A Christmas Cornucopia Part III: Holiday for Swing! By Seth MacFarlane, Arranged and Orchestrated by Joel McNeely

Before you protest, rest assured that Your Correspondent already knows.  Yes, Seth MacFarlane (born 1973) is an extremely low comedian, a vulgarian, politically incorrect and all the rest.  Check.

But … MacFarlane is also having a romance with the Great American Songbook, which he calls, in a most felicitous phrase, “orchestral jazz.”  I actually prefer the MacFarlanism, and will start using it myself.

He has previously released two albums of standards, doing his best to replicate the sound of Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), down to using the same, now-vintage microphone the older artist used.  With sprightly, energized arrangements by Joel McNeely (born 1959), these albums are, in a word, terrific.  (The spirit of homage is evident even on the album cover, which features a painted portrait of MacFarlane in the manner of many early 1960s Christmas swing albums.)

So, it was with a great deal of pleasure that I received a (very thoughtful!) early Christmas gift of his new holiday album, Holiday for Swing!  If you like Orchestral Jazz even a little bit, then this album is for you.  If you like holiday tunes with a touch of swing, this album is for you.  If you like singers who are clearly having fun, then this album is for you.  In short … get it already.

MacFarlane opens with Let It Snow!  This is a tuneful recording, but MacFarlane really hits his stride with the second number, Christmas Dreaming.  This song was only recorded by Sinatra and Harry Connick (that I’ve heard), but MacFarlane is better than either.  I have been humming this infectious tune for weeks, and it is now in my personal pantheon of Christmas classics.

MacFarlane returns to the seldom-heard with Little Jack Frost Get Lost (which I have only previously heard recorded by Bing Crosby) and Marshmallow World, which is also seldom released.  But are excellent – with MacFarlane having so much fun with the latter that we are happy just to listen to him.

His Baby, It’s Cold Outside is, frankly, openly sexy, and his Mele Kalikimaka (also only known to me through Crosby) is delightful.

There are several other numbers included (among them Moonlight in Vermont and The Christmas Song), and all work wonderfully well.

If you had told us that the recording of the season for us here at The Jade Sphinx would be by Seth MacFarlane, we would’ve signed you up for an extended stay in Bedlam.  But … Christmas is known for miracles, so we should expect the unexpected.  This is a great album and a worthy addition to pop Christmas standards. 

A special Christmas message tomorrow!

People’s Symphony Concerts Return!

If New York is the classical music capital of the world, then perhaps the best bargain in the world for music lovers is the series of concerts presented by People’s Symphony.

The Peoples’ Symphony Concerts series was founded in 1900 by the conductor Franz Arens to bring the world’s finest music to students and workers for minimum prices.  That winter, more than 7,000 people jammed into the old hall at Cooper Union to hear Arens, the son of an immigrant farmer, conduct his series of five Peoples' Symphony Concerts.  Subscriptions for the five concerts ranged from $.25 to $1.25 and single tickets went for as little as $0.10 each. 

Arens himself started out a poor student in Europe who had been too broke to attend many concerts.  When Arens returned to New York, he was determined to find a way to bring music to students, teachers, workers, and others unable to pay normal ticket prices.  Since those early years, hundreds of thousands of Peoples' Symphony Concerts audience members have heard the world's foremost concert artists and ensembles at the lowest admission prices of any major series in the country.

Your correspondent has been going for nearly 25 years, and has heard such world class masters as Richard Goode, Garrick Ohlsson, and Marc-Andre Hamelin.  There are three concert series, two taking place on Saturday evenings at the spacious (and newly-renovated) theater at Washington Irving High School in Gramercy Park, and one on Sunday afternoons at Town Hall in midtown Manhattan.

The season opened last week with a magnificent performance by the Musicians From Marlboro, the touring extension of the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont.  This group is comprised of exceptional young professional musicians together with seasoned artists in varied chamber music programs. Each program is built around a work performed in a previous summer that Artistic Directors Richard Goode and Mitsuko Uchida and their colleagues felt was exceptional and should be shared with a wider audience. The resulting ensembles offer audiences the chance to both discover seldom-heard masterworks and enjoy fresh interpretations of chamber music favorites.

