A couple of weeks ago Pierre Ruhe wrote this interesting piece for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the burgeoning Atlanta new music scene, listing a number of composers who make the ATL their home. These include the established (Alvin Singleton and John Anthony Lennon) as well as the young-and-upcoming (Ruhe is particularly intrigued by the work of Jen Mitchell).

New music aficionados interested in keeping up with what's going on with our large neighbor down I-20 will want to bookmark two websites: the Atlanta Composers Blog, run by composer-guitarist Darren Nelsen, and Synchronous, dubbed "Atlanta's New and Classical Music Webzone." The latter has links to many of the websites of Atlanta composers, as well as a very useful listing of classical and alternative performing venues in the area.

 

The month of March, for me, will be much occupied by a recording project for ASV with the English violist Helen Callus. The theme of the CD is "Romances" and thus many of the works are short and lyrical ones (often arrangements or adaptations) by the likes of Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Frank Bridge, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. One larger work in the project, however, is Vadim Borrosovsky's arrangement for viola and piano of several movements from Sergei Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" Suite. Helen's a marvelous player, a long-time friend, and we're going to have a lot of fun putting this all together, I'm sure. Some of this material (including the Prokofiev) we did for a "Saint Paul Sunday" radio broadcast a couple of years ago.

In this area, we are playing most of the material from the recording in concert this coming Sunday at 3 PM at the University of South Carolina School of Music. Then, two weeks later on March 17, we are repeating that program in Claremont, California, which is near Helen's current home turf (she is on the music faculty at UC-Santa Barbara). After that we fly to Frankfurt, Germany, near which city we are doing the recording.

The presence of the Prokofiev on the program gives me an excuse to post a quote I've been saving for this blog for some time, from the late legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter: "Sergei Prokofiev was an extremely interesting person, but dangerous....Principles weren't exactly his strong point....[But] as long as Prokofiev was alive you could always expect a miracle, as if in the presence of a conjuror who, with a wave of his magic wand, could produce the most fabulous riches."

 

New developments in the Joyce Hatto scandal: her husband, William Barrington-Coupe, has admitted passing off plagiarized recordings by other pianists as Ms. Hatto's own. The circumstances are as sad as had been speculated. In today's New York Times, Denis Dutton, a professor of aesthetics at the University of Canterbury, puts the whole mess into some kind of perspective. He fleshes out a number of points I raised in my post on the matter some days ago.

Professor Dutton: "Ms. Hatto usually stole from younger artists who were not household names, although on the basis of the reviews she received, they richly deserved to be....[the critics] may have been fooled, but their opinions were not foolish, because the artists she ripped off played beautifully."

And the money quote:

"This makes instrumental criticism a tricky business. I’m personally convinced that there is an authentic, objective maturity that I can hear in the later recordings of Rubinstein. This special quality of his is actually in the music, and is not just subjectively derived from seeing the wrinkles in the old man’s face. But the Joyce Hatto episode shows that our expectations, our knowledge of a back story, can subtly, or perhaps even crudely, affect our aesthetic response. The greatest lesson for us all ought to be, however, that there are more fine young pianists out there than most of us realize. If it wasn’t Joyce Hatto, then who did perform those dazzlingly powerful Prokofiev sonatas? Having been so moved by hearing “her” Schubert on the radio, I’ve vowed to honor the real pianist by ordering the proper CD, as soon as I find out who it is. Backhanded credit to Joyce Hatto for having introduced us to some fine new talent."

I usually don't get too excited about the Oscars ceremony and telecast, especially since Billy Crystal stopped MC-ing the show. Typically I would only have seen two or three of the major nominated films and individual acting performances, and this year is no exception to that (Well, I did see "The Queen" which I thought was fantastic, and there are a couple of other nominated films I'm still hoping to get to soon).

But this year I will, however, have a bit of a personal rooting interest with two of the Oscar categories, in both cases having to do with individuals who played big roles in the course of my adult life.

One of these people is Leon Fleisher, who was my teacher during some pretty formative years of my life (age 17 through 22). I still very much feel that Leon was the major musical influence in my life both in terms of my thinking about music itself (all the elements contained within it) and in the course of my career (being the strong advocate he was then and is still for chamber music and for contemporary music). Fleisher and his remarkable life's journey is the subject for Nathaniel Kahn's 17-minute film "Two Hands," which is up for the Oscar in the category of Short Documentary Subject. 

I'll also be watching the category of Best Original Score with great interest: Philip Glass has been nominated for the third time, on this occasion for his score to "Notes on a Scandal." My first gig playing with the Philip Glass Ensemble was in New Orleans in October, 1986, and there have been dozens and dozens since, most recently in Athens last summer. Working with Philip and the musicians around him has been a large and rewarding part of my life, and seeing him continually reinvent himself (only breaking into the world of major commercial film scoring in his 60's) has been fascinating. I think he's going to be at the awards, and I hope to see him onstage accepting an Oscar. Go Phil! (I have to say, though, I won't be terribly surprised if Thomas Newman, who's been nominated seven times before without winning and who should have won for "American Beauty," takes home the prize for "The Good German."

I only had the opportunity to hang out with Gordon Wright about a dozen times in the last several years, during my three visits to Anchorage to perform on the Sitka Festival's Autumn Classics series. But Gordon, who died a week ago today at age 72, was the sort of person who made a strong impression on you in a short time. That's a paradox of sorts because, like many of his fellow Alaskans who were closely connected to the land, he didn't talk much unless he had something to say. It was his presence that made the impact. That was partly his physical presence; six-feet-six and bearded, he looked the part of an Alaskan outdoorsman. But there was some other aspect surrounding him that drew you in...maybe the seeming integrity of his life choices, the way he lived his life and the way he had integrated that with his involvement with music. His passion for music and his encyclopedic knowledge also made him somebody delightful to be around, especially because whatever comments he did offer were usually leavened with an understated, wry sense of humor. I would dearly have loved to spend more time around him, but I am grateful for the brief moments (most recently last September) I was able to spend in the presence of such a unique individual.

For those unfamiliar with Gordon Wright's life, in a nutshell: he came to Alaska in the late 1960's, founded and conducted the Fairbanks Symphony for two decades. Its smaller offshoot, the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, traveled for many years under Wright's leadership to dozens of tiny remote corners of that vast state. Talk about your underserved communities! For more on Wright's life and his last ride down the mountainside where his off-the-grid cabin half-hour south of Anchorage was located, go to this story in the Anchorage Daily News. It didn't take Gordon's death, of course, to know that he had strongly impacted the lives of so many in Alaska; to read some of the recollections of those who knew him, including a few hilarious anecdotes illuminating a bit of Gordon's character, go here. There is no clearer evidence of a life well-lived than the words about that life you'll read there.

Last summer Gordon Wright was involved with an Alaskan cruise organized by "A Prairie Home Companion." The post-cruise broadcast from Washington State can be heard here: go to "Segment 3" and cue it up to the 11:15 mark to hear a brief conversation between Garrison Keillor and Wright. It's short, but has a classic bit of Gordon: Keillor ribs him about having left behind the charms of New York City (Wright was born in Brooklyn), to which Gordon retorts, "I often get back east...to Seattle."

I can't find my pictures taken from Gordon's cabin just now, if I do I'll post them...suffice it to say that the deck overlooking Turnagain Arm (where his body was found) has a billion dollar view. That may well have been the last image his eyes took in before shutting down for good. We should all be so lucky.