Of the new choral music collective which came to be known as Triad, I first blogged here. I forbore to post sooner while it was yet to be born and yet to be christened. As a composer and conductor, I was deeply invested in the endeavor and I grew to love a number of my fellows. Over the years as divers founding members left the Boston area, we managed to recruit some replacements, but over time the attrition became a greater challenge to counteract. And at last, we reached a kind of tipping point at which newer recruits did not develop the attachment to/investment in the endeavor. I write this with no blame to any. It is a great challenge to get on as a musician, and each individual must perforce weigh their own values, make their own decisions, and allocate their energies as they deem best fit. One of our illustrious alumnæ is now a practicing attorney, and I know how it pained her to send today’s necessary e-mail message headed Dissolving Triad. At least oversight of this unavoidable rite of passage is “in the family.” Composing this post has me near tears. Mostly I am grateful for the music-making,
13 May 2025
Almost a Day of Mourning
12 May 2025
An Exercise Considered, Then Discarded
I’m not even sure why the idea of this particular thought experiment crosses my mind now but here goes:
What would you say to your 18-year-old self, if you could? At the risk of appearing to think that, as it is, I’ve always done the best I might (I think no such thing) I’m not convinced that anything I might have advised myself then (apart from practice more) could have made a difference of net better. What would I say? “Get into a different school, so that your opportunities are better?” “Marry into wealth so that you do not lack resources?” Firstly, telling myself those things would not change the fact that such opportunities did not arise for me. Secondly, no other path brings me to just this place musically as a composer. In one of the hour-long episodes of the fourth season of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling’s “No Time Like the Past,” one Paul Driscoll goes back in time, first to seek to convince the Hiroshima police to evacuate the city; second, to attempt to assassinate Hitler; and third, to plead with the captain of the Lusitania. Failing in all these altruistic attempts to improve the 20th century, he goes back a fourth time to the 19th, to “retire” to a quiet Midwestern town. He falls for the town’s schoolteacher, but he comes to learn that she will perish in a fire. If this sounds familiar, there is a bit of an echo in Back to the Future III. Serling’s cautionary tale does not end so well for Driscoll as it does for Doc Brown, and indeed Driscoll finds himself serving as the unwitting catalyst of the conflagration. Let me not chide myself for any lack of imagination, if I cannot think of anything efficacious to say to mine 18-year-old self which might have improved the arc of my career.
11 May 2025
Ten Years Ago Today
Spam du jour: “Last Minute Mothers Day Gifts” — from Staples. What all are they thinking? “Happy Mothers Day, Mom! Enjoy your Sharpies!”
A bittersweet moment, as Triad is nae more, but highly satisfied that the Agnus Dei featured in that inaugural outing ten years since.
10 May 2025
Not About Me, Either (Brazil)
Last night, largely as a consequence of this post, I slipped Brazil into the tray. Hadn’t watched it in a while. When I watched Blade Runner the other night, I remembered how, when I saw it in the theater, that original release had explanatory voiceovers which Ridley Scott thankfully scrapped from the final cut. That recollection put me in mind also of Brazil since the studio added a happy ending resulting in what Terry Gilliam sarcastically referred to as the Love Conquers All version. Aggravated rather than caused by the world around us going haywire, I find that this visual fable gets more bitter with each viewing. I mean, I have always known that it ends badly for Sam Lowry, but the very first time I saw it, not only was I beguiled by the enormously inventive dream sequences but, for instance, one hopes, and is led on to hope, that Sam Lowry will somehow muddle through it all. Living with this brilliant movie over time becomes a matter, in part, of finding the point where it is clear that Sam’s rescue is raw delusion, and that therefore his “necrophilia” with Jill is his only moment of genuine happiness in the movie, but that Sam is not merely a victim of the machine, but something of an instrument of his own downfall. Was it Beauty that killed him? His need to pursue Jill which pries him out of the safe mediocrity of a mere functionary in a lower office of the Ministry of information, so that he begs Mr Helpmann to refresh the offer of a promotion? Yet, since he had been dreaming of Jill, how could he have done otherwise? But character is Destiny, and what with the young vandals’ destruction of the Personal Transport, Sam’s cocking up of the Buttle check, and his juvenile glee in running Jill’s truck through the gate and on: Sam sowed the seeds of his own immolation by bureaucracy. As to his friend Jack, the very fact that Michael Palin is so brilliant a comedian makes him chilling as Information Retrieval’s chief Retriever.
08 May 2025
Not About Me (Blade Runners and Beatles)
On 28 Apr 2020 Chris Voss at WCRB informed us of the program for that night’s instalment of “Festival 1750” [The broadcast festival featured music created immediately before and after the pivotal year of 1750, when the elaborate vibrancy of Baroque masters Bach and Handel began to give way to the grace and proportions of composers like Haydn and Mozart.]
