a fool in the forest

The Curious Case of the King of the Bush and the Working Men

Here is a jolly little tune well known to those of a certain age who consumed mass quantities of radio or of MTV or of VH1 in and around 1983.   Yes, it's the song that introduced the United States to the arcane substance known as Vegemite, Men at Work's "Down Under":

Now, having grown up in a household with two generations of Girls Scouts living in it, I noted on my first or second listen to the song almost thirty years ago that its distinctive flute part includes a dozen or so notes that quote directly from another song, "Kookaburra (Sits in the Old Gum Tree)".  "Kookaburra" is the Second Most Australian Song on Earth, surpassed only by "Waltzing Matilda," so the inclusion of a reference to it in "Down Under" -- a song that is itself all about Things Australian, about how the world perceives Things Australian and how Australians perceive and present themselves -- makes perfect sense.

To refresh the recollection of anyone who hasn't heard it for a while, here is a performance of "Kookaburra."  This version is slightly unusual in that it is sung as a solo: the song is more commonly sung as a round, by groups of Girl Scouts or schoolchildren or similar nice young persons.  The portion of the melody that recurs in "Down Under" comes just prior to the first round of applause in this video:

The incorporation of the "Kookaburra" tune into "Down Under" was always so obvious and so thematically appropriate that it never occurred to me to think that the Kookaburra bits didn't belong.  If I had thought about it -- which I confess I never did -- I would have assumed either that the Kookaburra song is an anonymous, traditional piece from the public domain, or that the snippet used by Men at Work was so brief as to constitute a permissible "fair use", or that the band had obtained permission before using it.  And I would have been wrong.

It turns out that "Kookaburra" was only written in 1935, that it has a perfectly identifiable author (Marion Sinclair, a teacher who wrote it for a troop of Girl Guides [Aussie Girl Scouts]), that it remains protected by copyright and that its copyright is now held by a publishing company, Larrikin Music.  Larrikin brought suit against songwriters Colin Hay and Ron Strykert of Men at Work and against the band's record companies for copyright infringement, after the connection between the two songs was pointed out in a question on a television quiz show.  This past week, Larrikin prevailed:

'I have come to the view that the flute riff in ''Down Under'' ... infringes on the copyright of Kookaburra because it replicates in material form a substantial part of Ms. Sinclair's 1935 work,' [Australian] Federal Court Justice Peter Jacobson said. 

He ordered the parties back in court Feb. 25 to discuss the compensation Larrikin should receive from songwriters Colin Hay and Ron Strykert and Men at Work's record companies Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EMI Songs Australia. 

Adam Simpson, Larrikin Music's lawyer, said outside court the company might seek up to 60 percent of the royalties ''Down Under'' earned since its release -- an amount that could total millions.

The ruling seems an odd one given that the quote from Kookaburra is at the same time obvious and trivial.  If the case were tried under U.S. copyright law, I would have to give good odds on the success of a defense based on Fair Use.  (See, e.g., the 2 Live Crew case, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music.)  

Hay and Strykert have never claimed that piece of the song as their own original work, and this is not a case of "subconscious" plagiarism as famously occurred in the case of George Harrison's reinvention of The Chiffons' "She's So Fine" as "My Sweet Lord."  In fact, it seems Hay and Strykert didn't even include the Kookaburra bit in their song as written. The offending notes were inserted while the song was being recorded, by flute player Greg Ham, much as a jazz player might include a reference to Song B while soloing on Song A.  From an Australian television report:

Colin Hay, the lead singer of Men at Work says he's very disappointed by the result. 

COLIN HAY: It has some pretty serious, you know, possibly some pretty serious financial repercussions. 

SARAH DINGLE: He doesn't deny that the flautist Greg Ham used two bars of 'Kookaburra', but he says that addition came after the original song was composed. 

COLIN HAY: When it was written, there was no band, there was no Men at Work, and so there was no flute in the band at all, and so when you talk about Down Under that's what Down Under is to me.  I'll go to my grave knowing Down Under is an original piece of work, when I wrote that with Ron, we took nothing from anybody and it was one of those, it was an accident that, it was a musical accident that happened.

No actual kookaburras could be reached for comment, as they were too busy engaging in howls of derisive laughter at these litigious humans.

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Cross-posted to Declarations & Exclusions.

