A Chain of Chevaliers

Some time ago, a few of my students at Boston Arts Academy and I got to talking about French-Guadeloupean composer Chevalier de Saint-Georges (warning: strong language), a wildly skilled fencer, superb violinist, and general badass who lived around the time of the French Revolution. One of them brought up the totally unrelated/haunting song "Chevalier" by Canadian R&B/soul singer-songwriter Daniel Caesar and the idea for a playlist was born.

Here's some music written by people named Chevalier or that have "Chevalier" (French for "knight") in the name somewhere:

Some thoughts on a few of these:

• Of course, a couple pieces from the Chevalier (de Saint-Georges) who sparked this idea, starting with the first movement of the overture of his most famous opera, L'Amant anonyme (which is also his Symphony No. 2 somehow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). Later, the slow movement from his Violin Concerto in D Major, which suitably showed off his impressive violining.
• The French math rock group Totorro was one of the new things I found while going down this rabbit hole. Their "Chevalier Bulltoe", the second song from their debut album Home Alone, is a ton of fun, and everything else of theirs I've heard by now is just as refreshing and lively.
• If you've ever talked to me about film music, you know I have mixed feelings about Hans Zimmer. That said, his "Chevaliers de Sangreal" is pretty freakin' cool, regardless of anything, and the high point of an otherwise pretty bad movie.
• Edith Piaf lived exactly the kind of colorful life you'd expect from a French singer of her stature and time: car crashes, morphine addictions, mobsters, and spectacular roller coasters of fame and infamy. I didn't know this song of hers before, but it's a fun one! (Connecting to Zimmer, he used her "Non, je ne regrette rien" to great effect in Inception.)
• I know Maurice Chevalier mostly from his work on "The Aristocats" (can we agree that movie was really weird?) and "Livin' in the Sunlight" (on this playlist), but he was apparently quite a big name cabaret singer for several decades in the US and France.
• Alizée was another new name for me, with her quasi-love song "Mon chevalier" (I say "quasi" because the descriptions of her knight are... less than flattering). This song comes from her fifth studio album entitled 5. Take a moment to breathe that naming creativity in. The song itself is quite pretty!
• I was shocked to discover the Québécois singer Céline Dion has in fact done more than one song, this one a take on the French children's song "The wolf, the doe, and the knight."
• Going waaay back, Baroque composer Michel Delalande was a Chevalier of the Order of St. Michel, so he earns a spot on the list with the 2nd movement of his haunting "Miserere".
• Another "Mon chevalier" on the list, and this was probably the coolest song that was new for me. French electronic composer Émilie Simon wrote this song in memory of her husband Franky Knight, who died during the swine flue pandemic in '09. Her voice and style remind me a bit of Björk, the swan-wearing Icelandic singer-songwriter who is one of my favorite musicians.
• Adrien Chevalier is a jazz violinist, so you know he's doing things right. He paired up with fellow New Yorker and singer Myriam Phiro on this arrangement of one of my favorite Mexican ballads, "Besame Mucho".
• And last but not least, a bit of a stretch: the closing movement of Stravinsky's iconic Firebird Suite actually has chevaliers hidden in the subtitle, with the "Return to Life of the Petrified Knights". And it makes a good ending, so why not.

Social media and all that

Just a quick note that in addition to following me on SoundCloud (where you can hear my music), you can now stalk me to your heart's content on Twitter (discussion and debates about music) and Instagram (pics from around Boston and other music-related things). You're welcome.

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  RT @acshreff: A wonderful resource for anyone programming classical or new music! @JABComposer https://t.co/Qpu584L9ES

  about 11 hours ago
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  Film, podcast, and piano music! (w/audio) - https://t.co/mZqW27b8zA

  about 2 weeks ago
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  March for Our Lives Boston #mfolboston @ Boston, Massachusetts https://t.co/KeEElriTbq

  about 3 weeks ago

Happy 150th Amy Beach!

As 2017 ends, so does the 150th birthday of Amy Beach, a creative force matched by few American composers before or since. There has been tragically but unsurprisingly little fanfare or celebration in her hometown of Boston, and in fact, no major American symphony has programmed any of her pieces this year. Thankfully, though, the rest of the world has not forgotten her. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, in particular, has been widely performed this season and in the past few years, including a performance at this year's Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony.

Several others have already written extensively about her, so I'll let them take it from here. Take a read while you listen to some of her work!

