Two LA Philharmonic Festivals of California Music

Dear Readers - this is the second of three unfinished Mixed Meters posts that have languished in my draft folder.  I'm posting them now to get rid of them in honor of this blog's tenth anniversary.

The line "Only now am I finding the energy to finish." seems quite ironic given the fact that it was written nearly 6 years ago.  (When I spoke of "January 16" I meant the one in 2010.)

This was not really intended as a concert review.  I have no interest in being a music critic.  Instead, I wanted to compare two music festivals, one held in November and December 1981 and the other in November and December 2009.  Both festivals dealt with the same general subject matter, music of California composers.

I have no idea what I wanted to add to this post.  My memory has deleted that information.  I've upgraded the links as well as I can.  Unfortunately the Internet has deleted some of that information.  I've been able to replace a few of them via archive.org.  

I also added links to each of the composers represented on the 1981 marathon concert.  Curiously, a couple have Wikipedia articles only in Dutch or German.  Finally I've added  a few relevant pictures which I squirreled away back in 2009.   

As always, thanks for reading.  I encourage you to sing along if you know the words.

//David

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I started writing this post on January 16.  Only now am I finding the energy to finish.  My subject is two Los Angeles music festivals, one very recent, the other nearly 30 years ago.  Both of these events were devoted to music with a real, direct relationship to California.  Both festivals were produced by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

The first, in December 2009, was called Left Coast, West Coast.  As far as I'm aware, this was the first time in nearly 3 decades that the Philharmonic had presented a series of events devoted solely to California composers.  The previous festival, in 1981, was called Festival of Music Made in Los Angeles.

In one of many pre-concert lectures he gave, the Philharmonic's Creative Chair, John Adams, indicated that the music of Left Coast, West Coast didn't really allow for any conclusion about California music.  The title itself suggested that our music could somehow be distinguished from Right Coast, East Coast music. That's not going to happen.

Personally, I found two interesting dichotomies of California music in the Left Coast, West Coast programs.  Turns out that it's not the longitude which is important.  It's the latitude.  In other words, the festival revealed differences between Northern California and Southern California composers.  It also displayed a split unique to Southern California composers.

You can still find a full program listing of the festival here.  My comments apply only to the four concerts I actually attended.  Other composers, mostly from the south, were presented by the L.A.Master Chorale, REDCAT and Piano Spheres   Other concerts were devoted to the worlds of pop and jazz.  And my comments should be considered very general - not hard and fast.  Exceptions abound.

The North California composers were John Adams, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Ingram Marshall, Paul Dresher, Mason Bates and Harry Partch (well, Partch moved around a lot.)  Their various pieces included elements of jazz, world musics, non-equal temperments, improvisation, found sounds, specially constructed instruments and electronic.  These all are cutting edge new music, valid, on-going trends.  They all have strong Northern California associations.

The Southern Californias were Thomas Newman, Franz Waxman, Leonard Rosenman, Jerry Goldsmith, Frank Zappa, William Kraft and Esa-Pekka Salonen.  These seven names divide neatly into two groups.  The first four are known primarily as film composers.  Except for the Goldsmith piece, Music for Orchestra (which was written specifically for concert performance and had my rapt attention from the very first note), these film-related pieces only strengthened my belief that film composing and concert composing require completely different talents.  I wish we could give a long, long rest to the notion that movie scores are worth listening to as pure music and without the visuals.

The three other Southerners, Kraft, Zappa and Salonen, were just as modern as anything from the North.  But these particular pieces revealed new music trends more attuned to East coast or European ideas.  (Let me note that Esa-Pekka Salonen lived in Southern California about the same length of time as Arnold Schoenberg, seventeen years.  Unlike Schoenberg, his music was strongly affected by California.)

It is good that the Left Coast, West Coast festival pointed slyly to this perennial issue of North versus South in California music.  Possibly, as Gustavo Dudamel comes into his own as music director of the LA Phil, we will see more consideration of North versus South, but on a hemispheric rather than statewide basis.

It's not particularly surprising to discover that Northern California boasts a more experimental music tradition while Southern California still struggles mightily to distinguish real art music from background sound tracks.   Still, for the time being, I see no sign that the South is any closer to resolving this musical schizophrenia than it was back in the days of, say, Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Mention of Korngold brings up another unique musical cross which Southern California must bear: our history of great musical talents who came here in the thirties and forties to avoid European politics.  The most inescapable of these were Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky.  These days Arnie's and Igor's direct local influences are long gone.  I've said (via Twitter):

If you still think Los Angeles is a great musical city because Stravinsky and Schoenberg lived here, please set your clock back 50 years. 

Maybe I should have said 29 years instead of 50.  In 1981, the LA Bicentennial year, the Festival of Music Made in Los Angeles prominently featured music which both Stravinsky and Schoenberg had written while they lived here.  The two composers were given equal status on two concerts, performed by the LA Philharmonic at Royce Hall.

Back in 1981 it was still easy to find people in Los Angeles who had studied with and devoted themselves to these masters.  Lawrence Morton and Leonard Stein came immediately to mind.

The rest of the festival consisted of one concert - actually a marathon.  It featured music by a wide variety of other composers.  The only requirement for inclusion was that all the music had to have been written in L.A. - or at least nearby.    The list contains some names not often associated with California and, unlike the 2009 festival, few film-industry associated names but many academics.

