Elaine Stritch and Her Inspirations

EVERY two weeks, I speak to a performer coming to town and ask them about their influences, figures who drove them into a life in the arts or helped shape what they do. But my latest subject -- Broadway's tough dame Elaine Stritch -- was having none of it.

Here is my latest Influences column, which I nearly had to rename.

She was also surprised to note that despite the success of her Elaine Stritch at Liberty in LA in 2002, Saturday night's Sondheim program at Disney Hall marks her first appearance there. Somebody, she said, must have it out for her. "Maybe Mickey Mouse."

Wily Finn Magnus Lindberg

NEXT to Esa-Pekka Salonen, the most visible Finnish classical musician over the last few decades has been his old partner in crime Magnus Lindberg, who is completing a three-year term as composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic.

Lindberg is a playful kind of modernist who has recently, as he told me, started to blend his avant-garde tendencies (interest in electronica, industrial music, Japanese drumming, etc.) with the central thrust of the classical tradition.

HERE is my piece from Playbill, which ran when his new piano concerto -- which has some roots in Ravel -- was performed with the New York Phil. (The group was at Walt Disney Concert Hall this week, giving the piece its West Coast premiere. Mark Swed's review is here. That was a show I really regret having missed.)

In any case, Lindberg spoke to me about his roots, his new piece, and his need to flee music and the world itself after its eventual, long-time-coming completion.

The Roots of Leila Josefowicz

I EXPECT I'm not the only one looking forward to the concert at Disney Hall tonight, which continues over the weekend: the new Philip Glass symphony, in its West Coast premiere, with John Adams' Violin Concerto, both conducted by Adams himself. And the violin part in the Adams piece -- some days, my favorite piece by the bearded Bay Area composer -- will be played by the lovely and talented Leila Josefowicz, a longtime interpreter of Adams' work.

The violinist is the latest subject of my Influences column. She speaks about some fellow classical figures (including former LA Phil conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen) as well as her love of Led Zeppelin and Ian McEwan.

Josefowicz has also become an important force in playing and commissioning contemporary classical pieces -- she explains the origins of that impulse and tells me why she considers it important.

See you at the Phil tonight.

Photo courtesy LeilaJosephowicz.com

The Return of Steve Reich

ON Tuesday I saw a fascinating concert by Steve Reich and Bang on a Can at Disney Hall. Once considered a minimalist with few ties to the mainstream, Mark Swed wrote in his review, Reich is now one of the most important and influential composers alive.

I sat down with Reich a few years ago and found him very accessible and easy going. My article starts by referring to the landmark "Music for 18 Musicians," which he led on Tuesday night. I've heard this piece perhaps more than any other piece of music not by the Beatles, and it was a thrill to see it and get a sense of exactly where all those shifting sounds emerged from.

The concert led off with the classic early Reich piece, "Clapping Music." Here is Swed's full review.

The Roots of Preservation Hall

THE latest installment for my Influences column is Ben Jaffe, son of the founders of Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans institution's current leader. (My story is here.)

Jaffe, who marched in carnival parades as a 9-year-old and later attended Oberlin College, described classic  Crescent City figures -- Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong -- as well as some lesser known musicians and a few wild cards, including Andy Warhol.

The group will be at Walt Disney Concert Hall next Tuesday, in collaboration with a contemporary dance group, the Ben McIntyre Project.

Cameron Carpenter, Classical Wild Man

THE young organist Cameron Carpenter is a thinker, a talker, a rebel and a nearly androgynous figure in white jeans -- I think of him as a cross between '50s Glenn Gould and '70s David Bowie. He makes other classical iconoclasts I know -- Jeremy, for instance -- seem middle of the road.

I spoke to Carpenter for the Los Angeles Times Influences column, which I am taking over for a while. When I told him I wanted him to talk about artists who've shaped him who don't play his chosen instrument, he said he was happy to stray from the organ, which he thinks is in the grip of a new kind of orthodoxy and conservatism. “I’m all about taking things out of the organ,” he says, “and the organ out of things.”

My interview with the be-sequined Carpenter, who is a very physical performer and feels more connection to silent-movie players than church organists, is HERE.

Here is Mark Swed's review from what sounds like a completely insane show in a church last spring.

Carpenter plays a recital of Brahms pieces next Sunday, May 8, at Disney Hall.

Classical LA

ANGELENOS don’t need to be told that they live in one of the nation’s best cities for classical music, but it may still be news to much of the rest of the world.

On that count, I wrote a piece for the fall issue of Listen, the classical music magazine, that looks at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hollywood Bowl, local chamber music series, and oddball programs like Classical Underground.

