As children, my two sisters and I rarely played in silence. Our little plastic Fisher Price turntable was equipped with dozens of well worn records that were the narrated stories, or background music to everything we did in that room with the big daisies on the wallpaper. The records lived in a purple plastic milk crate tucked under my baby sister’s crib.

On the day Raggedy Andy died, we were listening to one of our favorites, the Nutcracker Suite. The ritual for listening was always the same. For most of the record, the music played while we colored, or stacked blocks or dressed dolls, or engaged in whatever we were up to that day. We ignored its existence – but when the ‘Russian Candy Cane’ section began, my sister Jan and I would drop whatever we had been doing and spring to our feet. As the music played, we’d race back on forth across the room. On one side, we’d throw ourselves facedown onto the bottom bunk, then bounce up again and fly to the other side of the room crashing into the dresser – then we’d turn around to do it again.

As I recall, there was never any discussion that we would do this, and no anticipation that it was coming – but as soon as the first few notes began, we were on our feet, giggling and out of breath as we raced back and forth. My sister Beth, barely a toddler at the time, would cackle and jump up and down in her crib as we passed by. When the next section of music began, we’d simply resume whatever we’d been doing, listening passively as we went about the regular business of being children.

On that day, however, we ran a little faster, or crashed a little harder, because that time the hutch began to sway a little more and Raggedy Andy wobbled, then pitched forward, falling for what seemed a very long time. He crashed into too many pieces on the lime green carpet. Our mother was not pleased. But the thing about Raggedy Andy’s unfortunate end, and the reason I remember it so vividly all these years later, is that it was crystal clear to me than that I wasn’t responsible for the tragedy. The MUSIC was responsible. I was not the kind of kid who got in trouble regularly, and when I did, I usually knew full well how I might have behaved differently. But when I think of that day, there is no question in my mind that we HAD to run back and forth across the room, that we were compelled by the notes on the record to submit ourselves to such joyful abandon. The music was in us, completely. We were consumed; filled up completely.

And I think that’s what art is supposed to do – although it happens far less often than it really should. Think about it. When was the last time that a work of art took your breath away? Can you remember? A painting, a poem, a dance. When has art truly moved you; made you forget all your present circumstances, transported you beyond? Isn’t that what art is for – to move us beyond ordinary existence? Isn’t that transcendence precisely what we look to art to give us?

I can remember seeing Sam Sheppard’s Curse of the Starving Class on Broadway at sixteen year old. That night, alone in my room, I wept – both for joy and regret, unsure really of why – but knowing that somehow something profound had just happened to me. It wouldn’t take much more than a page to list all the moments of transcendence I’ve found in art – but they have been there. Most recently, it was a short story by Thomas Pynchon, a fairly mundane narrative that so perfectly captured the world view of an adolescent – that so skillfully revealed the truth of the way we operate in the world, I actually gasped as I read the last sentence.

For me, this is what art is for – the moments when we are so carried away, we forget ourselves. When absolute abandon is possible. When was the last time this happened for you?

Composer Reading Session (free!)
10 am Thursday, May 17

Missy Mazzoli’s Victoire
7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 17

Dogs of Desire
7:30 p.m. Friday, May 18

Albany Symphony Orchestra
with violinist Cho-Liang Ling, and soprano Talis Trevigne
7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 19

Capital Heritage: Celebrating the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall
7:30 p.m. Sunday, May 20 

Now the good news: EMPAC has announced that Laurie Anderson has been named its first distinguished artist in residence – a three year relationship that starts later this year.  What this will mean for RPI students and the arts going public isn’t clear from the announcement, but it’s hard to imagine a better fit.  Actually, it’s hard to imagine any other multi-media artist of Laurie Anderson’s calibre.

But if you’re a classical music purist, don’t feel bad that you’ve not heard of her. I was on a plane last night returning to Albany from a brief vacation and sitting behind me was a friend who holds a prominent post on a local arts board. I told him of these two bits of Capital Region arts news and wasn’t surprised that he didn’t know who Laurie Anderson was.  Our arts world – make that our world in general – is so fragmented that nothing surprises me any more.  I carry my business cards (for real estate) in a case with a Frank Lloyd Wright design on it.  And I’ve found that lots of people don’t know who he was! Even realtors.