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The President Appeals to the Bass(and to the French)

 

I posted the original version of the first video below last April under the title "Sérénade pour le commandant en chef et contrebass."  I had already planned to re-post it this week, in part to contrast the fresh-faced optimism of this past version of the President with his rather more beleaguered persona one year on -- friends, the Presidency is a tough job under the best of circumstances -- but principally to call attention to the fact that the creator of this piece, Florent Ghys, has been signed by Cantaloupe Music, the record label of New York's Bang on a Can, and will be releasing three EPs of his music in the upcoming future.  The first of the three, Baroque Tardif: Soli, arrives tomorrow.  (For the moment, at least, a free MP3download of the title piece, "Soli," is available via that link.)

Via Sequenza21, I discover that Cantaloupe Music has issued a slightly revised version of the video in conjunction with M. Ghys' debut, under the title "Music for Multiple Basses and The President of the United States." (Very similar to my own title, but not suspiciously so: how many variants are really possible here?)

In addition to tacking on some Cantaloupe-related titling at the start, this version rewrites history by changing the date of the Weekly Address on which it is built: the original version was dated (accurately) January 24, 2009, while this new one bears a date of January 27, 2010 -- i.e., this Wednesday, when Mr. Obama will fill us in on the State of the Union.  

Now, it is again my distinct honor and high privilege to present Florent Ghys and, looking very relaxed, a more youthful version of President Barack Obama.

I posted a second Florent Ghys item last May.  Looking back at it, I find that one of the videos I had embedded in it has disappeared from Ghys' Vimeo page.  The piece to which it relates, "Clignotants," is included on tomorrow's EP release, and it appears that the video has simply moved from Ghys' own page to the page maintained by Bang on a Can.  From that source, because I quite like it, here it is again:

Merci.

