When queried in 1964 by a New York Times reporter about the origins of the Elegy to J. F. K., Stravinsky described “a melodic-rhythmic stutter of my speech from Les Noces to the Concerto in D, and earlier as well—a lifelong affliction, in fact.” The comparison of his melodic writing to a stutter, perhaps offered as a slightly acerbic riposte to frequent critiques, in fact serves as a clever metaphor, for it links the fragmental, dislocated, and repetitive aspects of the composer's melodic style with underlying connective origins inherent in speech. from Gretchen G. Horlacher in Building Blocks: Repetition and Continuity in the Music of StravinskyGeorge Handy was an admirer of Stravinsky's music, and I hear a lot of these abstractions of melodic cells in the saxophone suites.
What Is Hip? lyrics
Tower Of Power – What Is Hip LyricsSongwriters: S. KUPKA, E. CASTILLO, D. GARIBALDI{ Band intro }So ya wanna dump out yo' trick bag.Ease on in a hip thang,But you ain't exactly sure what is hip.So you started to let your hair grow.Spent big bucks on your wardrobe.Somehow, ya know there's much more to the trip.refrain 1:What is hip?Tell me, tell me, if you think you know.What is hip?If you're really hip,the question, "Will it show?"You're into a hip trip.Maybe hipper than hip.What is hip?You became a part of a new breed.Been smokin' only the best weed.Hangin' out with the so called "Hippie set."Seen in all the right places.Seen with just the right faces.You should be satisfied, but it ain't quite right.Refrain 1refrain 2:Come on!Hipness is. What it is!Hipness is. What it is!Hipness is. What it is!Sometimes hipness is, what it ain't.You went an' found you a guru.In an effort to find you a new you,And maybe even manage to raise your conscious level.While you're striving to find the right road,There's one thing you should know,"What's hip today, might become passe'."refrain 1Think about it y'all.Refrain #2What is hip?Ahhhhhhhhh!What is hip?I'd like to know!What is hip?Is it in the style of your hair?What is hip?Is it in the clothes that you wear?What is hip?I'd like to know.What is hip?I'd like to know.What is hip?What is hip y'all? Hey!What is hip?Hey! Oh!What is hip?What is hip y'all?+D3What is hip?I wanna know.What is hip?Ahhhhhhh!What is hip?I wanna know what hipness is.
Caesuras
For the last year I have been struck by the logic of delineating musical phrases. There are several ways of doing this, depending on the music. When a phrase ends in a long tone, one can simply cut down the length of the held note to in effect insert a breath to indicate that one phrase is ending and the next is about to begin. One can alternatively insert a short pause, known as a caesura. Wanda Landowska, the first major harpsichordist of the 20th century and a fantastic pianist as well, wrote that "to allow air to circulate is like breathing a constantly renewed life into musical phrases; it gives them a relief indispensable to their comprehension. That is why all ancient treatises compare musical interpretation to eloquence. Nothing could be more annoying than those melodic lines that are never interrupted by the slightest breathing. They are comparable to an unpunctuated text or to extremely elongated spaghetti endlessly rolling with neither beginning nor end, but lasting forever!" (p. 376, Landowska on Music).
Layout headaches for the composer
The problem of performing music using sheet music are manifold. On the one hand, making music easy to see and follow cuts down on rehearsal time and produces better performances. Over the years I've been careful to add cue notes; arranged lines of music so that rehearsal letters are placed at the left of the page; made sure not to put too many measures on one line of music to keep chord changes from being cluttered; spaced drum parts to reflect the length of a musical phrase, and on and on. On the other hand, these layout strategies lead to more pages-per-part. Now the composer has to worry about the practicalities of dealing with a long part on a music stand. Occasionally I've changed notes to rests just so the musician can take the time to flip over the part or turn pages. Sometimes I wish that musicians had page turners so I wouldn't have to deal with the part layout at all. The Manhasset folder makes it possible to have 4 pages visible on the stand instead of the usual 3 pages. This is a great help, but it significantly clutters up the performance space and consequently pushes musicians apart. Moreover, the big folder hides the performers from audience views.
Bukowski Liked Mozart press release
Several years ago, Carl Banner of Washington Musica Viva commissioned Charley Gerard to convert Mozart’s violin sonata #25 into a jazz piece. Mr. Banner was intrigued by the bass note passage on the piano and thought, wouldn’t this work great as a “walking” bass part with a drummer playing along? At first Mr. Gerard was hesitant to reinterpret Mozart, especially since jazzin’ up the classics was at one time roundly condemned by the musical establishment. But after examining the work, Mr. Gerard saw the creative possibilities. Mr. Gerard retitled the work Bukowski Liked Mozart after writer/poet Charles Bukowski, America’s bard of the down-and-out. This is Mozart that would fit into a barroom setting. The work has gone through a change since it was last performed locally with violinist Kathy Judd, Executive and Artistic Director at Washington Conservatory of Music. There were new parts for bass and drums and the piano part was also altered, but the violin part unchanged. In the present work, the violin part will now be assigned to a saxophone, and there are several additional spots for jazz improvisation. In a way, this is not too different from the way Mozart’s works were performed in the 18th century when musicians inserted their own improvised lead-ins at key harmonic points, ad-libbed cadenzas and improvised between movements. Since the work ends with a series of variations, it was not much of a leap to add a few more variations in a style that jazz musicians would be accustomed to. Bukowski Liked Mozart will be performed at Twins Jazz on Dec. 5, 2013. The performers are: Mr. Banner, piano, Charley Gerard, saxophone, drummer Lennie Robinson, bassist James King and Dutch guitarist Syberen Van Munster. This group has performed at the Kennedy Center and the Czech Republic Embassy.Twins Jazz is at 1344 U St NW, Washington, DC 20009 www.twinsjazz.com
Irving Flores, Jr.
