I recall with nostalgia my first hearing of Yehudi Menuhin’s collaboration with Ravi Shankar titled, “East Meets West”.  I was in high school and had not yet heard the exotic sound of the sitar.  Menuhin’s ability to grasp and communicate world music to an audience schooled in the Western European classical traditions is a treasured part of his legacy.

Along comes composer pianist John Pitts (1976- ) who encountered raga scales and Hindustani classical forms during a “gap year” in his musical studies in 1995.  This encounter subsequently spurred him to write the present book, a seemingly obvious idea but one that has not been attempted in quite this way as far as I can determine.  Pitts is a highly skilled pianist and composer.

This book assumes no more than a basic grounding in western classical music and at least a modicum of skill at the keyboard.  With that and the present text the interested reader/player will be brought to a fine introduction to Hindustani scales and forms and have a method by which at least some of these ideas can be applied to the ubiquitous piano thereby providing another perspective.

Of course the microtonal aspects of this music cannot be reproduced on a piano but the basic concepts of the scales and the improvisational methodology will surely enhance the imagination and skills of any interested musician.  The book introduces these concepts in a lucid manner and provides notation and methods enabling one to play a variety of ragas at the keyboard in a fairly short time.

I have lived with this book for several weeks now and find it endlessly fascinating.  Even with my limited keyboard skills I have been able to scratch the surface and begin to explore some of the essence of this ancient musical system.  Very likely this text will do much to enhance the compositional imagination as well as one’s keyboard skills.  Some may recall, for example, that Philip Glass developed his mature compositional style after his encounter with this musical system in his work with the same Ravi Shankar whose mastery inspired Sir Yehudi Menuhin to bring this music to a western audience.

Recordings have made so much world music with its varied scales, rhythmic structures and tuning systems available to a much wider audience but much less has been done to provide interested musicians with a more hands on experience.  This book does much to address this gap.  It does not pretend to be a definitive exposition of this musical system nor does it attempt to create more than a basic pedagogy which will encourage further exploration.  This book is very much a continuation of the interest begun by Menuhin, Glass and their followers.

Bravo, Mr. Pitts!

His very useful and interesting website can be accessed at: http://www.johnpitts.co.uk/

Charles Amirkhanian (r) and Alvin Curran with the projection screen here showing Curran’s Geologic Conversation.

The David Brower Center in Berkeley, California provided a perfect setting for Other Minds‘ presentation of a conversation with American composer Alvin Curran.  The Brower Center is the new home of the Other Minds organization run by broadcaster, composer and new music impresario Charles Amirkhanian.  It is also home to a range of ecologically conscious organizations and is housed in a building renowned for its ecological efficiency. Curran, whose energy and charm belie his age (he turns 79 in December) is a composer with strong ties to the environment both as a concern and as a compositional element.

After a brief intro Curran provided a capsule overview of his evolution as an artist from his beginnings at Yale studying with Elliott Carter to his epiphanies in Berlin and later Rome (where he has made his home since the early 1960s).   He described his decision to drive with fellow composer Joel Chadabe to Rome saying that they were “dreaming about making revolution”.  There he collaborated with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum (among others) in founding the first live electronic improvisation ensemble, Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV).  This was before the general availability of prepackaged synthesizers.

While he does not eschew more traditional classical music much of his work ventures far outside those models and it was a sampling of some of these ventures that were discussed and displayed in this fascinating interactive discussion.

He began by playing a portions of a video of a piece called Geologic Conversation (2000) which involved a large gaggle of musicians peripatetically led by the unbelievably energetic Curran as they all moved (danced?) on the active volcano, Mount Etna in Sicily. The performance drew a crowd of some 500 people of varying ages who moved with the musicians as they traversed a path across the sometimes volcanically singed locations.  It was by all appearances an ecstatic performance and not without some danger.

Curran’s infectious, almost self deprecating humor charmed the audience who, like this writer, sat in rapt attention stunned by the audacity of the composer’s visions.

