Adam Tendler's Blog, page 28

nathan hall’s tame your man, movt IXthis friday |...

A video posted by Adam Tendler (@adamtendler) on Jan 5, 2016 at 11:08am PST

nathan hall’s tame your man, movt IX

this friday | baltimore | new music gathering (at Third Street Music School Settlement)

tame your man, by nathan hall new music gathering baltimore,...

tame your man, by nathan hall

new music gathering

baltimore, peabody conservatory

this friday 1/8/16, 5:15

bit.ly/tameyourmanbaltimore

my high school truck license plate, with G. Schirmer slogan...

my high school truck license plate, with G. Schirmer slogan #laborumdulcelenimen

A Little Blog for George Crumb at Christmas, A.D. 2015

When I mention to people that, after years of staring at the score, I’ve finally gone through with learning George Crumb’s “Little Suite for Christmas A.D. 1979” they usually respond with one word—okay, two: “Aw, cute!” 

Before the physically imposing (and surprisingly so) score arrived at my home those couple years ago, I too had framed it as a kind of quaint thing; fifteen minutes, brief movements, not amplified, and requiring the pianist to spend relatively little time ‘under the hood’ creating effects. 

It took until this season and deciding to put on a George Crumb Christmas concert for me to actually learn the piece. In the process, I’ve found that while it’s a work of great restraint, the music is hardly… well, cute.

Not to me, at least. I keep trying to figure out these sounds. What do they remind me of? Where do they take me? Where can they take my listener? To a church? No. To the desert? Yes. Is it daytime? No. Is it night? Yes. Definitely yes.  

The Little Suite is a timeless, trembling music—a kaleidoscope of wonder and fear. The innocence of a child, guiltless in his (His?) own miraculous birth, counterbalanced by what we know will follow: torture, sacrifice, centuries of bloodshed committed in his (His?) name. I hear this in the music.

And I think Crumb saw it in the nativity frescoes by Giotto in Padua that inspired the work. 

About Giotto’s frescoes, Katia Amore writes: “Giotto did something entirely new: his figures are not stylized or elongated, they are solidly three-dimensional, have faces and gestures that are based on close observation, and are clothed not in swirling formalized drapery, but in garments that hang naturally and have form and weight…characters face inwards, with their backs towards the observer… [The] Virgin…casts a long, sad look at the Infant. We may suppose that with her power of prescience, she is gazing into the future to the time when she must give Him up to fate. Giotto views the Nativity in an entirely new light - that of intense human drama.” (Amore, Katia. “Revolutionary Giotto: The Nativity Scene Inside Padua’s Scrovegni Chapel.” Italy Magazine, December 2014)

So also does Crumb humanize a story typically told in fairy-tale terms. The work captures the magic and mystery of that one epochal night, but also its pathos.

In the final movement, “Carol of the Bells,” the music’s refrain comes in an almost indistinguishable chord played in the lowest register of the piano, obscured furthermore by a simultaneous glissando on the lowest strings. A kind of blob, it’s one of the most ominous sounds in the whole work. This, to me, is Crumb’s vision forward. The nativity narrative has ended. Now we glimpse its legacy. 

A Very George Crumb Christmas | DiMenna Center for Classical Music, NYC | Sunday December 20th, 4:31pm | bit.ly/crumbchristmas

fashion

that time in October when I wrote to a celebrated new music venue to ask how, concretely and beyond the platitudes, they intend to follow through with the their mission of making space and performance reflective of and accessible to its community. (looks at watch)

grief

i think of myself as a proud liberal, but i'll tell you, i want nothing to do with a group of people who find unique angles in times of grief to police, shame and outsmart others. nothing. and frankly i think social media will lead to the end of any serious liberal movement if the kind of digital cannibalism i've seen over the last couple of days continues. embarrassing.

Really psyched to discover that this recording has shown up on...

Really psyched to discover that this recording has shown up on Spotify and all the other internets! One of the coolest pieces you’ve never heard of, Edward T. Cone’s still-unpublished 21 Little Preludes (some were once performed by Charles Rosen), and to date one of the gnarliest, chopsiest and personality-popping pieces I’ve dug my fingers into.

epiphany

the more i hear kids perform and think, “wow, i played that piece, too!” the more i realize that the narrative i created about my own early days as a student and the comprehensiveness of my first teacher, a narrative no doubt shaped by my future teachers, is actually completely fucked.

do you do

in philadelphia, a pianist from curtis asked me what i do. given that this happened at rehearsal for a concert i’d play the next day, i didn’t really know how to answer. “well, this,” i said, motioning around. 

a little later, the same pianist pointed to another artist who would play in the concert, a highly recognized leader in the field, and asked, “so what’s he do?” even more puzzled, i again answered, “this. this is what he does.” 

i have a question, too. what are they teaching pianists at curtis?

shit / piss

Gay New Yorkers and allies, I urge you to write a simple note to 311 about the new AIDS Memorial park at 12th/7th, which I visited today only to discover that its tiny central lawn (where people sit on the grass) has been appropriated by West Village residents almost exclusively as a pet relief area. Like seriously, I watched as countless folks obliviously led dogs there to pee and poo inches away from people’s heads. It’s unreal and totally disgusting, both hygienically and symbolically. While there are a number of rules in the park policing the activities of homeless people and potential graffiti artists, not a word is directed anywhere to pet-owners.

Here’s the link:

I can’t help it if West Village residents see nothing wrong with using a park honoring casualties of AIDS as a doggie bathroom, but the city and park share a responsibility to curb what is at its core unsanitary and offensive behavior. ‘Unsanitary’ because people sit, eat and drink on that tiny lawn. 'Offensive’ because I represent a community decimated by AIDS at a time when the city and country largely looked away, and while these days a luxury residence sits directly on top of that decimation’s epicenter across the street, and that residence thinks it’s enough to sponsor a small memorial park as a kind of olive branch, it’s offensive that no one thought it might be a good idea to put up ONE sign discouraging people from bringing their dogs there to evacuate their bladders and bowels. Talk about adding insult to injury. And some olive branch.