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Before leaving Ann Arbor, Ethan and I spent a long hour and a good chunk of cash at Encore, one of the world's more amazing record stores. Ethan has a full report of our takings at his blog. The photo above shows part of the hoard distributed on the back of our trusty Chevy Cobalt. I'm holding the score of one of Boulez's Improvisations sur Mallarmé, which I found tucked among the LPs.
The Rest Is Noise Stadium Tour rolls through Baghdad-by-the-Bay. Maestro Iverson tests out the handsome Steinway D in Herbst Hall.
Alan in Munich, 2007.
I'm tremendously sad to hear of the death of Alan Rich, the dean of American classical-music criticism, and one of its freshest voices to the end. Tim Mangan, John Rockwell, and Marc Geelhoed have remembrances. More soon.
An obligatory Harmonielehre shot of San Francisco Bay to mark the start of the Rest Is Noise Stadium Tour. Incidentally, there is now beginning to be a third Adams.
John Adams, Harmonielehre; Edo de Waart conducting the San Francisco Symphony, Nonesuch 79115.
"Poetry and jazz is back!" — Steve Reich, composer
This weekend, Ethan Iverson and I, the Bad Bald Men of Modern Music, will launch our globe-spanning, three-city modern-music tour, touching down in San Francisco (rise and shine with Schoenberg at 10AM on Saturday), Ann Arbor (Sunday at 4PM), and Kalamazoo (Monday at 8PM). On his blog, Ethan has issued an exquisitely annotated playlist, with plentiful audio examples. For my part, I'm trying to perfect my Vincent Price and Jackie Kennedy impersonations. We think it will be pretty fun in the end. Tour photos will appear as time and technology allow. Gratitude as ever to David Brendel, who had the concept of bringing us together at the Paris Bar.
time once again for the Northwestern University Music Marathon. This beloved Chicago-area institution begins at 8PM on April 30 and delivers what the organizers describe as "twenty-six hours of awesome." The schedule will feature, as it did last year, a wee-small-hours rendition of Terry Riley's In C by Billy Robin's Hep Cats, an ad-hoc group whose name seems inspired by Toscanini's Hep Cats, aka the New Friends of Rhythm. All proceeds will go to the People's Music School, which provides music instruction to Chicago-area kids free of charge. Billy Robin, a sometime contributor to Noise-dot-com, blogs here.
I'll be making various appearances in the next week or two. On April 22, I am giving a lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago, on the topic "Wind from Another Planet: Music, Words, and Images at the Dawn of Modernism." Then I'll go on the road with Ethan Iverson, the pianist of The Bad Plus, perpetrating a words-and-music program on the theme of The Rest Is Noise. Longtime Noise readers may remember that Ethan joined me for an Evening of Spooky Modern Music back in October 2007. This will be an expanded version of that (if I may say) very fun night. I'll read passages from the book while Ethan plays music of Schoenberg, Bartók, Jelly Roll Morton, Gershwin, Stravinsky, Webern, Charlie Parker, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Babbitt, and Ligeti. On the morning of April 24, we'll be at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, as guests of San Francisco Performances; on April 25, we will appear at Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor, as part of the University Musical Society series; and on April 26, we will join the Gilmore Festival in Kalamazoo.
Issue Project Room is presenting Feldman's six-hour String Quartet (II) at its future Livingston Street home this Sunday.
I'm participating in the above event, on May 2. We're not entirely sure what's going to happen, but don't be surprised if you hear some combination of Thai soul, doom metal, Justin Bieber, and, of course, nude Stravinsky. For details, go to Stereogum. The flyer is by Seldon Hunt.
