9/8/22. Winston Marsalis's "All Rise" at the Hollywood Bowl
My mousepad melted to my desk. Even at the Bowl it never cooled down. But Wynston Marsalis’s “All Rise” (1999) was the most enjoyable and moving concert I’ve heard in a while. It’s a big (he Phil, five soloists, five choirs, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra) modernist collage that proceeds by contrast rather than narrative. The sections jolt with opposing moods and sonorities.
Marsalis himself didn’t make an entrance. We wondered if he was there – until the big screen camera caught him at work in the trumpet section. Part of the team, exactly like the music: MW working with multiple musical traditions of North and South America, plus extended conversations with Stravinsky and Bernstein (“Jubal step”), Copland (“Wild strumming of fiddle”), Ellington (“Expressbrown local”) among others.
9/28/22. Roxy Music at the Kia Forum
Still beastly hot. Instead of partying all afternoon – as in the old days – in preparation for the Roxy Music concert, we napped and had a bowl of cold leftover pasta and slices of half of a tomato.
The Forum was lit all lavender and dark rose. The crowd seemed to be mostly people who had seen Roxy at the Palladium in 1972. I can only boast to have seen them at the Greek at the turn of the century. I remember that they really rocked out and ignored the ballads (also that there were Las Vegas style showgirls and one of my party slipped on a syringe that rolled down the aisle).
I hadn’t been at a big rock concert in a long time (Pearl Jam, Milwaukee, 2006) and marveled at the continuity of traditions (indoor clouds of smoke) and the novelties (roadies breaking down one set and installing another efficiently with a gleaming mini-forklift, digital panels so delicate that the screens were invisible in normal light).
The show began with a seductive instrumental (“India”) then blasted off with rousing audio and visual cacophony (“Re-Make/Re-Model”).
I’ve always dismissed “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” as a novelty song, but in person it’s impressive and audacious.
“Tara” was perhaps my favorite moment. Andy McKay on sax, with thundering piano by one of the back-up kids (each member of the original team was spotted by sharp younger musicians: two keyboardists, a woman on sax, three glorious back-up singers in spangles, two extra guitarists).
The credible performance of “Avalon” was an unexpected treat.
11/5/22. “A Musical Portrait: Price and Bonds” at Disney Hall
The most adventurous program of the season and it was thrilling. My take-away was that while Bonds may be a more polished composer – and perhaps had more advantages – Price (1887-1953) is more inventive and idiosyncratic. She’s a valuable neoromantic voice.
This presentation also highlighted Price’s wit. The finale to her Symphony No. 1 in E minor (1932) was animated fun. Her wonderful “Four Encore Songs” began with “Tobacco”, with words by Graham Lee Hemminger: “Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it. / It satisfies no normal need. I like it. / It makes you thin, it makes you lean, / It takes the hair right off your bean. / It’s the worst stuff I’ve ever seen. / I like it.”
I hear Bonds’s “Troubled Water” fantasia for solo piano on KUSC pretty often and it makes me want to hear more of her music. We should know all about it. She even lived the last part of her life in L.A.
At this concert she was represented by a generous selection of songs, and the second, fifth, sixth and seventh parts of her orchestral masterpiece “Montgomery Variations”. Fifteen months earlier the Phil played the first, third, fourth, and seventh parts at the Bowl. So in a sense I’ve heard the whole piece. But may I be outrageously greedy and request the Phil play the whole work – all seven parts – in one go? Is that asking too much? The publishers say it’s only 28 minutes total.
Chopping “Montgomery” into pieces was part of the problem of this concert. In the bad tradition of programs that try to make up for the neglect of worthy composers it sabotaged itself by going on too long, featured excepts rather than whole compositions, sequenced things for variety rather than chronology, presented arrangements rather than original versions (why?), and wasted space in the program with PR puffery instead of information.
The complicated stage management challenges were not handled efficiently. After the “Montgomery Variations” there was an ovation, the house lights went on, and the orchestra musicians left the stage. Show’s over, right? But then Nathaniel Gumbs started playing Price’s Organ Suite No. 1. People in the audience who had started filing out paused – and if they were smart, they sat down to relish one final treat.
[Image: Composition 10, 1939, Kandinsky]
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