If you live here in Columbia you'd probably have to order these online, so it's too late for holiday presents...but for the New Year keep these two recordings in mind:

Albany Records has just released a new CD of works by Columbia composer Meira Warshauer. The recording features works for chorus and orchestra with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kirk Trevor.

Opus Two, the violin-piano duo of USC's violin prof William Terwilliger and pianist Andrew Cooperstock of the University of Colorado, had a CD released last summer on Azica Records with chamber works by Paul Schoenfield, including the popular "Cafe Music," which seems to be appearing on chamber music series and festivals quite regularly these days. (They're joined by cellist Andres Diaz for that trio on the recording).

Lynn and I were watching TV a couple of nights ago and saw this new Geico ad, from the series where they pair a real-life Geico customer with various semi-celebrities who "intrepret" the customer's story...we nearly fell off our sofa when we saw who the "real person" was in this ad:



For classical music fans, Alex Klein is the real celebrity; the former principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony, now professor at Oberlin and, fair to say, probably one of the handful of most virtuosic players of that instrument alive on the planet.

If you're a chamber music fan here in Columbia, I think this Wednesday (Dec. 5) could be a pretty good day for you. At 12:30 PM I'll be joined by two members of USC's stellar wind faculty, flutist Wendy Cohen and bassoonist Peter Kolkay, for one of Trinity Cathedral's midday half-hour free concerts ($5 if you want to have lunch either beforehand at noon or afterwards at 1 PM). As befits the idea of not wanting to get too filled up with heavy nourishment in the middle of the day, we're offering some of the lighter side of Beethoven: his Op. 89 Polonaise for piano, and a rarely-heard pre-opus-one work from his teenage years, the Trio for flute, bassoon, and piano WoO 39. (Judging by this piece, Beethoven was not a surly, angry teenager...saving that for adulthood?)

Then go back to work for awhile, wolf down some dinner, and get yourself to the Columbia Museum of Art at 7:00 PM for the next installment of the Charles Wadsworth-hosted chamber music concert series. The lineup of performers and pieces doesn't get better than this: violinist Soovin Kim, cellist Edward Arron, and pianist Jeremy Denk. Arron and Denk play a Bach gamba sonata, Kim and Denk do the Ives 2nd violin sonata, and all three team for Dvorak's hot and heavy F minor Piano Trio. Having Kim, Arron, and Denk here making music is the equivalent of bringing the new-look Boston Celtics and their powerhouse trio of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen to town. All three of these guys can take it to the hoop. Wait, who was I talking about here?

Your faithful blogger-pianist must bow low before the amazing Denk, whose blog postings, are lengthy, strewn with numerous literary allusions, often quite poetic in their own right, and yet still make it clear that he seems to watch TV like the rest of us on occasion. Chew on this fact, too: there may be no pianist in this country whose performing career encompasses such a diverse and demanding list of pieces all the time. Seems like within a very short time span recently, I've heard tell of Denk playing the Ives Concord Sonata, the Thomas Ades Piano Quintet, and now this touring program, plus a whole bunch of other works which slip my mind at the moment. Which brings me to the question I'm dying to ask Denk Wednesday night after the concert: "Are you one of those appalling people who can learn music with virtually no practice time at the instrument, and/or are you one of those people who sleeps about 3 hours per night with no long-term ill effects?" Come to think of it, he does refer quite often in his blog to Starbucks.

Lastly, some of my recent musical/professional putterings-about are detailed in today's edition of The State by writer Jeffrey Day. I'd like to just go on record here as saying that the rather appealing (and almost neat) look of the room of our house with the piano photographed for the story is quite misleading in that it most definitely does NOT represent the average day-to-day state of the rest of our house, five months into the life of our funny, sweet Spencer. (That's right, blame it on the baby...)

I've been meaning to post a link for a few weeks now to an extraordinary article from the always illuminating pen of musicologist Richard Taruskin. I've always been bowled over by everything he's written, and have made it a life goal to make it through, cover to cover, his recent six-volume Oxford History of Western Music, all 5000 or so pages. (The USC School of Music library has a copy; you can't take it out of the library but there are some nice cozy chairs back in the corner of the reference section where it's shelved...so make yourself at home, pick an era of music, and start reading!)

Taruskin wrote an article for The New Republic last month which is a must-read. The basic premise of the article was a criticism of several recent books on classical music, all espousing the position that the perceived decline of classical music is a terrible thing, representing the ascension of anti-spiritual commercialism and the eclipse of certain values, most specifically the "art for art's sake" ethos. I'm someone who falls into the habit of embracing a kind of moral value for what I would call art music, so Taruskin is aiming right at people like me.

Taruskin's main point is that that view of music is hopelessly linked to an idea central to 19th-century German Romanticism (guilty), plus also linked by those making the moral argument to various versions of self-interestedness (guilty again). From the little I've poked around Taruskin's "History of Western Music," and what I've read about it, much of the underlying theme of the several-volume work has to do with the relationship of what we call "classical" music to the social conditions from which it sprang. In other words, he makes much the same point that he does in this New Republic essay, which is that classical music is not some abstract, "pure" art form that can be considered in a sort of superworldly realm, unconnected to any grubby societal, commercial, or political conditions surrounding its creation.

The money quote from Taruskin's New Republic piece:

"The discourse supporting classical music so reeks of historical blindness and sanctimonious self-regard as to render the object of its ministrations practically indefensible. Belief in its indispensability, or in its cultural superiority, is by now unrecoverable, and those who mount such arguments on its behalf morally indict themselves. Which is not to say that classical music, or any music, is morally reprehensible. Only people, not music, can be that. What is reprehensible is to see its cause as right against some wrong. What is destroying the credibility of classical music is an unacknowledged or misperceived collision of rights. The only defense classical music needs, and the only one that has any hope of succeeding, is the defense of classical music (in the words ofT.W. Adorno, a premier offender) against its devotees."

"The arts" does not turn up as much of a player here in local Columbia politics, although there was some grumbling last spring about the Columbia Festival of the Arts and the funding mechanisms employed by City Council to help bring that about. Certainly if "the arts" are championed by local leaders and politicians, it's mostly done at arm's length.

So it made my lunch go down easier today to go through my mail and find a giant-sized postcard saying "Belinda Supports the Arts!" and inviting me to a fundraiser gathering of local artistic luminaries who are supporting Belinda Gergel's candidacy for City Council District 3. Many of Columbia's leading names in the arts are listed as Gergel supporters: among artists, Christian Thee, David Yaghjian, Mana Hewitt, Mary Gilkerson; among musicians, Robert Jesselson, Meira Warshauer, and Ann Benson; among theatre folks, Kay and Jim Thigpen from Trustus Theatre. And there are many others.

Gergel has our vote already, too. It's logical that so many in the arts are supporting her candidacy: being involved with the arts here means that your definition of a healthy city includes values beyond simply how many deals can be made, how much development can be squeezed out of every square inch, and how much money can be made here. Gergel is most emphatically not anti-development; from her statements, it seems clear that she is merely for proceeding with careful deliberation all along the way. Columbia is truly poised at a crossroads, still being small enough that the decisions being made now will have huge ramifications for what kind of place this will be in 25 years or so.

And it's nice to see that she's embracing the support from the arts community so openly. "You like us, you really do..." (apologies to Sally Field).