Night After Night

Placebo Domingo.

NightAfterNight — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:59:46 -0400

Paul Potts with Neal E. Boyd and Diane di Stasio at the Beacon Theatre
The New York Times, July 11, 2009

All the comforts.

NightAfterNight — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:40:50 -0400

Caramoor International Music Festival Opening-Night Gala
The New York Times, June 29, 2009

Outward bound.

NightAfterNight — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:57:05 -0400

Just in from Avery Fisher Hall, where Lorin Maazel conducted his penultimate program: a rousing account of Mahler's Symphony No. 8. My companion and I enjoyed the performance rather more than did Allan Kozinn, who offered measured praise in his New York Times review, and a great deal more than did Martin Bernheimer, to judge by his sharply worded review in the Financial Times. Mark Swed's thoughtful evaluation of Maazel's final days with the Philharmonic, and his broader legacy here, is well worth reading on the Los Angeles Times Culture Monster blog.

Three more highlights of an evening spent in excellent company: Congratulating Matías Tarnopolsky on his impending departure, meeting Alec Baldwin and finally hearing Christine Brewer in person for the first time.

Speaking of blogs, the blogrolls here are overdue for a bit of tinkering, although I don't care to think about when I might actually get around to doing it properly. For now, I'll just mention the new additions:

Mass Culture Mozart, is the online home of freelance writer/consultant and current L.I.C. neighbor Olivia Giovetti, who is currently attempting to listen to every opera ever recorded in chronological order of composition. Olivia's first Time Out New York article, which appears in the current issue, previews a performance by composer and keyboardist Missy Mazzoli's excellent "bandsemble," Victoire, coming up this Sunday night at the Stone.

jhallmanmusic is where you'll find inventive Philadelphia composer Joseph Hallman. You can hear Hallman's very impressive Cello Concerto, as played by his close friend, Alisa Weilerstein, with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, on YouTube: movement 1, movement 2, movement 3.

Blogs previously introduced, but only just added to the blogroll: Philip Kennicott, Chicago Classical Review (which isn't functioning properly as I write this; hope that's temporary) and Creative Destruction. Apologies to all for the delay.

Playlist:

Frank Wess Nonet - Once Is Not Enough (Labeth)

Dave Douglas - Spirit Moves (Greenleaf)

Finn - The Best Low-Priced Heartbreakers You Can Own (Erased Tapes)

Globe Unity - Forty Years (Intakt)

Morbid Angel - The Metro, Sydney, Australia, June 5, 2009 (audience tape)

Hannah Montana - Hannah Montana 3 (Disney; due out July 14)

Tim Garland - Libra (Globalmix)

Thin Lizzy - Still Dangerous (VH1 Classic)

Django Bates - Spring Is Here (Shall We Dance?) (Lost Marble)

Son Volt - American Central Dust (Rounder; due out July 7)

Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry (Atlantic/Rhino)

Thomas Adès - The Tempest - Simon Keenlyside, Cyndia Sieden, Ian Bostridge, Kate Royal, Toby Spence, Philip Langridge, Royal Opera Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden/Thomas Adès (EMI Classics)

Renminbi - Surface (Cashmusic; due out July 7)

Various artists - The Metropolitan Opera: Celebrating 125 Years (Metropolitan Opera)

Iannis Xenakis - Complete String Quartets - JACK Quartet (Mode)

Rolling Stones - Some Girls; Emotional Rescue (Rolling Stones/UMe)

Prince - Lotusflow3r/Mplsound/Bria Valente - Elixir (NPG Records)

R.E.M. - Accelerate (Warner Bros.); Reckoning (I.R.S./Universal)

Anna Ternheim - Leaving on a Mayday (Verve Forecast; due out Aug. 11)

Peter Hammill - Singularity (Fie!)

