Breaking News: Man plays both piano parts for Steve Reich's "Piano Phase"

Miss Shani sent me this video today of pianist Peter Aidu exhibiting what he can do with his amazing brain. It makes me think of composer Robert Schumann, who had to give up the career of budding piano virtuoso because of a mysterious finger injury - he rigged up a mechanical device (pictured to the left) to separate his pinkie finger from his ring finger (you know how you can't lower your pinkie without some movement from the ring?) to increase fingering possibilities, & ended up damaging his hand permanently. (The other theory is that it was a syphilis symptom). Anyway, Steve Reich's early minimalist classic "Piano Phase" is an experiment with the same pattern played on two instruments coming in & out of phase. How Mr Aidu is able to separate his brain & phase with himself I chalk up to either some sort of mechanical device or perhaps a symptom of syphilis.

Music Review: Danny Holt's Fast Jump (2009), First Attempt of Many!

I neglected to review Mr Danny Holt's fine new album when it first came out, so to balance the karmic scales, I'm going to review it MANY TIMES. It's a fresh fleshy new CD of 21st century classical piano music. And it seems worth noting from the start that I've known hundreds of pianists, & despite the broad breadth of music available to them, you'd be shocked how so few venture very far away at all from the most central spinal cord of the narrowest classical cannon. In fact, if you're an American who never studied music, you've very likely never heard classical piano music that isn't Chopin or Beethoven or a few others. Will it surprise you to know that there is such a depth and range of other piano music pianists could be playing, a span of amazing American repertoire, from the mathematical dissonant stuff, to neo-Romantic stuff, to hip downtown stuff, to no end of jazz or pop or world-music influenced music, and really just about anything you can imagine? Now most emerging concert pianists tackle the same repertoire, & always dredge out the same awe at bringing to light new shadows in these masterpieces. But I just did a search for cds of Chopin's Nocturnes on Amazon, & just among the cds available to buy from that website of those pieces, there's more than two thousand different artists. I'm sure to them, tho, the new ways and exciting ways they've approached these beloved pieces are far more illuminating than considering playing any of the great music from the past hundred years, and at least they're not lonely on Amazon.

Do a search, tho, for Lona Kozik, an American composer of high caliber (she lives in Devon, England), and the centerpiece for the virtuosic first half of Danny Holt's new album. Fast Jump is the only hit for her on Amazon! And Graham Fitkin, an older more established composer on Holt's album (and a great favorite composer of mine), gets only twenty-six. The unavailability does not reflect the quality of the solo piano music being written in the past fifty years, just the wall between pianist's brains & great music (and also major label's inability to market much new classical music to an unaware public).

Danny Holt is a performing artist who takes great care in packaging likable music to timid audiences. He is not a secluded genius tinkering at horrible noises for a possible alien future where people will learn to love horrible noises. He attempted many gimmicks in his younger years to bring people into concerts halls, but most of his flash is just in the personality of his playing. Which of course is not lost in these studio recordings. He is wild & fun, & his taste always steers him towards music that can showcase his playful playing & deepest emotions. Style, tho, is what really sets him apart from other "emerging concert pianists" - his background in percussion and composition has left him with superior skills at playing difficult rhythms with precision, & everything always with crisp cleanliness. (These things seem like they're not worth pointing out, but much of the pianosphere is awash with romantic sloppiness, "expressive" rhythm, & in general, mush. It's like, everyone devotes great respect & adoration for Arthur Rubinstein & Glenn Gould, but fail to notice that a lot of what made those guys great was that they could count, their passion was tempered by clarity, & even groove.) Everything about Mr Holt's approach to classical piano music is alive - his composers are alive and paying attention, his playing is full of life, and his audience is awake.

Anyway, like I said, I wanted to review this CD in a couple pieces, without bogging the blogosphere with long essays. Look for this CD, altho it's easier to find it at Amazon, iTunes, or the innova website. Find yourself only about ten dollars poorer, play it at your wildest bacchanals. There's also some sample tracks at his music MySpace. The next installment will have less rant & focus more on individual pieces, what they mean to the galaxy, and an unbelievable narrative about Mr Holt & a rodent gynecologist.