The concert opened with a relatively new work by Svervánszky, the Trio for Flute, Violin and Viola.  This piece was filled with a rich, folkloric, Middle European flavor, and was played with great brio by the troup.

The was followed by the Sonata for flute, viola and harp, L. 137 by Debussy.  This was, perhaps, my favorite piece of the evening – offering a lush, yet limpid, interval of pure aural pleasure.

The evening progressed with Officium breve in memoriam Andreæ Szervánszky, Op. 28 by Kurtág which, frankly, went in one ear and out the other.  However, as with most contemporary pieces, mileage varies depending on user.

The concert ended with a gripping rendition of Beethoven’s String Quintet in C Major, Op. 29, which was greeted by the crowd with long, loud and lusty applause.

Artists for the evening included David McCarroll, violin; Nikki Chooi, violin; Kim Kashkashian, viola; Wenting Kang, viola; Karen Ouzounian, cello; Marina Piccinini, flute; and, Sivan Magen, harp.  These are exceptionally talented young people.

Many of my readers support the New York Metropolitan Opera, WQXR and/or Tanglewood, but few seem to know this wonderful reasoure for people who are serious about music. 

There are still tickets available for this season; visit http://pscny.org  or call (212) 586-4680 for more information.  

Celebrate the 90th Anniversary of Rhapsody in Blue With Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks

America’s true musical tradition is the Great American Songbook; the great body of music written by brilliant tunesmiths from the Great War through the advent of rock-n-roll (or, if you will, bookended between two global catastrophes).

In an era when artists sought legitimacy, rather than rejecting the very notion, it was not uncommon for Jazz Age songwriters to write ‘serious’ compositions that bridge the worlds of pop and classical music.  Perhaps the most ambitious of the Jazz Age songwriters was George Gershwin (1898-1937).  His great, serious opus of the Jazz Age, Rhapsody in Blue, premiered at the Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924.  Gershwin was on hand to play the piano, and the concert was conducted by pop music legend Paul Whiteman (1890-1967), who commissioned the piece.

How did Gershwin come to compose his signature piece?  He related to his first biographer: It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise.... And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.

The 90^th Anniversary of this seminal event is a scant two weeks away.  And to mark this milestone, Bandleader Extraordinaire Vince Giordano will recreate the concert on Wednesday, February 12, 2014 at 8:00 PM at the Town Hall, Manhattan, on the same day and same block as the original concert 90 years ago.  Giordano has gathered solo pianists Ted Rosenthal and Jeb Patton to play along with his 22-piece Nighthawks Orchestra.  The evening will be conducted by Maurice Peress, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody will be accompanied by music by Irving Berlin (1888-1989), Victor Herbert (1859-1924), Jerome Kern (1885-1945) and Zez Confrey (1895-1971).

This is it, this is where American music really found its distinctive voice, Giordano told your correspondent recently.  It’s rare that anyone can put their finger on exactly the moment that a new era starts, but this is pretty close.  There was a sense that America was a new country, and needed a new music to give it voice.  Gershwin rose to that challenge and made musical history.  By doing the concert on the same day, on the same block, just feet away from the original 90 years ago, we are trying to recapture lightning in a bottle.

Giordano has earned great acclaim for his musicianship and for his curatorship of America’s musical heritage.  He has appeared in many major motion pictures (The Aviator and Cotton Club, for example), and was the musical voice for the award-winning television show Boardwalk Empire.  He has long been a favorite with New York sophisticates looking for great music and a smart evening out – he currently plays at the Iguana NYC every Monday and Tuesday evenings in the Times Square area.

Initial response to this planned recreation has been dynamic, and Jade Sphinx readers are encouraged to order tickets as soon as possible.  We will be there, as this promises to be the Must-See musical event of the season.  Tickets are $25, $30, $35 and $40, and are available at the Town Hall box office, or by calling Ticket Master at 800.982.2787.