Back to Laurie Anderson.  Have you heard the T-Mobile commercial that uses her “O Superman” as the soundtrack?  If you know the song, it’s impossible to miss.  That piece, her only true single, dates back 30 years.  I was stunned when I heard the commercial and also happy that she got the licensing deal.

Below is a portion of EMPAC’s press release.  And here’s a video of Laurie’s “O Superman.”  Now, mind you, this is not high tech anymore.  It’s quaintly low tech.  This site explains how she used to perform it live as kind of a shadow play.  And there are probably college thesis written by now about the lyrics and the metaphor of mom. “Hold me Mom in your long arms, your automatic, your electronic arms.”

Maybe, for us high tech old timers Laurie will perform a greatest hits evening sometime at EMPAC.  Who wants to make suggestions for the playlist?

Troy, NY—The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is pleased to announce that Laurie Anderson has been named EMPAC’s inaugural distinguished artist-in-residence for a three-year term beginning in 2012.

As one of America’s foremost contemporary artists; a persistent experimenter at the intersection of performance, media, and technology; and an inventor of tools and instruments, Anderson and EMPAC’s exceptional research and production environment for adventurous new work are an ideal match. The residency provides Anderson with wide access to space, technology, and support for creative experimentation, but as important, brings the artist into ongoing dialogue with students and faculty at the nation’s oldest technology university.

Anderson first came to EMPAC as a resident artist in 2009 to complete work on Delusion, a complex series of stories about longing, memory, and identity commissioned by the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad. At EMPAC, she found the ideal working environment to try new ideas and integrate the diverse, multidisciplinary elements of the work, including music, visuals, altered voices, and electronic puppetry. Based on the success of the extensive working relationship between Anderson and EMPAC, founding Time-Based Arts Curator Kathleen Forde and Director Johannes Goebel proposed this new opportunity. “It’s such a great honor to be the first EMPAC distinguished artist- in-residence. Working with the crack technical and production teams and having access to EMPAC’s spectacular spaces and resources is such a dream. I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity.”

The distinguished artist-in-residence is an expansion of EMPAC’s extensive project-based residency program, which supports the creation of new works and research. It marks the first time an artist has been invited for an extended time unrelated to a specific project, with the express goal of sharing the artist’s creative practice with a technology-focused campus and the community through lectures, work in progress demonstrations, web documentation, workshops, and more. Goebel sees a unique opportunity in this collaboration: “With EMPAC, Rensselaer has made an incredible commitment to bridge new technology with new artistic development and to bring together the engineering and scientific world with the experiential and creative approaches of the arts. Laurie Anderson will bring her deeply rooted experience in using technological tools in her artistic work to the campus community.”

And that’s for theater. Classical music is a different matter. While I haven’t seen any petitions, I know that local performers and presenters would like to see much more Metroland coverage, more, of course, meaning coverage of what they’re performing or presenting.

For over 25 years, Metroland’s classical reviewing has been almost exclusively my province. There was a time, towards the beginning, when I tried to make something of a living off reviewing, which already has anyone who’s tried to do it for money in the Capital Region screaming with laughter. I was writing for more than one paper – but more on that in a moment.

So I was out three or four nights a week, covering music, theater, dance, and restaurants. And occasional oddball events – the Schenectady Gazette, for example sent me to cover ice skating. And (in a separate performance, you’ll be relieved to learn) Julio Iglesias.

Even then it was hardly enough to do justice to what’s offered in the area. Fortunately, the Gazette had other stringers at hand. Unfortunately, it still seemed scattershot. And it wasn’t until I was in the trenches, getting to know performers the Albany Symphony, the St. Cecilia Orchestra, and Capitol Chamber Artists, and presenters like the Union College Concerts and Troy Chromatics, that I began to question my purpose.