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UPDATE 012610: It occurs to me that perhaps the President should begin to travel with a string quartet, to provide musical commentary and support for his speeches.  Sure, a string quartet lends a certain hifalutin' air to the proceedings, but it could be an improvement on the President's beloved Teleprompter, so frequently criticized by nasty Fox News commentators . . . and occasional others:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Obama Speaks to a Sixth-Grade Classroom
www.thedailyshow.com

~~~

Photo of Florent Ghys via Cantaloupe Music.

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Schweik While the Irony's Hot

The cold equations of arts finance dictate that even a large, comparatively well-funded opera company can only mount any given production for a small number of performances.  "Engagement extended by popular demand" is not a sign commonly seen around the opera house.

Long Beach Opera is not one of those large, well-funded companies.  In consequence, LBO's new production of Robert Kurka's The Good Soldier Schweik runs for only two performances -- and you've already missed the first one unless you were in Long Beach last night.  It would be a mistake to miss the second.

 

Schweik is based on Jaroslav Hašek's 1923 novel, chronicling the adventures of the titular Josef Schweik (Švejk in the original Czech) during the First World War.  As the novel begins, Schweik lives in Prague and makes a living selling dogs with forged pedigrees.  We learn he previously served in the Army, but was discharged as "feeble minded."  On page 1, he hears of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. He spends the remaining 700+ pages of the unfinished novel -- Hašek died of tuberculosis in 1923 with only four of the intended six volumes completed -- getting to the front, with innumerable side trips to jails, mental institutions, field hospitals, fashionable homes, taverns, trains, and so on.

Havoc follows in Schweik's wake.  Whether through innocence, idiocy, or inertia, Schweik tends to do as he's told in a zealously literal sense, with absurd and embarrassing results.  He is some unholy combination of Chaplin, Mr. Bean, Chance the gardener, Candide and Sancho Panza, albeit without the self-knowledge of any of those characters.  Figures of power and authority tend to be the most discomfited by Schweik, and the novel is generally accepted as the first great 20th Century antiwar satire, and an acknowledged influence on later authors such as Heller, Vonnegut and Pynchon. 

Schweik is also one of those characters who are as much associated with an illustrator as with their author.  Josef Lada's illustrations are as definitive of Schweik, and as well known in Europe, as John Tenniel's of Alice. 

Robert Kurka, a Czech American who presumably absorbed Schweik with his mother's milk, wrote his opera in the mid-1950's.  The libretto is credited to Lewis Allen (born Abel Meeropol), whose other claims to fame include having written "Strange Fruit" for Billie Holiday and becoming the adoptive father of the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg following their execution for espionage.  His Man of the Left credentials are in good order.  The text tends to trade in rough hewn colloquial couplets, of the sort favored by Brecht.  

Like the novel, the opera was not quite complete when Kurka died of leukemia, at age 35, just before its scheduled 1958 premier with New York City Opera.  A complete piano score existed, mostly orchestrated, but the final orchestration had to be reconstructed for the premier from Kurka's detailed notes.  The orchestra is strictly winds, brass and percussion, with no strings.  The score is clearly influenced by Weill and Stravinsky and possibly Bernstein, among others, with strains of jazz, blues, Czech folk music and more thrown in as needed.  It is dissonant and contemporary, but without abandoning melodicism, and while you may not be able to remember any "tunes" as you leave the theater, it works quite effectively moment by moment. 

 
 
The Los Angeles Times' preview of Long Beach Opera's production suggested a circus atmosphere, but that's not quite right.  Genial agitprop cabaret is more like it.  Singers and ensemble act, dance, move scenery, and generally do whatever it takes to keep the performance moving along through a rapid fire two and a half hours.  The plot is episodic and sudden shifts in tone are the rule.  While farce is the dominant mode genuine danger is never entirely absent, as when we are reminded early on that the Hapsburgs' secret police were no joke or when Schweik and company encounter the maimed, starving soldiers returning from the front. 

The Long Beach cast is uniformly committed, energetic, and engaging, with all but Matthew DeBattista (as Schweik) filling multiple roles, sometimes within the space of a single scene.  DeBattista does not resemble Lada's Schweik -- he is more of a three way combination of Chaplin with Laurel and Hardy -- but he strikes all the right notes with the character, which is to say he takes everything in stride with equanimity -- whether deranged psychiatrists, doctors whose cure for everything is three enemas daily, irate generals, or his superiors' inconvenient mistresses -- and that it is impossible to tell whether Schweik is or is not conscious of all the trouble he causes for those around him.  DeBattista is new to Long Beach Opera, and a welcome addition to the company's tradition of savvy singing actors.  (This is Long Beach: we do not "park and bark" here.)

Also new to LBO is Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams,whose roles include the philandering Lieutenant Lukasch, who wins Schweik as his orderly.  From a priest.  In a crooked card game.  Williams brings a long-suffering dignity to the lieutenant, whose circumstances grow worse each time Schweik approaches with another "Beg to report, sir . . . ."

Several standout performers from prior seasons return, including LBO fixture Suzan Hanson (as Schweik's landlady, Lukasch's needy mistress, a nasty nurse and more), Jesse Merlin (a crazed Freudian, an even nastier nurse, and more), Benito Galindo (sundry victimized persons), Alex Richardson (another crazed Freudian, a priest of doubtful probity, and more), and Peabody Southwell (victimized persons, female division, and a Madeline Kahnesque turn as Baroness von Botzenheim, who shows that she Supports Our Troops by bringing her front to the front to hug them goodbye). 

 
Because his book was unfinished, there's no knowing what fate Hašek had in store for Schweik in the end.  Kurka and Allen elect to have him simply wander off, putting his gun gently down and going left on patrol when his companion goes right.  It is, in its way, the only willful act Schweik commits in the entire opera, and it leads to a final swell in the orchestra that promises a nice, satisfying major chord resolution but delivers a dissonant squawk.  It is a right choice, true to Schweik and his world.  The real satisfaction sets in immediately after, with the realization that Long Beach Opera has again done that thing it does: finding an interesting work that seems to interest no one else and mounting, against the odds, a smart and appealing production.  It may not be grand opera, but it's pretty darned fine opera.