Kuok-Wai Lio Makes His People’s Symphony Concert Debut

One of the great clichés in film and theater is the Big Star suddenly becoming incapacitated, and the new-comer making a last-minute hit.

Well, I’m happy to report that this is exactly what happened at a People’s Symphony Concert (PSC) last Sunday (January 12^th).  For the first concert of the New Year, celebrated pianist Radu Lupu (born 1945) was scheduled to play.  Lupu has been a great friend of PSC for several years, and has always been met with riotous applause.

Last week, however, Lupu came down with the flu – threatening to turn into pneumonia.  Not only did his illness force a cancellation of his PSC concert, but Lupu also had to miss his final performance with the Montreal Symphony and hasten his return to Europe.  We here at The Jade Sphinx wish him a speedy recovery.

However, never letting an opportunity to let new, significant talents make their mark, PSC managers Frank Salomon and David Himmelheber reached out to up-and-coming pianist Kuok-Wai Lio (born 1989).  Lio – who considers Lupu “a god” and who planned on watching the performance from the audience -- quickly stepped in to perform selections by Leos Janacek (1854-1928), Franz Schubert (1797-1828), and Robert Schumann (1810-1856).  The result was magical.

Lio began playing at age five.  In 1997, he was awarded a scholarship to study at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, and in 2006, he entered the Curtis Institute of Music.  His principal teachers included Gabriel Kwok and Gary Graffman.  He has also worked with Andras Schiff at international master classes and festivals in Europe.

Lio has received prizes in international competitions, including Fulbright, Gina Bachauer, Seiler, Steinway, Ettlingen and Chopin (Tokyo).  In 2004, he was awarded a Commendation of Merit from the Chief Executive of Macau. 

Lio played Janacek’s In the Mists (1912) to great effect.  The piece has a sweet and delicate air, and Lio captured that with great sensitivity.  It was a wonderful crystallization of mood, and the performance, transporting.

For Schubert, Lio played Four Impromptus, D. 935 (1827).  These were handled with remarkable élan, including the Impromptu in B-flat Major, which is the most interesting, and musically satisfying, of the group.

After intermission, Lio returned for Schumann’s challenging Davidsbundlertanze, Op. 6.  This includes 18 movements, and mastery of this piece is a mark of true virtuosity.  Lio handled it deftly and with astonishing empathy for a performer so young. 

Kuok-Wai Lio is a remarkable talent and we will be hearing more from him in the years to come. 

Garrick Ohlsson at People’s Symphony

Last week we told you about People’s Symphony Concerts – which have been in existence since 1900, when they were founded by conductor Franz Arens.  World class musicians – both emerging talents and old masters – have been the mainstay of People’s Symphony, and each and every year the lineup grows more impressive.

So, I was greatly excited when an amateur musician friend told me of a concert he heard in San Francisco where Garrick Ohlsson (born 1948) played.  That same concert was in the offering at People’s Symphony and the early verdict was … it was not to be missed.

Nor did Ohlsson disappoint.  The concert at Washington Irving in Gramercy Park last Saturday evening was simply splendid.  Dressed in impeccable tie and tails, Ohlsson is showman enough to command the stage in any venue, and once he sat behind the Steinway piano, he held the audience spellbound for more than two hours.

Ohlsson opened with the very familiar Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79 (1879) by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897).  This warhorse is a mainstay of classical music stations, and one would expect its allure to dim with over-familiarity.  Not so under Ohlsson’s skillful playing; it was fresh and alive and the line of Brahms’ music clean and clear.

Ohlsson followed with Fantasia on Ad Nos, ad salutarem undam, S. 259 (1850) by Franz Liszt (1811-1886), easily my favorite piece of the evening.  This is Liszt at his most ornate and outlandish, and Ohlsson played the Adagio with tremendous gusto and the Fuga with deep sensitivity.  If you are not an aficionado of Liszt or his music, this piece may well change your mind.  It demands quite technical virtuosity, and Ohlsson plays it with brio.

The program continued with Selection from Etude for Piano (1915) by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), which I found amusing, but undemanding.  Debussy has never been wholly to our taste, but the Pour les sixtes was quite wonderful and almost enough to make me reconsider my opinion on this polarizing composer.