Joseph Achron
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Gerald Strang
Leroy Southers
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Frederick Lesemann
Gladys Nordenstrom
William Grant Still
Hans Eisler
Paul Chihara
William Kraft
George Antheil
Roy Harris
Dorrance Stalvey
George Tremblay
Robert Linn
Karl Kohn
Henri Lazarof
John Cage
Donal Michalsky
Ingolf Dahl
Ernst Toch
Adolph Weiss
Lukas Foss
Aurelio de la Vega
George Gershwin
Oscar Levant
Ernst Krenek
Halsey Stevens

The only composer whose music was presented on both the 1981 and 2009 festivals was William Kraft, who started his career as an L.A. composer in the mid-fifties.  He's still going strong.  He's also one of the few remaining local musicians who worked closely with Stravinsky himself.

Personally I can remember attending only one of the three 1981 concerts.  I also remember reading the lengthy erudite essays in the program book by Peter Heyworth and Lawrence Morton.  These were devoted to Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Otto Klemperer.

I vividly remember being absolutely bowled over by Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Schoenberg's arrangement of Brahm's Quartet in G Minor.  It's strange to think any piece by such a famous nineteenth century German composer might have even this small a connection directly to California.  Maybe that's enough of a connection to hold a county-wide Brahms festival, which is a much better idea than a Wagner festival.  It's also much less offensive in my opinion.  (Sergei Rachmaninoff lived and died in Beverly Hills.  I'm unaware of any music he might have written here.)

I do strongly believe in holding music festivals which feature strong California associations.  Serious music in California desperately needs some sense of place.  My problem with these two Philharmonic festivals has nothing to do with the content chosen for them.  The differences between them no doubt reflect the differences of the times.  The big issue, however, is the length of time separating the two.

I wonder if anyone planning the 2009 Festival was even aware of the 1981 Festival.  There have been other new music festivals between these two.  Most notable would be New Music Los Angeles in 1985 but that had a nationwide scope.

I can dream than more regular surveys of serious California music, past, present and future, produced by our major performing arts organizations, might lead eventually to a pre-concert lecture at which the speaker would be able to suggest some common aspects of "California music".  Maybe there will be, by then, a proto-california music style.  I should live so long.  In another 29 years I'll be in my mid-eighties.  If I'm around then I will, naturally, voice my disagreements with the programming right here at Mixed Meters.

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Here's Mark Swed's review of West Coast, Left Coast
Read two Mixed Meters articles labeled William Kraft

Vexations in Los Angeles

(Listen to a live recording of Vexations while you read.)

Vexation n.

1. The act of annoying, irritating, or vexing.
2. The quality or condition of being vexed; annoyance.
3. A source of irritation or annoyance.

Vexations

a noted musical work by Erik Satie.

I think Erik Satie's Vexations is one piece of music with a perfect title.  A title should give you some insight into the music itself.   And in the case of Vexations, if the music itself were not annoying, irritating or vexing enough (and it is aplenty), the composer compounded the annoyance with his instruction:

"In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities"

If you spend even a short while thinking about and listening to Vexations you'll end up scratching your head.  That is a good thing.

John Cage, whose 100 birth anniversary is being celebrated far and wide at the moment, reveled in music which made listeners think.  It was Cage who brought Vexations to the attention of the music world.  In 1963 he organized the first complete performance in New York City.

This piece is now so associated with Cage himself that complete Vexations performances (which take upwards of 18 hours) are presented in Cage's memory.  I know of two coming soon in California, one on the Berkeley Arts Festival and the other on the Jacaranda Series in Santa Monica.  Check them out.

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This Mixed Meters post will feature two decades-old complete local performances of Satie's Vexations.  I was lucky enough to be a performer in both of them.

The first was on radio station KPFK on September 6, 1981 - all 840 repetitions were performed and broadcast live.  For 19 hours there were no station identifications.

The other was performed at a West Hollywood art gallery and was organized by the composer Randy Hostetler as part of his Living Room concert series.  It happened on August 1, 1992.

We'll go in reverse chronological order:

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Composer Randy Hostetler lived from 1963 to 1996.  His short life and his music are honored and recounted at livingroommusic.org.   His piece "8" for piano and eight ball (in the side pocket) is a good introduction to the spirit Randy brought to his work.  Randy's close friend Art Jarvinen wrote 8 revealing stories about Randy.

One of Randy's projects was a concert series entitled The Living Room Series.  On one of these he produced Vexations. Here's the silk-screened concert poster:

Click on the poster for an enlargement.  Here's the text:

THE LIVING ROOM SERIES PRESENTS

SATIE

VEXATIONS

vexations by erik satie

1 august 1992, asher-faure gallery, 612 n. almont drive, west hollywood

beginning at 7 am and running continuously for close to 24 hours

for more information: 310 271-3665

scheduled pianists: gaylord mowrey, michael fink, jim fox, christopher hobbs,

david hatt, lorna eder, randolph hostetler, david ocker, chas smith, sandra brown,

david peck, francesca talenti, michael webster, brian howrey, wendy prober,

joe metzler, dan lawrence, sarah simons, daniel mettler, alan zychek

designed and printed by i.c. and a.b. at the rollins printing office of the school of art, yale university

(If you click on the address you'll be taken to the Google Street View.  Next click on the double arrow pointing toward the building and you can look around inside the now renamed gallery.)

Here are some memories of that event.

Alan Zychek:

I remember Vexations, that was a wonderful day over in WEHO. There was the vexation room with the piano and rugs. Outside the room there was food, drink and good times.  I think there was someone asleep under the piano when my turn came. I remember trying to discern stylistic nuances when the next player took over, but finding none. It was as if the piece neutered any personality a pianist would normally strive for.

I also remember Randy's LR concerts.  He placed mirophones throughout the entire space, inside and out -  and the back room is where you could listen to a mix of random conversations in real time.  Good luck and thank's for dislodging some wonderful memories. 

