more Spoleto photos

Here are some more people I met at this year's Spoleto festival, beginning with some friends I made who share a connection to USC (the one in Southern California, not South Carolina):

Lydia, Ke, and Mike at Spoleto USA

My brother Dan also went to USC, so I consider myself the genetic equivalent of a USC alum, though unfortunately I cannot present my DNA for student discounts. Lydia is a violinist who I first met at Tanglewood in 2002, and an enthusiast of James Joyce and Chinese opera. Ke is a bassoonist who recently won a position in the Detroit Symphony and is very adept at coining catch phrases. Mike is a clarinetist and a native Oregonian, as well as a lover of alphorn concertos (or at least Leopold Mozart's Sinfonia pastorella, the pinnacle of the genre.)

I also met Mary, a flutist who left the New World Symphony the year before I got there:

Mary with a painting of a church in Charleston

Mary introduced me to a great jazz singer named Rachel Farrell, and was kind enough to listen to me blather about Anita O'Day.

Many of my photos, like the one below, ended up with bizarre distorted blobs on people's faces:

please excuse the thing on Jason's chin

Still, Jason is definitely a person worth noting, a violinist currently living in Texas but originally from Idaho. Like all the people mentioned here, neither the picture nor my pithy summary do him any justice. Best wishes to everyone anyway!

Steve, the airplane maven

One of my favorite non-fiction books is Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, which like his more recent book blink is a wide-ranging exploration of all kinds of interesting and often counterintuitive ideas, from the broken-windows theory of urban crime prevention to the ways we use our friends and family members as external storage for memories. The main topic of the book is how ideas and trends arise, and he identifies several important personality types in this process, one of which is the maven: the person who is constantly gathering knowledge, on anything from grocery prices to car repair to movie releases, in order to share with anyone (sometimes everyone) that maven meets.

I always thought of myself as a bit of a maven - hella frisch alone is evidence of my continuous need to tell other people about what I am doing and listening to. Today, however, I was humbled and astounded, while on a flight from Los Angeles to Phoenix, to meet a true maven by the name of Steve.

I came onboard with a newspaper editorial about Alexander Hamilton and the economic philosophies of the founding fathers, confident that it would either educate me or lull me to sleep. I had not completed more than two sentences, however, before Steve struck up a conversation about recent presidential biographies; this discussion then segued effortlessly into computer software recommendations, Steve's family, the LA Dodgers' recent woes, people Steve knew in college, movie recommendations, the situation in Iraq, Steve's health problems, ways to win at blackjack, and it went on. It was only a one hour flight, but by the end of it I had a sheet of paper crammed with notes - Steve had insisted I jot a few things down, so that I would remember.

Having met the Platonic ideal of maven-dom, I'm not sure I really want to be one - it's alright to suggest a book every once in a while, but being a friend of Steve would be a full-time job. Then again, I would know exactly which software to download, what movies to see, and how to make money at blackjack. (Not that I'm going to use all of that knowledge.) I asked Steve if he had a website himself, and he said that he didn't; for better or worse, this particular maven can only be appreciated in person.

my Anita O'Day obsession

A few of months ago my yoga teacher Garth put on a recording of the jazz singer Anita O'Day, and ever since then I've been addicted. Whatever it is about her voice, her phrasing, her style, I just find her singing irresistible. Full disclosure on how much of a nerd I am: when I recently purchased a laptop computer, I decided to name it "Anita O'Dell" in her honor.

One curious thing about Anita O'Day is that her album covers tend to feature terrible photographs. She wasn't an unattractive person, yet I may have never picked up a CD of hers had I not already fallen in love with the voice. In an industry in which female recording artists' success too often seems to depend on sexy album covers, though, it's refreshing to be reminded that appearance needn't take precedence over substance.

My obsession with Anita was largely based on the first CD Garth played me (Jazz 'Round Midnight) and a couple of others I've been able to find, all representing her work from the '50s and early '60s. Then last week my brother took me to Amoeba Music, a fantastic record store in Los Angeles, and I found an album of hers called My Ship, recorded in the late '70s. Listening to this album was incredibly moving - it is the same voice, but the decades in between have deepened her, and added a new poignance to her performance.

It is probably more common to discover a jazz singer in later years and then to work backwards to the earlier recordings, but reversing the process can be just as fascinating. Had I never heard her more recent work I would have still found her delightful, but I would have missed a whole dimension of her career, the effect of time and maturity. In music, an art form so concerned with stretching, suspending, and shaping time, it is a wonder to hear how time can shape a great artist.

Urn-forgettable

I had a great surprise last month when I received an e-mail from my high school friend Aaron Olson, otherwise known as Urn. I am not quite sure how the nickname was derived, though it did always seem like a touchingly polite gesture, rendering his name just that much quicker to type or to pronounce. (I suppose I was not so polite, because for a long time I went by the nickname "maccheww", based on a noise that our family dog, a siberian husky, made one day - Bandit may have just been clearing his throat, but his howl sounded distinctly like "Halloooooooooooooo! maccheww".)

Anyway, Urn was always one of my favorite people and closest friends in high school. We used to walk together to and from almost every day, and since he lived at a convenient point midway between school and home I would often linger there at Urn's house for several hours each afternoon.