Ohlsson ended with Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49 (1841), by Frederic Chopin (1810-1849).  It is a work of deep, emotional tenderness, and it was beautifully rendered by the pianist.

Garrick Ohlsson has a worldwide reputation for his Olympian interpretive and technical prowess.  He was born in White Plains, NY, and began his piano studies at age 8.  He has won too many awards to be fully chronicled here, but they include the Chopin Competition in Warsaw and the Avery Fisher Prize.  His 2013-14 season will include recitals in Montreal, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angles, Seattle and Kansas City, culminating in February at Carnegie Hall.  In January, with the Boston Symphony, he will present the world premier of a concerto commissioned for him from Justin Dello Joio; he will also play, this year, works by Beethoven, Schubert and Charles Tomlinson Griffes.  If you have even the remotest interest in virtuoso piano playing, be sure to see out Garrick Ohlsson this year.

One parting word about People’s Symphony.  There are still some tickets let for their three, concurrent series, but numbers are limited.  It remains the best deal for New Yorkers passionate about music that I have ever come across, and subscriptions will not be regretted.  The can be found at:  http://pscny.org/.

My Modest Proposal: A New Mathematical Theorem

Regular readers of this blog may be surprised to find mathematics in these pages, but there are times when questions of art can only be settled through the precise measurements of science.  With that, I propose a new scientific model by which one can gage both intellectual and aesthetic attainments, as well as IQ.  It is, simply, this: an individual’s taste and intelligence is in direct contrast to the volume of his or her car radio.

Attend: let us assume that an individual’s “normal” IQ is 100.  A person listening to his car radio at a normal volume (e.g., audible only to people within the car, even with windows open), is at 100.  If that person is listening to Classical Music, or melodies as defined by the Great American Songbook, add anywhere from 10-to-30 points, depending on taste and depth of understanding.  Listeners to Vivaldi and Jule Styne, for example, are closer to the 110 range, while listeners to Brahms and Cole Porter nearer the 130.  Add additional points for an understanding of musical history and/or theory, details of the composer’s or performing artist’s biography, as well as one’s support for public radio.

Now, working with the same “normal” baseline of 100 and the same car radio at an even volume, let us look at other musical tastes.  If an individual has a taste for country music, deduct 5-to-15 points.  For rock (including, but not limited to, funk, punk, glitter, glam, metal, etc.), deduct 15-to-30 points.  For rapp, hip hop, gangsta ad nauseam, deduct 30-to-60 points.  If you have a taste for gospel, you are a living contradiction – it’s impossible to like gospel and still possess an immortal soul.  (And every adult should  feel intellectually diminished by simply writing the words funk, punk, glitter, rapp, gangsta….)

However, the real key to this intelligence test is volume.  Using the score received above, adjust thusly: any individual playing a car radio in a volume audible to those in the car, but no more, add 20 points.  If the volume is audible to those within the car, but does not inhibit conversation within the car, add 45 points.

If the volume is audible only within the car, but conversation is impossible, deduct 35 points.  If the music is audible five feet away from the car with the windows open, deduct 50 points.  Ten feet away with the windows open, deduct 65 points.  Twenty-to-30 feet away, deduct 75 points.  If the volume is audible 100 feet away from the car with the windows open, you are clearly too stupid to drive.  If the volume is audible 100 feet away and the windows are closed, it is quite possible that the driver is brain dead.

From this, it is clear that those who score lowest on this new theorem are those who play their music the loudest.  Have you never noticed that passing cars never blast (or, to use the common vulgar parlance, crank) Tchaikovsky or Schubert or Jerome Kern or George Gershwin?  That is simply because lack of musical taste plus excessive volume equals the most dire stupidity.

To test the validity of these assertions, in your travels throughout the day, look closely at those drivers whose car radios are the loudest.  Are they usually not unrefined and ugly, antisocial and filled with adolescent aggression?  Indeed, when have you last had to cover your ears because a passing motorist was cranking Stravinsky or Mahler?  Odds are, never.  Civility may be a word that currently has little cultural currency, but it does mean something to the select few.