Anton Bruckner - Symphony No. 4 (1874 original version) - Bayerisches Staatsorchester/Kent Nagano (Sony Classical)

Brad Paisley - American Saturday Night (Arista Nashville; due out June 30)

Wynton Marsalis - Here...Now (Bandcamp free download)

Ge Gan-ru - String Quartets Nos. 1, 4 and 5 - ModernWorks (Naxos)

Van der Graaf Generator - Regent Theatre, Arlington, MA, June 23, 2009 (audience recording)

Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation (Geffen)

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis; Symphony No. 6 - New Philharmonia Orchestra/Adrian Boult; Patrick Hanley - One Morning in Spring; Arnold Bax - Mediterranean - London Philharmonic Orchestra/Adrian Boult; Alban Berg - Lyric Suite - BBC Symphony Orchestra/Adrian Boult (BBC Music)

Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 3 - Anna Larsson, American Boychoir, women of the Westminster Symphonic Choir, New York Philharmonic/Lorin Maazel (New York Philharmonic download)

Michael Jackson - Off the Wall (Epic)

Rapoon - Time Frost (Glacial Movements)

Ludwig van Beethoven - Late Quartets, Volume 1 - Cypress String Quartet (Cypress Performing Arts Association)

Joseph Haydn - Symphonies Nos. 93 and 101 ("The Clock") - Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Claudio Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon)

Man in the mirror.

NightAfterNight — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:01:04 -0400

Michael Jackson's passing put me in an evil state of mind. Not so much the fact of it, which was shocking and tragic, but hardly unimaginable given the downward spiral of his career during the last decade-plus. No, it was the mad rush to pronounce the man dead that bothered me. No sooner did we learn from reliable sources that Jackson had been found in dire condition than the death announcements started to arrive: first from the gutter-sniffing vultures at TMZ, then from veteran offal vassal Matt Drudge. And then from Fox News, that infallible resource that had labeled disgraced South Carolina governor Mark Sanford a Democrat in a broadcast only one day before.

All three declared Jackson dead before the official announcement at 3:15pm California time, which effectively meant that they published what they did in order to draw attention and stir up hits. It sickened me to the point that I had to close my perpetually open Twitter window around 7pm, and leave it closed until just after midnight. I reopened it in time to see some genuinely moving statements -- and some inexplicably pin-headed jokes, too. (Sad to find that a favorite prominent political blogger, whose observations I've always found ribald, brave and true, was so ready to take lame cheap shots -- but that didn't prevent me from weeding him out of my Twitter feed.)

By day's end, the Time Out New York music staff was instructed to post personal remembrances of Michael Jackson. I encourage you to read the collective post, as I do genuinely think it presents a multifaceted, cross-generational (and even slightly international) view of a major artist's passing. I'm not certain that my contribution won't contribute to the mythologizing I predict in the opening paragraph -- and it might already be a little bit embarrassing. But here it is, nonetheless, verbatim:

In the days, weeks and months ahead, grand mythologies will be constructed on Michael Jackson's behalf; perhaps a decade from now, we'll see a tome or two the size of Peter Guralnick's Elvis Presley biographies, aimed at stripping away myth to reveal something approaching truth. Until then, we will all be reflecting upon what Jackson meant to us, and upon the ways in which his saga may or may not have reflected upon some deeper strand in our collective consciousness as music lovers, as Americans and as fragile humans.

Michael Jackson was around as far back as I can remember, usually somewhere within a comfortable periphery of my conscious existence. The Michael of "ABC," "I'll Be There" and "Ben" was a childhood acquaintance; the Michael of Off the Wall was a bond between me and one of my closest high-school friends. Then came the Michael of Thriller, the mythic figure who shattered walls (the race barrier at MTV most especially) and floated on air. It is not hyperbole to state that Michael Jackson's moonwalk on Motown 25 was a moment of captured time on celluloid every bit as profound and archetypal as Neil Armstrong's venture. You could believe that Michael Jackson, having defeated racism, could just as easily shrug off the laws of nature.

Thing is, the closer we got to Michael, the more we realized that he'd never escaped some deeply ingrained pain, some terror of which we could only be vaguely aware. A precocious child became an awkward, childlike man; attempts at eroticism increasingly seemed like play-acting. Jackson retreated, grew odd, transformed, became alien. No longer fulfilling (or even able to calculate) the needs for which we originally desired and revered him, he attracted attention for all the wrong reasons. The darkness he'd successfully outrun for so long seemed to be closing in upon him.

I can't imagine that anyone in this office imagined Jackson's planned return performances at London's O2 Arena could possibly have been successful. Even so, several of us talked about wanting to attend; one of us surely would have. However impractical the trip might have been for most of us, the desire itself proved that our affection for Jackson had improbably endured everything.

And that resistant faith in what Jackson created—not just a body of unforgettable songs (though there are those, for sure), but a sense that boundaries were for breaking and miracles could be achieved—is what will surely linger as his dearest legacy, among those of us fortunate enough to have witnessed the years in which he walked on air, trailing stardust in his wake.

