Life continues at a hectic pace here in downtown LA! My blogging job today is to catch up on Thursday and Friday. The quicker I can do the blog the more details I can capture- the mentors have bonded and tend to stay up too late in each other's company and then I'm too tired to blog and fall asleep sitting up on my twin bed. Not great for my neck! But my neck and back aren't feeling too bad, surprisingly.
On Thursday, June 14 I started the day with a 9:15 masterclass with Bolcom and Morris on his Cabaret Songs. We heard "Amor" (a pachanga dance where rhythm is the spine of the piece), "Toothbrush Time" which he LOVED sung in a bluesy style (text comes from idea of George Gershwin's girlfriend Kay Swift saying they never stayed over night and made it to "toothbrush time (10:00 a.m.!)"), "Blue" (Weinstein was very ill while writing this and the text basically lets go at the end--not all the Cabaret songs are funny), and "Satisfaction" which was written for Barbara Harris. Some great conversation about the hills and dales of the English language (it has lots of filler and only some important words)--Joan said that in speech class she was taught to speak only the important words of a sentence so that when put back into context they will pop our of the line. Bolcom suggested highlighting important words in yellow or red and also parataxis (sp?) of stripping a sentence down to the important words---instead of "the quick red fox....etc" saying "fox jumps dog."
Toothbrush Time!Bolcom thinks Irving Berlin was the MASTER of text setting, and he is THE person who showed American composers how to set English in song. He is one of my all-time favorite composers!
Morris says we should listen to all kinds of music and maybe let it infiltrate into our composing style and singing tool kit. As an example she likes Adele! She also collects joke books (picks them up in used book stores wherever she travels)! Marriage is a 3 ring circus--the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and suffering!!! They've been married 37 years! She said you'll never know when you need a good joke. So true.
Other tidbits- Viola Spolin taught improvisation at 2nd City- Bolcom improvised musically with them! Joan writes her own lyrics for every song she sings so that she has something that comes to mind if she forgets the words! Be sure to list the lyricist/librettist and not just the composer in your program (Weinstein was bitter about this).
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| Team Bolcom/Morris |
Lovely concert at noon! We heard; de Falla, Granados, Obradors, Larsen, Corigliano, Cipullo, Bolcom, Musto, Margaret Bonds, Brahms, Wolf, Satie, Rossini, and Mozart. Delicious! Wonderful variety, good singing, good playing.
1:45 masterclass with Lisa Saffer on music of John Harbison. I really like some of his music (Mirabai Songs!--very sensual for a mystic???!!!) but some of it isn't easy to listen to without some familiarity I'd say. The challenge of singing it is very cool though--perhaps I shall try. I just had to go take a short nap in order to function for the rest of the day and awoke refreshed in time to...
Thursday from 5-8 is free day at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) which is about 500 feet from The Colburn School. Kristine went with me, and I stayed about an hour. Their permanent collection was pretty amazing and it was wild to see them "live." Everything is much bigger than I imagined and really dominates the room and makes you look at it.
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| Jackson Pollock |
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| Rothko |
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| Rothko Red |
Right before I was told to stop videoing the room :( Still photos are OK, though?
I love this painting- see Moses' words above. They really captured me.
6:30 was a fabulous, fabulous masterclass on Russian song with Martin Katz. Russian music has its emotions on its sleeve more than pretty much any other school of art song. I heard some familiar pieces (Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Britten) and also the works of Taneyev, which were gorgeous and totally unknown to me. We all left floating on air!!!!!!!!!!!!
To the Omni again with friends- Bitter Sweet and Truffled mac and cheese again. I thought I'd be on a diet here in CA but it is not so!!!!!!!!!!! Good friends by a roaring fireplace.
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| The boys, Kerry and Nathan |
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| Wanda and Kerry in a bear hug |
 Reverie, Kristine, and me! |
Read some Martha Stewart "Living"--not my normal reading material but enjoyable. Slept hard.
FRIDAY June 15, 2012: great day!
Rise and shine! Got downstairs at 8:58 in time for a cup of coffee and a pastry before 9:00 class with Martin Katz. Great Spanish repertoire: I LOVE Montsalvatge and will do his music! Learned about a new composer to me- Argentinian Carlos Buchardo. Great duet, "Vidala." A gorgeous, wistful piece about missing home. "Prendiditos de la mano" is a wonderful rhythm-driven song for mezzo. I will try to get ahold of this music before I leave, since I suspect it will be hard to track down otherwise. Also heard folk song settings by Garcia Lorca (yup) and Ernani Braga. Learned a lot in that class. Need to get Castel's Spanish diction book out and dig in. There really aren't that many differences between Castillian, North American, and Argentinian Spanish and I should be able to easily memorize them.
Boil down of Spanish:
Lunch on the patio (the weather is absolutely beautiful here! Did I mention that I have consumption? I feel fine, but I have a rattling in my lungs and a cough. I don't think it is a cold, I think it is congestion from the SMOG. Ug. The air here is of course different from the Northwoods- smoggy and dry.) 12:45 class with Bolcom on his cycle "Briefly it Enters." What a wonderful cycle with text by Jane Kenyon, who died while he was working on the cycle. The two singers were excellent and the music and text are truly masterful. I have the score here so was able to follow along. Bolcom was very annoyed with mistakes in the score from the transcriber--he wanted to make sure that those of us with the score made the corrections, and he even made one in mine when I gave it to him to sign in. My score had coffee spilled on it, and he said "That's OK, it makes it yours." I really liked that. After working through the cycle, sung by 2 sopranos in our masterclass, we took a short break and then they sang it straight through. Really moving. I want to do it someday.
Rachel, pictured with Bolcom above, did such a lovely job. She is able to sing lots of contemporary music very cleanly and effectively. She is a pro.
Spoke to Bolcom afterwards and just told him how lucky we were to have him here and that he is such an important composer to us. He said "you make me blush." Cute! To the MOCA store where I bought a lovely black scarf with blue flowers, a tshirt and some notecards. I fell in love with Rothko, and sadly, the had nothing but a postcard in the store! Sad. Then to a Purcell masterclass with Lisa Saffer. She readily stated that she was tired, and we had a short class. But it was nice to hear some early music in addition to the Romantic and 20th C. literature we've been devouring. Wanda and I (after a short nap for me) walked to Little Tokyo and wandered around the shopping, restaurants, and little streets. Such fun! Japanese tchotchkes, karaoke, treats, and I bought some rice crackers which I LOVE. Bought California lottery tickets and am saving them- I feel LUCKY! Oh, and how could I forget? We got our pedicures! My feet look and feel so much better! The orange toes are mine and the green ones are Wanda's!   I giggled the whole time- tee hee! Beautiful toes and new flip-flops! Bean cakes! Num! Tchotchke heaven!   
Then, we met the mentors at Pinkberry for treats! I had pomegranate yogurt. YUMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
    Tired, tired, tired, so to bed!!!! |
Wow! You ate sushi!!? Good for you!!!! Maybe we can go to this AWESOME place in the cities when you get back!!!! :)
ReplyDeleteHugs,
Nic
That was a most awesome day! Miss you!
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