Go Play Outside!

Outside or inside—that is the question. I suspect things started outside: chants and drums in the village square, songs sung around the fire. But as soon as we could build rooms big enough…sure, bring the band inside. Cathedrals offered really big rooms—with kick ass reverb that made the choral masters go weak in the knees. Private little music rooms in mansions and castles gave way to concert halls big enough for a Mahler symphony and 3,000 of its close personal friends. Sure, outside there were still marching bands and instruments that could be heard over the wind-blown heaths (bagpipes!). But serious listeners, they wanted acoustic perfection and were willing to pony up to build places like the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria, considered by most to be the best sounding concert hall in the world.

But then came vacuum tubes and transistors and Gibson Les Paul’s and Hammond B-3’s and Mr. Microphone! You no longer needed a Sousa-sized band to play the national anthem for a crowd, you could do it with a left-handed Stratocaster, a few thousand watts of amplifier power, and some 75-foot high speakers.

Not really interested in joining Woodstock-sized throngs, I’m more inclined to stroll down to the local park to join a few hundred folks who have made summer music a tradition. These ersatz pioneers pack their uncovered wagons with camp chairs, coolers and toddlers. They claim their turf on a grassy field and sit back as the daylight wanes. Purists may balk, preferring to hole up in air-conditioned listening rooms with $55,000 sound systems. And it’s true, conditions are hardly perfect. Musicians compete with popping wine corks, unruly dogs and passing car stereos. They put up with the humidity wreaking havoc on their various strings and reeds. And I suspect their love for the crowd is tempered by the wish that more of the lawn-chair-folks would pony up a few bucks to come to their indoor gigs once the weather gets cooler. But when summer-music-love is in the air, it’s hard to argue with a sweet, bluesy guitar solo under a cloudless sky at dusk.

The Amazing Mr. Bennett

There have been a lot of memories shared since Tony Bennett died on July 21st. Some going back to the beginning of his career in the early ‘50s. Others lauding his more recent collaborations with Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse. He sang with big bands and full orchestras, and could fill a large concert hall with his unaccompanied and unamplified voice (as he did at Milwaukee’s Riverside Theatre a few times). But I think Bennett was at his best in a more intimate setting. (I’ve already written about his album with pianist Bill Charlap in The Friday Five, March 27, 2023).

Those sessions with Charlap were an echo, of sorts, of the classic recordings Bennett made with pianist Bill Evans in the mid 1970s. There were two sessions, recorded for two different labels. But they are all available these days in various formats (including several alternate takes). The pair surveys dozens of great American songs that I’m sure were all dear to Bennett’s heart. For me, Leonard Bernstein’s “Some Other Time” stands out among them.

It was one of Evans’s favorite ballads. He even built an improvised solo (“Peace Piece”) from its opening vamp. Written for the 1944 Broadway musical On the Town (the song was omitted from the film version), it’s sung by two couples who are saying goodbye to each other after spending 24 hours together in New York City. The men are sailors on shore leave, so it’s unlikely that they will meet “some other time.” And Betty Comden and Adolf Green’s lyrics capture that gentle irony. Bennett’s singing embraces that subtext perfectly. Listen to the way he speak-sings the swooping interval on “Oh, well…” In single musical gesture, he conveys both the emotional pain of a missed connection and the feigned nonchalance of an difficult goodbye. So farewell, Mr. Bennett, perhaps we’ll hear you sing…some other time.

The Maria Schneider Orchestra

In a record store (remember those?) you’ll find Maria Schneider’s music filed under “jazz.” Her ensemble of choice is the Big Band—trumpets, reeds, trombones and a rhythm section—but the soundscapes she creates with these raw materials are original and miraculous.

At Ravinia last Sunday night the Maria Schneider Orchestra whispered and thundered by turns. At times, accordionist Julian Labro (not a typical big band instrument) murmured gently. At others, the full-tilt of the horns sounded like a freight train approaching. These are not the standard, bluesy riffs of a Count Basie standard. Schneider’s sound is complex and rich, like Richard Strauss with a backbeat.