What should a reviewer try to accomplish? I wasn’t, and still am not, given the editorial space – or the financial incentive – to construct any kind of a thoughtful critical analysis, which anyway is a tough thing to turn around in an hour or two. (Although I sometimes try to do so in Metroland, where the lead time is longer. I was rewarded for one such effort, a restaurant review, by a dim-bulb daily-paper editor who collared me at a party to say, “I couldn’t tell if you liked the place.”)

How do you learn what a review requires? Studying what others have written, of course, but then finding your own voice. I devoured Shaw’s music criticism, but find his ideas too stuffy and his style too self-consciously clever. H. L. Mencken was a terrific classical music writer, and brought an outsider’s freshness to the task – his essay speculating about the premiere of Beethoven’s “Eroica” is a masterpiece.

But I pretty much snapped myself into the harness and ran, learning as I loped along. I had two significant epiphanies along the way.

The first was in May 1986, when James Galway appeared as conductor and flute soloist at Proctor’s Theatre in a program of works by Handel, Stamitz, and Mozart. The place was nearly packed – over two thousand people to see a classical musician! – and I resented it. They’re only here, I muttered to myself, because he’s been on Johnny Carson.

I already could feel myself slyly mocking them in print. An infrequently visiting angel landed on my other shoulder and whispered, “So what? Will they derive any less pleasure from this concert?”

Which was terrific – Galway was in top form. So wouldn’t it make more sense, I had to consider, to reinforce the experience this audience enjoyed? It would only require that I give an honest appraisal of the event, untainted by my native snobbery.

The second was the result of a Gazette review I wrote of a Lake George Opera production of “The Pirates of Penzance” in July 1989. It was an embarrassingly low-budget affair worsened by the conceit of setting it in the year 2025, “Somewhere along the Milky Way.” I wrote a scathing piece that threw some pretty sharp wisecracks, and soon after the piece ran a friend of mine told me it was one of the funniest things he’d ever read.

I felt terrible. I was guilty of something I thought I abjured in critics: showing off my own cleverness at the expense of the performance, which might have befitted from a thoughtful analysis. My reviews have grown less amusing since then, I fear, but I hope they’re more thoughtful.

And I remain committed to the idea that the reviewer’s job is to be a set of intelligent eyes and ears wielding a facile pen to bring full-circle the job that begins with an artistic vision. That’s why the critic should understand a performing or presenting group’s mission, and be sympathetic to its risks and limitations. You should have to dissemble, but you can look for the diamonds that lurk in the muck and, by calling attention to them, draw the artists on to greater things. Or quietly help persuade them to pack it in.

As for making a living writing reviews – we can only hope that this market might some day offer that potential. When I started writing these things, in 1983, I was paid twenty bucks a notice. I managed to double that fee before long, but it was still a pittance. Reviewing was viewed as part-time work for fairly literate enthusiasts.

I’ll tell you in another column how I got into it in the first place, but while I was busy scribing for Metroland in 1984, the now-defunct Knickerbocker News, Albany’s afternoon daily, asked me to be its chief (meaning only) classical music reviewer. But they demanded that I write for them exclusively.

Ever-obliging but desperate for cash, I retired from Metroland and George Gordon took my place – tribute to a well-known Romantic poet who shares my given name. As Gordon, I continued to churn out piles of advances and reviews, often doing double duty with completely different pieces about the same event in my two publications.

This went on for a year, until a goofy publicist phoned the Knick News and asked for “Byron Nilsson, or George Gordon, or whatever he’s calling himself these days.”

I don’t know what pissed them off more – that I did it at all or that I’d done it for twelve months – but I was immediately informed by an editorial hatchet-man that my services no longer would be required and Nilsson returned, poorer but more honest, to Metroland’s fold. My duplicity cost the area classical-music coverage by Knick News, but – and I take no credit for this event – the newspaper folded soon after that.

A Kingston resident and professor at RPI, Oliveros is an internationally respected leader in experimental and environmental music.  She coined the term “Deep Listening” about two decades ago to describe her system and philosophy of composition, music and listening.  The term was first used as a the title of a record (on New Albion) for a trio of instrumentalists that recorded in an underground cistern.  This concert, part of a season of events celebrating Oliveros’ 80th birthday, will attempt to recreate that event.

