Radiohead is one of those bands, man.

Radiohead is one of those bands that has a huge following of people who analyze everything they do and try to make a huge sweeping idea out of it all. And, from my experience, Radiohead is also one of those bands that is seen as “legit” in the concert music community. That’s interesting in itself, but it’s true that the music they produce is really quite great. I’m always impressed at how much I can discover when listening back through OK Computer or Kid A. And their latest record, The King of Limbs, has been a recent favorite of mine. Dear listener, if you aren’t a hip college student like I am, check out them Radioheads. It’s great stuff, from Oddslot Creep, to House of Cards.

But this is all beating around the bush to what I really want to talk about. I want to talk about Jonny Greenwood.

Greenwood is the lead guitarist/keyboardist/everything player for Radiohead. He is one of the big creative forces in the band, and as wikipedia informs me, was named #48 in Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” That’s pretty high praise, there. He also does a variety of work alone. Notably, he was the composer for the soundtrack of There Will Be Blood.

So this guy is mad talented. But his latest solo record makes my heart explode with pride, as a “classical” composer, myself. He just released a solo record in collaboration with (wait for it…) Krzysztof Penderecki.

This is a big deal guys. Penderecki is a Polish composer, widely known for his piece, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. The piece pushes the limit of what music is, what sounds a string orchestra can make, and also haunts my nightmares to this very day. But don’t take it from me, listen to it below, and be afraid.

(Composer nerd note: This piece is a great instance of what goes into a title. This piece was originally titled after the length of the piece itself-8’37”. Later, Penderecki changed the title to the very programmatic and evocative, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. Is the piece less valid because Penderecki changed the name later? Is it still a lament for the victims of that horrible attack? How much does a title mean?!)

So that is a scary piece of music. An absolutely incredible piece of music, but by no means tame. And Jonny Greenwood released an album with this piece on it! The rest of the CD is another piece by Penderecki (called Polymorphia) and two original compositions (in a similar vein to the Penderecki!) by Greenwood, called Popcorn Superhet Receiver and 48 Responses to Polymorphia. And Greenwood’s pieces actually stand pretty well up to the Penderecki! That’s a pretty big deal, considering that Threnody is considered a staple of 20th Century Avant Garde Repertoire (too many qualifiers, there).

Take a listen to Popcorn Superhet Receiver….

(Also of note: Greenwood borrowed a bit from this piece in his score to There Will Be Blood. Interesting. Also might have cost him an Academy Award. )

I love this, though. The rock music industry and polish avant garde are not as far apart as one would think. In fact, the raw unpolished sound that Greenwood can get from his guitar in Radiohead isn’t too far away from the glissandos and rawness of this collection of strings. Music is music, regardless of what makes it up. And Greenwood is a shining example of that.

I encourage you all to buy the album. Because it’s really quite incredible and I doubt you have anything like it in your iTunes right now.

Bear Parade round two.

A poetry collection by Ellen Kennedy titled:

yesterday i was talking to myself and i told myself that i was going to write a book and give it to you so i put paper in my bag and put a pen in my bag and rode my bike to the river bank and then sat on the ground and thought ‘i will never write a book’ and watched ducks swim away from me

The title of her poetry collection is very long but it only takes ~5 min. to read the whole collection itself.

Everything on bearparade seems to have a sort of minimalist style.

Ellen Kennedy’s particular brand of bearparadian minimalism is something like ‘lots of declarative sentences and parallelism and some repetition.’ Or: ‘Anaphora‘ + a little ‘polysyndeton,’ + a lot of understatement + deadpan tone.

I think everything on bearparade employs a kind of minimalism because being online shortens your attention span automatically. Minimalist stuff ‘works’ online. Dense stuff doesn’t–you click away from it. Literary stuff is notoriously dense and boring, so bears who parade seem to try to not be dense and boring by using minimalism.

(I think I’m going to start trying to write shorter / more minimalist blog posts. Lots of people’s blog posts here on arts, ink seem ‘hella dense,’ and I’m skeptical people actually, like, read them, beginning to end.)

(For some reason I feel like writing < 600 words is not ‘legit,’ though, for an obliquely academic blog.)

