Boring Like A Drill

New Subscription Feed Redirection

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:20:00 +0000

I am trying to seamlessly redirect my blog's feed from its old address (http://cookylamoo.com/boringlikeadrill/atom.xml) to its new one (http://feeds.feedburner.com/BoringLikeADrillBlog). You can update your own settings if you wish, but it should soon be redirecting automatically, if I've figured it out right.

An Old Look for a New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:20:00 +0000

Sorry about the mess. I spent the xmas break moving the blog from Blogger to WordPress (like you care) and trying to get the layout into some coherent, compatible shape. It still needs some tweaking and there are probably some dud links around the place, so please email me if you notice anything particularly ugly or broken.

Please Mister Please

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:51:00 +0000

Jackson 5, "One More Chance" (1970).
(3'01", 3.45 MB, mp3)

Ignorance achieves wonders.

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:47:00 +0000

I'd like to apologise for a fundamental error in my review of the Crumb Total Immersion day. I mistakenly referred to the composer as George Crumb throughout. George Crumb is, of course, the famous cartoonist. The composer's name is Robert Crumb, as correctly identified by BBC Radio 3.

It's good to see Radio 3 diligently pursuing its remit to "inform and educate the audience about music and culture", although when you try to follow the BBC's own link to its Radio 3 website it in fact takes to you BBC Three, a television station dedicated to programmes like Bashing Booze Birds and Britain's Most Embarrassing Pets.

There seems to be a webmonkey at the Beeb who gets easily confused over names.

Can't do nothin' for ya, man.

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:24:00 +0000

Please Mister Please

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:13:00 +0000

Elliott Carter, "Esprit Rude / Esprit Doux" (1985). Sophie Cherrier, flute; André Trouttet, clarinet.
(4'52", 7.68 MB, mp3)

Total Immersion: George Crumb

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:59:00 +0000

George Crumb turned eighty in October, and so was dragged across the Atlantic for the BBC to make a fuss of him for one day of the year. Actually, he probably came willingly, as the night concluded with what must be a rare concert of his orchestral music. He seemed pretty cheerful, seated up in the stalls doing that Rat Pack style double-pointing to the performers at the end of each piece.

I wrote a bit about Crumb’s music earlier in the year after hearing the Nash Ensemble perform it at the Proms:

Crumb's music really needs to be heard live to appreciate it, not only for the theatrical elements of its performance, or for the spatial placement of sounds (more than once the musicians had to relocate from the stage to one of the balconies to achieve an elusive, distant quality to their sound), but for the subtlety and complexity of the sounds he specifies.

The Proms gig included Claire Booth singing Ancient Voices of Children, also played here by the Guildhall ensemble, with the soprano Anna Patalong (and a real, live boy this time), in between Joanna MacGregor playing the piano works A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979 and Volume 1 of Makrokosmos.

The last time I heard Makrokosmos it was part of an ill-judged mix of music and visuals by Michael Kieran Harvey. Witnessing it performed again reminded me the extent to which Crumb's music seems to be held together almost by the sheer force of his personality, and how dependent it is on musicians to hold the greater purpose of its disparate elements in focus. MacGregor’s performance was much less theatrical (or histrionic) than Harvey's, but found and sustained the drama in the music.

The evening gig was a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra of Crumb's orchestral music - in fact the only three mature orchestral works he has written - culminating in the massive Star-Child. Pure logistical difficulties aside, it seems clear why Crumb tends to keep his music on a more intimate scale. The often episodic nature of his music can be difficult for such a large group of musicians to follow without losing momentum.

The 1967 piece Echoes of Time and the River (Echoes II) is a processional of varying sounds and textures produced by small, discrete groups within the orchestra, to the extent of moving some of the percussionists and brass players on, off, and across the stage in various configurations. In effect, Crumb was attempting to work with the orchestra to his usual scale, while taking advantage of the wider pallette of available sounds. The slow choreography of the musician's movements added a theatrical, ritualistic aspect that was only slightly more awkward in reality than it doubtless was in the imagination.

A Haunted Landscape (1984) must be more successful in combining all the distinctive facets of Crumb's music into a seamless whole, because I always remember it as being more conventional than it really is. On the other hand, Star-Child (1977) works hard to present a semblance of cohesiveness between its seven continuous sections. The piece is often referred to as Ivesian, and amongst the many parallels you could make out were the cosmic scope of the music, and its seemingly rough-hewn structure.