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One performance remains: Saturday, January 30 at 4:00 p.m. in Barnum Hall, Santa Monica.  Tickets here.  Did I mention you should go?

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UPDATE:  For those of you keeping score at home . . .

• Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times is on record as being only luke warm on Kurka's opera.  That said, he's definitely an enthusiast for this production.
• As is the Orange County Register's Timothy Mangan.  (I had a paragraph in a draft of my post referring, favorably, to the "let's put on a show" mentality that informs so many Long Beach Opera productions.  I cut it after discovering that Mangan went there first.  Durned professionals.)

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All production photos by Keith Ian Polakoff, used by kind permission of Long Beach Opera.

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Drive-In Saturday: Eat, Crow!

The fable of The Fox and the Crow, usually attributed to Aesop, is well-known, as is its moral: Beware of vanity and be wary of flatterers.

Usually, the good thing that the crow possesses and that the fox desires -- and obtains by wily application of the aforementioned moral principle -- is a piece of cheese.  It could just as well be something else, such as f'rinstance a Tasty Cookie.  

If the obscure object of the fox's desire were to become a Tasty Cookie, and if that cookie had a good agent who would negotiate a prominent place for it in the title of the piece, the tale would become that of "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie", and it would proceed along the lines of this lively bit of puppetry, accompanied by the band mewithoutYou:

The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie from David Bell on Vimeo.

Via LAist.

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Illustration: Detail from gate commissioned for the William Church Osborne Memorial Playground, Central Park, NYC, 1952.  Photo by Flickr user cliff1066, used under Creative Commons License.

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Listening Listfully 2009

Just in time for the year to end, here is my list of the 20 AEUs [Album Equivalency Units] released during 2009 that held and rewarded my attention, provided recurring pleasure, and otherwise achieved a State of Favor in my ears, heart and head.  As usual, the selection is purely personal: most of the releases that earned wide ranging huzzahs among the bloggy-music crowd -- your Animal Collectives, your Dirty Projectors, your Grizzly Bear (the involvement of Nico Muhly notwithstanding) -- did nothing for me this year.  

Habit's creature I seem to be.  Three of my top four selections are by artists who placed similarly high in my estimation in prior years. In 2006, Sweet Billy Pilgrim and Elvis Perkins ranked first and second, as they do again in 2009, and Doveman took the prime spot in 2007.  Had I actually posted a list in 2008, Doveman banjo-picker Sam Amidon would have headed the procession, with the complicated simplicity (and Nico Muhly-arranged chamber ensemble) of All Is Well.  (Based upon the one track that is circulating about at the moment, I can predict with confidence that I will be talking about Sam's I See the Sign somewhere on next year's list.)  The principal reason for the repeaters repeating is the simplest and best reason I know: each produced a new recording this year that was as good as or better than the ones I liked so well before.  So there.

And so, to the list.  Beyond the first half dozen or so, the ranking becomes increasingly loose, but I am an enthusiastic endorser of each of these collections.

1. Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Twice Born Men  

The placement of Twice Born Men at Number One can come as no surprise, given my previous effusions in its support.  The best use ever of a garden shed.  

• Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Truth Only Smiles [MP3]

Here are two video versions of the concluding song, "There Will It End."  In the first, from the album, the "choir" is made up of some 30+ versions of writer-singer Tim Elsenburg accompanying himself.  The second is just three fellows and their handpumped harmonium in the back seat of a cab in the country.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim from Black Cab Sessions on Vimeo.

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 2. Elvis Perkins in Dearland - Elvis Perkins in Dearland

I so admire Elvis Perkins' debut Ash Wednesday that I included it on both my 2006 and 2007 lists, but so much of that record is So Darned Sad that even I will let long stretches go by without feeling compelled to listen to it. Elvis Perkins in Dearland -- it's the name of the band and the name of the album -- is a far more approachable creature, though still amply infused with mortality.  It has been compared elsewhere to the "second line" in a New Orleans jazz funeral, the raucous strut that ensues upon leaving, but not forgetting, the graveyard.  It has its own attendant spirits: one senses the shade of Roy Orbison or Buddy Holly was smiling quietly in the next room as it was recorded.

• Elvis Perkins in Dearland - Shampoo [MP3]

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 3. Antony and the Johnsons – The Crying Light

There is no middle ground when it comes to Antony Hegarty.  Some are put off by his richly florid singing style, some by his unapologetic fluidity of gender, and the list goes on.  Those who like his music like it immensely, and I am one of those.  The Crying Light is more a series of art songs than a conventional "pop" record, an impression enhanced by the orchestral arrangements contributed by, yes, Nico Muhly.  You can't really dance to it, but it certainly holds your attention.

• Antony and the Johnsons - Epilepsy Is Dancing [MP3]

Below, not from the album itself but from a more recent single release, Antony has his way with Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love."  This is as good a way as any to learn whether Antony and the Johnsons are your cup of tea.

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4. Doveman – The Conformist  

I suppose the singing of Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, is another acquired taste, since he seems always to be straining away at the whispery top of his range.  Otherwise, the songs on The Conformist are as approachable as Antony's are difficult.  The avant-garde excursions of With My Left Hand I Raise the Dead (#1 on that 2007 list) have been foregone in favor of straightforward, dreamy and slightly sad songs, mostly about love.  Nico Muhly is again involved, alongside the likes of Norah Jones, the Swell Season, and most of the members of The National.  Deeply comfortable, lived-in music, perfect for staring into the middle distance at the rain outside the window, scotch in hand.

• Doveman - Angel's Share [MP3]

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 5. Elvis Costello – Secret, Profane and Sugarcane  

The Other Elvis on this list.  Costello goes wandering in the company of T-Bone Burnett in the fields of Americana and returns with his strongest record of recent years.  Guilt and revenge meet southern Gothic 'round the back from P.T. Barnum's Museum.  Hotcha!  I don't think it's true, though, what he says about the girls in Ypsilanti.