• AmyBeach.com's announcement of her 150th birthday on 5 Sep. 2017 (this website is run by Liane Curtis, President of the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy; shout out to her for her incredible work in many arenas!)
• From the New York Times: "That Beach was famous in her lifetime but ignored today suggests that, even if we live in a more enlightened age..., prejudices still shape the symphonic repertory."
• From Mayor Walsh's declaration of Amy Beach Day: "Whereas Amy Beach was the first American woman to achieve national and international acclaim as a composer... I urge all my fellow Bostonians to join me in recognizing and honoring Amy Beach as one of the most successful American composers."

Merry Christmas!

A couple Christmas videos for you: One with my friend Avanti Nagral at Adams House's Winter Feast, the other attempting to play "Silent Night" on the organ.

A Christmas version of Hallelelujah at a Winter feast - let’s bring in the holiday spirit early ❤️ (FULL VERSION in bio) with @jaballest @onthegoldcoast - thank you to my beautiful roommate @woman.of.the.world for taking this video! (Courtesy of Avanti Nagral)

Christmas pipes from Adams House! (Note that I don’t actually play organ. You’ve been warned. 😶)

Gaudete recording

Enjoy this recording of the ISU Concert Choir premiering my “Gaudete” in Illinois! Seeing as it's inspired by (and takes a bit from) a 16th-century Christmas carol, this seems like a good time to toss it out in the world.

(Feel free to contact me if you or a choir near you is interested in performing it!)

Women-Only Music History, part 2 (piano)

Happy International Women's Day! In celebration of the day, here's a continuation of my series of posts focusing on recognizing a missing part of music: the contribution of women composers.

I started this series in conjunction with my efforts to bring women on a level playing field in my music history class at the Boston Arts Academy. (You can support our innovative teaching methods at Boston's only public high school for the arts by making a tax-deductible donation here!)

For a substantial period of time, women composers were more or less relegated to writing vocal music or music for piano and/or small ensembles in salons.

Although they were largely limited to a smaller arena and away from the “manly” large works of orchestras and operas, the women who worked in the salons created spectacular works of art, especially for piano, which is what I'll be focusing on today. (And don't forget to sign up for the mailing list on the right sidebar for extended playlists, previews of works in progress, and more!)

Some thoughts on today's selections for the curious:

• Marianna Martines (1744-1812) lived on the third floor of a house in Vienna, and at a young age started piano lessons with a young man who lived in the attic of the same building: Joseph Haydn. (The family who later employed him, the Esterházys, lived on the first floor.) She became such a fine player that Mozart later asked her to join him in performing duets, and she became well known as a composer in her own right, playing for Empress Maria Theresa on many occasions.

• Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847) will be returning at least one more time, but this is possibly my favorite piece of hers, a passionate, astonishingly gorgeous nocturne. She had a close relationship with her brother Felix and her family supported her music-making—but only in private. Felix was adamantly opposed to her publishing her pieces for quite a long time, almost until her premature death. Her father once wrote her that "Music will perhaps become [Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament." Just as she broke through and started a public career with her husband’s support, she died of a stroke at age 41. Her brother wrote a string quartet in her honor and died later that year at age 38.

• Clara Schumann (1819-1896) has one of the most fascinating life stories of anyone we discuss in BAA's music history classes. For now, I'll mention her crazy love story with her husband, composer Robert Schumann. They got engaged when she was 18 and he was 27, but her father didn't approve. This led to some great drama: the couple sued her dad, he demanded she return her piano and said all kinds of crap about her, she fired back in spectacular fashion and the judge ruled in her favor. Their joy lasted a few years before Robert slowly went insane. She wrote this set of variations on a theme of Robert's for the last birthday he spent with the family before passing away. She will return to this series.

• The Venezuelan Teresa Carreño (1853-1917) was primarily a pianist, but also composed a fair number of pieces, especially for her instrument. She gained the moniker “the Walküre of the piano” for her fiery performances and personality. As English conductor Henry Wood put it, “It is difficult to express adequately what all musicians felt about this great women who looked like a queen… and played like a goddess.” (Of course, he then “complimented” her by remarking on the “masculine vigor of [her] tone and touch,” but so we go.) Other interesting bits include her Venusian crater, her collection of piano rolls, her several lively marriages, and that one time she turned down Liszt's offer to teach her piano.

• The American composer Florence Price (1887-1953) was largely brought up on a mix of classical music and spirituals. Her Symphony No. 1 became the first piece by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra in 1933 (thanks Chicago), but that'll come up later. For now, here's a kickass piano fantasia on the spiritual “Sinner, please don't let this harvest pass.”

• Next up is May Aufderheide (1888-1972), who I know next to nothing about, other than that she wrote a bunch of rags. (Apparently, most ragtime composers in Indiana were either black men or white women.) Her first rag was actually so successful it convinced her father to start a publishing company based around her music, so there's that.