The entire 35 or so minutes is suspended from a repeated "music of the spheres" played by the string section throughout, oblivious to all the other goings-on; they form a separate orchestra, with their own conductor. The remaining sections of the orchestra, plus a truckload of extra percussion, half-a-dozen brass players in the balcony, a male speaking choir armed with handbells, and two children's choirs, require between one and three conductors between them to keep everything together, depending on the music's complexity. Oh, and there's a Vox Clamans In Deserto recited antiphonally between a soprano and a trombonist.

Star-Child boldly reaches for profundity with its Latin texts and massed voices and bells, and for once Crumb uses the full force of the orchestra for emphatic, dramatic power. It's an anomaly in Crumb's canon, the way he uses brute force and awe to move his audience here, particularly in the apocalyptic middle sections. Thankfully his musical allusions never get too overt or too literary, but the piece is really left to stand or fall on the message Crumb wishes it to convey. The performance itself couldn't be faulted, but in experiencing it I felt like I was witnessing an attempt to make manifest a grand vision best realised in the imagination, brought to life as best as one can.

There is no Tooth Fairy, there is only Tooth Jesus.

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:55:00 +0000

Sorry I haven't written this week. My brain took a few days off after seeing a dentist whose idea of relaxing ambience in the surgery was a very loud radio tuned to an evangelical christian station broadcasting an emphatic sermon about Hell. I'd have asked her to turn it off but really you don't argue with a woman holding a drill to your molars.

Please Mister Please

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:05:00 +0000

Boredoms, "Shock City" (1994).
(4'43", 4.18 MB, mp3)

Greetings from a non-denominational robin

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:49:00 +0000

I got so excited about the George Crumb Total Immersion day over the weekend I broke a tooth. While I recuperate and write up the contrasting concerts (including a rare chance to hear an evening of Crumb's orchestral music), here's a picture of a friendly robin who was hanging around the chapel when I last walked through Abney Park.

The latest thrilling dispatch from my crazy dream world.

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:41:00 +0000

Last night I dreamt I trimmed my fingernails. There were some minor complications, but nothing I couldn't handle.

Dumitrescu/Avram - Radical Amateurism (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:33:00 +0000

(Continued from Part 1)

I have to admit I'm not crazy about the music of Iancu Dumitrescu, Horaţiu Rădulescu, or any of the other Romanian spectralist composers (and I'm sure someone will berate me for lumping those two names together in the same movement). It all has a general tendency towards the shrill and self-important. But a lot of people think it's Very Important and love it very much, and who am I to doubt them? The week of Spectrum XXI concerts brought together local musicians, the Hyperion Ensemble from Romania and the Talea Ensemble from New York, all extremely capable musicians. That's part of what makes the amateurism of the whole enterprise almost endearing.

Some of the amateurism was pardonable. The first thing you saw when approaching a Spectrum XXI concert was a bunch of musicians huddled around a rental van with Romanian plates smoking like chimneys (Ana-Maria Avram borrowed my friend's lighter, and never gave it back). Then there was the trombonist at the final concert, taking snapshots of the audience with his digital camera after the show. And between each piece. And during the music, when he didn't have anything to do.

Other aspects were less so: the first ten minutes of the first concert was spent messing around with the lighting. Trying to set an appropriate mood, Dumitrescu and a couple of other musicians eventually managed to turn out all the lights in the hall, before turning them all on again, one by one. The fears raised by the large number of world premieres announced in the programme were largely founded. Across the concert series it seemed that the strongest pieces were usually the oldest ones. Works like Dumitrescu's percussion trio Multiples (VII) from 1972 displayed a unique and innovative approach to sonority, compositional method and structure. Many, but not all, of the new pieces sounded like little more than undifferentiated dabbling with a particular instrumental effect, with a focus on timbre at the expense of all other considerations.

These weaknesses were most obvious in Dumitrescu's world premiere Sound Sculpture (II) for solo piano. Prefaced with a short talk by Avram explaining how difficult the piece is to play, it sounded uncannily like the fabled Three Discontinuous Movements by Rose Bob, as performed at its world premiere by Madame Berthe Trépat (Gold Medal, Grenoble): a long, tedious series of unconnected chords and clusters separated by elaborate pedalling gambits to filter the piano's resonant overtones.