Here's something I wrote in an e-mail to Urn, thinking back on that time:

I remember how we had our own huge collection of inside jokes, when we would walk to school and back together every day, and how we could totally crack eachother up while saying nothing that would be remotely meaningful to any other person on the planet. I've always admired people who could collect jokes like that - they just seem to evaporate out of my head, leaving only vague nostalgic memories of something pleasant and funny!

When Urn e-mailed me last month, wondering if he had stumbled on the right Matt Heller and hoping to renew our acquaintance, his message awakened all kinds of vague nostalgic memories. Especially since, as it happened, I received his e-mail just after returning to Charleston, SC, a place that has all kinds of nostalgic associations for me as well - I felt like I was nibbling the tea-soaked madeleine at both ends. I also wrote:

...getting back in touch with you makes me realize how so many of the people I've known and liked since then were basically replicas of people I knew in high school. Or rather, I tried to replicate the relationships I had in high school with those people - and when they failed to behave in quite the same ways that their high school prototypes would have, I never quite knew what to make of them. I don't think I ever quite found a substitute Aaron Olson, which I suppose makes you a highly valuable commodity!

Urn's value as a commodity seems only to have risen, judging from the charm and humor of his e-mails! Here is an excerpt from Urn's e-mail to me, which I think gives a taste of his unique sense of humor:

Man, I'm glad I found you. Not as though I've been on some lifelong quest to find a long lost sibling holding onto the other half of a pendant that will eventually usher in the new world order or anything, but now and then I get a bug, and I start looking up people to see if I can find them. My internet stalking abilities only stay fresh if I use them, you see.

He also has a blog, alternate 3rd thursdays, which I've been snooping on to catch up on his current obsessions. Urn's blog may get a bit technical on occasion, but it still makes me laugh, even when I have no idea what he's talking about!

a few new bass acquaintances

Jory, Dave, Gabe, and Adam at Middleton Place, near Charleston

I got this photo just before the Spoleto Finale Concert at Middleton Place, which included a beautiful Lt. Kije solo by Jory Herman (first on left, above). Due to the various opera orchestra detachments, we only played one concert as a full bass section, but it was a pleasure meeting all of these guys, and I hope to run into them again in the future.

Jory was the only one pictured here whom I had met previously, at the Milwaukee audition a couple of months back, where we shared a taxi from the airport. I couldn't have asked for a better or more reliable stand partner for The Rite of Spring, and I already mentioned his impressive solo playing. Dave is heading to Germany later this summer, where he'll be in an the Essen Philharmonic orchestral academy, a really exciting opportunity to get a foothold in one of that region's orchestras. Gabe is also heading abroad this summer, for a trial in Singapore, and I should see a lot more of Adam down in Miami in the fall.

More and more I seem to be at least acquainted with the people winning the big orchestra jobs, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see any of these four soon do likewise. Of course, I'm beginning to get tired of vicariously enjoying my bass colleagues' successes, and impatient to follow their examples!

This afternoon, I went for a walk with my brother Dan and sister Zoe, as well as Zoe's two dogs, Daisy and Django. Both dogs are labradoodles, a mix of labrador and poodle, and they are still just puppies.

Having both my siblings together in the same place is a nice treat, allowing us to recall lots of childhood memories and stories. None of us like much to talk on the telephone, but I am always surprised by how funny and amiable my brother and sister can be when I get to see them in person!


Zoe, Django, Daisy, Dan, and Isaac (in stroller)

Four Seasons with the SLSQ

One of the highlights of the Spoleto Festival for me was getting to rehearse and perform with flutist Paula Robison, lutenist Frederic Hand, pianist Jeremy Denk, and the members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet. They were all guest artists in Spoleto's Dock St. chamber music series, and Paula brought an arrangement of Vivaldi's 4 Seasons with herself playing the solo violin part on the flute.

It was an interesting substitution - great for those bird calls in Spring, somewhat less successful at summoning up the fury of a Summer storm, though Paula plays with more character and imagination than just about any instrumentalist I am aware of. In rehearsal she loved to tell long and extravagantly acted stories about fox hunting or lonely shepherds, and would often get carried away by a narrative and start singing and dancing around.

The other members of the group were just as lively and interesting. The first violinist of the St. Lawrence, Geoff, always seemed to have a thoughtful observation to make about the way the music worked, and an extra nuance to add to the interpretation. Chris, the cellist, always had a funny aside and impressed me with his characterful ways of phrasing a bass line. The violist, Lesley, often would bring things back to the topic when the discussion got a little flighty or tangential, and the second violinist Barry had some great suggestions for articulations.

trying to look like I belong: Barry, Chris, Jeremy Denk, me, Geoff

I was impressed by how light and amusing they kept rehearsals, never getting bogged down in problematic passages. I imagine that being a chamber musician demands so much interpersonal skill, managing everyone's egos while trying to contribute everything possible to the musical product, that a healthy sense of humor is an absolute requirement of the job.

Vivaldi's Four Seasons wasn't a favorite piece of mine - after hearing it so often in elevators and department stores, it's hard to get really excited about performing it live. Playing it with these musicians, though, brought everything to life and made all the gestures seem spontaneous and thrilling again, from the thunderstorms of Spring to the cracking ice in Winter. It inspired me to try to bring a chamber musician's engagement, conviction, and energy to all of my playing.