The whole story is not online, but I encourage everyone to pick up the new issue, which has pianist Maurizio Pollini (!!) on the cover. There’s also a very fine piece on how the city of Louisville reinvigorated itself during the torpor of the Great Depression – and after a major flood, no less -- with the creation of the Louisville Orchestra. (It’s timed to a new documentary, Music Makes a City, which could have easily served as the title of my article about L.A.)

Here are a few sentences that begin my article:

Los Angeles is the heavenly chime of the Byrds, the woodsy self-absorption of Laurel Canyon, the horn counterpoint of Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, the boy-girl nihilist crunch of X, the rhythm-driven rage of gangsta rap.

These are some of the high points: The city, which is regularly and gleefully destroyed in disaster movies, has also long symbolized everything ephemeral and cheap in popular culture and pop music.

But other sounds have come from – and to – this place. John Cage grew up here. Stravinsky and Schoenberg lived here for years, as did thousands of German-speaking intellectuals fleeing fascist Europe, keeping alive a powerful literary tradition and sustaining an audience for chamber music.

And while neither the local orchestra nor the opera are as old as those in our sometimes-stuffy elder brother San Francisco, these operations have often been livelier and less predictable.

The Many Moods of Keith Jarrett

As a longtime fan of idiosyncratic jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, I would have been disappointed if I'd seen him perform without reaming out at least one audience member. And I was not disappointed.

Last night Jarrett made one of his rare appearances at LA's Disney Hall, and this show was devoted to solo improvisation -- pure Keith, unalloyed. He began the performance with a strange, gentle kind of sweeping his hands along the extremes of the keyboard -- my friend said he was coaxing ghosts from the piano. And many ghosts there were -- in the course of the show, he would summon French impressionist Erik Satie, soul-jazz pioneer Horace Silver and everything in between.

Because Jarrett's fame rests in part on extended workouts (freakouts?) on albums like the best-selling The Koln Concert, I was surprised his pieces were relatively short -- mostly ballads and blues which involves improvisatory fights or grooves, but were brought to a fairly crisp conclusion. From first track to last, I was knocked out. HERE is the review, just up, by the LATimes' Chris Barton.

But let's get back to the guy's quirks. He's known for standing up and down while he played, as well as moaning/humming in a vaguely Monk/Gould kinda way. The fact that three of the greatest pianists in modern history do this makes me think there's something to it: He seemed truly possessed.

Jarrett's anger and intolerance toward audience noise is a bit harder to take -- he's passed out cough drops at winter concerts and famously berated paying customers for coughing. But you know, there was way too much coughing last night. "There's some kind of duel going on out there," he said of the coughers.

And when a woman walked away from her seat, in high heels, between songs, he paused, and offered,
" Was that a horse?" There were also a few Luddite rants about the importance of things that don't change -- the piano for instance.

But you've not lived until you've seen Jarrett stand up and single out a man in the fourth row for using a flash -- "you've screwed up other people's experience!" he scolded -- and then sit down and play a tender version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

Weirdly, in the audience a few rows in front of me was a Jarrett fan I consider one of the most dangerous men in America -- Kenny G. Was I tempted to run by him, pull out my corkscrew and end this frizzy-haired imp's reign of terror? Of course.

But I was so stunned to think that our tastes -- fairly disparate, I'll guess -- come together in the music of this difficult and astounding musician that all I could summon was a strange sense of awe.

Cool Polish Pianist in Los Angeles

One of the finest young(ish) pianists in the world appears with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this weekend -- Polish-born Piotr Anderszewski. His Bach, Beethoven and Chopin are magnificent -- a truly deep, probing player. (He's also interested in the oft-overlooked, harmonically interesting Karol Szymanowski.)

I spoke to the pianist the last time he was in town, and he talked about his choice of repertoire, his upbringing and his approach to the piano in general; he also told a funny story about the time he met Richter. Story here.

On Friday morning, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, he will perform in a concert that includes Beethoven's First Piano Concerto; Phil schedule here. (He has already done one stint of chamber music this week that I wish I could have caught.)

When I say young(ish) by the way, I mean he's my age. In any case, eager to see him at Disney Hall this weekend -- his show a few years ago was gripping

Photo credit K. Miura

The Calder Quartet vs. Airborne Toxic Event

ONE of my favorite LA bands is the Calder Quartet, who accompany another of my favorites, the Airborne Toxic Event -- yes, the name comes from DeLillo -- Friday night at Disney Hall.

I met the Calders soon after they graduated USC's conservatory, and caught up with them a few weeks ago  to discuss their latest travels. They've stretched outward, into rock and experimental music, as well as inward, intensely studying Haydn in Berlin, and they've begun to play internationally.