Jim Fox:

One thing I remember about the '92 Vexations performance was its lovely mix of the sacred and the profane. In the gallery itself, where the music--ever different, yet ever the same--slowly and quietly spun forth from the assembled musicians, I recall that the mood was sacredly hushed. The tempo shifted from player to player, sometimes slightly, sometimes dramatically. Interpretations of a pass through the single page of notes drifted, sometimes as willed, sometimes as fatigue dictated. Well-schooled fingers milked its chords for all they could find and less-schooled ones went about the task in a workmanly fashion, and sometimes a note or two disappeared beneath the keyboard. 

Listeners were strewn about the floor or draped over chairs or even sitting on the edges of chairs, as if waiting for one of the players to keel over. They generally gazed into space or stared intently, chins cradled in hands, at a performer. (Many seemed lost in near-sleep or reverie.) Some performers and some listeners were there for the duration (or some reasonable facsimile of it), some seemed to merely pop in for a few moments. 

But just outside the gallery doors--on a concrete patio as I recall--was a wonderful, long-winded, nearly off-the-rails (or perhaps that was just me) party, a spontaneous and at times slightly raucous celebration among new and old friends, blessed by a broad sense of camaraderie, and fueled by the consumption of much volatile liquid. And that day's odd blend of the sacred and profane seemed altogether Satie-esque in a good and simply simpatico way. 

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The 1981 KPFK performance of Vexations was organized by the station's music director Carl Stone and assistant Lois V. Vierk.  The event was scheduled as a special event for Labor Day weekend.  The station would often suspend regular programs on holidays in favor of unusual programming.

Here's a page from the KPFK September 1981 Folio, their program guide.  Even then Vexations was associated with John Cage's birthday.  At the time he was turning 69.   A 12-hour broadcast of Cage's Empty Words is announced for later in the month.  In that folio you can read a 3-page interview of Cage by Roger Reynolds.

Carl sent me the thank-you announcement from the October 1981 Folio.  (That month also announced the resignation of both Carl and Lois from their positions at the station.)

The performance of Vexations by Erik Satie was one of the larger and more fun undertakings of the Music Department. Carl Stone and Lois Vierk co-ordinated the schedule of the 18 pianists who played in half-hour shifts. They were: Gloria Cheng, Paul Reale, Bob Fernandez, Gaylord Mowry, Mike McCandless, Lorna Little, Zita Carno, Reymond Berney, Heidi Lesemann, Del ores Stevens, Alan Oettinger, Felix De Cola, Richard Grayson, Milus Scruggs, Lucky Mosko, Ani Schwartz, David Ocker, and Leonid Hambro.

Audrey Tawa stayed from 6 am to 1 am the next day with the task of keeping an accurate tally of the 840 repetitions demanded by the composer. Ahna Armour prepared a grande bouffe for all the participants, and Kathy Harada stayed to make sure things went smoothly. Special thanks to David Ocker for staying at the piano for an extra hour to finish up.

By the end of the 19 hours, the station had received a total of 89 phone calls to comment on the broadcast: 67 favorable and 22 not. Below is a sample of some of the telegrams and letters the station received in the days that followed.

You can read the sample of telegrams and letters here (search for "Vexations".)  Note the "special thanks" to me for playing the clean up position.  I tell the full story of that below.

Here are a couple personal recollections.

Heidi Lesemann:

Carl had set it up so that we paired with another pianist for 2 hours, each of us taking half hour shifts, as Carl said. My partner was Dee Stevens. The music was easy, about 12 bars, but I was very nervous coming into the studio. I had been listening to it for a couple of hours beforehand. When the half hour was close, the relief pianist sat with the first pianist and slid into place in the keys as the first pianist slid off the bench. Seamless. I remember feeling like I was part of an historic event! Honored to be part of it.

Lois Vierk:

I remember organizing the event with Carl. It actually wasn't too hard to get together because the musicians were so gracious with their time and energy. And Audrey Tawa was, as always, a terrific person to work with.

Audrey Tawa was the person charged with tracking the number of repetitions.  She had a mechanical counter, a little chrome job with a plunger.  Each push on that increased the count by one.  She pushed it for each phrase.  One repetition - out of the 840 - consists of four phrases.  Therefore the magic number which needed to be reached on the counter was 3360.  

Before I went to the studio that day I made a home air check of the broadcast.  I recorded off the air onto a 10 1/2 inch reel-to-reel half track tape deck running at 3 3/4 inches per second, the slowest possible speed.  I recorded in mono in one direction.  Later in the day I flipped the tape over and recorded the other side of the tape.  I put the tape in a box.  It remained untouched for nearly 31 years.

A few weeks ago I found the tape and digitized it.  I have the same tape machine which still works!  I improved the sound as best I could and combined both sides into one file.  The total length is 6 hours, 24 minutes and 45 seconds.  I've uploaded this recording and you can listen to it.

Listen to Erik Satie Vexations - 1981 KPFK live broadcast

Yes, the sound quality sucks.  There is wow and flutter.  I think the piece transcends the poor sound quality.  Unlike other recordings you might find online, which likely have only a few repetitions, this has several hundred - about one third of the entire piece.

I do not know who the specific players are.  I'm pretty sure none of them are me.  If you listen carefully you can hear the style change as the players change.  Some are very precise and repetitive.  One in particular has problems.  Another seems to be trying to play each repetition slightly differently.  The tempos change, at one point quite abruptly.  Hesitations.  Mistakes.  If you listen long enough these little variations will no longer matter.  At that point I suppose you will have achieved Serious Immobility.

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Here's the story of my extra hour ...

In 1981, like now, I kept a strange schedule of sleeping and waking.  Since I was staying up all night I chose a time slot in the Vexations schedule when I would be wide awake - i.e. the middle of the night for everyone else.  That's why I was one of the last pianists.  I think I was alternating with Lee Hambro.