With these findings on hand, I propose a new set of tests for prospective drivers.  Individuals arriving for their written or road test wearing headphones are immediately excluded from the licensing process.  A complete list of records/CDs/music downloaded must be part of the application process, and a taste for any of the juvenilia that encompasses so much contemporary “music” makes ownership of a car radio or stereo set punishable by law.

I am convinced that application of this new theorem will maximize driver safety, increase civility in our culture, and drive (if you’ll pardon the verb) cultural social responsibility. 

Think about it.

The Page Turner by David Leavitt

David Leavitt first jumped to popular attention with his 1986 novel The Lost Language of Cranes.  I first came across his work in 1993 when reading the acclaimed While England Sleeps. 

Though I have not read later, expurgated editions, the first edition of While England Sleeps was a compelling novel of lovers separated by class, intellectual attainment, and later, revolution and war.  Leavitt was sued by poet Stephen Spender (1909-1995), who claimed that Leavitt plagiarized (and vulgarized) his own life story.  Leavitt settled out of court, and altered portions of his novel.

Leavitt followed While England Sleeps with The Page Turner (1998), another story of an ultimately failed love affair.  The Page Turner is the story of Paul Porterfield, an 18 year-old music student, and his romance with Richard Kennington, a famed pianist approaching 40.  Paul meets his idol while turning music pages for him at a concert.  Chance brings them together again months later in Rome where they begin their love affair, complicated by Paul’s mother, Pamela, who also develops feelings for the senior artist.  Months later in New York, Paul becomes sexually involved with Kennington’s long-term lover and agent, Joseph Mansourian, who is 61.

Unlike the rich first edition of While England Sleeps, Leavitt here falls into the fatal misconception shared by most contemporary novelists:  thinking that less-is-more rather than simply … less.  The four protagonists are drawn with deft sketches, but we never inhabit their interior minds as we would in the hands of a more generous novelist. 

Paul, the ostensible protagonist, is little less than a cipher, and at best markedly unsympathetic.  The novel opens with his burning passion to be a great pianist, a passion which, it seems, is crushed all too easily some months later when he is first passed over for a more talented student, and because one of his teachers tells him he’ll never be “great.”  Such youthful ambition is seldom amputated so quickly, and his conversion to bitter cynic (while still an adolescent) rings false. 

Pamela, his mother, is drawn with such broad strokes that it is impossible to really mine whatever riches the character has to offer.  Is she worthy of our sympathy, or our scorn?  Leavitt never seems to know.

It is only with Kennington that Leavitt approaches complexity and a fully-realized human portrait.  Kennington is a man under siege, plagued by doubt, by conflicted feelings over his affair with Mansourian (which started when he was 15), and by his deep-seated ambivalence about live performance.  But still, Kennington is too thinly drawn to transcend his book and haunt the memory.

Thin, here, is the operative word.  Since Leavitt does not imagine a richly populated reality, he often resorts to parenthetical asides to add flavor or necessary background information.  His secondary characters – and we know they are secondary as they are known by diminutives, Teddy and Bobby – exist only to ease the plot and supply a bit of tawdry comic relief.  Such scarcity of imagination robs the novel of any possible romantic grandeur. When Paul is told that he will never become an artist of any particular merit, Leavitt lets drop an opportunity for great feeling and deep pathos.  Instead of an exploration of thwarted artistic ambition, Leavitt has Paul accept this condemnation with mournful resignation and a crying jag.  In other hands, this realization would be worthy of an entire novel…

Unfortunately, The Page Turner does not end so much as simply … stop.  Though key characters all have had profound experiences, there is no resolution as such.  The Page Turner, despite its wonderful romantic and melodramatic possibilities, never soars.  As a New Yorker short story, it would be interesting enough; as a novel, it is insufficient.

There still is room for a great novel about accepting artistic limitations, shattered expectations, artistic disparity and the challenges of inter-generational passion.  Leavitt touches on all of this, but only touches the surface.  The Page Turner remains a readable misfire.