7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 10
EMPAC Concert Hall, Troy 

B. A. Nilsson, veteran classical music critic (and restaurant reviewer) for Metroland.

Jill Rafferty-Weinisch, the director of performing arts and outreach at the Arts Center of the Capital Region and former director of education for Capital Rep.

Liz Friedman, who’s worked in patron services at many local arts venues and now heads her own management firm, Green Room Artist Development. 

Thanks in advance to these folks for their time, insights and desire to help build our local arts scene through contributing to HudsonSounds.

In addition to the voices of these and our other regular bloggers, we invite YOU to join the dialogue.  Respond to posts using the “comments” feature.  Whether it’s rants or raves, we want to hear from you!

We’re also putting out another call for volunteers to assist with data entry so that the the site stays up-to-date with events (summer is a full schedule and next season’s concerts are already being announced).  As thanks you’ll receive free CDs and possibly some tickets, plus the gratitude of music lovers across the region.  Use the contact button to get in touch!

Be seeing you at the concerts…

– JD

A student (and one with talent that I had hopes for) once shocked me back to the real world by saying” Is that the same music that was on when I went to lunch? That’s what I hate about your music. It goes on too long!”

Now, sampling the post modern schools of composition, I am a novice myself.  Brevity and succinctness seem to be favored by some in the new order. When I notice a brief performance time I find myself fine tuning my ears, as if to hear poetry, to capture the gist. That might be the case for such as Schnitke or W Rihm.

On the other hand, that would not (usually) describe music by Steve Reich, Philip Glass or John Adams, the old, new, all of who, with brilliant dynamic pacing, glory in expanse. Like a Tchaikovsky ballet, one could leave, order and eat, return and still get the point of “Music for 18 Musicians ” by Steve Reich. It wouldnt be as much fun though!

Reactionary in its break from constraints of the past, music presently composed contrives to do away with all boundaries.
Composers decide individually and with unflinching creativity, sometimes successfuly, to venture into whatever realm their intuition leads.

I avidly scan the notes for clues to what’s to come. Even better, I access the primary source, often still living, available and maybe even present.

Usually before purchasing a ticket, driving, parking, hauling the body to a seat, it seems wise for one to decide her listening mood and plot the parameters of the evening. But why not throw caution to the winds (or gases) of chance! Challenge the mind to accept and process whatever happens.

I did just that on a warm spring evening, urging myself to take my own advice.

Music by Fausto Romitelli played by Talea Ensemble at EMPAC (March ’12 ) was an adventure that thrilled.

No description offered lived up to the delight it delivered. I got a few facts from Joseph Dalton’s preview article and the accompanying picture showed that the instruments were standard but also there would be the inevitable sound engineering.

Romitelli by Talea was an evening of musical poetry. It was incisive, dramatic, vivid and, surprisingly, never lengthy. Six pieces made up a program of about 90 minutes.

Reading the notes beforehand, however, almost caused me to flee. It spoke of “distortion, saturation and psychedelic rock”. The commentary seemed to dare rather than encourge the audience.

Spectral, the school of music ascribed to Romitelli, might give one a starting point to asssign the sounds created. That, however would not account for the effect flute, clarinet, violin and cello conjured up progressing through a score that called up whispers, gasps and even odd melodic interludes appearing but then vaporizing. All of this happened with a linear clarity romanticists would envy.  That was “Dominiche alla periferia dell’impero ” (2000). It encouraged me not to leave at intermission.

Titles gave programatic cues. “Blood on the floor, Painting 1986 ” (2000) was exactly that. But it was not as startling or even as edgy as the Bernard Herrmann music for the film “Psycho” from the 1960′s.  Fausto Romitelli, born in Gorizia, Italy, died at the age of 41.

This is my chance to tell my favorite anecdote about music and time:  On a trip to Phoenix Arizona in May of 08 , Isom and I, Myra Herron, decided to attend a matinee performance of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra. The program featured violinist Karen Gomyo playing the Khachaturian Violin Concerto and the orchestra playing Brahms Symphony #3.