Supposedly Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”

But so Ellen Kennedy. Her internet poetry collection is good. It’s relateable and relevant if you’re ~20 and are an internet user, which you most likely are. Like, you’ve probably felt ambitionless and bored like this poem:

i have no ambitions

i don’t want to hate the president i don’t want to go to harvard i don’t want to win the pulitzer prize i just want to sit in my bathtub and think about relationships i will never have with people i will never meet and then go lay in my bed with a magnifying glass and count all the stiches in my sheets until i fall asleep and wake up to repeat again.

There’s something about spending a lot of time online that makes me feel ‘i have no ambitions’-y. There’s something about reading a poem online that’s about having no ambitions and which takes very little ambition to read because it’s minimalist and short that makes me feel very…something.

In another poem titled ‘i want to sleep,’ there’s this:

(…)i used schutzhund methods of training to teach the duck to attack on command. we went on a killing rampage that lasted three days. we killed many small children and received the nobel prize for our achievements.

the other day, as i was eating the leg of a small child like a popsicle, the duck turned to me with tears in its eyes and asked, ‘why do you make me kill things?’

Teaching ducks  to go on killing rampages via “schutzhund methods” seems very unserious and stupid. But then you’re hit with the teary eyed duck’s ‘why do you make me kill things?’ and you’re like, “wait…” And then your hit with i felt ashamed. i stared down at the ground and stood very still and very quietly.

Bears’ parading seems to have a sort of tears-of-a-clown quality to it. Like, ‘I’m full of funny non sequiturs and absurdisms, but I’m crying inside.’

And I thought these beautiful lines in the penultimate poem made the whole collection ‘worth it’:

‘i want to rub my face in my blueberries’

‘so do it’

‘okay’

i rubbed my face in my blueberries

i batted my eyelashes against your cheek and left blue streaks on your cheek

i thought about all the times i’ve almost been hit by a car for listening to loud music while walking and laughed.

I feel like if I could read this poetry collection on a computer in the fishbowl after a stressful exam or stressful text message from a girl, and it would make me feel calmer.

—
@barkmuckner

This year I have seen three one-man shows through UMS– The Infernal Comedy starring John Malkovich, Watt by the Gate Theatre of Dublin, and The Andersen Project this past weekend starring Yves Jacques.

When I saw my first one-man show, years ago, I was first amazed by the amount of work that one performer would have to do by themselves and the number of lines they would learn.  Invariably, at any of these shows, there is a group of people astounded by the number of lines they heard the performer speak.  That is just the surface level though.  When you begin to think of the way conventional theatre operates and the way a one-person show works, there are noticeable differences.

The first thing I think of is the interaction between characters is a central part of conventional theatre.  When there is a solitary figure onstage, they are either playing all the characters by themselves or interacting with people unseen by the audience.  Each of these three performances handled this construct differently: in The Infernal Comedy, Malkovich was actually onstage with two other women, opera singers, who acted as his victims.  Outside of his interaction with the women, the concept was that he was writing a novel and was addressing the audience as an author.  In Watt, Barry McGovern was telling the audience a story the whole time and when, in his story, he spoke to other characters, the characters were spots onstage.  In The Andersen Project, most interestingly, had Yves playing three different characters throughout the show, with a few cameo appearances as other characters.  When he spoke, he usually spoke toward the audience or to someone offstage, although he did have interactions with an invisible dog, represented by a leash and bell onstage.

The second thing I think about is how one actor will fill a space usually filled by many actors and intricate sets.  It is easy for an actor to be swallowed up by the space, but again these three shows took three vastly different approaches to fixing this problem.  The Infernal Comedy was performed at Hill Auditorium, so there was less space to occupy, and the performers shared the stage with the orchestra, who acted as their own sort of set.  In Watt, The Gate took a minimalist approach, and Mr. McGovern was just sort of framed by the set and called upon all of his power as an actor to fill the space.  The lighting highlighted some key moments and took us through his journey, but it was mostly a traditional one actor, one audience set up.  The Andersen Project, by contrast, used projections to suggest settings and fill out the space.  In seeing this piece, I realized I had never seen projections done extremely well.  That production changed my mind on projections entirely.  It made the one-man show a fully realized production.  I never felt like I was missing out because it was only one man, there was so much happening and it all contributed to the story in the way that more actors or a more elaborate set would usually.

