia in 2017. It is my contribution to the great line of “Italian Voyage” pieces that include Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony, Berlioz’s Roman Carnival overture, Bizet’s Roma, and Strauss’s Aus Italien.
The pizzica of the title refers to a dance common to the region, a variant of the Neapolitan tarantella. Local folklore offers the same origin for both: a tarantula has “pinched” (“pizzicato“) the dancer on the ankle, who must then engage in a frenzied, whirling dance to rid themself of the poison.
Throughout the summer, bands of pizzica musicians travel from village to village to perform for these festivals which last well into the night. The tradition unites old and young alike, and it’s not uncommon to see young women dancing with their grandfathers, who otherwise might not be able to get up from their chairs.
I wrote this piece for my friend Marcello Cormio, whom I first met in 2008 when we were both conducting grad students at Indiana University. We’ve maintained a close friendship since then and finally in the summer of 2017, I took him up on his offer to visit his home town of Trani in the south of Italy.
Marcello sipping a beer at the Festa della Pizzica in 2017
In writing the piece, I was influenced not only by the music I heard at the festival, but also the people and stories that I heard while in Italy. I was also in the thrall of several other works from other media that I encountered in the years leading up to my trip, in particular the Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante, Call Me By Your Name (both the novel and its adaptation) and the film Gomorrah.
The piece itself is both a dance suite and a character study. It begins with maximum chaos, with all of the themes that will appear later in the movement layered on top of one another. This gives way to a bassoon solo, an angular, bony old man, beset with illness. The dance pulls him into remembrances of his youth, and we get a flashback of him as a sprightly young man.
The next dance is a feisty episode for solo violin, a character who reflects and is repelled by the culture of violence of the region (think Lila in My Brilliant Friend.) Here, and throughout the piece, the orchestration is reminiscent of Rimsky-Korsakov.
The third character piece is one of those “Tony sees Maria” moments on the dance floor, where two characters connect and the rest of the scene is greased out. This episode nods strongly to Mendelssohn in the woodwind writing.
As you would expect, the themes of all these characters unite in the end (along with a “summer breeze” theme that appears in all of the episodes) and builds to a frenzied finale, complete with shouts from the orchestra members.
It’s impossible to see an Almodóvar film and not come away a) raptured and b) contemplating what it means to create art and to live as an artist, and Dolor y Gloria gives more fodder to the latter than any of his films for at least a decade.
I’d heard that this was “a return to form” or a “comeback” (both impossible: Almodóvar has never lost his way.) I’d also heard it was a new direction for him, a departure from his earlier films, and here I also disagree: it is a deeper exploration of themes and techniques that have been a consistent part of his work for decades:
Mother-son relationships. The art of filmmaking. Self-medication via illicit drug use. Stories told in several temporal layers. Rural Catholic education. Young boys singing and reading. Unrealized desire. Hospitals and death. City/village life. Theatrical performances (featuring audience members crying.)
What’s amazing is that, given the consistency of the tropes, themes, and tone palette with which he builds his films, each one crystalizes in a unique way, based on the weighting each element receives.
[A side note: I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately as I’ve deepened my appreciation of the music of Herbert Howells. Just think about how many times he set the phrase, “my soul doth magnify the Lord.” He uses similar melodic gestures and harmonic structures in all his canticles, and yet, some sound ancient and ethereal, others bluesy and grounded.]
Most importantly, the film offers a beautiful answer to the question “why do we create?” Put simply, it’s for the physical and mental health of the creator.
That’s an answer that I resonate with deeply. I’ll never reap fame or fortune from writing music. I feel lucky to have a handful of friends and family who remain curious about my work, and to obtain the odd commission or sale. I think the music I write is pretty good, but I’m under no illusion that any of it is groundbreaking or life-changing.
What I do know is that when I’ve gone too long without composing, I fall into bad habits, and my body and my soul cry out to me to begin work on a new piece. (Thankfully my vice is eating too much vegan junk food rather than smoking heroin, but we all take our kicks where we can get them.)
Which means I should stop typing and start plunking out notes on the piano. But before I go, two recommendations:
The film Tous les matins du monde (which I’m sure I’ve written about on this blog before) which answers the “why do we make art” question differently: to communicate with the dead.