Here in the Pianosphere: The Lost Music of James Welsch

Mr Mary & I have big plans for The Pianosphere. We spearheaded this department to showcase great pianospherists, like Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, Liberian Congresswoman Malinda Jackson Parker, Italian Friar Brother Basil Frison, & onward towards the future. We are now conspiring, alongside glorifying these pianospheric outsiders, to offer the pianosphere our own contributions, & commission our comrades to contribute to the pianosphere, as well as our comrades' comrades (both ourselves, again, & outward.) 

There is already plenty in the archives, & tonight we will drag out the first sampling. Mr Danny Holt, about eight years ago, put on a concert at Hampshire College called The Lost Music of James Welsch - named after a series of piano pieces I had written as a teenager which were lost & found. Actually the original sketches were from a series of unfinished "etudes" to practice odd rhythms, I was writing for a friend who was a good pianist but couldn't count her way into a hippy drum circle. I was looking thru old scores a few weeks ago, & I found all these sketches again, most of them are sucking, but a few are gems - I found them a second time! Then, I realized I didn't have a copy of the recording Mr Holt made earlier this decade, & luckily he was able to dig it up. WITHOUT ANY MORE ADO:

I had forgotten that he had played so many of these little pieces as a suite, I had only remembered him doing the first couple, but he does:

I. Syncopation (Ragtime)

II. 5/4 Waltz

III. The Hemiola

IV. Dies Irae (3+2)

V. Dies Irae (2+3)

Of course, Mr Holt's groovy performances do great justice to these sketches. Those are the titles from the original "etudes", named after the rhythm it was meant to teach. A hemiola is when a meter is beat with different accents to imply another meter (like, if you're in 3/4, which has six eighth-notes, & the first & fourth eighth-notes are accented, making it sound like 6/8 time. It happens all the time in the finest music.) Dies Irae is a chant from the 13th century which is referenced all over classical music - the first eight notes of it are often heard, hinting at doom or just a gothic mood. It's famously used in the witch scene in Berlioz's Symphonie Fantasique, & it's all over The Nightmare Before Christmas ("Making Christmas") & Sweeney Todd. I'm not telling you why I evoked it, not once, but DOUBLY in "The Lost Music of James Welsch", that is for the great romantic artist & his critics to exegete. The sketch of the "Dies Irae (2+3)" I'm looking at ends differently then the last few seconds of that recording - I think Danny & I added an unfinished measure to imply the composer had somehow, perhaps violently, left off writing - a parody of J.S. Bach's Art of the Fugue, where the composer croaked mid-way thru writing the Contrapunctus XIV, & his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote in the score: "At the point where the composer introduces the name BACH (or in English notation, B-flat A C B-natural) in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died."

Future contributions to the PIANOSPHERE will not end so badly! If you have anything to add, either a lead or an original, send it this way ~ (My e-mail is o [[at]] itwaslost.org.)

Danny Holt is releasing a new CD soon, check his WEBSITE & for details & his MySpace for samples & more on that here anon.

For Today: The Langley Schools Music Project

I was looking up Liberian Congresswoman Malinda Jackson Parker to find more pianists for our Pianosphere project (the one where we judge if Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou is the Best Piano Player Ever to Live & Play the Piano). Irwin Chusid is the man who first compiled "Songs in the Key of Z", & the Wikipedia lists as one of his primary accomplishments the recovery of the Langley Schools Music Project. They are a "collection of children's chorus recordings made from 1976-77 by Canadian music teacher Hans Fenger in a school gymnasium in Langley, British Columbia, near Vancouver. The students performed unique versions of pop hits by the likes of The Beach Boys, David Bowie, and Paul McCartney. The recordings were quickly forgotten until Victoria record collector Brian Linds found the first record in a thrift store and sent it to" Irwin Chusid. (I love the poetry of the Wikipedia, like how the recordings were "quickly forgotten.") It's not quite of the pianosphere, altho there are pianos.

Here's a few samplers:

	- - -
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

David Bowie said of that recording of Major Tom: "The backing arrangement is astounding. Coupled with the earnest if lugubrious vocal performance you have a piece of art that I couldn't have conceived of, even with half of Colombia's finest export products in me". Since when did Mr Bowie refer to the former colonies as "Columbia"? UPDATE: Thank you, anonymous comment, for pointed out that David Bowie meant Colombia, that country, not Columbia, the alternate name for the New World. I think I had Murillo's Lesson on the brain.

