Alex Ross's Blog, page 187

Brooklyn Phil

I have a column on the "new" Brooklyn Philharmonic in this week's issue of The New Yorker (subscribers only).

Make Music 2012 photojournal

Amy Garapic prepares to ring the closing bell.

At midday on June 21, I posted a report from the Vexations marathon on Wall Street — an eighteen-hour vibraphone rendition of that short Satie piano piece which, if one takes the composer's elusive note at face value, is to be played 840 times in a row. Here are a few more pictures, videos, anecdotes, and thoughts from this year's Make Music New York celebration, which seems to have been an especially successful edition, although gratuitously hot weather may have affected daytime attendance. An overview of the Vexations scene in the morning, with the vibes at bottom center:

The performance aroused curiosity from some passersby, although many walked by without seeming to notice. One could draw dire conclusions from such inattention, in the manner of that 2007 Washington Post article finding significance in the fact that commuters exiting the L'Enfant Plaza subway stop one morning — on their way to jobs at the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA, Homeland Security, and other neighboring government buildings — failed to dawdle around listening to Joshua Bell play Bach. But I doubt that Satie, progenitor of musique d'ameublement and grandfather of ambient music, would have minded. In any case, the performers did have all manner of curious encounters with the public over the course of the day; one gentleman, I was told, recognized the piece and joked that he had performed it himself and messed up on the 840th Vexation. (He had a child at Oberlin.)

Here, a woman asks Matt Evans what he is doing, then realizes that he needs to concentrate:

She had with her a very cool baby:

The best-dressed of the dozens of tour groups that trooped by:

The cutest:

As a Vexations veteran, I found the vibraphone version of the piece somehow gentler and more hypnotic than the usual piano version, which, over extended stretches, can jangle the nerves, especially when restless pianists begin to introduce variations. (During the 1993 Roulette rendition, Kirk Nurock made the piece sound like Stockhausen.) There was also something compelling about the choice of location: John Cage, who presented the first "full" Vexations in 1963, would probably have enjoyed the idea of his avant-garde spectacle taking place beneath the pompous façade of the New York Stock Exchange. Although, as Jim Oestreich noted in the Times, the instigators disclaimed any political agenda, I couldn't help pondering the juxtaposition, and wondering whether the really pointless, absurd, demented behavior was happening in the foreground or in the background.

At 5PM I went to Central Park Lake for Alvin Curran's Maritime Rites, with members of the West Point Band and the Montclair State University Symphonic Band performing from rowboats. Here's my video of a portion of the piece, with a notable tuba solo by one of the West Point players (begins at 1:38, as the gondola surreally glides by):

And here's video of the ending, with "Shall We Gather at the River?" Another observer has the view from the lake. Vivien Schweitzer has a fuller report in the Times.

I then headed down to Times Square to check out a choral event under the direction of Kent Tritle, with a volunteer chorus assembled via Internet invitation. I took shaky video of the rehearsal of Philip Glass's The New Rule (my camera conked out in the middle). Steve Smith was there for the Times; John Schaefer represented Soundcheck.

After recharging my batteries and rehydrating — the temperature was in the mid- and upper nineties — I headed back to Wall Street for the end of Vexations. It got rather eerie in the final hour, but a handful of devotees stuck with the performers to the end. (There was, alas, no Karl Schenzer who sat through the entire thing.) With Satie as the soundtrack of the night, the movements of scattered pedestrians took on an air of ineffable sadness, as if downtown Manhattan were the set of a particularly slow-moving indie film.

Here, Amy Garapic, the organizer of the marathon, plays the 840th, and last, iteration, at a glacial tempo that took us to the border of unreality:

On most nights, it would be both impractical and inappropriate for a critic to shake hands with each of the performers afterward, but I made an exception in this case. Congrats to the Vexations team — Amy, Matt, Carson Moody, Sean Statser, Ayano Kataoka, Mike Truesdell, and, as chief counter, Rebecca Lentjes — for pulling off a remarkable feat.