Each show had a very different story, but I think The Andersen Project most successfully emobied the spirit of a one-man show.  There was something inherently lonely within each of Jacques’ characters.  And through his solitude onstage, the audience was both reminded of the loneliness of the 21st century world and distancing effect technology has had but also aware of themselves and their own experiences.  By doing such, I think Jacques showed us that we are not all one-man shows.

Some things are best viewed exactly as we see them, if only altered or in different contexts. Some things are presented to their advantage when viewed from very close up, revealing details invisible to the human eye. Other things are perfectly visible at an ordinary scale, but do not reveal comprehensive shapes and forms until they are looked upon from afar. As such, aerial photography is an excellent means with which to discover things hidden in plain sight. A portion of archaeological surveying, for instance, is done this way. Pull back far enough, and entire patterns begin to emerge. Lines and curves and networks, etched onto the landscape. It’s urban as well as rural, too: How are cities planned? How were the roads placed?

It does a funny thing, perspective. On one hand, the great distance between the viewer and the viewed pushes very thoroughly three-dimensional things flat, simplifying them into shapes and textures where not even shadows offer any hint of their height. On the other hand, there is an added dimension in the form of mountains and crevices and significant elevation differences, marked by light and shadow. The cloudscape, perhaps more significantly, overlays land and water below, thoroughly three-dimensional, projecting shadows of their own. And these things, reflectivity, luminosity, color— these depend on the nature of the material below, be it water or snow, forest or manmade sprawl, grassland or bare sand.

This photographer’s set of aerials demonstrates a familiarity with the subject in that his photographs are not just the bony spines of a mountain range in an otherwise flat brown desert, not just a strip of river cutting through a greenish patchwork of agricultural fields. River systems fan their delicate latticework over indeterminate washes of soccer bets of the day color, spines of textured cloud emerge from a hazy floor, and the earth itself is aged, weathered, puckered and scarred. Elephant-hide. If minerals stain the soil in only a particular swath, how would you know, but to view it from above? If the tops of mountains emerge from a smooth blanket of cloud, cut off from their bases, who would see?

This one is a particular favorite of mine. The patchwork squares of development stretch away into the background, hazy bluish squares of green and yellow and rust, but they come to an abrupt halt at a ragged border partway down the frame, dark and irregular before it falls away to nondescript brown desert. The juxtaposition is stark and arresting, the scale of the geography expansive.

I, for one, am always delighted when I’m able to secure a window seat (on any sort of public transportation, but mainly on flights).  If you have a choice of seating, consider:

1. the flight route, the direction you’re travelling, and how you’ll be approaching interesting landforms or cities
2. the time of day- where’s the sun? (how strong is the light? will there be strong glare?)

Even a drab sea of uniform clouds can be transformed with the correct application of light. Turn off the film for a moment, lay off the solitaire, and opt for the window instead.

Let’s talk a little about the death of classical music. Because nothing pushes my buttons more than to suggest that classical music is dead. It’s my humble opinion that “classical” music has just adapted a new name, place, and time. It’s just as relevant as Adele, and just as emotionally potent.

Now I use air quotes around the word “classical” because it’s such a misnomer. True Classical Music, with a capital C, refers to the music produced exclusively in the time period from about 1750-1820. It’s when people like Mozart and Haydn were active. Now, I love me a little Mozart as much as the next guy, but that music is old. It’s great, but it’s very, very old. We live in a modern day society, right? And there are still some orchestras around playing this “classical” music? So where are our Mozarts and Haydns? Where are the people producing music that speaks to us as a modern generation? And the answer…well it requires a little history lesson.

Near the beginning of the Twentieth Century, composers started to get a little ambitious. They were fed up with the old style and how music followed exact patterns, so they started to push the boundaries of music more and more. This meant a lot of things (levels of complexity in the music started to pick up, composers started doing some weird things) but suffice to say, listeners’ reactions were all across the charts. Some people cheered on this new music, others rioted at the premieres (See: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring). Music really started to push some buttons, go farther and father out, and the audience started to deplete a bit.

All the while, this crazy thing called “jazz” started popping up.