What a staggering life. For those who made it this far, here's Michael Jackson moonwalking on Motown 25:

Pretty persuasion.

NightAfterNight — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:49:49 -0400

True confession: I did not care for R.E.M.'s Murmur when it appeared—which is the same as saying that if I'd attempted to realize my nascent rock-crit aspirations a year or so sooner than I did, I'd have been dead at the starting gate. At the time, the rock-crit rulebook looked something like this:

1: Murmur is the greatest American rock record issued in 1983.

2. See No. 1.

Years later, Murmur's kudzu mumble would finally take hold. (The recent deluxe reissue is an easy recommendation.) Where I came in was Reckoning, R.E.M.'s second full-length album. Issued in 1984, the album showed no sign of the much-cited sophomore-slump phenomenon. What it did show was a band capable of playing lean, wiry jangle rock with muscle and heart, stripped clean of the preciousness that delayed my appreciation of Murmur.

Heard again now, the ten songs that make up Reckoning still hold up. "Harborcoat," with its near-ska guitar shuffle, is as brash an opener as you could want; "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" and "Pretty Persuasion" remain among the band's strongest cuts, and "Camera" retains its mystery. Still, it's "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville," the most straightforward song—and the only one with lyrics not penned by Michael Stipe; Mike Mills wrote the tune back in 1980—that sticks in my mind most, not least because of a couplet that still resonates with all the power it had for a then-recently dumped collegiate:

At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
’Cause it's so much easier to handle all my problems if I'm too far out to see

The album sounds crisp, clear and fresh in Universal's new deluxe repackaging, part of a series that will presumably see the band's entire I.R.S. catalog spit-shined one last time for the twilight of the CD era. The bonus disc seals the deal, offering a terrific live show taped on July 7, 1984, at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Hearing the young band play, you get no glimmering of a later grandiosity that would inflate into pomp and border on parody. Listen to "Driver 8," an as-yet-unrecorded track that would turn up on 1985's challenging Fables of the Reconstruction, and what you hear in Stipe's insistent twang, Mills's nimble basslines, Peter Buck's melancholy jangle and ominous gnarl, and Bill Berry's affirmative thump is a combination of hunger and confidence that proved R.E.M. had the stuff of greatness.

[Posted this afternoon on The Volume]

Close to me.

NightAfterNight — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:22:47 -0400

"You sort of have to get close in this place, whether you want it or not," Anna Ternheim said as she carefully swiveled around the edge of the tiny stage at Joe's Pub on Monday night, maneuvering herself behind the piano. "I really like that," she added. Ternheim, a Swedish singer-songwriter now based in the East Village, has played more spacious rooms than Joe's Pub—both here in the U.S., where she's opened for Lykke Li, El Perro del Mar and Kristin Hersh, and back in Europe, where Ternheim racked up Swedish Grammy awards for each of her first two albums.

Turned out the close quarters and intimacy of Joe's Pub ideally suited Ternheim's lithe, penetrating voice, moody storytelling and stripped-down instrumentation. She mostly concentrated on songs from Leaving on a Mayday, her third European release, which will be issued by Verve Forecast as her second U.S. full-length on August 11. (Last year's arresting Halfway to Fivepoints, Ternheim's American debut CD, culled tracks from her two previous European releases, along with a few odds and ends.)

Not surprisingly, Leaving on a Mayday will strike most American listeners as Ternheim's most focused creation. Produced by Björn Yttling (of Peter Björn and John), the album wraps Ternheim's direct, memorable melodies in rich, resonant settings well suited to her vignettes of love, loss and loneliness. It's a far cry from the dance-pop escapism peddled by most of her Scandipop contemporaries: Ternheim has been likened to Beth Orton and even Joni Mitchell, but her closest stylistic forebear is probably Suzanne Vega, especially the clear, cool sound of Vega's first two albums.

Still, Ternheim's an original in the shaping. Here, she often held an audience spellbound with little more than her voice and acoustic guitar or piano. For a number of songs from the new album, she was joined by Leo Svensson, a Swedish cellist who doubled on glockenspiel (in a stark arrangement of "What Have I Done," the disc's orchestral-disco opening track) and musical saw (on the aching "My Heart Still Beats for You"). Svensson also joined three local singer-songwriters—Sharon Van Etten, Cat Martino and Clare Manchon (of Clare and the Reasons)—in luminous harmonies in several songs, and drummer Nils Tornqvist added stark tom-tom beats to a few more.