The concert started on schedule but the music did not. Celebrating the orchestra’s 60th birthday, recognition and applause was awarded to almost everyone present.  When this was finished music director Michael Christie announced that considering the time left the Andante movement of the Brahms Symphony no. 3 (9 minutes) would be omitted.  Cross my heart and hope to die, that really happened.

FYI: The Tokyo String Quartet has decided, rather than replace retiring members Kikuei Ikeda and Kazuhide Isomura, to disband in June 2013. They will include Friends of Chamber Music, Troy New York, in their farewell tour. Having been on the series for over 30 years, the Tokyo String Quartet will play there for the last time on Sunday February 17, 2013 at 3 o’clock.

The Musicians of Ma’alwyck perform music of Mozart (excerpts from “Marriage of Figaro”), Stamitz, Kruetzer, Vogel and Reicha (variations on an aria from “Figaro).   All in an historic venue, naturally.

3 p.m. Sunday, May 6
Schuyler Mansion, Albany 

3 p.m. Sunday April 29
Massry Center for the Arts
College of St. Rose, Albany

Presidential Pianos Courtesy of the Pierce Piano Atlas
1st President – George Washington – Longman & Broderip Harpsichord; Schoen & Vinsen Pianoforte
2nd President – John Adams – Currier & Co.
3rd President – Thomas Jefferson – Astor Pianoforte
4th President – James Madison – Square Grand (name destroyed by fire)
5th President – James Monroe – Astor Piano
6th President – John Quincy Adams – Currier & Co.
7th President – Andrew Jackson – T. Gilbert & Co. Square Piano
8th President – Martin Van Buren – Hallet & Cumston Square Piano
9th President – William Henry Harrison – Haines Brothers
10th President – John Tyler – Thomas Tomkinson Upright Piano
11th President – James Knox Polk – Astor & Harwood Square Piano
12th President – Zachary Taylor – name unknown
13th President – Millard Fillmore – name unknown
14th President – Franklin Pierce – Chickering Square Piano
15th President – James Buchanan – Chickering Grand Piano
16th President – Abraham Lincoln – Chickering Square Piano & Chickering Upright
17th President – Andrew Johnson – Steinway & Sons Square Piano
18th President – Ulysses S. Grant – Melodeon
19th President – Rutherford B. Hayes – Bradbury Upright & Harpsichord (name destroyed by fire)
20th President – James A. Garfield – Hallet & Davis Upright
21st President – Chester A. Arthur – Piano cannot be located.
22nd President – Grover Cleavland – Combination Piano & Harpsichord (name destroyed by fire)
23rd President – Benjamin Harrison – J. & C. Fischer Upright Piano, Haines Brothers Square
24th President – Grover Cleveland – (same as above)
25th President – William McKinley – A. H. Gale Co. Square Piano
26th President – Theodore Roosevelt – Chickering Upright, Steinway Grand Piano
27th President – William Howard Taft – Baldwin Grand Piano
28th President – Woodrow Wilson – Ernst Rosenkranst Square Piano, Knabe Grand
29th President – Warren G. Harding – A. B. Chase Electric Player Piano
30th President – Calvin Coolidge – Sohmer Upright Piano
31st President – Herbert Hoover – Knabe Grand & A. B. Chase Grand
32nd President – Franklin D. Roosevelt – Hardman Grand
33rd President – Harry S. Truman – Steinway Grand, Baldwin Grand & Steinway Upright
34th President – Dwight D. Eisenhower – Hallet & Cumston Upright
35th President – John F. Kennedy – Ivers & Pond Grand Piano
36th President – Lyndon B. Johnson – Style L. Steinway, Knabe Console
37th President – Richard M. Nixon – Geo. P. Bent Upright, Baldwin Vertical
38th President – Gerald Ford – No personal piano
39th President – James (Jimmy) Carter – Ludden & Bates
40th President – Ronald Reagan – Steinway Grand
41st President – George Bush – Did not own personal piano.
42nd President – William (Bill) Clinton – Baldwin Grand in the Governor’s Mansion.
43rd President – George W. Bush – No personal piano. Steinway Grand in the White House residence.