~~~

6. Mark Eitzel - Klamath

Mark Eitzel is best known as frontman of American Music Club, but I have never been a particular follower of that band.  My enthusiasm for Eitzel derives from his 1996 solo collection, 60 Watt Silver Lining, which begins with a classic miserable (I mean unhappy, not talentless) reading of Carol King's "No Easy Way Down" and includes one of my favorite song titles ever: "Some Bartenders Have the Gift of Pardon."  Klamath was recorded somewhere in the forests of northern California or southern Oregon, near the titular river, and offers more of the beauty, booze and regret that are Eitzel's trademark.  It apparently received an actual release in Europe, but is available in this country only by way of direct order from the artist. There are many worse ways to spend twelve bucks.

• Mark Eitzel - There's Someone Waiting [MP3]

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7. Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble – In C Remixed  

Pingpingpingpingpingpingpingpingpingpingping....

It's Terry Riley's In C, performed by the estimable GVSUNME of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and then turned over to an array of third parties to be broken down, squashed, squished, scrambled, repurposed, deconstructed, marinated, basted and broiled into some other transformogrified sort of a thing.  The "straight" performance is one of the shortest and most concentrated I've encountered, coming in at a brisk 20 minutes when 35 to 40 is more typical.  The remixes are all over the map, demonstrating both the breadth and variety of the entire concept of "remixing" and the remarkable resilience of Riley's little piece.  Minimalism you can (sometimes) dance to.

• GVSUNME - In C - Semi-Detached (Jack Dangers remix) [MP3]

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8. John Vanderslice – Romanian Names  

This might have made a higher position on my list, but for being the followup to what I think are two of the best albums of the past ten years, Vanderslice's Pixel Revolt and Emerald City, and is just a shade less strong than either of them.  Where those records are a sort of zeitgeist-in-a-bottle distillation of life in these United States post-9/11 and mid-Iraq War, Romanian Names is "just" a very fine album of story/character songs. It is still more compelling than 90+ percent of what's out there.  This is the best-produced record of Vanderslice's career (Scott Solter again joins him at the board) and the sound and arrangements could not be better. The close-mic'd strings on the closer, 'Hard Times,' just slay me.

• John Vanderslice - Too Much Time [MP3]

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9. Richard Swift – The Atlantic Ocean  

Richard Swift is the new Harry Nilsson, though he has not achieved anything like Nilsson's (short lived) success.  Popcraft of a high order, spiced with humor and a cockeyed skepticism of all things.

None of the "Richard Swifts" in this video is actually Richard Swift.  Nor, I believe, are any of them male.  "Lady Luck" is a soulful lady indeed.

• Richard Swift - Lady Luck {MP3}

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10. A.C. Newman – Get Guilty  

Another case of preferring the group leader to the group: The New Pornographers are fine, but Carl Newman's two solo albums, of which this is the second, are finer.  Brighty, shiny, poppy, with poison in it.

• A.C. Newman - Submarines Of Stockholm [MP3]

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11. Ida Maria – Fortress Round My Heart  

A blast, in every sense.  Redolent of that exciting moment ca. 1978 when Punk collided with New Wave and the result was sharp, sharp, sharp. Even the two slow songs sizzle.  Ferocious.

Ida Maria - I Like You So Much Better When You`re Naked

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 12. LA Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen – Arvo Pärt, Symphony No. 4 "Los Angeles"  

Esa-Pekka Salonen's final year as music director and chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic included many notable concerts, of which this is one: the world premiere of Arvo Pärt's Symphony No. 4, his first return to the symphonic form since 1971.  The performance is only available currently as a download from Deutsche Gramophon by way of iTunes; I do not know if it will ever see physical release.

The Symphony is pure late period Pärt, the large string orchestra planting chord after chord as if each is the only one that will ever matter, with occasional interjections from the percussion section.  Heavy, but not lumbering, and deeply serious in going about its business.  A beautiful piece of work.

