aworks :: "new" american classical music

Gnarly Buttons (1996). John Adams /you'll have to pry it out of my dying hands/

Via today's daily gmail, la la users are asking that I ship them the following CDs from those I've admitted to owning. I have to say I wouldn't miss the CDs by Autechre and Aphex Twin but how come no one has asked for this?

                                     

Dimanche A Bamako by Amadou & Mariam Sleep On The Left Side by Cornershop Confield by Autechre Out From Out Where by Amon Tobin I Care Because You Do by Aphex Twin Drums Along the Pacif... by David Rosenthal, Dani...

Adams: Gnarly Buttons... by Michael [clar/cond] C... Twoism by Boards Of Canada Glass: Akhnaten / Dav... by Christina W�chtler, P... Turn On The Bright Lights by Interpol Amelie by Original Soundtrack Run Lola Run by Original Soundtrack

Piano Music of John A... by Gloria Cheng-Cochran,... Music 4 Hands - Glass... by Dennis Russell Davies... Spiderland

technical note: unlike napster, la la doesn't seem to be set up to easily share links, so clicking may not work. on the other hand, napster is working for me again (even if skype is not).
now playing on itunes (no, really): la la love you by the pixies.
napster: la la love you by the pixies. gnarly buttons by john adams et al. no spiderland by the group slint, though.

Gnarly Buttons (1996). John Adams /aws: part 5 of 8/

Cows in Berkeley? Well no, but the Alarm Will Sound performance of John Adams' clarinet concerto Gnarly Buttons did have an electronic moo. It also had one of my least favorite instruments, banjo, but this piece is so compelling, I'm even starting to like the banjo accompaniment. Think of this as written by Vivaldi if Vivaldi happened to live in small-town New Hampshire instead of 18th century Italy. Bill Kalinkos was the able clarinet soloist.

The censored SFMike gets it right:

The highlight of the concert was "Gnarly Buttons" with Bill Kalinkos, in the blue shirt, playing the clarinet heroically. It's one of Adams' most charming and deeply felt pieces of music and it gets better on every hearing.

In addition to being jerky and fun, Gnarly Buttons also has a serious side. From the fine program notes by Dennis DeSantis:

...He [Adams] writes of the underlying influences in the work as being two polar extremes in his life with the clarinet: the music he absorbed while growing up--Benny Goodman, Mozart, marching bands--and the experience of watching his father's disintegrating relationship to the instrument he loved, as brought on by Alzheimer's disease.

Gnarly Buttons (1996). John Adams /upcoming concerts/

Upcoming Bay Area concerts:

• February
  • 8th, 8pm. Meridian Gallery, SF. Carl Stone. Maybe.
  • 17th, 8pm. Davies Symphony Hall SF. Philip Glass Ensemble. Koyannisqatsi. Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi follow the next two nights. Saw the first two live in Berkeley; sensational.
• March
  • 5th, 3pm. UC Berkeley. Alarm Will Sound. China Gates, Chamber Symphony, Gnarly Buttons, Scratchband. John Adams. Going.
• 5th, 8pm. The Fillmore, SF. Animal Collective. Want to go.
  
• 12th, 2pm. Legion of Honor, SF. Musicians of Marlboro. Twilight Music John Harbison. Last time at LoH, struggled to find parking.
• 19th, 8pm. War Memorial Opera House, SF. Keith Jarrett, solo. Love/hate this.
• April
  
  • 21st, 8pm. Grace Cathedral, SF. Pharoah Sanders, solo. Saw same fifteen years ago.
• 28th, 8pm. Herbst Theatre, SF. Randy Weston's African Rhythms & the Gnawa Master Musicians of Morocco.
• 28th, 8pm. Bimbo's 365 Club, SF. Amadou & Mariam.
• 30th. TBD. Dewey Redman Quartet.
• May
  
  • 17th etc. Davies Symphony Hall, SF. SFS. Ecuatorial Varèse
• 19th-21st. Balboa Theatre, SF. Jazz/Noir Film Festival. Anatomy of a Murder, Sweet Smell of Success, I Want to Live, Elevator to the Gallows, Odds against Tomorrow, Touch of Evil.

Gnarly Buttons (1996). John Adams

In doing a little investigation about Adams' (annoying albeit American) use of banjo in his Gnarly Buttons, I found this prognostication in a Fanfare review by Christopher Abbot:

I think Adams's true genius lies in pieces like these [Gnarly Buttons and John's Book of Alleged Dances] and Grand Pianola Music, rather than in the operas or the Chamber Symphony (the Violin Concerto is an exception -- I think that will endure).

Dunno but after the Doctor Atomic extravaganza (and a run-through of the so serious Varèse), the small-scale works sound refreshing. Moo.

---

Update: I'm reading Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. I never knew the banjo had West African predecessors. Wald also makes the point of how whites have romanticized blues history; we forget that rural legends like Robert Johnson were basically unknown at the time compared to more polished and professional urban black artists that still get tagged with the "country blues" label e.g. Leroy Carr. (Checking, I see that Carr doesn't even have an entry in Wikipedia. I'll start the stub). Finally, he points out classifications like classical, jazz, country, and blues only became common as a way to market records and that in the early 1900s, musicians were likely to play a variety of styles, even if they only recorded in one. This includes concert pianists who would add arrangements of say, Yankee Doodle Dandy, to their usual repertoire of European concert music. Most interestingly, Wald cites textual evidence canonical bluesman Muddy Waters, early in his career, played such pop songs as Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Deep in the Heart of Texas, and Down by the Riverside.

rgable: aworks culture wars era adams: official aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish amazon gnarly buttons: official aworks tweeness current track: déserts/varèse/chailly.

Gnarly Buttons for clarinet and chamber ensemble (1996). John Adams

Erika's Bloglet dismisses modern music and specifically, John Adams' Gnarly Buttons:

Although [it] isn’t atonal, it still manages to sound incoherent, and his borrowings from popular styles only make it sound twee.

She does speak positively of Philip Glass.

For myself, I never much liked the banjo in Gnarly Buttons although how many CD covers have a cow? William F Olive III on Amazon  calls the piece "goofy."

I'll have to ponder if Adams' music tends toward "twee-ness."  Eros Piano, a "gloss" on Toru Takemitsu, has some of that quality and is one of my least favorite Adams works; Grand Pianola Music is bombastic but yet still refined; El Dorado, Shaker Loops or maybe Harmonium are good representatives of the "non-twee."

Interestingly, Peter Gutmann points out that the work has a poignant context despite its surface. Adams wrote it in tribute to his clarinet-playing father, who ultimately suffered from dementia. Here's Adams'
overview of Gnarly Buttons:

I. "The Perilous Shore": a trope on a Protestant shape-note hymn found in a 19th century volume, The Footsteps of Jesus...

The melodic line is twisted and embellished from the start, appearing first in monody and eventually providing both micro and macro material for the ensuing musical structures.

II. "Hoedown (Mad Cow)": normally associated with horses, this version of the traditional Western hoedown addresses the fault lines of international commerce from a distinctly American perspective.

III. "Put Your Loving Arms Around Me": a simple song, quiet and tender up front, gnarled and crabbed at the end.

Boosey & Hawkes samples in Real Audio.