If you love chamber music, here is an unabashed plug for some concerts I'll be involved with this Tuesday, Nov. 1 in Charlotte. Alan Black, the principal cellist of the Charlotte Symphony, has been curating a great chamber music series at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in downtown, sorry, "Uptown" Charlotte for several years now. Usually players from the Symphony are involved, but often Alan brings in performing artists from farther afield in both Carolinas. The concerts take place the first Tuesday of every month, a lunchtime concert at noon and an after-work performance of the same program at 5:30 PM.

This coming Tuesday Alan and I will be joined by violinist Calin Lupanu, the marvelous concertmaster of the CSO, for a piano trio by Haydn and the Schumann D minor trio, Op. 63. The Schumann is just an amazing piece. It's truly Romantic music, when that meant being revolutionary and aesthetically groundbreaking. The trio inhabits a world far removed from that of the Piano Quartet and Quintet; it's much more unruly at times, a little wild. And yet, Schumann's recent (at that time) study of counterpoint shows from the very first two bars of the work all the way to the finish. It's a bold experiment in using the tools of the past to forge a radically new music.

Best of all, these concerts at St. Peter's are free! Please come join us and hear some extraordinary music. I'll close with this quote from Robert Schumann in a letter to his wife Clara in 1838: "I am affected by everything that goes on in the world ... politics, literature and people, and then I long to express my feelings and find an outlet for them in music ... everything extraordinary that happens impresses me, and impels me to express it in music."

If you happen to be in Aiken tomorrow at lunchtime and in the mood for a short concert, Rebecca Nagel, the distinguished oboe prof at USC, and I will be performing at the First Presbyterian Church there. The concert is part of their Music & Lunch series. Unfortunately the deadline for lunch reservations was last Monday, but I'm sure that you could still get in just to hear the concert, which takes place at noon and is just a half-hour long, with works by Hendrik Andriessen (father of famed contemporary Dutch composer Louis Andriessen), Antal Dorati, and Alan Richardson. Hey, maybe they made up some extra food and you could scam lunch too in the bargain. In any case, looks like they have some good concerts coming up later in the year, so take note for the future.

A legend is coming to town this week. Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee will be speaking at the USC Law School Auditorium this Wednesday the 26th, at 6 PM, as part of the USC Fall Festival of Authors. It should be a fascinating talk, and literary types from miles around may show up, so get there early! Some of you may recall that last spring Trustus Theatre had to cancel a planned production of Albee's play "The Goat or Who is Sylvia?" because of objections from Albee about the casting. Apparently Albee reserves veto power over all matters of casting etc. for any productions of his works anywhere. It will be interesting to see if anybody poses a question to him about the Trustus situation.

I, for one, would really like to hear Albee talk about that issue from his point of view. To what extent is a play "the words on the page plus stage directions," and to what extent does it exist in the interpretation of the actors, or even the casting choices themselves? Parallels to music are intriguing. A composer really has no control over his work once he finishes putting it to paper. The composer has to have faith in the essence of the work coming through despite a potentially infinite variety of interpretations (if we're talking about live performers, that is; a piece of computer music would be unvarying and "ideally" represent the composer's intent, I suppose). With contemporary music, we performers can and do often work with the composer, asking questions such as "what the heck did you mean by this?" and so forth. But eventually today's living composers will be yesterday's dead composers and all that will be left to guide performers will be the score and its markings, plus recordings and whatever understanding may live on of the "tradition" or "style" or context of the composer's time and place.

So how does Albee view his creative role as compared to a composer's? Perhaps he would say that casting issues in a play are similar to orchestration or instrumentation in a piece of music. He reserves the right to have final say-so over casting in his plays by the same right that would allow John Adams to object to Harmonielehre being performed by a choir of tubas. But how can Albee hope to exercise creative control over his plays once he is gone? Or does he consider it only critical to do so in his lifetime, so as to help ensure that the works get off to a good (or "authentic") start, as it were? Will executors of his estate seek to retain that kind of control? I think that may be the case with Samuel Beckett, perhaps those out there who know theater better than I do can comment on that.

Personally, I would say to Albee, "Lighten up and trust your work." Of course, I'm coming at it from a performer's standpoint; we actually believe that we can find and illuminate aspects of a piece of music that the composer himself did not know or understand beforehand. Cheeky, yes? And anyway, seeing as how I'm rather shy in general, I don't think I myself will be asking any of these questions at Wednesday's talk. If you're bolder than I, please feel free to ask these questions as your own. I'm not in the habit of challenging three-time Pulitzer-winners.

Aside from these issues of creative control, one thing is clear about Albee. He describes his work as "an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen." If you consider that his work accomplishes those goals, it then must be deemed art that is urgently, even desperately needed in this country at this time in history.