I have no sample to offer, so instead here is Björk, almost inarticulate with rapture, interviewing Pärt for the BBC in 1997.  Watch and learn what Pärt's music has in common with, of all things, Pinocchio: 

~~~

 13. Gong – 2032 

I confess: this is just silly and I don't care.  A new album by the surviving core -- Daevid Allen, Steve Hillage and Gilli Smyth in particular -- of the early 70's lineup of Gong.  A bit more funk in the mix than in the classic era, but still a lot of hippy trippy peacenlovin' nonsense, tricked out with plenty of sustain and reverb, Eastern drones and sitars, squonking sax, moaning soliloquies by the Good Witch Shakti Yoni, and a return of the entire Planet Gong mythos: pothead pixies, Zero the Hero, flying teapots and the lot.  I cannot begin to account for the extent to which this ridiculous record makes me grin.  Hee hee.

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 14. RAM On L.A. 

Available only as a free download at the link above, this project of the Aquarium Drunkard blog is simplicity itself: gather a collection of working Los Angeles bands and have them cover Paul McCartney's beloved Ram, track by track.  As with any compilation, not everything works as well as it might, but the overall caliber of these covers is high and several can stand beside their originals with no embarrassment on the part of either.  A delight, and the price is right.

• Earlimart - Too Many People [MP3]

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15. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society – Infernal Machines  

I don't know what makes a "steampunk big band" steampunk, but I do know that Darcy James Argue has absorbed most every lesson there is to absorb from the past fifty years on how to make serious large ensemble jazz.  Sharp, smart contemporary jazz composer meets sharp, smart contemporary jazz players.  Excellent, and swinging, music ensues.

Here, a live performance of "Transit."

~~~

Finally, those whom we Honor with a Mention:

16. Bob Dylan – Together Through Life  

17. Nadia Sirota (viola) – First Things First 
[includes substantial Nico Muhly content]

18. Madness - The Liberty of Norton Folgate

19. John Doe & the Sadies - Country Club

20. Julianna Barwick - Florine EP

Thus endeth the year 2009.

~~~

YuleTube 2009

I am no mystic myself, but I am partial to mysticism and especially partial to the strange visions that flow out of the medieval Church and in to such places as the Arthurian legends and, ultimately, wily old Dante.  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the best-known Christmas-related examples, establishing the always popular holiday tradition of lopping one another's heads off.  Another example is the "Corpus Christi Carol," with its mysterious imagery of the lavish hall in which a knight lies bleeding from a wound that never heals, a relation perhaps of the Fisher King, or Wagner's Amfortas, in Parsifal.

The text of the Carol comes down to us via a manuscript from the early 16th century, but it is obviously much older than that.  It is best known today, and became associated with Christmas, in a setting by Benjamin Britten.  Britten first incorporated the Carol in to the fifth part of his early (1933) set of choral variations, A Boy Was Born.  In 1961, he returned to it, separating it out and arranging it for solo voice and piano.  That version, rearranged with guitar taking over the piano part, featured prominently on the late Jeff Buckley's reputation-making Grace album.  

Here, Jeff Buckley's recording accompanies a performance by members of Ballet Austin:

While I'm on the subject of 16th century unearthings of medieval Christmas tunes, here is the only one I know ever to crack the UK pop charts: "Gaudete," recorded in 1973 by the great electric folk group, Steeleye Span.  The version below is more recent, from the band's 2004 35th anniversary tour.  The singers here include only two of the members from 1973, most importantly Maddy Prior, still in excellent voice.  

Finally, a non-medieval, wordless Christmas tune, and a reminder that, notwithstanding the churlish carping of Garrison Keillor, Christmas music would not be the same without the manifold contributions of Jewish singers and composers.  This is a repeat from prior years, but one of my personal favorites: Arnold Schoenberg's 1921 Weihnachtsmusik (Christmas Music).

Wishing you (it sez here) 

Ein frohes und besinnliches Weihnachtsfest!
[A Merry and Reflective/Thoughtful Christmas!]