The Maria Schneider Orchestra

Or perhaps Debussy. Schneider loves to compose with a “program,” evoking the non-musical world through music. One of her best known works, The Thompson Fields, was inspired by the Minnesota farm where she grew up. Visiting as an adult, she surveyed the surrounding landscape of farm fields from the top of a silo, and this tone poem captures its vast warmth. In this concert, the piece evolved from stately Copland-esque harmonies to a raucous guitar solo by Jeff Miles, as if the pastoral had been digitized and put through distortion filters. Bulería, Soleá y Rumba thrived on driving latin rhythms that had you moving in your seat (even if you got lost trying to count the complex time signatures). For encores, she played two pieces from her suite for soprano and orchestra, Winter Morning Walks. Inspired by the poetry of Ted Kooser (see below).

If you are unfamiliar with Schneider, don’t expect to find a vast selection of her work on YouTube or Spotify. She is an outspoken advocate for the rights of musicians to be fairly compensated for their creations, so “freemium” services are the enemy. She’s testified before Congress about the issue and has pioneered ways for keep “big data” at bay. (Her most recent recording is a musical protest of sorts, called Data Lords.) But when she had to cancel live appearances during the pandemic, Schneider did release a video concert of sorts, and you can watch it here. Or see this official video of Data Lords, made available by the Library of Congress, which commissioned the music.

The Iguanas

Getting butts in seats—or feet on the dance floor—is a struggle for musicians these days, but there are plenty of bands still going at it. For every billion dollar Taylor Swift tour, there are hundreds of bands like The Iguanas, who hop around the country playing in small- to medium-size clubs to keep their music in circulation.

The Iguanas: Doug Garrison, Rod Hodges, René Coman and Joe Cabral.

I didn’t know much about The Iguanas (other than their New Orleans roots), but when a local musician friend posted an enthusiastic endorsement, I dove in.

Their music is a heady blend of American traditions: blues, jazz, New Orleans R&B, Tex-Mex Conjunto and Tejano (they describe it as music created “within earshot” of Bourbon Street, Muscle Shoals and Mexico City). As you can imagine, it had the dance floor filled from the first notes. Their beats were infectious, propelled by the big, fat tenor of Joe Cabral.

Catch them the next time they’re in your town. Or just pick a venue and find a band that piques your interest, and go see/hear some live music. There just ain’t anything like it.

Winter in July

Poet Ted Kooser

Hearing a bit of Maria Schneider’s instrumental suite, Winter Morning Walks, brought me back to Ted Kooser’s beautiful collection of short poems. Kooser was treated for cancer in the late 1990s and during his treatment and recovery, he found it difficult to write. Here’s how he described it in the book’s introduction:

“During the previous summer, depressed by my illness, preoccupied by the routines of my treatment, and feeling miserably sorry for myself, I’d all but given up on reading and writing. Then, as autumn began to fade and winter came on, my health began to improve. One morning in November, following my walk, I surprised myself by trying my hand at a poem. Soon I was writing every day.”

His daily poems were often about his pre-dawn walks, which became his post-cancer exercise routine to avoid the sunlight during his radiation treatments. He recorded his daily poems on postcards and mailed them to novelist Jim Harrison. And eventually, collected 100 of them in a book. Here’s one of them:

December 28
Windy and at the freezing point

There are days when the world
has a hard time keeping its clouds on,
and its grass in place, and this
is one of them, tumbleweeds
huddled up under the skirts
of the cedars, oak trees
joining hands in the windy grove.
Even the dawn light, blocky
with pink and yellow and blue
like a comics section, quickly
fluttered away, leaving a Sunday
the color of news.

I’m taking a break from The Friday Five for a week. Look for another edition on Friday, August 11th.

Have a good couple of weeks.