I had the opportunity to ask him about his relationship to the work of the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer whose works seem to echo Curran’s.  “He is more ‘composerly’ than I am” was Curran’s reply  but he did acknowledge some kinship with Schafer’s work.  Indeed Schafer has probably produced more traditional classical concert works than Curran but the parallels of his operas utilizing the sheer vastness of the Canadian landscape are hard to miss.

He next described and played video excerpts of what he calls Living Room Music.  In it he invited various musicians to his apartment in Rome to do “anything they wanted” in exchange for a modest fee and a meal cooked by Curran.  The recorded excerpts of these various performances were later used in a radio sound work for Deutschland Radio.  What is impossible to grasp is how this seemingly banal idea is transformed into a sort of musical tabula rasa which inspired some amazing ideas from the guests he hosted.  His successful facilitation of such seemingly strange, even goofy ideas is a mark of his genius.

Next up was a sort of installation art piece called Gardening with John which involved Curran building a little prefab garden shed (yes, filled with gardening tools) in which he covered the internal walls with quotes from John Cage and played tapes of Cage laughing. The video consisted of an unmoderated conversation between Curran and some of his guests. This installation sat on the grounds of a German museum.  Humor and irony are a part of Curran’s work as much as they are of Cage’s.

Next up was Curran’s own version of Water Music which he calls Maritime Rites. It has been performed in various settings, all on or near water.  This piece involves recordings which Curran made of various maritime sounds across the east coast of the United States as well as notated music to be played by the musicians.

The video he showed was of a performance on the Thames River in London (also the site of the performance of Handel’s Water Music) with the audience gathered on the Millennium Bridge.  Curran and two other musicians played from a barge and members of the London Symphony played on the shore.  The crowd was so large as to suggest that the bridge may be challenged in its ability to accommodate them safely but, thankfully, it did.

Curran’s wild genius is tempered by an affable inclusiveness and an infectious enthusiasm.

Finally, though the audience was clearly prepared to stay much longer, Curran and Amirkhanian discussed, “Oh for the Brass on the Grass”, a work for some 500 band musicians recruited from surrounding German towns.  These amateur musicians ranging in age from 8 to 80 responded enthusiastically to Curran’s manic conducting (apparently banging a couple of pipes) as they traversed a large grassy field.  At one point Curran turned off the sound and laughed at the specter of his own passionate conducting.

As if to remind me that I was in the liberal enclave of Berkeley I spied this graffito in the elevator on the way to retrieve my car. I think Curran would have enjoyed the humor and the critique.

Unfortunately there was not time to delve into the many other aspects of this composer’s work which include some traditional concert works and a generous helping of politically charged work.  But Curran warmly greeted his admirers providing autographs and avid conversation.  All in all a lovely evening with a true master musician of our age.  Can’t wait to see what he will do next.

I am going to start here with some disclaimers:   I tend to like liturgical classical music.  I asked to review this recording.  I really expected to like this piece.  I dislike giving bad reviews.

My readers  will note that, while I may turn a critical eye/ear, I generally don’t give bad reviews.  That being said I can tell you that I had hope for this recording and gave it a fair and close listen.  I am sad to say I was disappointed.

The positives:  great recording, great label, elaborate and competent writing, dedicated and competent performance.

The negatives:  Perhaps it is the composer’s intent to create this retro Beethoven/Berlioz piece for the purpose of making this big recording (an audio DVD is included in Dolby 5.1) but ultimately I find it to be overstated and derivative.  It just tries too hard.

Some listeners may enjoy this big production with its excellently recorded sound but that reminds me of a friend who used to collect “audiophile” recordings and was concerned at times more with sound than content.  If that’s your bag then you will like this disc.

The second piece on the disc is a shorter a capella piece Tout les Matins Du Monde fares somewhat better.  The composer’s skill is evident and better used in this smaller format.  Unfortunately we only get to hear one small scale composition here.