CONCERT REVIEW Keith Jarrett is Better Than You, and He Knows It
The trailblazer of egoism in Jazz might be Miles Davis, or perhaps Charlie Mingus; each declared jazz to be art, not just entertainment. They didn’t smile. They didn’t laugh. If you screwed around with them, they punched you in the face (in Mingus’ case).
CONCERT REVIEW New and Old
Sometimes I worry that my particular brand of love for Jane toes a fine, but distinct, line between nuisance and comedic relief. She puts up with a whole lot: I constantly talk to her during lecture, disturb her while she’s in the middle of her experiments, push my fiber pills on her like I were a dealer, tell her dirty jokes (loudly) when we’re in public and insist on detailing the most horrific details of my ever-faltering love life.
ALBUM REVIEW Ten Songs From the Time Capsule
As Eddie Vedder has pointed out at many Pearl Jam shows, “we’ve all been benefiting from the long term friendship between Jeff Ament and [Pearl Jam guitarist] S<i>tone</i> Gossard.” It’s True that it was the songwriting duo that sent Eddie Vedder a demo tape almost two decades ago, which contained nascent versions of future Pearl Jam hits like “Evenflow” and “Alive.”
CONCERT REVIEW Michel Camilo, Pure Love
Saturday night. Full house. Glasses clink and lapels straighten.
ALBUM REVIEW How to Be Unpopular
From all accounts, Gustav Mahler was a formidable grouch. It’s not hard to hear this in his music — his ninth symphony is nearly an hour and a half’s worth of rich, Wagnerian lines, rife with paranoid navel-gazing over his imminent death. His orchestral song-cycle, Das Lied von der Erde is a meditation on eastern philosophy and a hidden symphony meant to cheat fate (Beethoven had nine symphonies, so did Dvorak, Schubert1, Mahler knew where this was headed).
Bringing Music Back Alive - Sudeep Agarwala on MITSO
When did classical music become boring? It’s not hard to understand why it is: music is taught at schools on a pedestal lower than, yet not distinct from calculus, English literature or honors French. It’s been mummified beyond recognition — at some point, students are asked not to listen to music, but to <i>understand</i> the music — in fact, there are musical rules, drills and practices that students must complete with stoic integrity, an entire body of history to digest and, if you can imagine — <i>exams</i>, even.
Bringing Music Back Alive - Sam Markson on MITSO
Modern classical performance is often a rigid form — a study of strict tempos, pitches, and moods. The performers take it upon themselves to recreate the vision of the original artist, and as that artist is usually dead, that recreation can become a study in accuracy rather than exploration — what <i>not </i>to play, rather than <i>what </i>to play.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★★★ Family Unions and Reunions
Almost a year ago, I reviewed Noah Baumbach’s <i>Margot at the Wedding</i>: a film about a damaged and grotesquely self-involved woman, Margot, returning to her childhood home to attend her sister’s wedding. The family collapses and rebuilds over the course of film, with Margot always at its center. At a cursory glance, Jonathan Demme’s new film, <i>Rachel Getting Married</i>, is the exact same story.
CLASSICAL REVIEW To Be a King
New conductors can be traumatizing, regardless of the quality of the ensemble — the tension surrounding these changes originates from the very heart of the complex relationship between an orchestra and its conductor.
EVENT REVIEW Racial Complexity, Effortless Comedy
Last Friday’s Russell Peters show was an uproar. I hadn’t heard of Russell Peters prior to the show, so as I made my way to the website five days after tickets went on sale, I was surprised to be greeted with the message ‘SOLD OUT’ in glaring red font. Many Bakerites were also unpleasantly surprised at how quickly the tickets sold out. During the course of the week leading up to the show, I think there was a frantic e-mail sent out every day about some poor soul willing to buy tickets for double the price.
CONCERT REVIEW A Secular Blessing
As with many things, this too started with Beethoven. It must have been a draining performance for both musicians and audience: the first three movements of the Missa Solemnis (Op. 123) and 9th Symphony (Op. 125) premiered all in one night on May 7th, 1824. These have both become monumental works that have revolutionized their genres. The Ninth Symphony is the more famous of the two because it was the first (or, at the very least, the most major) symphony to incorporate both choral and orchestral music into a symphony.