Judi and I caught up with Irving Flores, Jr., the son of the bandleader I worked for in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico 36 years ago. We also met his wonderful girlfriend Lillian Johnson. What an amazing experience! Irving is an amazing jazz pianist with an impressive resume (see www.irvingflores.com). He currently lives in San Diego. We played together and the music was on a high level. After we ate an excellent dinner cooked by Judi, we reached Irving Flores, Sr. at his home in Puerta Vallarta. After speaking in Spanish, he told me in English that he loved me, and I said the same to him.It's almost a dream-like experience to reconnect with a family after over 3 decades. Irving invited me to San Diego to make a record and do a concert. Who knows? I might take him up on it.
Lucid Culture 2013 review of "Sound of a broken reed" CD
The Broken Reed Saxophone Quartet’s album The Sound of a Broken Reed is a quintessentially New York creation. With its edgy humor and intelligence, it’s steeped in history but just as irreverent, pretty much what you would expect from a bunch of longtime downtown types jazzing up Debussy, Piazzolla and Led Zep. Yet as entertaining and amusing as the covers here are, it’s bandleader Charley Gerard’scompositions that stand out the most. As you may have guessed, the album title is sarcastic: the charts are lustrous, the ensemble plays seamlessly and the songs swing just as hard as they would if there were bass and drums on them. The only other instrument besides the saxes (Gerard on alto, Jenny Hill primarily on soprano, Chris Bacas mostly on tenor and Alden Banta on baritone) is Carl Banner’s elegant piano on the first two suites. Most of the album, as well as a considerable amount of equally intriguing, more recent material, is streaming at the group’s Soundcloud page.The opening diptych is Gerard’s Quintet for Carl and Saxes, Banner’s third-stream lyricism followed by lush four-part harmonies that grow to a majestic waltz. The second part is a wry series of interwoven miniatures that’s basically a non-linear history of jazz: ragtime, lounge, a little noir amd sumptuous big band swing, capped off by a genial soprano solo by Bacas.The second suite is Dick Hyman’s droll Novelties for Piano and Sax Quartet: jaunty ragtime, a couple of lively staccato strolls and a comedic polka/ragtime hybrid. They follow that with Gerard’s Quartet No. 3, bookending a pensive exchange of voices led by Banta with variations on a theme that very artfully coalesces out of lively, dancing counterpoint.The Led Zep comes after that. Humor-wise, it’s a lot like the Threeds Oboe Trio’s take on the Doors or Michael Jackson, equal parts spoof and opportunity to have fun with taking old themes to new places. Whole Lotta Love and an unexpectedly anxious, rather radical remake of Dazed and Confused are barely recognizable until halfway through, while miniature versions of Heartbreaker and Kashmir are as irresistibly over the top as you could possibly want. Living Loving Maid falls somewhere in between.Tom Olin takes over for Bacas on tenor (with Hill playing soprano, as she does with a judicious elan on most of the tracks) on three Gerard remakes of Summer, from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The first has a balmy Miles Ahead vibe and adheres closest to the baroque, the second a lively, bluesy exchange of voices, the third a mashup with Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay, done as a clave tuneBacas moves back to his usual tenor, Olin to soprano for his arrangement of Debussy’s Syrinx for Solo Flute, fleshed out with a nod to Gil Evans, weaving the pensive melody through the whole ensemble. Gerard’s medley of popular Cuban melodies (De Cuba Para La Habana, Guantanamera, Bilonto and El Manicero) bops along with a sunny pulse, followed by Hill’s pensively airy, understatedly majestic waltz arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s Chiquilín de Bachín. It’s a rare blend of edgy fun and razor-sharp chops.For anyone who might take exception to giving this much ink to an album that came out in 2009, that’s old thinking. Exciting as the past year has been, if the only music we listened to was brand-new, nobody would have heard of Coltrane or Mingus.
More ideas for interpretation
Flexible temposQuantz: "the performance should be easy and flexible...without stiffness and constraint." p. 20CPE Bach: [certain sequences] can be effectively performed by accelerating gradually and gently, and retarding immediately afterwards." "Certain deliberate disturbances of the beat are extremely beautiful...certain notes and rests should be prolonged beyond their written length for reasons of expression." p. 21AccentuationCPE Bach: "discords are performed loud and concords soft." p. 32Balance:[when one part has merely] to fill in the harmony, it must be performed more softly than the other which makes the principal melody meanwhile. p. 37Demarcating phrasesRobert Donington: "It is necessary for the audience to experience the patterns; and for this the separations in the line are just as important as the line itself." p. 30As a composer I have likewise demarcated my phrases, changed tempos and written out note extensions. In order to emphasize the principal line I have marked in "lead" and put it in all parts of an ensemble so everybody knows who has the melody and to adjust one's part accordingly.