GO TO LAST FM & LISTEN TO THE WHOLE ALBUM.

Elsewhere in the Pianosphere: Liberian Congresswoman Malinda Jackson Parker

A few weeks ago, we spearheaded the initiative to spearhead a new sphere, namely the Pianosphere. To validate Mr Olaf Mary's tweeted claim that "TSEGUE-MARYAM GUEBROU IS THE BEST PIANO PLAYER EVER TO LIVE AND PLAY THE PIANO", we vowed to evaluate some similar piano geniuses, like Father Basil Frison.

Today, we turn to an old favorite, & in a similar vein. Long ago, Sam Amidon gave me the cd "Songs in the Key of Z", which contains one track of the Liberian Congresswoman Malinda Jackson Parker. Here it is:

	Congress-Woman Malinda Jackson - Cousin Mosquito
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

I recently put this on a gourd-making mix-CD for Friend-of-the-Blog "Big Mama" Raleigh, among thirty other tracks, this is the one she was dying to have identified & was wondering if there was more. There is! I just found out you can get that entire EP, Tubman Goodbye Songs of Liberia, from iTunes, & you can listen to the entire album on LAST Fm - go here. There's even a second movement to the Mosquito song. Here's the e-mail from Big Mama:

from "Big Mama" Raleigh ____@yahoo.com date Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 8:50 AM subject Re: More of Liberian Congresswoman Malinda Jackson-Parker mailed-by yahoo.com signed-by yahoo.com

Thanks for sending this. I like the [first] version you sent better because she sings a lot more of the cousincousincousincousincousin

cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin part. How in the world do you find such obscure stuff? Do your Negro friends recommend these? I LOVE 'em! Speaking of, I just made reservations for us to see Ladysmith Black Mambaso here in July. Thank you, James. Big Mama, Bishop of Bend

Music Review: Bold Twotturgies

A short track, mixing two piano pieces by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou with part of the old Gershwin recording of Rhapsody in Blue, was given to a dj at KALX 90.7 & played last Sunday night. (Listen to it below) This prompted Mr Mary to twatt boldly about the supremacy of Guebrou's pianoing. Now I am all but against extreme assertions, especially across the tweetosphere, but with enough qualifiers, anyone is the world's best something. The folloing tweetologue followed:

OlafMary
TSEGUE-MARYAM GUEBROU IS THE BEST PIANO PLAYER EVER TO LIVE AND PLAY THE PIANO.
about 20 hours ago from TwitterGadget

SSandrigon
@olafmary Who is the best never-to-have-lived Ethiopian piano player to have never played the piano?
about 20 hours ago from txt

SSandrigon
I've been reading about Joseph Smith all day- - charismatic prophet & naughty naughty boy.
about 20 hours ago from txt

SSandrigon
& sitting on the Berkeley campus, how young everyone looks: these girls are 6 yrs older than when polygs prefer them!!
about 20 hours ago from txt

OlafMary
@SSandrigon I am.
about 20 hours ago from TwitterGadget
in reply to SSandrigon

SSandrigon
@olafmary As one living non-ETHIOPIAN piano player to another, I am highly suspicious of that claim & you will have to prove it.
about 20 hours ago from txt

OlafMary
@SSandrigon I accept.
about 20 hours ago from TwitterGadget
in reply to SSandrigon


We await both proofs. Now, who is this Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou? Several images of her I found seem to show her with a blue face. Here is the brief track played on KALX, bookended by her peculiar compositions.

Are they the finest piano pieces ever composed? She is in a crowded competition. Earlier on this WEBLOG, we heard one Father Basil Frison sing The Prayer of St Francis & play guitar. WFMU's Andrew Lander had earlier discovered him as another self-taught piano composer.

	Rev. Basil Frison - A Gondola In Venice
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Stay tuned at itwaslost.org while we listen to other iconoclast pianists in the pianosphere to evaluated Mr Mary's claim of Tsegue-Maryam's superiority.