"I saw you guys setting up this morning," a very tired-looking man with a briefcase said, just as it ended. He, too, had been at work for eighteen hours. Vexations, indeed.

Previously: Make Music snapshots, Symphony of the City.

Make Music: midday report

I spent three strangely soothing hours this morning in the company of the Vexations chapter of Make Music NY, reading a little Hermann Hesse on the side. (Vexations, for anyone who doesn't know, is the Satie piece that, in the tradition established by John Cage, is played 840 times in eighteen-hour sessions. I covered such a marathon for the New York Times in 1993.) This Vexations is emanating from a single vibraphone on the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, right outside the New York Stock Exchange. In the video above, Matt Evans mans the vibes while Sean Statser keeps track of the repetitions by way of old-school technology. Here, Sean plays while Carson Moody counts. Amy Garapic, who organized the event, has handily finessed various obstacles: the permits are in place, the police are amenable, and, on this very hot day, a Black & Decker mobile AC unit is providing relief. Unfortunately, there were several last-minute cancellations, leaving only six performers to cover the eighteen-hour stretch. I am sure that beverages and snacks would be gratefully received. Hint to visitors: there's a cooling downdraft on the steps to the right of the player.

Vexations will continue until midnight; sixteen other marathons are proceeding around the world, as you can see at Vexations Central. (Unfortunately, annoying ads intrude every time you switch from one stream to another.) Make Music NY will get very dense in the late afternoon and early evening: there's Circuit Bending and Humming in Dumbo (6pm-9pm), Alvin Curran's Maritime Rites (Central Park Lake, 5pm), Stockhausen's Musik im Bauch (also Central Park, 7pm), a Philip Glass singalong in Times Square (6:30pm; download the score if you want to join in), Prokofiev's solo Sonata in the many-violin version (Cornelia Street), Frederic Rzewski's Les Moutons de Panurge (Soho), and Wendy Mae Chambers's KUN for sixty-four toy pianos (South Street Seaport, 4:30-8pm), among hundreds of events in dozens of genres.

Make Music forecast

The good news is that there seems to be no chance of rain in New York tomorrow, as Make Music NY takes hold of the city. The bad news is that it's going to be very hot. You might want to get your Vexations in early or late. The Chicago forecast anticipates a high of 80 and a thunderstorm in the morning. In Phoenix AZ, where it will be 110, Vexations is safely indoors.

The problem with Free Culture

"Why do we value the network and hardware that deliver music but not the music itself?"

At the grave of Ligeti

Picture by Will Robin.

Movie palace

Objet

Dune

Miscellany: Boulez taxi, etc.

Travels in pursuit of Gayby — I report from Provincetown, Mass. — will make me miss several notable NYC events in coming days. For one, there's the twenty-fifth edition of the Bang on a Can Marathon, on Sunday, kicking off the River to River Festival. The lineup is formidable, culminating in Talujon's rendition of Gérard Grisey's Le Noir de l'étoile. For the following night, So Percussion has announced a Night of Awesome(ness) at LPR. As the founding theoretician of Awesome Music I can only applaud this development. And the Chelsea Music Festival is under way, with a Debussy-Cage emphasis. In a lovely post on the New Yorker website about the Mendelssohn Octet, Russell Platt mentions that that piece is being done in Chelsea on Wednesday, with the soulful young violinist Augustin Hadelich in the lead.... Missy Mazzoli has been announced as the second composer-in-residence at the Opera Company of Philadelphia, joining Lembit Beecher. Mimi Stillman, at NewMusicBox, recounts the company's recent surge. A revised version of Nico Muhly's Dark Sisters is playing there now.... The tenor Nicholas Phan is raising funds for a second album of Britten songs. The first was very fine.... Christian Carey reviews Soundings for a New Piano by the late Ann Southam.... The New York Philharmonic is gearing up for its Park Avenue Armory appearances with a neat series of preview videos. Here, Kyle Zerna and Liang Wang play the opening of Boulez's Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna while riding in a cab. And this video, with the assistance of advanced technology, takes us inside the fevered brain of Alan Gilbert.