But did not explain why the program includes the Beethoven 7th Symphony (composed in 1813) nor even the Mozart Clarinet Concerto (composed in 1791) . . . not that it is Chris’s fault.
Tuesday night I rewatched Blade Runner 2049. When it came out I gave it a wide miss. My prejudice was not deeply ingrained nor was it especially strong, but it was completely ill-founded. At last, however, my native curiosity prevailed and I did actually watch it,.I find it an excellent slowburn and as beautiful to watch as the original. The score plugs into the Vangelis vibe, too. Entirely predictably, I love Edward James Olmos’ return as Gaff, and I am delighted that this screenplay also is by Hampton Fancher. I don’t believe I had previously made the connection that this was the same director (Denis Villeneuve) who is doing the new Dune movies. As to the latter, I enjoyed Part I without being besotted with it. I suppose that my not being a great fan of Herbert’s source novel is related to my not finding anything greatly disappointing in the old David Lynch movie. I haven’t yet watched Part II, but neither am I strenuously avoiding it. I’m walking to the Library today, perhaps I’ll check Pt II out.
And so last night I revisited Ridley Scott’s original, still gorgeous to the eye. Probably unsurprising: the new movie imparts an interesting “pre-echo” to the final scenes of Deckard finding Rachael in his apartment and leaving with her. These days I speak exclusively in terms of Ridley Scott’s Final Cut, for which I am richly grateful. Back when there still a Borders on Washington Street in Boston (that used to be a bookstore chain, by the way) I bought a discounted DVD of Blade Runner. I wound up returning it unopened as my subconscious was pricked to do some investigating, and I learnt that the Final Cut edition was imminent. I found the Dangerous Days documentary on YouTube (it seems to have dropped off since) and my Blade Runner Fever was really pitched up. To shift gears only slightly, Terry Gilliam’s brilliant Brazil (another dystopian classic) fell afoul of the Studio, which edited it into what Gilliam wrily dubbed a Love Conquers All version. Gilliam waged a PR war and won. To return to Blade Runner, Scott was compelled to make similarly-motivated modifications. Deckard eloped with Rachael and we see outtake landscapes from Stanley Kubrick’s helicopter shoot for The Shining, and we have grandfatherly voice-overs not only “explaining” that romantic escape, but upstaging Rutger Hauer’s touching rooftop soliloquy which concludes the film’s drama. Decades had passed since I watched the film in the cinema but I recalled (notwithstanding my overall white-hot enthusiasm for the movie) rolling my eyes, albeit only to myself. The Final Cut restores Deckard’s dream of a unicorn. The origami unicorn that Gaff left outside Deckard’s apartment thus suggests not only that Deckard is himself a replicant, but that Gaff is aware of that fact, and that his LAPD colleagues are leaving him and Rachael be. Deckard thus has the question he had posed to Tyrell (How can it not know what it is?!) turned back upon himself. Atop the discovery which astonished those in the BR 2049 lab, that a replicant could bear a child) we have the related puzzle that Deckard was created capable of inseminating a partner, and Tyrell (apparently) so designed them (Deckard and Rachael both.)
The novelty of returning to Scott’s original last night was having the following sink in: Deckard asks Zhora for leave to check her dressing room for “Little, uh, dirty holes they uh, drill in the wall so they can watch a lady undress.” And then we see Joanna Cassidy in the shower. The echo of Hitchcock’s Psycho impressed itself on me so strongly last night, I near wondered I had missed it before. Deliberate on Ridley Scott’s part or serendipity?
Entirely separarely, I am slow-reading The Beatles Anthology. The experience is reminding me that at the time of my first descent into the Beatles rabbithole, I did read two books dedicated to them so, as with the DVD Anthology, it is a mix of some few factoids of which I was already aware, and a wealth of new info.
07 May 2025
Five Out of Six
The Henning Ensemble rehearsed this afternoon, and the sounds were pretty exciting. We had initial readings of the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia and Dark Side of the Sun. The quest for potential concert dates is ongoing, but we’ve pinned down the next rehearsal, this time of the full sextet.
Some Tidying
A footnote to Jazz for Nostalgic Squirrels: One discovery we made when we revived the piece in 2023 ... through mis-handling the mouse, I gave Peter an erroneous cue in his alto flute part. And in case you were wondering, yes, an erroneous cue (in this case, a measure off) is indeed worse than no cue at all. And I failed to remember this when exporting the Alto Flute part from the newly expanded score. So, yesterday afternoon I cleared out the stale cues and inserted fresh cues. Even though we shall be missing Todd I am eagerly looking forward to today’s rehearsal.
