Sufjan Stevens' Orchestral Manoeuvres, or Why seek? Choose Any Pill You Want! Our Sufjan is Your Cureal!
Is it just me, or is classical music shit-hot lately? I suppose we can lay the blame squarely at Owen Pallett's feet - and I, for one, couldn't be happier.
From the irrepressible Amanda Newman (not the same person as Lisa Moran, pls update yr links) comes word that Sufjan Stevens will be shortly embarking on another tour, this time to support The Avalanche, his obscenely listenable collection of discards from the writing of Illinois. He'll be accompanied on tour by My Brightest Diamond (one of the Illinoisemakers; she's lovely) and his band will include strings and a brass section. Oh bliss. They will be playing a repertoire drawn from Michigan, Seven Swans and Illinois, in a new symphonic context. This is Spitzer getting all distracted and dreamy-eyed at the thought.
The
From The Avalanche, two tracks. One that feels like Manu Chao is going to begin singing at any moment, and another that seems to articulate the awe I felt when, during a long night drive over the Canadian shield (listening to Illinois for the first time), I caught my first ever glimpse of the Northern Lights.
[MP3] Sufjan Stevens - The Henney Buggy BandAn Admission: All right. Okay. I lured you here under Sufjan pretenses to tell you about Jablkon. Apologies for my artless segue to contemporary classical music, and why Czechs are the shit, but all this talk of the new symphonic Sufjan and his oboe-fondling past was a ruse to get you geeked over the symphonic/jazz/avant-garde (not sure what to call it; oh look now, you're getting scared) music of Czech singer/composer Jablkoň. When I interviewed Sufjan Stevens for Exclaim! last year [transcript excerpted here] we got to geeking on classical music and whether or not he still listened to it after enduring "oboe boot camp" as he called it. Right at the time that I was attempting to absorb Illinois through my pores in preparation for the interview, I was also heavily imbibing a CD-R copy of a recent live recording of Jablkoň with the Moravští Symfonici that I had been sent by impeccable Czech label, Indies Records. [Please go there immediately! and listen to MP3s of Iva Bittova, Květy, and Cicvarek, Kabelkova & Kriz]
[MP3] Sufjan Stevens - For Clyde Tombaugh
Young people do listen to avant-garde and classical music in Czech Republic, I suspect more so than they do here, though this is entirely optimistic conjecture. But is seems true, judging by the relative youth of the audiences there for all classical music (in contrast to the Itzhak Perelman concert in Toronto last year, where my companion and I were the youngest by about 40 years). While perhaps the hip young things in Czech aren't lining up so much for the old guys (Dvorak, Smetana, Mozart), there is a vibrant and living contemporary classical scene there, and it gives me hope. That there can be a place where there isn't this discontinuity between orchestral music and other kinds of musics, between symphonic music new and old, and there doesn't seem to be this formaldehyde culture of Top 40 style Mozart-Beethoven-Vivaldi preservationists sucking the life out of classical music for radio consumption.
As it so happens, I ended up sending a copy of Jablkoň: Symphonic - XXV to Stevens - but then of course, he blew up, and all was pandemonium, and silly girl kept not even the original for herself to enjoy. I do however have one precious, precious track to share with you, though it doesn't capture the great gestures of the rest of the music (so romantic; so Czech), the muttered in-jokes with the band, or the briefest quotations snatched from the Moldau that makes my heart leap out my throat into my lap. Please find yourself a copy of this recording, it's magic. I can't describe it properly, but I think Mr. Němec can [from the Indies listing of Jablkoň]:
“Under a branchy fruit tree, two stirred jazzmen and one violin player rage. A squealing, hooting, puffing, pounding, fiddling and “pizzicato” crowd of instrumentalists cheers them frantically. A lonely man with a baton makes swift gesture with his hand and... it’s over. Recording of this concert will be released on a CD at the beginning of May under the title SYMPHONIC JABLKOŇ - XXV.” (Michal Němec)
[MP3] Jablkoň - Říkadla (Nursery Rhymes)Please go and listen to the clips of Bláznivý valčík, Sázava and Návraty on the same page, to give you a better idea. My mother is coming back from Czech later this month with (hopefully) a copy of the album. I am on pins and needles until then. Order music from Indies' site; English translations are available on the individual pages (just not globally). And while yr there, why not watch some videoklipy?
posted by Spitz at 12:07 PM
5 Comments:
I picked up "The Avalanche" yesterday but have not listened to it. Thanks for the Toronto Sufjan tour date info. Where's St Andrew's Cathedral. His last show at Trinity Church on Bloor St. was beautiful.
Man do I feel silly/stupid/dumb about that last comment having read your post a little more closely. I won't hold it against you.
just wanted to drop a line and say i enjoyed my visit!
"Young people do listen to avant-garde and classical music in Czech Republic, I suspect more so than they do here, though this is entirely optimistic conjecture. But is seems true, judging by the relative youth of the audiences there for all classical music (in contrast to the Itzhak Perelman concert in Toronto last year, where my companion and I were the youngest by about 40 years). While perhaps the hip young things in Czech aren't lining up so much for the old guys (Dvorak, Smetana, Mozart), there is a vibrant and living contemporary classical scene there, and it gives me hope. That there can be a place where there isn't this discontinuity between orchestral music and other kinds of musics, between symphonic music new and old, and there doesn't seem to be this formaldehyde culture of Top 40 style Mozart-Beethoven-Vivaldi preservationists sucking the life out of classical music for radio consumption."
The problem is the classical community (here) itself (ala the universities and concert halls, etc) and the attitudes that this community injects (consciously or otherwise) into their disciplines. I have been seeing quite a few younger (under 30 or so) classical majors who are much more interested in and (more importantly) accepting of "the new breed" of classical music (which is no longer the standard acoustic "violin being played in a concert hall" format - it's WIDE OPEN to include ALL brands of "art music" such as electronically -keyboard/computer/etc- based music). In short: the concept of what constitutes "classical music" is in dire need of being re-defined (and quick).
As far as nationally speaking, North America has a great many modern classical/art music listeners and creators, actually. This fact just gets lost in the (populous) stream of shit (pardon my French) that it pumped down our throats via the media (and whatnot).
well, yeah.
And if the CBC (as an example) programmed some of this music in a more adventurous, creative spirit, we could actually see these listeners and creators cohere in a visible way.
Hearing the bell orchestre kids wax rhapsodic after the seeing Courvoisier/Feldman (themselves tightrope-walking rather neatly the classical/jazz divide) got me thinking about how most radio never actually programs Bell Orchestre next to music that they themselves like.
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