Near set's end, Ternheim moved her microphone off to the side and brought Van Etten, Martino and Manchon up for an all-acoustic rendition of "Summer Rain," ending in rapt silence. A gripping end to a soggy night's show? Not quite. "I feel weird not saying thank you, good night or whatever, so I'm gonna play one more song," Ternheim said. Mustering her forces, she played one of the most memorable cuts from the domestic version of Halfway to Fivepoints: a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Little Lies" that wrung more melancholy and poignance from the song than even its famously damaged originators could muster.

[Posted this afternoon on The Volume]

The clot thickens.

NightAfterNight — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:10:17 -0400

Sunday night's show by Van der Graaf Generator and Strawbs at the Nokia Theatre Times Square, recounted through my Twitter posts, and annotated and corrected as necessary.

From one of the thickest crowds I've ever seen at Town Hall (Emerson Quartet) to the thinnest I've seen at Nokia (Van der Graaf Generator).
7:44 PM Jun 21st ¹

Strawbs playing as acoustic trio, like a Crosby, Stills & Nash from the British Isles. #vandergraaf
8:07 PM Jun 21st ²

Strawbs play "Oh How She Changed," melancholy first single, issued 40 years ago. #vandergraaf
8:14 PM Jun 21st ³

@dollarama3k Yes, sir, Reunited in 2005; current U.S. tour is first in nearly three decades. #vandergraaf
8:25 PM Jun 21st ⁴

Strawbs play "The Hangman and the Papist" from "From the Witchwood," only LP with Rick Wakeman, replaced here with foot pedal. #vandergraaf
8:36 PM Jun 21st ⁵

Trivia: Strawbs began as bluegrass group, the Strawberry Hill Boys. #vandergraaf
8:39 PM Jun 21st ⁶

Now that I wouldn't have guessed: Just spotted Jim Thirlwell at VdGG show. #vandergraaf
8:52 PM Jun 21st ⁷

Van der Graaf Generator takes the stage with "Intereference Patterns" from last year's CD, "Trisector." #vandergraaf
9:17 PM Jun 21st ⁸

@jgrossnas Hey Jason, use a #vandergraaf hashtag, we can annoy everyone in tandem!
9:19 PM Jun 21st ⁹

"Scorched Earth" #vandergraaf
9:25 PM Jun 21st ¹⁰

Not close enough for iPhone photo. Peter Hammill, singing at electric piano stage right, faces Hugh Banton, organ & synth... #vandergraaf
9:29 PM Jun 21st ¹¹

... with Guy Evans drumming on riser to rear. Sound is strong & clear, and appropriately heavy. #vandergraaf
9:31 PM Jun 21st

"Every Bloody Emperor" feels timely: "Imperceptible the change as our votes become mere gestures." #vandergraaf
9:37 PM Jun 21st ¹²

"Lemmings" is resonating, too: "We have looked upon the High Kings / Found them less than mortals..." #vandergraaf
9:46 PM Jun 21st

"...their names are dust before the just march of our young, new law." Hammill on scathing guitar. #vandergraaf
9:48 PM Jun 21st ¹³

Peter Hammill looks like he could be Nels Cline's dad as he lurches around, spraying notes. #vandergraaf
9:51 PM Jun 21st ¹⁴

Hammill announces two more from "Trisector," a wise, profound disc that grew on me slowly. First, "Lifetime." #vandergraaf
9:59 PM Jun 21st ¹⁵

Followed by "All That Before." #vandergraaf
10:02 PM Jun 21st

Worth noting that audience filled in appreciably; Nokia's probably 75% full, not at all bad for a cult band. #vandergraaf
10:08 PM Jun 21st ¹⁶

"Childlike Faith in Childhood's End," apocalyptic sci-fi visions. #vandergraaf
10:15 PM Jun 21st ¹⁷

"Over the Hill," from "Trisector." Oblique elegy on obsolesence and breakdown: personal, interpersonal, societal. #vandergraaf
10:29 PM Jun 21st

Too bad VdGG has no merch table. They'd probably sell 100 copies of "Trisector" to old fans who didn't know it existed... #vandergraaf ¹⁸10:35 PM Jun 21st

...which is probably about as many copied as EMI sold through stores in the U.S., period. #vandergraaf
10:37 PM Jun 21st ¹⁹

"Killer," a classic from 1970 and the first time tonight I've truly missed ex-member David Jackson's multiple-sax blasts. #vandergraaf
10:42 PM Jun 21st ²⁰

Encore: "The Sleepwalkers," from 1975 LP "Godbluff." Evans does more with well-placed thwack than most do with elaborate fills. #vandergraaf
11:01 PM Jun 21st

============FOOTNOTES============

1 Arriving from a packed Free for All at Town Hall performance by the Emerson Quartet, Nokia—a comfortable but too-large space for this kind of show—seemed half-empty at first. (Things improved.)