It's impossible to know ahead of time precisely how long a complete performance of Vexations will last.  Carl and Lois had arranged for enough performers to cover 18 hours, thinking that would be sufficient.  But as that evening wore on, as Audrey kept clicking her counter, it became clear that 840 repetitions would take more time.

By then most everyone had gone home.  The people who had been there all day were exhausted.  On the other hand, I was wide awake.  It was still "morning" for me.  That's why, after I had done the two half hours for which I had signed up, I found myself back in the studio playing the rest of the piece.  How long would that take?

Studio A, a room with a very high ceiling, was dark except for a reading lamp on the music.  The piano was positioned so the player could not see into the control room.   It was a very isolated experience to sit there alone, nothing at all like performing in front of a live audience, even a small one.  The music contributed to the isolation.  It is quiet.  I repeats.  It meanders.  It repeats.  It repeats.  Vexation, indeed.

After a while I noticed that the sound of the piano was changing.  Strange.  I was shocked because pianos don't do that and KPFK had an excellent instrument.  As I kept playing over and over and over - hoping that someone would open the door to tell me that this was the last repetition - but no one did - I became increasingly certain that the sound was indeed slowly morphing.

As I listened more and more carefully to each repetition it became indisputable.  I could hear beats in the sound.  Beating is an indication of mistuning.   The piano was going out of tune!  Yes, it was. The effect became intense and I became quite anxious because of it.  Strings on a piano do not simply begin to slip, except what I was hearing could only be explained by exactly that.

Finally ... finally the door opened and I was told to stop.  After a suitable short silence Carl would have announced the long delayed station identification "KPFK Los Angeles" and then gone on to explain what had just happened.  I stood up, stretched and left the studio.  Someone introduced the overnight program ...

Once I was certain that the microphones were off, I returned to the piano to test the tuning.  I played some octaves and open fifths - intervals which are not found anywhere in Vexations and which easily reveal how well in-tune an instrument is.  To my astonishment, the piano remained in perfect tune.  My jaw dropped because the out-of-tune sound had been completely in my head.  Vexations had warped my hearing, an unmistakable hallucinogenic effect.  Vexations had drugged my brain.

That's the only time anything remotely resembling that kind of effect has ever happened to me.

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Gaylord Mowrey, who performed in both of these Vexations performances, sent me some of his thoughts.  He wraps things up nicely, mentions performances of which I was unaware and reminds us of an important work inspired by Vexations.

David, I appreciate that you brought up the Satie Vexations events in this forum. It has always been a pleasure to be a "Vexadigitator" (Randy's term) in all these events.  

You probably are aware that during the 24 years I was involved with the California State Summer School for the Arts, the last 15 of which were at CalArts, I organized 14 consecutive yearly presentations of Vexations with students and faculty and friends, always a strangely moving and transformative experience for many. 

The piece is so controversial and challenging, so quirky and vexing, that almost everyone who give themselves to it for any length of time must come to terms with its aesthetic, somehow. And the original material is so rich that it grabbed Art Jarvinen to create the massive variations - some of his deepest work.

Gaylord is referring to Art Jarvinen's piece Serious Immobilities, 840 distinct variations on Vexations, which will someday will be the subject of another Mixed Meters post.

UPDATE:  Arthur Javinen's massive work, Serious Immobilities, was eventually described in two Mixed Meters posts.  Read the first one first.

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I'd like to thank all those who contributed their memories of Vexations in Los Angeles for this post:

• Zona Hostetler
• Eric Hostetler
• Carl Stone
• Lois Vierk
• Heidi Lesemann
• Alan Zychek
• Jim "Mr. Memory" Fox
• Gloria Cheng

A recent Microfest program in Los Angeles featured Vexations performed on specially re-tuned keyboards.  You can hear samples here.

Another remembrance of the Living Room Series performance of Vexations.


840 Tags: Vexations. . . Erik Satie. . . KPFK. . . Randy Hostetler

David Raksin Centenary

(If you read this entire article you'll learn how I once broke into David Raksin's house and why I can never think of that event without also thinking of bad cheesecake.  Now read on...)

David Raksin was born on August 4, 1912.  That makes today his centenary.  Although the year 2012 includes the 100th birth anniversary of composers more famous than David (e.g. John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow or Stan Kenton), here in Los Angeles, where he was a fixture in the music community, there are many who remember him with great fondness.

And our memories are based not just on his musical accomplishments - although writing at least one big hit tune and scoring a flotilla of movies is clearly enough to get him into the music history books.   We remember that David was a jovial guy with a keen intelligence and a ready wit.  He always had a story about someone famous that he had known (and he seemed to have known just about everyone).  Or he told a joke (often of his own creation).  Or he made a pun.  Or two puns.  Or a whole passel of puns.  David loved word play.

To prove the point about knowing famous people, here's a photograph of David in his mid twenties.  He's the guy on the right.  On the left is Charlie Chaplin, with whom David worked on the music of the movie Modern Times.  Working for Chaplin was David's big break.  In the center are Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Schoenberg.  David studied with Schoenberg.  (David wasn't really all that tall.  Those others were just short.)

David belongs to a very small number of musicians who easily bridged the gap between the classical music and film music communities in Los Angeles.  He was a walking history of music in Southern California.  When he died it was announced that he had written an autobiography.  I remember him talking about it and showing me a decades-old kitchen calendar which he was using as a memory aid.  That's a book I'd love to read.

David Raksin had long since become a fixture in the music community of Los Angeles when I arrived here in the seventies.   He seemed to be at every concert I attended.  I don't remember specifically when I was introduced to him but it most certainly was by composer William Kraft, who was an extremely close friend of David's from the 1950s until David's death in 2004.