The notorious false starts were present and correct. The ensemble would begin, only to be halted by an aggrieved Dumitrescu a minute later, then try again. This behaviour wasn't limited to his own music. His disrupted Avram's world premiere of Telesma VII for percussion and electronics because he wasn't happy with the sound mix, and wasted several minutes of everyone's time futzing around with the faders, producing various distorted noises until he was satisfied.

The world premiere of Dumitrescu's Infinity (II) for bass clarinet and ensemble lasted right up to the entrance of the bass clarinet itself, whereupon Dumitrescu broke off from conducting to engage clarinettist Tim Hodgkinson in a brief but vehement argument on stage, before storming out past the audience announcing that the performance was cancelled. The expression on the ring-in cellist's face was priceless. A little while later Dumitrescu returned, then excused himself again to pace the courtyard for a few minutes more, finally coming back inside to conduct the next item on the programme.

At one point between pieces he gave an impassioned speech to the audience about the importance of creating new forms of expression, and that despite their limited funding he and his fellow musicians were forging the music of the future. This is the most pernicious aspect of Dumitrescu's amateurism: the confusion of isolation with supremacy. Judging from the music and the attitude on display, his increasing exposure to the world has only entrenched his insularity within a growing circle of acolytes. Such insularity leaves an artist vulnerable to their greatest weaknesses, to which Dumitrescu is evidently succumbing and which he must address, unless he is content to remain nothing more than the figurehead of his own cult.

Still Number One!

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:29:00 +0000

Too busy to post words and stuff right now, but stay tuned because this blog is No. 1 FOR HIP|HOP & R'n'B!

Please Mister Please

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:03:00 +0000

Jon Rose, "Spare Body Parts" (2000). Jon Rose, violano.
(4'57", 6.44 MB, mp3)

Valencias from Valencia

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Website Update

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:52:00 +0000

Yeah, yeah, I know action's been pretty spotty here over the past few weeks. The good news is the website is fully functional, and all the files should now be back in place.

Instead of finishing off the Dumirescu article I've been dicking around with Wordpress with a view to upgrading this blog, but editing the templates has turned into a frustrating way to expedite procrastination. Regular posting should resume now I've realised that shiny new blog look won't happen in a hurry.

Dumitrescu/Avram - Radical Amateurism (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:48:00 +0000

It was hard to shake off the feeling that I was in the midst of a cult when attending last month's Spectrum XXI series of concerts. Before and during the gigs, which were essentially a vehicle for the composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram, little things kept niggling at my consciousness.

Dumitrescu's scrappy, free-hosted website welcoming you to "the great experimental composer's home page" conjures up memories of Madame Berthe Trépat (Gold Medal, Grenoble) from Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch. The programme announcement - on a different free-hosted website - makes the rather suprising promise of "World and UK premières by Dumitrescu, Avram, Diaz de Leon, Hodgkinson, Pape, Tsuda, Scelsi, Xenakis", but in a bait-and-switch move favoured by many cults the actual gigs featured nothing by the last four composers. That's OK though, because the link to the London programme from the main page doesn't work.

If you look on the web for reviews of Dumitrescu's work, you'll probably first find panegyrics from Harry Halbreich and/or Ben Watson; two critics whose tastes tend to the cultish and whose praise tends to the fulsome. Watson himself was in the audience for a couple of the gigs, and occasionally stepped up front in his green suit and tennis shoes to recite some sound poetry to the faithful. This did not help to elucidate the music much.

More frequently, Ana-Maria Avram would introduce each piece in an attempt to convey to the punters just how important the music was, that they were about to hear. This well-intentioned but misplaced advocacy also brought back memories of Madame Berthe Trépat (Gold Medal, Grenoble), and her introduction to the stage by Valentin ("it represented for contemporary music one of the most profound innovations to which the composer, Madame Trépat, had given the name "prophetic syncretism.")

As in Madame Trépat's recital, there was a high proportion of world premieres: I count a whopping seventeen across the four London gigs in the programme, from a tour which had already been to Brussells and Paris. This doesn't inspire confidence, not in either Dumitrescu's or Avram's quality control nor that all the performances will be as polished as they could be. In this and other ways, their enthusiasm would sometimes undermine their strengths as musicians.