HERE is my piece in today's LATimes: I talk to members of the band as well as Mikel from Airborne Toxic, who has become one of my favorite indie rockers.

Part of what I like about these guys is their commitment to the art of chamber music -- not an easy way to make a living, for reasons having to do not just with economics but with the strange personal bonds and tensions. I also admire their ability to keep their eyes -- and ears -- trained on the outside world and the larger swim of pop culture. They're both regular guys, in a sense, and something extraordinary.

Very much looking forward to this show.

Photo courtesy Calder Quartet

Viva Gustavo

FRIDAY night I was lucky enough to take in the concert Gustavo Dudamel conducted as part of the LA Philharmonic's "West Coast, Left Coast" festival. (The concert was repeated Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.)

I say lucky because not only were we seeing the nation's most exciting young conductor -- albeit one born, raised, and trained in Venezuela -- but a program that made the case, if it still needs to be made, for the West Coast as the site of much of the freshest, most distinct music post-World War II. This weekend that meant Esa-Pekka Salonen's "LA Variations," which seems to me his breakthrough piece, Lou Harrison's Asian-accented, alternate-tuned Piano Concerto, played by Italian phenom Marino Formenti, and John Adams' "City Noir."

The Adams is the newest piece, debuted just last month. Adams is known as a minimalist, and this piece offered some of the genre's use of repetition, but also drew from film noir soundtracks, Gershwin, mid-century West Coast jazz, automobile sounds, and other signifiers of Southland culture. Even by Adams' high standards this was a wonderful piece. (It was inspired by the excellent books of California history by Kevin Starr.)

Here is Mark Swed's LA Times review of the show.

None of this music is an obvious fit conductor Gustavo "The Dude" Dudamel, but he brought it alive. I really wanted to be a detractor on this guy, but he keeps winning me over.

Amazingly, we sat right in front of Adams, who is a very cool guy, Frank Gehry -- who of course designed the hall we were sitting in, and legendary tenor Placido Domingo. Next to us was Phil boss Deborah Bordah. Quite an evening -- and more proof that traditional "high" culture in LA has long come of age. The fact that the show sold out also proves that the audience is on board with the explosion of serious music here.

Photo credit: LA Philharmonic

The West Coast vs. Classical Music

ON Saturday night I took in an intriguing if imperfect concert at Disney Hall that involved Kronos Quartet, electronica duo Matmos, rocker Mike Einziger and minimalist pioneer Terry Riley. The evening -- with the coolest crowd I've ever seen at Disney Hall -- was the kickoff to the Phil's "West Coast, Left Coast" festival, which runs for the next several weeks. (Review of show here.)

The festival, which aims to seek and present what's most distinctive about West Coast music, is curated by Bay Area composer John Adams, and I first heard about the festival last year, when I flew to Berkeley to interview Adams about his memoir. In "Hallelujah Junction," Adams writes about his New England roots in "the era of the clarinet in American music," his move to California in the early '70s, working menial jobs and flirting with experimental and electronic music, and his eventual development of a personal language that nonetheless synthesizes various strands of West Coast tradition.

HERE is my interview with the composer. The book, now out in paperback, is a delight, and is a work of not just musical but cultural history. Will be writing more about the festival in this space.

Christoph Eschenbach, Elegant Cosmopolitan

LAST week i went to meet christoph eschenbach, the conductor/pianist who's been part of one of the nastiest divorces in the classical music world during a strained tenure at the philadelphia orchestra.

here is the way my colleague mark swed described him: "Thin and erect, with shaved head and large cranium, dressed in avant-garde sleek black shirt and slacks, he looked like some inscrutable creature of advanced intelligence out of the future."

he was an imposing, very germanic guy, you could say, but one of the most culturally curious people i've ever interviewed, and he loosened up when we started talking about rilke. he's the kind of guy so in love with music it literally wakes him up at night.

HERE is my story in today's LAT.

looking forward to seeing eschenbach play schubert (d.960!) at disney hall tonight... he's also conducting a program of mozart and bruckner this weekend. those of you in DC can count on him taking over as music director at the National Symphony -- which he has pledged to bring into the 21st c. -- in 2010.

Addendum: here is the review, not by me, of last night's dvorak and schubert concert.