David made fastidious musical manuscripts.  Often in many colors.  Each year David was in the habit of sending some clever hand-made birthday greeting to Bill.  One such encomium took the form of short choral piece which David entitled A Posy From Woolworths For Bill On His Birthday.  Bill framed this and hung it in his studio, but after many years it had faded well past easy readability.

So Bill asked me to decipher the page and reproduce it on a computer.  I used the Sibelius hand-written music font.  It doesn't look much like David's own writing (and it's monochrome to boot) but it gives the same feel.  The layout of the page is identical to the original.

Here's the text:

Love and fortune wax and wane

We are entangled in their webbing,

More or lesser men may flow down the drain,

But Billy Kraft will never ebbing.

David's nickname for Bill was "Krafty Bill".  Notice that in the tenor part he changes the last line slightly in order to work the nickname in.  I doubt the reference to Krafft-Ebing is accidental.

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I once did some music preparation work for David.  I made the parts for a chamber music work entitled Oedipus Memnitai, which had been commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation at the Library of Congress.  That was a great honor for David.  He never called me for another job.  After his death I learned that it was the last piece he ever wrote. (The Speaking of Music interview - see below - concludes with a description and an excerpt of this piece.)

I also helped him prepare, at the last minute after he suffered a heart attack, for a concert of music by composer Alex North.  David was to conduct it in Spain.  When he arrived there some of the music - a piece I hadn't worked on - was missing.   David called and asked me to look for it in his studio.  David's ex-wife produced a key to his house but no one knew the code for the security system.  After some discussion, we unlocked his door and set off the alarm.  Fortunately the police were not alerted automatically.  We just waited, enduring the sound of a fortissimo trill on a solo bell, an opus annoyicus.  It continued until the alarm battery wore itself down.  Those were long minutes.   Once inside we could not find the missing music.

That night, on our way home from David's house, Leslie (who had been waiting in the car) and I stopped at the California Pizza Kitchen to sooth my alarm-wrenched nerves with dessert.  We chose a piece of New York cheesecake.  They served us the worst piece of cheesecake we had ever eaten or have eaten since: cardboard in a cardboard crust.  Ever since then, I have never thought about David Raksin without also thinking about bad cheesecake.  Or thought about CPK without thinking of David.  Aside from that one awful pastry, however, which certainly wasn't his fault, David earned an absolutely stellar place in my memory.  He deserves nothing less.   It was a honor to have known him.

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If you don't know about David's accomplishments or want some idea of what it was like to be around him, I recommend that you listen to this Speaking of Music event, in which David is interviewed by Charles Amhirkhanian.  It's as close as you can get to experiencing David Raksin, the raconteur, wit and name dropper.  You'll enjoy the story about David meeting Frank Lloyd Wright.

Here are some quotes I culled from this 90-minute interview:

"I can write thematic material faster than most people can make wrong chess moves."

"I would love to be able to say that I tried out for several porno films and didn't make it, but it wouldn't be true."

"You have no idea how music benefits from audibility."

"I could not see the Eastern university mafia permitting a guy who makes most of his living in films to get one." (i.e. the commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge foundation.)

The picture of David, Gertrud, Arnie and Charlie came from here.  The two pictures of the older David Raksin were posted on Facebook by Marilee Bradford.

Raksin Tags: David Raksin. . . film composers. . . centenary

Making the Scene With New ClassicLA Blog

Los Angeles has a new blog devoted to the local new music scene. It's called New ClassicLA.  Check it out.  Notice that the name omits the space between "Classic" and "LA".  That must be significant.

As of today New ClassicLA is a bit over 9 months old.  It is the brainchild of composer Nick Norton.  Most of his posts describe a wide variety of upcoming concerts.  Better yet, he conducts interviews with various movers and shakers from the new generation of Los Angeles new music composers and concert producers.

You can be forgiven for not knowing that there is a new generation of Los Angeles new music composers and concert producers.  That, I suppose, is why he started the blog to begin with.

Today's New ClassicLA post is entitled Ben Phelps: Making a Scene which turns out to be a guest editorial authored by composer Ben Phelps, a new generation crew member.   You might want to read his article before continuing with my own rant.   You can also read Ben's New ClassicLA interview.  You should not be surprised to learn that Ben has his own blog.

Making a Scene turns out to be Ben's call to new music action.  He exhorts us...

Talk about the concerts you see. Put on lots of concerts, and talk about them. If you are so inclined, blog or tweet about it. Or just talk to people in the old fashioned way, like in the middle ages. It’s the appearance of activity that counts, but not just your activity. The scene’s activity.

The more it seems like something is going on, the more others will want to be a part of it. It’s human nature. Nobody wants to be left out.

... to which I can only say "Hey, that's super.  I hope that works out for you."

Still, Ben's optimism seems rooted in realism.   He recognizes that making a scene requires lots of active performing groups, which, like a force of nature, will attract composers.

where there are new music bands putting on concerts, composers will follow like attorneys chasing ambulances.

It's a clever line.  But, duh.  He even describes the "classic" under-attended new music concert ...

When you only have three audience members, two are the significant others of the band members, and the third is a composer.

It's a dangerous thing to perform to a professional audience.  I found that mostly they didn't pay attention.  When they did listen, generally they filtered everything through their personal musical assumptions and prejudices.  Eventually, later in my life, it actually came as a surprise to me that there  are people out there who really listen to new music because they have interest in the music.  And, more amazing still, these people aren't composers.  Trust me, those are the ones you want in your audience, not other composers.  (If they happen to have money, ask them to join your board of directors.)

Ben's new music realism goes even deeper; possibly deeper than he realizes.  He opens with two anecdotes outlining perennial L.A. new music issues.