And by the 1950s, we’ve got jazz and folk music and r&b and full on rock and roll. All of these genres outside of classical music. We have the creation of what is now referred to as “”pop music.” Because of a lot of factors, audiences grew to like this music in much greater numbers than the “classical” composers of the time. This created a bit of tension between these two groups. And you can still feel that tension now. Fans of “classical” music are quick to point out that their music is much more intelligent and high-class. Fans of pop music criticize classical music as being lofty, boring, and much too stuck up.

Anyway, this is a huge oversimplification that sets the scene for where classical music went to. A bunch of young kids were raised on pop music AND classical music. They grew up loving the Beatles just as much as Beethoven. And they eventually went to school for music, but wanted to breech this barrier that separated the music they loved. A whole group of composers wanted to create music that wasn’t just “classical,” but was rather true to all the music that they enjoyed.

The answer to this in the 60s and 70s was a movement called minimalism. This music favored repetitive structures, a unifying process to create a piece, and mixed instrumentation (that is, whoever the composers could find to play their music). The sound owed a lot to rock music, african music, and eastern thought. The idea was that you could experience music in a very different time structure―something that hinted at a much more primal and basic human level. Repetition was a natural human sensation that could be exploited through music. A great example of this aesthetic is Steve Reich:

Or Phillip Glass:

Personally, I find a lot of beauty in this music. It’s incredibly simple, but really quite striking.

But how about people that are even younger than that? Members of the new generation? Well, let’s start with one of the most well-known groups, the Bang-on-a-Can All Stars. This is a New-York based group that pioneered the idea of a classical “band.” They have a set instrumentation and tour with new music being produced by composers and artists that want to collaborate. Here is a piece by a Bang-on-a-Can composer and professor of composition at The Yale School of Music, David Lang-

Notice the beat-based structure that sounds a lot closer to prog rock than it does Beethoven. And yet, David Lang is a classically trained composer, one that has studied all the greats. He is trying to write music that he wants to hear, regardless of what kind of genre it falls under.

Todd Reynolds is another name I’ll throw out as well. Reynolds is a composer and a violinist also out of New York. He writes in a way very similar to David Lang, which is to say he ignores boundaries of genre and just writes what he wants to hear.

It’s also worth noting the artists that aren’t considered to be composers in the classical tradition. This means people and groups like Sufjan Stevens, Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Bjork, and the Dirty Projectors. These folks all owe a lot to this weird classical tradition, and, I would argue, are some of the great composers of our time. Songs like The Age of Adz, by Sufjan Stevens are just great demonstrators of this.

Besides the obvious instrumentation that owes itself to the classical realm, Stevens’ whole aesthetic is informed by the shifting timbres, experimentation, and the violent energy that modern classical music has.

To mention these artists and not mention their backup groups would quite a travesty. These artists, like Sufjan, often enlist help from musicians who are also active in the classical community. See Colin Stetson or yMusic as great examples. Stetson has toured and recorded with Arcade Fire, Tom Waits, TV on the Radio, Yeasayer, and a whole host of other “non-classical” groups. But he also operates his own solo efforts, which are incredibly well thought out and simply amazing to listen to. They are certainly within an experimental classical tradition:

He uses his instrument (bass saxophone) to its full potential, exploiting it to generate all sorts of sounds that you wouldn’t think could come from a bass sax. This is a huge scores aspect of the modern classical aesthetic―experimentation with generating new and interesting sounds from instruments that simply weren’t made to do such things.

Along the same lines, yMusic is a group of musicians who have toured and recorded with the likes of Sufjan Stevens, The National, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Bjork, and lots of other awesome acts as well. Here they are performing with Shara Worden (yet another one of these genre bending artists who are just CRAZY GOOD)

yMusic was founded with the idea of overlapping the pop and classical worlds, an endeavor sometimes referred to as “indie-classical” or “post-classical.” I just see it as great music played by great musicians.

So. Classical music. Dead? Not at all. The musicians and composers trained to be “classical” have just created a new world in music where genre doesn’t exist. You can find these academically trained composers writing just about anything these days, from indie rock to orchestral concert music. Good music is good music, regardless of what people call it. Classical music never died. It just became more relevant.