Photo credit: christoph-eschenbach.com

The End, and Beginning, for Esa-Pekka Salonen

SATURDAY night i took in one of the farewell concerts by esa-pekka salonen leading the los angeles philharmonic. of all the reigning  arts heads from when i arrived here a dozen years ago, i'd bet that salonen is the only one still in place. some institutions -- and this includes hollywood studios as well -- have turned over leadership several times in that period.

this was about as strong a concert as i've ever seen the phil offer: first was a wonderfully eerie short ligeti pieces, "clouds and clocks," in which strings and female voices made their own harmonic world without forgetting melody.

second was salonen's new violin concerto, a wide-ranging piece that sought to sum up his 17 years in LA and his 50 years on earth. except for an overly literary nod toward pop culture (with rock drumming) he almost entirely succeeded: the final movement, the adieu, is one of the most deeply felt adagios i've ever heard. and this from a man often considered an icy nordic. i am no scholar of contemporary music -- here is the nyt's tomassini's review of the same program. but my sense is that salonen's compositions have taken an enormous jump forward in the last five or six years, since about the phil's move into disney hall.

finally, the program's second half devoted to beethoven's fifth. wondering how this once-young-turn modernist would render this hoary old warhorse -- ironically? with a contemporary-music coolness? salonen jumped right in, literally. this is a hard piece to really >hear<, after all these years, but salonen and the phil made a convincing go of it.

there are some all-stravinsky programs coming, with visuals by peter sellars.

as we left disney hall, my wife and i lamented that the la times would not give his retirement (to compose fulltime) the attention it deserves, get into the whole sweep of the man's 17 years here. the next morning we found that we were wrong: this very fine story by mark swed gets at al of it.

HERE is my discussion with salonen re. his interest in rock music.

besides changing classical music's culture -- making it more contemporary and pop savvy -- and helping get the acoustic marvel disney hall built, salonen exemplifies a certain graceful, crisp and balletic conducting. he may lack the power or heft of the tradition austro-german maestro, but he brought something new and valuable to southern california.

Photo credit: los angeles philharmonic

Lang Lang vs. Vienna Philharmonic

THE other night i took a break from watching robert downey jr. in "iron man," which has a party scene in which downey and a cuter than usual gwyneth paltrow nearly begin making out on the balcony of walt disney concert hall, to run to disney hall myself for a concert by the vienna philharmonic. it was nearly as  star-studded a crowd as the movie's scene (though i'm still trying to figure out what rick rubin was doing out with josh groban -- i dont think i want to hear that record.)

were these luminaries there to see vienna, sometimes called the finest orchestra in the world, or guest conductor zubin mehta? probably not. the real heat, i think was around Lang Lang, the young chinese pianist who is either the most exciting phenomenon to hit classical music in 20 years -- bringing emotion and large audiences back to the music -- or a cross between liberace and the devil himself.

here is my LAT piece on the divisive virtuoso.

as for lang, i dont think he embarrassed himself but i would rather listen to rubinstein or pollini or pires doing chopin any day of the week. lang's story -- he was basically marinated in classical music in the womb -- is fascinating, whatever one thinks of his music, and my esteemed friend david ritz (best known for his work with marvin gaye and brother ray charles)  ghosts with the pianist in this book, journey of a thousand miles.

vienna? well. "where are all the women??" an unidentified wag near me shouted as the august philharmonic's players filled the stage, and it is truly odd in 2009 to see an orchestra made up almost entirely of white men. (NOT that there's anything wrong with that.)

as for the concert itself, it was a thrill for me to finally see the burnished, old-world vienna, even if mehta was conducting. and to see schubert's 9th -- a composer i love, and know mostly from his deathbed sontatas and chamber music -- was a pleasure, even if as my friend tim mangan suggests here, was a mismatch of conductor to orchestra. (here is my old colleague mark swed's similarly mixed but quite different judgement on the gig.)

anyone have any thoughts on vienna, mehta, lang?

Photo credit: Flickr user 32 and 33

Classical Piano and the Importance of Good Grooming

Last night i caught Leif Ove Andsnes, the norwegian pianist, at disney hall. (here he is, right, after, presumably, chopping an entire nordic forest.) he played a set of janacek, brahms, mozart and schubert, with violinist christian tetzlaff. (a fine story on the celebrated duo here.)

great concert, by the way. while the ballade in the janacek was nearly heart-stopping, my favorite was the brahms sonata no. 3. (a wonderful unfashionable composer, a true genius of melody and delicate small scale pieces, on whom more another time.)

but the appearance reminded me (chin-stroking music please) of classical music's image problem. as someone who grew up with rock n roll and later the very photogenic era of mid-century jazz, i was amazed as i started to get into chamber music in the mid-90s just how dowdy a bunch classical players tended to be.  and then things started to change a bit: leif ove spoke to me for this piece in the LATimes from a few years back. every time i see a picture of that hedgehog james levine i think of it. 

could it be that classical music is more "deep" than pop music, which has become enslaved to youth and  image? dont forget, these days, even philosophers have style. what do my esteemed readers think?

 

Photo credit: Flickr user 13