~~~

Photo: Tomb effigy of Jan Kamieniecki, voivode of Podolia, via Wikimedia Commons.

~~~

"Oh My, It's Fruitcake Weather!"

The Hometapes label of Portland, OR, has been posting a series of Christmas-related tracks from their artists, under the nom saisonelle "The Eight Days of Hometapes."  

All Tiny Creatures, which centers on Collections of Colonies of Bees/Volcano Choir multi-instrumentalist Thomas Wincek, offers up "Kites," more a sound environment than a song per se, built around an extended excerpt of Truman Capote, supra, reading his story, "A Christmas Memory".  Rather nifty and sure to raise eyebrows if you slip it on to the digital Victrola at your next holiday soiree.

• All Tiny Creatures - Kites [MP3 link]

I also recommend the Danes of Slaraffenland (sometime collaborators with the wonderful Efterklang) and their twitchy-thumpy revision of "The Little Drummer Boy," a song of which I would otherwise be tired and sick but as to this version am not.  In contrast to which . . .  

Parumpumpumpum boom ching.

~~~

2009 Song of the Year 2009 for the Year 2009: "She Made Light of the Dark As I Laid Her Low"

I did not get a "this is the music I really liked this year" post up in 2008, but I am at work on such a post for 2009.  While that post percolates through the mental bureaucracy and spiritual inertia that is my blogging praxis these days -- to emerge, I hope, before the year expires -- I will take this occasion to leap ahead, to look back, to tip my hand, and to doff my hat to the defining song on my clear choice for Favorite Album of 2009.

The album is Sweet Billy Pilgrim's Twice Born Men and the song is "Kalypso."  I am repeating myself a bit here, having already enthused at length over this selfsame song this past July.  But what care I for repetition, when such a fine song's at stake?

Since I last thrust it upon my readers, "Kalpypso" has acquired a second official video interpretation, directed by Phil Hopkins:

I remain more partial to this earlier (longer/more complete) version, from Yuka Fujii:

I take it as a sign of how really splendid this album is that the song I like least out of the lot -- "Longshore Drift" -- is still a thrilling bit of music, largely redeemed by the way it veers off in to ArvoPärtland at the 3 minute mark. Its best qualities are nicely captured in this semi-official video version from Frances Main:

Now back to work on that Favorites of the Year post.  Stay tuned.

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Metal from the Shtetl: "You Want Fries With That Big Maccabee?"

I have been able to say, truthfully, for most of my life that nearly all of my best friends are Jewish.  Thus it is with sincerity and enthusiasm that I wish to all a Happy Hanukkah in advance of that festival's commencement at sunset.

For the occasion, some choice seasonal musical oddities.

The Jewish contribution to heavy metal music is underappreciated, but crucial.  The very term "heavy metal" is generally reputed to have been first applied as a musical descriptor by Sandy Pearlman, writing in Crawdaddy magazine (about The Byrds, oddly enough).  Pearlman went on to groom and oversee the career of the seminal (largely Jewish) metal band, Blue Öyster Cult.  

For this year's Hanukkah season, New York's Gods of Fire offer Hanukkah Gone Metal, which is exactly that: wild-eyed metal craziness with a Hanukkah theme.  What can it hurt?  It's even endorsed, more or less, by the Jerusalem Post.  Here, a video presentation of the title tune:  
 

More at Brooklyn Vegan.

Meanwhile, Boston's dj BC has compiled a selection of Menorah Mashups,"Crazy Chanukah Mixes and Mashes", including this intermixturization, by FAROFF, of House of Pain's "Jump Around' with a slew of klezmer:

My own particular favorite, however, is this tasty stew of Gwen Stefani and Hava Nagilah:

• dj BC - Challahback Girl [MP3 link]

By way of a counterweight to all this frivolous levity (or Levite frivolity?) one might turn to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who complains of "the Adam Sandlerization of Judaism in America" in the course of narrating the amazing true story of how he brought about the creation of a new and entirely serious Hanukkah song at the hand of that noted Jewish Mormon songsmith, United States Senator Orrin Hatch (R - Utah). 

Sing it, gang!

Goldberg makes the point that embracing Judah Maccabee, as the Senator has done, as a symbol of universal freedom of belief fudges the historical record just a smidge:

But, for such a pivotal figure, Judah Maccabee is one of the more misunderstood leaders in Jewish history.  He was not, for one thing, a paragon of tolerance.  One of contradictions of Hanukkah--an unexplored contradiction in our culture's anodyne understanding of the holiday--is that the Maccabee brothers were fighting not for the principle of religious freedom but only for their own particular religion's freedom. Their understanding of liberty did not extend even--or especially--to the Hellenized Jews of Israel's coastal plains. The Maccabees were rough Jews from the hill country of Judea.  They would be amused, if they were capable of amusement, to learn that their revolt would one day be remembered as a struggle for a universal civil right.