2 Specifically: founding singer-songwriter and primary vocalist Dave Cousins, guitarist Dave Lambert and guitarist-bassist Chas Cronk.

3 Actually, issued by A&M in the U.K. precisely 31 years earlier—to the day.

4 Colleague and friend Steve Dollar has just learned from my previous tweets that Van der Graaf Generator is back in business. This should indicate how poorly word circulated, especially in the U.S. That this was the band's "first U.S. tour in nearly three decades was an underestimation and then some: its sole previous New York date was at the Beacon Theatre on October 18, 1976.

5 In Yes lore, among the first things you learn about keyboardist Rick Wakeman is that he came from the Strawbs. For this song, the only one played from the only LP Wakeman was on, Chas Cronk played chords on foot pedals.

6 True. Dave Cousins was once renowned as the fastest banjo picker in late-’60s England.

7 Van der Graaf Generator has always enjoyed an odd renown as the one prog-rock band that punks and post-punks truly appreciated; John Lydon and Mark E. Smith are commonly cited. Thirlwell, an industrial-music icon, offers further evidence.

8 Murmurs of "This is a new song" could be heard rippling through the rows behind me. Trisector was issued in March 2008. Way to get the word out, EMI. (I found out about the album via a flyer handed out after Peter Hammill's riveting solo show last summer at the Cutting Room.)

9 My discovery that another friend and colleague, Jason Gross, was present and tweeting—or so I thought. Actually, it later turned out that he'd uncharacteristically sent just one tweet. (It was Jason's partner, @RobinCook, who would be reporting on this show.)

10 From the 1975 album, Godbluff.

11 Self-explanatory. Wondering whether the improved camera in an iPhone 3GS addresses this.

12 The track comes from Van der Graaf Generator's first studio recording after reuniting in 2004, Present.

13 Given that my main use of Twitter is not reviewing concerts but following the developments in Iran, these particular lyrics (from 1971's Pawn Hearts) rang eerily prescient. (At least one friend thought so, too.)

14 Nels Cline is, of course, the tall, gangly, avant-garde jazzer-turned-Wilco guitarist.

15 My first response to Trisector was based on what it wasn't: a clone of the vintage VdGG discs of yore. It's less excessive, more streamlined for the most part. But it grew on me with time, especially as I prepared to write a concert preview for TONY. I now have a tremendous respect for the disc, and the songs they played here in particular.

16 Seemed important to note, given my dire announcement at the start. (Some folks are just going to show up late.)

17 The song I most hoped to hear—from Still Life, the reissue I most wanted to buy directly from the band. But alas…

18 …the band was not selling CDs. In the case of Trisector, the existence of which many people around me were apparently unaware, this was a serious mistake. I don't think this was the type of crowd that would go home and buy the disc on iTunes.

19 I have no figures to substantiate this claim, of course; my statement was based in nothing more than frustration and distaste for the practices of certain corporations.

20 I'm reasonably certain that Hammill announced "Killer," as is my companion of the evening. But the song, as pointed out by @RobinCook and @andyzax, was in fact "Man-Erg." (The first line of that song is, "The killer lives inside me, yes," but that's no excuse.) David Jackson, who used to play two saxes at once à la Rahsaan Roland Kirk, left VdGG in 2005.

Dark shadows.

NightAfterNight — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:52:00 -0400

Emerson String Quartet at Town Hall
The New York Times, June 23, 2009

Fun fact: According to Midge Woolsey, who hosted this concert, Schubert is the most-played composer on WQXR-FM.

Make your own kind of music.

NightAfterNight — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:36:39 -0400

The New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall
The New York Times, June 19, 2009

Speak, memory.

NightAfterNight — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:01:01 -0400

Paula Matthusen at Roulette
The New York Times, June 15, 2009