Spiegel im Spiegel (clip)

A heart not so much heavy, but bigger.

Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet – Tom Waits and Gavin Bryars
I find that the music being made these days is more likely to speak truthfully, in short but meaningful sentences, about the stunning beauty of the ordinary.

Okay, so I got an email this morning from Mary Jane Leach, a New York composer. She sent me a link to listen to her piece for solo oboe and 8 taped oboes which is here and you should definitely check it out! She also sent me a score, and that makes me very, Very happy because A) I love looking at scores while listening to music, and B) I just happen to have almost a dozen oboists who are always looking for oboe-army pieces to play in Friday Masterclass and elsewhere. This is Excellent!

Anyway, I guess Mary Jane knows Linda Catlin Smith, my composition prof, and I asked Linda today after seminar, and she was like, “of course! She lives in a church in upstate New York!” That is pretty fantastic! “Xantippe’s Rebuke” – the 9-oboe piece – was originally commissioned by Libby Van Cleve who quite literally wrote the book on contemporary oboe techniques. I have to get a lesson with this lady! Hey Libby Van Cleve, let’s talk. Contemporary oboe is like…what I’d really like to pursue in my future with the instrument.

So I learned lots of new things today.

Anyway, I mentioned composition seminar up there, and tonight we talked about Kevin Volans and listened to a bunch of his music and it is actually incredible. Like…incredible. All I want to listen to right now.  The movement he was part of in the 70′s and 80′s was called “New Simplicity” but it is very complex in its way. It’s more…honest than simple. Rewarding to listen to, engaging, it doesn’t talk down to the listeners, it talks to us. He puts style aside and focuses on an approach Linda described as being like “I have this and I have this and I have this and I have this for you.” And yet it’s organic, and doesn’t superimpose its African roots obviously…

Anyway, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about music that is more about Being As Opposed To Going, and Volans’ music that I heard tonight scratched an itch in a hard-to-reach place.