But what is the good of an historical figure, after all, if he or she cannot be remade in our own image?  

So light the lights, spin the dreidel, wake in the night wracked with gelt, and all in all have a Happy Hanukkah if you're having any Hanukkah at all.

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Tamerlano: You're Bajazet, Bajazet All the Way

As USC and UCLA had at one another in the Coliseum on Saturday afternoon, a different sort of rivalry played itself out in front of a full house in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles Opera's mounting of Handel's Tamerlano.  The central battle of wills in this case is between the conqueror Tamerlane (or Tamburlaine or Timur Lenk or Timur the Lame or what have you) and the conquered emperor of the Turks, Bajazet (or Bayazid or what have you).  

Historically, Tamerlane defeated and captured Bajazet at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, and their post-conquest confrontations have supplied plenty of grist to the dramatic mill.  Christopher Marlowe, for example, has the triumphant Tamburlaine keep Bajazet in a cage, rolling him out for the entertainment of guests.  Bajazet takes it poorly, cursing his enemy at every opportunity.  Tamburlaine's seemingly unstoppable accumulation of additions to his empire eventually drives Bajazet to such fits of rage and despair that he literally knocks his own brains out on the bars of his cage.

Before Handel took it up, Vivaldi composed an opera on the subject, and both Vivaldi's and Handel's plots, in proper Italian opera fashion, turn on an elaborate love triangle in which Tamerlane, already planning marriage to Irene, Princess of Trebizond, decides he would rather marry Bajazet's daughter Asteria, who is in love with the Greek prince Andronico, who is allied with Tamerlane and tasked by him with persuading Asteria to the marriage.  Bajazet hovers miserably throughout, raging in his defeat and horrified that his daughter might be conjoined with his archenemy.  It ends badly for him.

 
The role of Bajazet in Handel's opera is considered one of the first important dramatic tenor roles, and the rationale for the current production is Placido Domingo's decision to add the part to his repertoire. (The pre-performance lecturer claimed this bring Domingo's total role count to 126, though I am not sure whether that includes his recent first foray in to the baritone realm as Verdi's Simon Boccanegra.)  On the musical side, we can be pleased that Domingo has been indulged: Tamerlano turns out to be a very good bit of Baroque opera and in Los Angeles it was very well played (under the direction of William Lacey) and very well sung. 

I have not seen all that much of Domingo, and most of that has been his runs at Wagner: Parsifal and, most recently, Siegmund in Die Walküre.  He remains a compelling figure on stage, and a rather better actor in this part than in some others.  In his hands, Bajazet's Act 3 suicide -- after which Tamerlano takes the last minute or so of the opera to decide that he has changed his mind and everyone else gets to live -- is a terrifically effective scene.  The other roles in this production are in good hands, particularly Patricia Bardon in the trouser role of Andronico and Jennifer Holloway in the too-small part of Irene.

However. . . .

The production itself is a bit dunderheaded.  As the photos show, most of the cast is in modern dress, and the action takes place in a generic police-state atmosphere.  Ho hum, how very contemporary.  Only Bajazet sports princely raiment, and in context it makes him appear to be just another crazy old man wandering about the Presidential Palace in his favorite bathrobe.  

The role of Tamerlano suffers most in context.  Written for a castrato, and here sung splendidly by countertenor Bejun Mehta, Tamerlano already has to overcome the oddity, to contemporary ears, of a powerful male character sounding like a mezzo soprano.  Mehta is further hampered by being asked to portray Tamerlano as a sort of decadently flighty-flippant sociopath.  He ends up, through no fault of his own, as a sort of Bond villain on helium, or Dr. Evil with perfect pitch.

This year's other local Baroque-in-modern-dress production -- Long Beach Opera's run at Vivaldi's Motezuma -- was wildly ridiculous, but it had the courage of its wild ridiculousness and, to my mind, succeeded overall because of that choice.  Tamerlano is almost as wildly ridiculous, in fits and starts, but intends at all times to be taken seriously.  It succeeds despite itself, on the strength of the performances on stage and in the pit, but for pure enjoyment Motezuma gets the nod from me. 

One last performance of Tamerlano remains, on Tuesday, December 1. 

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Incidentally, by way of meaningless coincidence: the last street I lived on in West Bloomfield, Michigan, before my family moved to California in the mid-1970's was . . . Tamerlane Drive.

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Photos: Robert Millard, courtesy Los Angeles Opera.

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