Firstly he talks about how there is competition between new music groups when there should ideally be cooperation.  He tells how he was shot down when asking for advice from an "older, more established" new music group (which, alas, he does not name).  Then, rightly so, he decries the "grossly self-defeating" nature of this response and suggests by analogy how this might lead to the collapse of civilization.  He concludes his anecdote with ...

It’s the tragedy of the commons – somebody should write an opera about it.

I can only say, speaking as an experienced failed composer, that writing music rooted in professional bitterness is a bad idea.  Music can have many meanings for its creator, most of them are very uplifting.  But when a composer tries to express frustration with not achieving acceptance from the music community it can only be a downer, a fresh bit of compositional hell.  Believe me, the audience won't see the point.

I agree that this is my own over-reaction to an offhand humorous comment.  Maybe this is because I don't like opera.  Do you think it might be a better idea instead to work the theme of civilization's collapse into something of a more appropriate size?   Perhaps an oboe sonata?  Silly me.

Secondly, Ben talks about the obvious lack of interest in local composers by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, our local 800-pound gorilla of new music.  Historically this is absolutely nothing new.  It stems, in my opinion, from the notion that "world class" California musical organizations consider that their mission is to track what goes on in Europe.  (From a uniquely California perspective, Europe, in this case, also includes New York City.)

Our audiences have been led to expect that they are being presented with the latest, most important bits of newness from places where prominent new music scenes already exist.  "What about local composers?" you might ask.  "Yeah.  What about 'em?" will be the reply.  What has always been needed is a good answer to the reply.

I've always felt that the quality of importance is the key to getting a local composer programmed on our own most prestigious concerts.  Successful local series, not just the Philharmonic, by and large keep their fingers on the pulses of new music scenes elsewhere.  They try to present works of "consequence" to Los Angeles audiences.  This strategy has proven itself in various ways over the years.  Audiences like to feel that they're taking time out of a busy life to listen to something significant.

So, let me offer some advice, advice I personally ignored throughout my entire career, on how a Los Angeles composer can get performed by the L.A. Philharmonic: move to New York.  More specifically for the moment, move to Brooklyn.  While you're there, get important.   By making a splash in existing new music scenes you'll have a much better chance of getting noticed back here in Los Angeles.  Once you get noticed a few times, it'll be okay to move back.

If you decide to stay in L.A. instead, you'll need to develop a sense of perspective while you enjoy the weather.   Learn to recognize which music is considered world class and which is considered provincial.  Realize that changing the latter into the former without leaving town is a futile mystical quest.  Kind of like alchemy.  And alchemy never worked.  Not even during the middle ages.

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Now, for the irrelevant tangential reference, in this case prompted by the notion of "alchemy in Los Angeles".   Here are some quotes from Douglas Adams' novel "So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish", chapter nine, in which a thinner Arther Dent (the hero) drunkenly lies to his pub mates about where he's been for such a long time.  First he tells them that he went to Southern California.  Then...

"Of course, I had my own personal alchemist, too.  ... Oh yes, the Californians have rediscovered alchemy, oh yes. ... They've discovered how to turn excess body fat into gold. ... Fourteen hours in a trance, in a tank. ... And slowly, slowly, slowly, all your excess body fat turns to subcutaneous gold, which you can have surgically removed.  Getting out of the tank is hell."

If only.

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Some links to other historical Mixed Meters rants about the futility of new music in Los Angeles which you won't enjoy either...

How To Feel Like An Old Composer In Three Easy Steps (I wonder what those young composers in the Times' article are up to now.)

Los Angeles, New Music Backwater

Classical Music Isn't Dead, It Just Needs A Rest

My New Music Manifesto

Want even more?  Click here and scroll down.

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Making a Scene Tags: New ClassicLA. . . Nick Norton. . . Ben Phelps. . . Green Umbrella

Just Be A Regular Person Like Everyone Else

Just Be A Regular Person Like Everyone Else is another 30 Second Spot. The title was the first phrase I heard after switching on the radio news in search of a file name.

I had the sense that the title expressed a personal wish of the speaker, not a command issued to another person, someone who needed to get their own act together.  By that moment my music was pretty much finished, so you won't get very far trying to figure how the music and title relate to one another.

That's as much as I know.   Except that I had a lot of trouble getting the ratchet sound.

Listen to Just Be A Regular Person Like Everyone Else
Copyright © 2012 by David Ocker - 39 seconds

Here's a picture which I took of an old lady's face on a wall.  Her face appears on a derelict Sunset Boulevard apartment building.  I was just going to let it decorate this post without explanation, but then I researched it a bit.

As context, here's the Google street view of nearly the same spot.  The gas station had disappeared by the time I was there.

Here's another picture on Tumblr.
Here's an LA Weekly article with yet another picture.


The artist is named JR.  He has a whole series of these works, collectively called Wrinkles of the City - LA.  Here's a somewhat more informative LA Weekly article with lots of Wrinkle pictures.

Here's a video by JR with the subjects of the wall pictures as talking heads.  There are little glimpses of the pictures being installed.  If you don't know Los Angeles, the street scenes in this video show our reality much better than anything you will ever see on television.

Wrinkles of the City - Los Angeles from SOCIAL ANIMALS on Vimeo.

I don't know what this street art has to do with the phrase "Just be a regular person like everyone else". Probably more than the title has to do with the music itself.

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Previous Mixed Meters posts with Street Art references:
Street Art Now and Then
Banksy Speaks


Wrinkle Tags: 30 Second Spot. . . Street Art. . . Echo Park

A Brief History of John Baldessari

John Baldessari is a famous artist.  He taught at Cal Arts while I was a student there in the seventies.  Of course I never met him.  Nor do I even remember seeing his works back then ... although I must have, of course.  He is now respected, super successful and much honored - so the works I can't remember must have been pretty damn good.

