I’ve just recorded a new little pièce d’occasion of mine, titled Dans les champs de Valensole, and in order to present it to the world, I’ve made two videos and uploaded them both to YouTube. The question is: which will the algorithm find more enticing?
The first one features me and Kevin performing “live” and featuring beautiful shots of the lavender fields of southern France:
The second features the rolling score:
I’ve posted them both in various places just to get the ball rolling. My mother thinks its insane that anyone would prefer to watch the score video, but I think she underestimates the popularity of the medium, or the number of classical music nerds who sit around and watch this kind of stuff all day.
I particularly wonder which cellists will prefer – to see the player in action, or to see what it is that he’s actually playing.
Only time will tell. I’ll share the results in a couple of months.
Op. 38 pièce d’occasion pour violoncelle et piano
This piece was inspired by a trip I took with my dear friend Catherine Lukits in the summer of 2014. We drove from Berlin to Munich to Milan to Barcelona. Along the way, in the hills of the Côte d’azur, entering into Provence, we stopped in the outskirts of a tiny village called Valensole, known for its endless fields of lavender.
Catherine is a cellist, and so is my friend Kevin, both of whom I first met in 2008 when we were students together in Bloomington, Indiana. I’ve dedicated the piece to both of them: to Catherine in commemoration of our shared experience, and to Kevin for his love of all things lavender, French, and songful.
I finally got to hear / see the Danish String Quartet live a couple weeks ago. They played Beethoven and Bartok, music which they play very well, but I wouldn’t care if I heard them play the canon ever again. The deep spiritual core of the DSQ’s repertoire is their set of Scandinavian folk music arrangements.
How to describe these pieces? They are fiddle tunes that would sound familiar to anyone with an interest in Scottish reels or American bluegrass. They are fashioned into forms full of variety, spontaneity, and verve that function, emotionally and intellectually, as real pieces of music.
The style of the arrangements draws from the Italian baroque, French impressionism, modern pop and film score music, contemporary indie rock, and old fashioned jug band music. It’s hard even to parse the influences because they are blended so seamlessly into a coherent style, which, were I to hazard a name for it, I would call Cosmopolitan String Folk. (This would be a great name for the group itself if they ever decided to ditch the whole Danish thing.)
The music is arranged by the members of the quartet themselves, and as far as I’m concerned, that makes these gentlemen the leading composer-performers of the current generation. They perform with finesse and subtlety, both live and in person. They’ve got enough twang to make you feel country, and enough polish to make you feel urbane.
It’s hard for me to express how much I love this music, but here’s a go at it: the Danish Quartet’s Scandinavian folk arrangements are my platonic ideal of what new concert music should be. It’s music that is deeply connected to an ancient tradition, and that draws from the best styles and tools available from the history of music. The textures spring forth from the instruments themselves, and the music has been crafted by the hands of the performers.
I know the DSQ will continue to play Beethoven and Adès and Haydn, but if they ever give it up and just play full shows of the Scandinavian folk music, I’ll be first in line to buy a ticket.
I’m so pleased to present one of my latest pieces, a sonatina for clarinet and piano. I decided to make one of those YouTube score videos since those are all the rage these days (at least among me)
This was a case of writing something for a specific performer, a young clarinetist named Joseph Folwick, who played in the Metropolitan Youth Symphony during my year-long stint as conductor. Joseph was a technical wiz on the instrument, but more than that, his playing was full of a puckish vitality that I’ve rarely encountered. When he had a solo, he would interpolate licks from other pieces (“Rhapsody in Blue” during the “Cuban Overture” for example.)
He was always pushing the limits, trying to see how far he could go to make me laugh before I actually got pissed off. Even when we played my own music (the Mulligan Overture), he would play his part in different octaves and add freewheeling glissandi to the printed part. Rather than getting annoyed by his shenanigans, I changed the score to match his improvisations.
So I was looking out for an excuse to write a piece for him, and the opportunity came to perform at a New Year’s Eve concert here in Portland on December 31, 2017. The sonatina is in three short sections connected into a single movement, lasting about 12 minutes. It’s in turn zany, sultry, soulful, and jocular. He complained (and continues to complain) that the licks were too hard (“impossible!”), and then proceeded to play them perfectly, as you shall hear.
It was a blast to write and perform, as I hope it is to listen to.