...the first of an ongoing series within the blog just to give some love to various folks that have put a smile on my face in recent days...so here we go, sending out some love to...

Chris Weinke of the Carolina Panthers, who hadn't taken a snap at quarterback in an NFL game since 2002, but replaced a semi-concussed Jake Delhomme in the final couple of minutes of last Sunday's game against Detroit and led Carolina to the winning touchdown with seconds to go. On the road in a noisy indoor stadium, I should add. You can practice all you want, stay mentally involved in every game, stay in shape, all those things...but nothing can simulate entering an actual game at QB in a hostile environment. Not to have done that in nearly 3 years and to perform as Weinke did is testimony to great preparation and truly impressive poise. In a 16-game NFL season, every win is worth as much as 5 wins in the NBA, or 10 wins in major league baseball. At the end of this season, if things turn out well, let's remember to look back at what Chris Weinke did on October 16.

The CMRTA. You heard me right, the Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority. I clicked on their website to look up some route schedules this week and had to smile from head to toes when I heard their adaptation of the Staple Singers' "I'll Take You There" playing on the site. Sounded just like Mavis Staples, too, until I noticed the revised lyrics talking about "Fort Jackson," and "Cayce," etc. From what they say on the site, this has been part of an ad campaign on radio and TV since April, but this was the first I'd heard it.

The weather...I think some rain may be coming soon, maybe this weekend, but this last week has been just gorgeous. It's a good thing, too, for the wallet when one doesn't have to run either AC or heat in the house.

The state of South Carolina, for not only NOT being last in the nation in per-capita arts agency appropriations, but for (believe-it-or-not) being a better-than-average 22nd in the nation, according to USC's South Carolina Indicators' Project, which tabulates and ranks the state in a host of categories, including culture but also health, social indices, and so forth. 22nd in the country is the good news. The bad news? If you look at the graph on the linked page, you'll see that both North and South Carolina, and the whole southeast in general, had a drop of somewhere around 40% in state arts agencies' per capita appropriations since 2000. I'm sure that's true in general nationwide.

As recent transplants to the Capital City, my wife and I are often asked, "How do you like living in Columbia?" When we say that we love it, often we are met with a quizzical look and the question, "Really?" (This charming civic modesty is in stark contrast to Ann Arbor, where I lived for four years. There people constantly tell YOU how much you must love living in their town, which is not quite as perfect as its self-image suggests...too cold for one thing--OK that's personal taste--and way too expensive, especially housing--an indisputable fact.) Anyway the above-mentioned conversation happened again the other night with a long-time Columbian. We again proclaimed our enthusiasm for this city, and our guest then asked us, "But what do you do, you know, for fun or entertainment here?"...which is a perfect segue into this morning's blog entry. This happens to be one of those weeks where fine cultural offerings are on tap nearly every night.

First off, let me direct your attention to yesterday's blog entry about "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," running Tuesday through Thursday at the Nickelodeon Theatre. Maybe Tuesday is the night to go, because...

Wednesday evening Oct. 19 at 7 PM Charles Wadsworth returns to the Columbia Museum of Art for the first concert of the year of his series, which brings top-notch artists to town for first-rate performances of great chamber music. This series really amounts to "Spoleto Chamber Music in Columbia," minus only the ambience of Charleston's Dock Street Theatre. Tickets are pricey but it's worth it. Anne-Marie McDermott is a marvelous pianist who has dedicated a major portion of her career to chamber music. At her best, her playing is often sparkling, electrifying. Ida Kavafian and Soovin Kim are also listed on the program, and violin playing of that magnitude is also not to be missed. I haven't worked with Ida but she's incredibly highly regarded and plays often with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and in Opus One, a piano quartet with McDermott. Soovin I have worked with and he's just a consummate elegant artist. This series, at least on average, is unquestionably the highest-quality musical event that happens in Columbia. Enough said.

Thursday the 20th, the USC Symphony plays the Koger Center. Swedish pianist Per Tengstrand will perform Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto---I don't know Tengstrand's playing, but here's a favorable report from his performance of said concerto with the Detroit Symphony a year ago. Also on the program is Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor. I adore Franck's music, his manipulation of harmony. In August I had a memorable week when, just a few days apart, I played his Piano Quintet with the Miami Quartet in Colorado, then found myself standing by his gravesite in Paris' Montparnasse Cemetery ("sorry about those wrong notes" I told him). Franck is also the patron saint of late bloomers everywhere. Almost all his works we celebrate today (the Symphony, the Piano Quintet, Violin Sonata, Symphonic Variations) were written after he turned 60, in the final decade of his life (he died in 1890). There's hope yet.