A couple days ago I encountered an LA Times webpage entitled Tom Waits talks up artist John Baldessari in six-minute video.  As I happened to have six extra minutes at that moment, I watched it.   Fun stuff. Here's the YouTube link:  A Brief History of John Baldessari .

Waits was apparently chosen because Baldessari likes his voice (and also possibly because the two came from the same hometown.)  More than the voice, it's Waits' dry, wry delivery style that contributes so much.  The video itself is a high energy assemblage: the artist as a talking head in his studio, pictures of the artist, his artworks, his stuff, places he's been and lots of moving text and graphic effects.

One quick bit of text (30 seconds in) says that Baldessari has been called "the Godfather of Conceptual Art" but with a telling, sophomoric, hysterical extra on-screen letter F which is conspicuously crossed out.  Guy humor.  Blink and you'll miss it.

(Go ahead, search Google for the phrase "Godfather of Conceptual Fart" to find out if anyone ever really said that about John Baldessari.)

The people who produced this video, no one I've heard of, are credited on the YouTube page.

directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (http://gosupermarche.com/)

edited by Max Joseph (http://www.maxjoseph.com/)

written by Gabriel Nussbaum (http://www.bankstreetfilms.com)

cinematography by Magdalena Gorka (http://magdalenagorka.com/) and Henry Joost

produced by Mandy Yaeger & Erin Wright

These people are really the reason I enjoyed it so much.  The bouncy pacing, witty writing and irreverant attitude combine to be lots more interesting than John Baldessari's art or Tom Waits' voice.   Rossini and Bizet don't hurt either.  I especially like a great new cadential chord in William Tell (at 1'50").

There's also an apparent reason for the Clint Eastwood reference: this video was produced for a LACMA gala where Baldessari and Eastwood were both feted by rich and famous people, possibly ones with short attention spans.

Later in the film we learn that "John Baldessari believes that every young artist should know three things":

1. Talent is cheap.
2. You have to be possessed which you can't will.
3. Being at the right place at the right time.

That sounds to me like damn good advice, although not great grammar.  All three points ring true in my ears today.  In fact, I wish I had heard that advice as a young composer, like, you know, back when I was studying at Cal Arts.

Of course, maybe I did hear it.  And I just can't remember now.

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A recent MM post about another LACMA art project: Floating Rocks.

If you prefer your art in the streets rather than in the museums by artists who don't allow their picture to be taken, here are two MM posts: Street Art Now and Then and Banksy Speaks.

Conceptual Fart Tags: John Baldessari. . . Tom Waits. . . video biography. . . LACMA

Floating Rocks

Los Angeles has been witnessing the movements of a large rock.  A boulder which is supposed to weigh 340 tons.  I wonder how they weighed it, not that it matters.

At a reported cost of $10,000,000 (I calculate that's roughly $1 per ounce, considerably more than first class postage) the boulder just finished a very slow, very public journey through urban Los Angeles, picking up not moss but publicity as it moved towards the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Public relations-wise the museum must figure the ten mil is money well spent.  We are told this is one of the largest objects ever moved.  A feat of engineering to be sure.  Lots of good pictures of the moving rock here.

Once at its destination, the boulder will be suspended in mid-air.

No, not really.  It will be installed above a trench through which people can walk.  The rock will only seem to be float.  Giving it the appearance of floating is, I guess, what makes this project art.  It will be called Levitated Mass and it is the concept of artist Michael Heizer.

Here's some real art in which a large rock actually does float high in the air.  It's the painting by Rene Magritte entitled The Castle in the Pyrenees.  (click it for an enlargement)

I saw this painting in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.  I was there in 1987 with my Aunt Marion and Uncle Ben.  In spite of rules against doing just that, they photographed me standing next to it.   I would love to post that picture here but, alas, I can't find it.  It is lost in the decades of my accumulated crap.  Maybe the snapshot will turn up someday.

Here is another floating rock in the Middle East.  It seems that some people in that part of the world believe that large boulders can float in midair.  It's probably a Photoshop trick, don't you know.  Still, the mother and child speaking in this video seem pretty much convinced.

The best example of gravity defying stonework, however, comes from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - the original 1980 BBC radio version.

This happens in the fourth episode of the "secondary" phase of programs.  Arthur Dent and his companions Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android land their probability-propelled spaceship in a mysterious white cave with smooth walls.  The cave turns out to be the Nutramatic cup.

Arthur falls from the cave and finds out about its origin from a bird-person on whose back he very improbably falls.  Here's the passage:

Arthur: "It looks like … like … just like a plastic cup hanging in the sky.  It's about a mile long."
Bird: "Looks like plastic.  Carved from solid marble there."
Arthur: "But the weight of it.  What's supporting it?  What keeps it there?"
Bird: "Art."
Arthur: "Art?"
Bird: "It's only part of the main statue.  Fifteen miles high. It's directly behind us but I'll circle round in a moment."
Arthur: "Fifteen miles high?"
Bird: "Very impressive from up here with the morning sun gleaming on it."
Arthur: "But what is it.  What's worth a statue 15 miles high?"
Bird: "It was of great symbolic importance to our ancestors.  It's called Arthur Dent Throwing the Nutramatic Cup."
Arthur: "Sorry, what did you say?"
Bird: "There.  What do you think of it?"

Not enough space or time in this post to explain the entire origin story of the statue of Arthur throwing the cup.  It's quality Douglas Adams.  There's the "Shoe Event Horizon", the Lintilla clones and the Dolmansaxlil Galactic Shoe Corporation publicity film.  Great stuff.