(Continued in Part 2.)

Filler By Proxy LXXV: What the Hell Mouth?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:16:00 +0000

After the ceremony there’s a dinner hosted by the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, whose name is Rocco. He wears handcrafted alligator cowboy boots with his black tuxedo. Marcel [Proost] asks him about the boots, which are, of course, a major conversation piece.
“You wrassle that ‘gator yourself?”
No, says the Chairman. He bought them in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I had not known that they had alligators in Jackson Hole, but it could be they’ve migrated there to work in the hotel or food service business.
The Chairman is reputed to be a very wealthy man and a fan of theater, baseball, horse racing and country music, in other words our indigenous American beaux arts, our native Kunstwerke. Someone there tells me he contemplated buying the Cincinnati Reds but thought the asking price of one billion too high. Perhaps he could just buy the NEA for half that amount and not have to deal with the flamers in Congress. That would be an exemplary form of the great American tradition of privatizing.

That's an excerpt from a recent entry in John Adams' blog, Hell Mouth. Yes. John "Nixon In China, Short Ride In A Fast Machine" Adams. (Note to self: check out some music he's written in the past fifteen years or so.)

The Return of Please Mister Please

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:26:00 +0000

Please Mister Please is up and running again, with your old favourites and a welcome return by Mister Buddy Greco. Beats me why there's a blank space above this paragraph, so let's just say I was trying to build up suspense.

Also re-uploaded, Real Characters and False Analogues: twelve pieces for microtonal piano, all available for streaming or download.

Blogging is ready to recommence, and the rest of the music will be up again shortly. Everything else seems pretty much intact, but there should (hopefully) be some improvements coming soon.

This includes the long-promised writeup of the Dumitrescu gigs from, oh, a month ago now.

Under Construction

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:27:00 +0000

Apologies if the site went down at the end of last week. I was on a long weekend in Brighton and came home to find an email saying that my site had used up its bandwidth allocation.

I've now switched to a larger server which allows more traffic, but the music files have not yet been uploaded. They will be soon. In the meantime, to commemorate the closure of GeoCities last week, please enjoy this page of about eight billion Under Constuction icons.

Okay, that's definitely it for now

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:40:00 +0000

No updates for a week, while I back things up and move stuff around.

"Wait till they find out / where you took most of "your" poetry"

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:05:00 +0000

Paul Zukofsky, violinist, conductor, son of poet Louis Zukofsky, has declared war on pretty much everybody who gives a rat's ass about Louis Zukofsky:

In general, as a matter of principle, and for your own well-being, I urge you to not work on Louis Zukofsky, and prefer that you do not. Working on LZ will be far more trouble than it is worth.... Finally, when all else fails, and you remain hell-bent on quoting LZ, but you really, really REALLY do not want to deal with me...

And that goes for you so-called academics and conniving dissertation students, too!

Unsurprisingly, there are now half-a-dozen scanned copies of LZ's masterwork "A" circulating teh interwebs. Don't worry Paul, I'm sure they won't stoop to reading it!

Funny thing is that Louis Zukofsky was something of a virtuoso in the art of appropriation, as the above quote from PZ, quoted by LZ in "A"-12 (p.214) shows.

Whoa there a second...

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:23:00 +0000

Regular update-type stuff is on hold while I change servers. It seems like several million Chinese punters made a common mistake and have eaten up just about all of my bandwidth. Enjoy the piano music, guys!

Also, RIP Maryanne Amacher - the link's worth it for the photo of what I always imagined was a typical audience reaction. I mentioned this on Twitter but haven't had a chance to write anything substantial. (Also haven't had chance to put Twitter link on my website.)

Please Mister Please

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:51:00 +0000

John Cage, "Eight Whiskus" (1984). Joan La Barbara, voice.
(4'37", 3.40 MB, mp3)

Apologies for not writing lately

noreply@blogger.com (Ben.H) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:32:00 +0000

But I've had one of those double doses of flu that go away and come back again a few days later for another crack at you. In the next day or two will post something about last week's odd little Dumitrescu festival in town, and an impromptu GCTTCATT reunion gig in someone's flat.