CD AND CONCERT REVIEW Experiment and Soul
A lot of single-instrument groups can be gimmicky — along the lines of, “How many tuba players does it take to make a coherent album?” Many of those efforts are well and good, even virtuosic, but the majority are relegated to narrowly devoted fan-bases — those who, no doubt, brake for vibraphones or are the proud parents of an oboe player — without much chance at breaking through to the larger musical scene.
CONCERT REVIEW No Brook, but an Ocean
Things must have seemed bleak to the thirty-five year old Johann Sebastian Bach in the spring of 1721. He had composed six pieces, delivered for a commission to the Margrave of Brandenburg, Christian Ludwig, each one an exposition of the new and old instruments that were available to the young composer, each one a re-thinking of the concerto form — still relatively young in the early eighteenth century and certainly still very Italian in its conception and tradition. In short, each of these orchestral pieces were a thoughtful exposition of the musical world that Bach inhabited.
CONCERT REVIEW Weezer Does What They Want to Do
Two things to keep in mind before we get into a review of Weezer’s fall “Hootenanny” tour in support of this summer’s Red Album. First, Rivers Cuomo is closer to 40 than he is to 30 — he may actually need to put some Rogaine in his hair. Second, whether genuinely or ironically, Weezer has made YouTube culture the theme of their fall tour.
CONCERT REVIEW Dave Holland Sextet at the Regattabar
For the Boston jazz scene, Regattabar is about as classy as it gets. High-rollers in tailored suits like to mix and order $86 bottles of champagne, and mellow out after a day of tapping their blackberries. Its best asset is that it can entertain this crowd without losing sight of jazz’s groovy, down-home feel: those same high-rollers are sitting happily next to Berklee students in hoodies and ripped jeans. There’s no stage — only a wood floor in one corner of the room. Big names in jazz come and stand a yard in front of the audience, and no one pays it any mind. There aren’t any barriers here (save the $86 champagne tab for you and me) — this place is about the music.
EXHIBIT REVIEW Organic Forms and Exploding Stitching
Nicholas Hlobo’s exhibit at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston) opens with a sign blaring the words “Momentum 11” and a sculpture that seems to be emerging from a white wall. At first glance, it is as if a hole has been ripped into the wall, and the white peeled away to reveal black charred rubber, tethering off into multi-colored ravines winding their way across the white wall.
EXHIBIT REVIEW Concealed Ancestry in Modern China
Today’s photographer is often faced with the challenge of either maintaining the purity of black and white photography, or embracing the current culture of digital practices. Julio de Matos, in his exhibit entitled <i>Fading Hutongs</i>, at times seems to have inadvertently exempted himself from this rigid classification. While deep inspection of his digital color prints clearly reveals his medium, his subject matter lends a black and white <i>feel</i> to any casual observer.
MOVIE REVIEW ★★ ★ Morally Ambiguous
At the center of Claude Chabrol’s <i>A Girl Cut in Two</i> is the kind of pulpy love triangle that the tabloids dream of: a nymphet-like TV weather-girl is caught between a nationally revered literary figure (decades older) and a volatile, dashing heir to a pharmaceutical company fortune. The conflict ends very, very badly.
MUSIC Music in the City of Love
How well do you know the local jazz scene in Boston? If you’re under 21, chances are you have some difficulty getting into clubs. Have you ever attended Boston’s national festival of music? Well, given that Boston hosts no such event, I can say that you haven’t. Spending three months in the city of love, Paris, I’ve realized how closely music and culture are linked — and how much we might be missing out in lovely Beantown.
CD AND CONCERT REVIEW Forget About Phish
Mike Gordon is weird. He’s best known as the bassist from the now broken-up Phish, but also as the author of Mike’s Corner, a section of the band’s newsletter which served as a sort of psychedelic literary repository. Take for example a story he published in October, 1995 with the beginning: “As far as tikes go, Johnald was a wee bit irregular. For one thing, he had an Amrope coming out of his head. You may be wondering, ‘What is an Amrope?’ I won’t piss on you for wondering that. Actually, it’s like an antenna, but it’s got some mold on it. It’s not something you buy at a store, maybe you do buy it in a store.”