Meanwhile, back here in Los Angeles we will soon have our own floating rock, Levitated Mass.  As mentioned, the rock will be held up by a contraption of concrete and steel. Here's a video showing the trench in its early stages:

The Los Angeles rock will, clearly, not be held up by "art" as Magritte's castle or the Nutramatic cup are. Nor will it float because of any sort of religious faith. It will appear to float by virtue of some sort of optical illusion.  Shortly Los Angeles will discover just how good that illusion is.

It is fair to wonder what the illusion will mean.  I assume that like most art this piece is supposed to have some sort of meaning.  The word monumental is used quite a lot.  Levitated Mass is a monument, I guess.  Monuments are supposed to memorialize things.  And Levitated Mass does.  Here's a quote from a LACMA press release:

It is dedicated to the memory of Nancy Daly, former chair of LACMA’s board of trustees and an influential advocate for children and the arts in Los Angeles.

Nancy died in 2010 and Levitated Mass was conceived of in 1968.  So Nancy Daly is not an intrinsic part of the artistic experience.  She's someone important to the funding.  That's arts reality.

The press release also informs us:

Taken whole, Levitated Mass speaks to the expanse of art history—from ancient traditions of creating artworks from monolithic stones, to modern forms of abstract geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering.

Ah! So maybe Levitated Mass is a modern day Stonehenge or  Chichen Itza - but one without any astronomical relationship.  That's because you can't see many stars from the Wilshire district.

Maybe it's an abstract geometric work - one which will inspire onlookers to consider its aesthetic form and artistic composition.  Probably not.  It's mostly just a found object - a random, if very large, rock that the artist convinced certain powerful people would look good from underneath.

If nothing else, Levitated Mass will cause us to wonder what we might have done with an extra $10,000,000.

Mostly it will become a conundrum for passers-by who will ask "What's that rock doing there?"  Maybe rock climbers will use it for practice.  It will also be a great target for taggers.

Maybe someday, hundred of years from now, when the steel and concrete under the rock have crumbled, and the people of LA have forgotten the spectacle of moving it through the streets and no one even remembers that LACMA ever existed, and if it hasn't sunk into the tar pits, someone will rediscover the art of stone sculpture and carve faces in the rock.

Those faces could be recognizable ones from late 20th and early 21st century Los Angeles:  faces most likely to survive in popular culture for generation after generation.  I suggest Mickey Mouse, Michael Jackson, Kim Kardashian and O.J. Simpson.

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Here's Eagle Rock, an inspiring natural fixture quite near to Pasadena.  The rock doesn't float in the air - but it reminds us of animals who do.  It would cost much more than $10 mil to move.

The picture came from here.

Rolling Rock Tags: Levitated Mass. . . Michael Heizer. . . LACMA. . . Rene Magritte. . . Douglas Adams. . . big money art. . . Los Angeles monuments

Mixed Meters Visits Occupy Los Angeles

I was in downtown Los Angeles several times this week and I happened to walk past the Occupy Los Angeles encampment - our local version of Occupy Wall Street, still going strong after nearly two months. 

Naturally I took a bunch of pictures.  The first one shows a few forlorn tents up against the massive north edifice of Los Angeles City Hall.  The main camp is on the south side.

The whole affair had the feel of a homeless tent city - but from the sixties.  I saw guys playing hackie-sack.  Men were drumming.  Flyers were handed out - the one I got denounced the Fed.  There was a meditation tent, an art school tent, a library.  There seemed to be some sort of communal kitchen.  I heard talk about drugs - and, once, I smelled marijuana.

But mostly I saw signs.

 

 

 

 

Some signs were organizational, like the one advertising a protest at the upcoming Rose Parade.  Others signs (e.g. "Fuck the Lakers") had uncertain relevance.

 

 

The face of Anonymous (i.e. the Guy Fawkes mask) was in evidence.  Remember people - this is a copyrighted image of Time Warner Inc.  If you buy a mask, the corporation gets royalties.  And copyrights are what big corporations use to control our culture.

 

There were many people, like myself, taking pictures.  These people, like myself, were obviously not protesters.  Some were newsmen.  Others, like myself, may have sympathy for the causes of the Occupy movement - if for no other reason than these protests have managed to eclipse the Tea Party from our national news.  And the Occupy movement has managed to get the message that corporations are not people into the corporate-controlled media.  That's a huge success.

I do wonder why they set up shop in front of a government building instead of a bank headquarters.  I do believe that their in-your-face protest will do more good for left wing values than anything else could do at this moment.  The one percent will make concessions only when they become afraid the situation will get out of their control otherwise.

 

As I walked through the encampment I heard a man with a bullhorn telling a helicopter several blocks away to leave.  He made some other cracks.  He had been corrupted by his little bit of power: control of the P.A. system.  Power had gone to his head.  I took some pictures of him.

He called to me through the bull horn saying "How you doin' cameraman?"  I responded.  He kept questioning me about my motives, asking who I was working for and whether I had sworn an oath to the Constitution.  After a while I started video recording.  His compatriots begin chanting "Who the fuck are you?" apparently to him, not to me.  A good time was had by all, I guess.  Fortunately the other protesters of Occupy L.A. were not allowing absolute power to corrupt anyone absolutely, especially this guy.

Watch for yourself:

Today the Mayor of Los Angeles announced that protesters must be gone by Monday.  Stay tuned to your local news media to find out if there will be pepper spray in the future of Occupy Los Angeles.

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Here are some links:
Occupy Los Angeles
Occupy the Rose Parade

Mixed Meters covers past Rose Parades:
Burn in Hell at the Rose Parade
Left Behind after the Rose Parade
On the Beach at the Rose Parade

I don't make a habit of taking pictures of people and I post those very infrequently.  This post is apparently an exception.  Click any picture to see an enlargement.


Occupy Tags: Occupy Los Angeles. . . Occupy Rose Parade. . . Occupy Wall Street. . . protest signs