• Tania León was born in Havana, Cuba in 1943 and moved to NYC in the 60s, where she's been since then. She is of mixed Cuban, French, Spanish, Chinese, and African heritage, so I guess New York makes a lot of sense. Her music is dense and flies wildly between exhilarating and terrifying, which makes for great listening. “Ritual” is a prime example of this style.

Music History: The Women-Only Version (part 1)

In December, the New York Times published a women-only version of music history, highlighting 9 women composers in recognition of the Met's first performance of an opera by a woman in over a century (Kaija Saariaho's "L'Amour de Loin"; I've discussed the Met's poor track record before).

As nice as that article was, it requires a lot more than a one-off to recognize this almost-lost part of history. One of my goals this year for the senior music history class I teach at the Boston Arts Academy has been to bring women composers into the spotlight right alongside their male counterparts. (You too can support our innovative teaching methods at Boston's only public high school for the arts by making a tax-deductible donation here!)

In that spirit, I'll be starting a new series this year highlighting a much more in-depth women-only version of music history via Spotify playlists. (Side note: Sign up for the mailing list on the right sidebar for extended playlists, previews of works in progress, and more!)

Today I'm focusing on vocal music by composers from the 12th century until today. Check it out!

Some thoughts on today's selections for the curious:

• Hildegard of Bingen was a visionary (as in, she said she had visions) 12th-century German abbess who somehow found time to compose in between corresponding with popes and kings; writing books about theology, botany, philosophy, and medicine; founding a couple of abbeys; and inventing her own language, mixed with Latin in this particular song.
• I don't know too much about Maddalena Casulana, but she worked in that weird late-Renaissance chromatic style that I enjoy so much, vaguely in the vein of the madman Carlo Gesualdo. This song is one of my favorites of hers.
• Francesca Caccini wrote the first opera written by a woman in addition to a lot of harmonically beautiful songs, including this one. She was way more specific in her notation than most of her contemporaries, which is helpful for knowing how her music sounded but probably didn't go down so well with her contemporaries. This particular performance is absolutely stunning.
• Barbara Strozzi was an illegitimate child who became such a renowned musician her aristocratic father legitimized her before dying. Granted, because of her sultry past (and out-of-wedlock procreation), she was followed throughout her life by rumors of a less palatable side career (if you catch my drift). (My students did an excellent video introduction of her.)
• Amy Beach was a fellow New Englander (as part of the Second New England School) and one of the first American composers to be successful outside the country. This is a nice song of hers, but her true chops will show up later in her orchestral music.
• Meredith Monk is a really strange human being and solidly one of my favorite composers, living or otherwise. She has an astonishing command of her voice and breathtaking creativity in the use of ensembles. Also do yourself a favor and check out her recent "Water/Sky Rant." She will return here for sure.
• Vienna Teng (a.k.a., Cynthia Yih Shih) is a Taiwanese-American pianist and singer/songwriter who writes unexpectedly layered lyrics for her music. I'm not terribly familiar with her body of work, but her album Aims is great and this song, "Hymn of Acxiom," is particularly astonishing. Google around for the full story on the song; it's mind-blowing (which is why it's in our curriculum at BAA).

Red Note New Music Festival Results!

I'm delighted and honored to announce that my new piece "Gaudete" has been selected as the winner of this year's Red Note New Music Composition Competition in the choral category! The ISU Concert Choir will premiere the piece on 26 March 2017 in Normal, IL for those who happen to be in the area. Look for more upcoming news regarding the festival!

A look back at 2016

Well, 2016 turned out to be quite an eventful year any way you slice it. Speaking just in terms of music, some highlights here from the past year include:

January: The Music Department at the Boston Arts Academy held a music technology intersession, where I led a group of students in a film scoring session, at the end of which the students scored their own shorts.

March: We debuted the new ethnomusicology curriculum for seniors at Boston Arts Academy, featuring a visit from renowned Silk Road Project tabla player Sandeep Das, a djembe drumming session, and an unexpected Arab techno saga.

April: Soloists with the Mozart Society Orchestra premiered my violin quartet “Equinox” in Harvard's Paine Hall during their Eight Seasons concert.

March: The Boston Arts Academy received a Grammy Signature Schools Enterprise Award, with a special mention for the music department.

May: During the Boston 48 Hour Film Festival, I joined Hop and Pop Productions to write dessert-inspired music in “Beyond Cheesecake.”

September: Scores become available for purchase on SMP Press.

September: “Persefone's Breakfast” premiered at the Official Latino Short Film Festival in New York.

December: I joined the Boston Arts Academy jazz choir and other local musicians for a performance with jazz legend Jacob Collier.

Here's looking forward to even more adventures in 2017!